#also its still horror but its not horror because of the cleft

[pukusmucus]

#i want to say what thisakese feel #but why bother #my disabilities arent scary #please stop villianizing crestures with cleft palates #its cute to have triangular lips #i love having the ocean beneathy skin #also mutation is an incorrect word #so is deformity #i just like to feel good and seen. #takes bravery to look up about my niche qualities about me and be stunned by every negative thing associated with clefts #im only just now using cleft synomously with valleys and removing years of shame #its very beautiful tho #also its still horror but its not horror because of the cleft

[brandnewhuman]

hey--i was wondering if you could do a slasher matchup (also i love your work it's so good and the matchups are so fun!!)

- i am 5' 4" and kinda scrawny (i play sports so my arms and shoulders are pretty toned) and i have been told i look like tweek from SP cause my hair is choppy and a total mess and i have pretty severe eye bags/dark circles that i'm relatively self conscious abt,, i also have a scar on my lip from an accident as a kid (it looks a bit like a cleft lip cause it healed bad and the stitches re-opened a few times) and honestly im really self conscious abt that so i tend to avoid looking at peoples faces and hope they don't look at mine

- i grew up in a farming town but somehow im still scared of horses (they are too big and have dead eyes-) and am very jumpy around loud noises--which leads to me clinging to people a lot and 8 times outta 10 i drag them to the ground with me (i trip on everything-air even i am a total klutz and my elbows/knees/knuckles are scared up because of it lol) and usually yelp as i'm falling

- i have an extensive horror movie collection, all dvd's, and spend a lot of my time taking pictures and videos of others cause i forget things a lot and that helps, even though i am nOt photogenic and have a hard time showing my face in pictures cause of my scar and eyes and stuff (i generally don't think i'm very attractive lol) i like having people i trust take pictures of me like for the further and stuff like that

- i am very affectionate, and love physical contact with the people i love-im don't have a high sex drive at all (plus im demi) but i get weird random bursts of libido and get rlly focused on that -i don't have a good verbal filter either and tend to just spew things out without realizing it, i listen to lots of classic rock and 80's--90's metal

- i am fiercely loyal, almost obsessive, and will do anything without a second thought if someone i trust/love asks me to do something--i didn't have a great family growing up so when i deem someone family i am like a guard dog (even though im more like an aggressive terrier or something lol) and (idk if this is over sharing but– –) i get physically aggressive when that idea is challenged or if someone pisses me off when im having a bad day or something like that

- i kind of have a staring problem--not in a judging way but i'll just space out thinking about someone while staring and not notice

uhh anyway that's the end, i love all your world and hope you're having a wonderful day/night, thanks!!

I paired you up with...

♡ Thomas Hewitt ♡

Okay so first of all IM SORRY IT HAS TAKEN SO LONG AND IM SO HAPPY YOU LIKE MY STUFF BROSKI. It may sound stupid but i appreciate so much when people tell me if im doing a good work with stuff ecc it motivates me so much you have no idea

Moving onto the matchup tho YOU ARE LITERALLY THIS MAN SOULMATE. PLEASE ITS ALMOST RIDICULOUS HOW FUCKING PERFECT YOU ARE FOR EACH OTHER.

We all know how self conscious Tommy is so he would be like the least judgemental person ever in regards to your appearance, if anything he's hyping you up like crazy cause in his eyes you're genuinely the most handsome/pretty/beautiful/gorgeous person ever. He understand you can feel insecure and he would always try to make you feel better without invalidate your feelings cause sometimes it happens to him too that luda tries to tell him he's pretty ecc and doesn't understands that he still feels bad and can't really help it. He would be so sweet about it, even trying to take off his mask from time to time to make you feel like you don't have to be perfect cause he really does love you for who you are.

FARM LOVERS WHO FARM TOGETHER,STAY TOGETHER. Everytime i think of thomas there's the vine "COUNTRY BOYYYY I LOVE YOUUUUU AUGH" playing in my head loudly. This man actually loves everything that has to do with farming and animals, he 100% has a little garden where he plants everything he can and would love for the two of you to take care of it together. I feel like horses don't like him too much, i don't know why but i feel like its true so you won't have to worry about that. OMG IMAGINE HIM TRYING TO GROW YOUR FAVOURITE FLOWERS SO HE CAN BRING THEM TO YOU EVERY MORNING

Okay so about the loud noises, that sucks right? But think about this, you get to cling to this beefy sweet boy and get comforted by him everytime. Surprisingly he hates loud noises too, specially yelling so for your mental peace and his own he always tries to get done with victims as fast as possible. He menacingly glares at hoyt everytime he gets too loud so dont worry about that either. If you do get scared for whatever reason he's always there to help you and wont let go of you until he's sure you're all alright. Besides if you jump on him he can take it without falling cause he's a big boi so do not worry!

Please for the love of God update this boy about films and stuff cause he desperately needs to catch up with all that stuff. He wants to understand you better and if you like something he wants to know about it to have something you both can bond over. I think he would be a little bit sitffy about you taking pics of him ecc cause we all know what he did to his old pictures but with time and patience im sure he will do it just to make you happy. Your happiness means more than his own comfort to him

This man is 100% down for cuddles whenever wherever. This man wont never pass on the opportunity of bear hug you or just holding hands. His favourite part of the day is taking naps together, or sipping iced tea on the poarch with you close. He literally lives for affection cause everyone is always so harsh with him he craves some gentleness and softness, he doesn't want to always be tough and rough so yeah go ahead, make him melt with all that good ol romancing bro

He loves, no scratch that, HE ADORES YOUR LOYALTY. He always has this fear of being betrayed or being taken advantage of so to see you're always on his side it gives him a sense of peace and safety he hasn't felt for years. You will become his safe place like fr, he will do for you anything too so the energy you give will always be matched by him.

I hope you liked it bro, once again I'm sorry for taking to long!!

Song recommendations for this match up!!

#slasher fandom #slasher community #slashers #slasher fanfiction #slasher x reader #horror movies #slasher headcanons #thomas brown hewitt #slashers x reader #slasher #slasher matchups

[consistentsquash]

25 Snarry Recs for Halloween!

If you are not a Snarry reader but still want some Halloween themed recs you can maybe find something you like on my A-Z Intense Darkfics List.

Shoutout - @snarryauctoberfest   will be posting from Oct 15!

AO3 Collection for this list

Selection Criteria

Fics you can have beautiful nightmares about. Trust me. I get nightmares about them. But I can't stop rereading them! That's how good they are! Some of the fics are legit darkfics. So definitely read the warnings.

Because a lot of them use some mystery/suspense as part of the plot I am going to keep the blurbs short to avoid spoilers!

Genre categories

These are just how I categorized the fics. Totally subjective.

Grimdark

HP fanfics generally have some logic in the type of magic they write about. The fics I picked for grimdark don't have that type of magic. They pretty much have the weirdest/craziest/scariest unexplained things happening to our characters.

Because unexplained scary magic is scary.

Psychological

Psychological manipulation or straight up horror.

Ghost stories

Ghost stories! Not guaranteed to be horror but we get ghosts.

Body horror

Weird things happen to our main character's bodies. I really love body horror in movies. Super excited to pick some fics for this list.

 Reflections

by starcrossedgirl (2012)

Spooky because - Snarry in its darkest form! The psychological obsession here is so beautiful/scary.

You look in the mirror and --

One day it will crack.

 Of Disguises and Hearts

by Arkady (2003)

Spooky because - peak Bastard Snape and some real body horror!

Then Harry hears the scissors being set aside, and looks.

With the hint of a smirk on his face, Snape holds up a ragged-edged cutout, the darkest of reds seeping across its whole surface.

 Ariel

by eldritcher (2021)

Spooky because - Snape is a thestral and Harry eats his heart. Except not really. A lyrical dark fantasy fic.

Fear is the boy's blood. Courage is the boy's flesh. And in the having, the thestral's black, dead skin sloughs away. Bone and body warp and open, leaving bare the heart of the beast that thuds brittle with the anguish of a man. The boy kisses the heart, plucks it out from its hiding place, and eats it in black, sweet, blood mouthfuls.

 And death shall have no dominion

by snakeling (2006)

Spooky because - Ghost Snape.

“Black told me to go to the Shrieking Shack. On a full moon.”

Harry felt a little nauseous. “Oh fuck. That mustn’t have been an easy death.”

Thyself a Memory

by Nimori (2010)

Spooky because - Snape is programmed with some dark agenda. Heartbreaking fic.

"Can I ask what you thought to gain?"

Quietly: Sub-directive one engaged. Do not answer questions pertaining to the programme.

 Corvus Corone

by rinsbane (2005)

Spooky because - rinsbane. I mean. Rinsbane's writing can make birthday parties spooky.

Harry glances over his shoulder, suddenly uneasy. The Willow doesn’t suffer anything in its branches, and yet there must be 100 crows gathered on it, watching. They’re all staring at Harry. He knows; he can feel the pinpricks of their eyes jabbing his skin.

 Red as Blood

by @likelightinglass (2019)

Spooky because - vampire Harry. Fairytale Snarry inspired by Snow White and the Huntsman!

Harry looked down, ashamed, and his voice was scarcely above a whisper. “I’ve always been hungry, but that night...I had been starving for so long. They’d kept me locked up, I couldn’t hunt for anything, or even steal from the butcher.”

“So you ate them,” Severus filled in, matter of factly.

 The Lost World

by @perverse-idyll (2012)

Spooky because - Secret Garden fairytale vibes! Also some Orpheus/Eurydice vibes! Dark fantasy with unexplained magic.

"Help?" The voice is bitter. "Not likely. But there is something you can do." The carpet of leaves rustles like a quilt being thrown back. "Potter. Let me touch you."

Harry's heart stamps once, hard, in his chest. It leaves an impression like a cleft hoofprint, the track of something dangerous running through.

"One touch."

 Birdsong

by @writcraft (2014)

Spooky because - Harry sees Lily in the forest! Is it really Lily?

“It’s really me.” Lily laughed and Severus frowned. The sound was both harmonious and alien. Lily’s boisterous fire and spirit were nowhere to be seen and this angelic creature was nothing like the Lily he had adored.

 Love, Thieves, and Fear

by emynn (2010)

Spooky because - haunted house!

The grandfather clock in the parlor began to count off the hours. It seemed to go on rather longer than it should have. Severus could have sworn he counted thirteen chimes …

 Morior Animus

by vain (2006)

Spooky because - This is one of my favorite fics of all time! Heartbreaking fic. Was waiting for the chance to rec this! So good.

Eventually, he turned and looked up again, staring at the young man. "They're fairy tales. The original versions," he stressed, feeling defensive about having such a thing. "Albus"—Merlin's blood, how he hated that word—"gave them to me once."

 By Sulfur and Salt

by @elfwreck (2009)

Spooky because - Harry and Snape being really creepy for reasons of their own!

Hermione spoke as soothingly as she could. "Mrs Dursley, I'm very sorry, but your sister is long dead. If you saw someone who looked like her…"

"It was her! I know my own sister! I spoke to her!"

 Her Eyes

by drachenmina (2008)

Spooky because - Bellatrix. Bellatrix being Bellatrix.

And then she’d started taunting him. About his mudblood mother, about how he bore the signs of her taint in his eyes.

 Being Snape

by gingertart50 (2007)

Spooky because - Obsessed Harry is next level obsessed.

"Snape," he muttered, "Severus Snape." He tipped the tube until a single fragment fluttered down into the potion. "How could I have forgotten about you for all these years? I wonder what you'd be doing now, if you had survived?" The potion turned translucent green and Harry smelled something sharp and invigorating; mint, wintergreen and rosemary.

 Black Story

by tryfanstone

Spooky because - a combination of body horror and psychological horror.

What Harry sees, opening the door, is a man. A man blackened and burned, his robes in shreds, his skin blistered and torn.

 Ghosts

by ntamara (2004)

Spooky because - Ghost Snape!

Severus wondered what tale had been spun to cover his disappearance. Did they know he was dead? Or had the headmaster fabricated a lie and told everybody he'd run away?

 This Boy's Life

by pir8fancier (2007)

Spooky because - Obsessed people with nothing to lose can get pretty weird!

"Then do it!" I shouted, because I'd had enough, damn all of them to hell, enough of kowtowing to more powerful wizards. A lifetime of enough. "And invoke Albus' memory when you rape my mind with whatever Unforgivable you decide upon." I pointed at my head. "Be my guest, Mr. Potter."

 The Darkest Corner (Of My Heart)

by NecromanticNoir (2013)

Spooky because - This is classic horror! NecromanticNoir is the One True Snarry Halloween Author for me <3

Snape came closer, and Harry almost felt that Snape could smell his fear.

Prey upon me. I am yours.

 White Light, White Heat

by drawlight (2019)

Spooky because - Black Death + religious themes is a really intense/scary combo.

More are sick on the Continent. More are dead. A report comes from Dorset in June. A sailor (he has always mistrusted the sea) from Gascony had come down with the plague. It is their first casualty on English shores. He had thought the tales were exaggerated, that this had been a myth, a ghost story told around fires, sailor to sailor. The seafarers are rife with their superstitions, their phantom ships

 The Snidget

by @ac1d6urn, Sinick (2010)

Spooky because - dark fantasy horror epic with fairytale vibes.

As Snape knelt before the Dark Lord, he looked up and saw the raised sword arcing above him, poised like a cobra before the strike. In that endless moment of anticipation, he felt nothing. No hope. Then the Dark Lord seized the hilt of the sword in both hands, and plunged its point down with all the monstrous strength of his new body.

 Cauldron

by Bridgette_Hayden

Spooky because - supernatural things happening! SPN vibes actually.

Snape summoned the will to walk towards the cauldron. With the drain on his magic, it felt like moving underwater.

 Death and the Open Mind

by LoupGarou

Spooky because - what's going on in Harry's head?

The house isn't sentient, fool.

"Then why is it talking to me?" Harry asked aloud, half afraid the house might answer.

 A Peculiar Haunting

by @skybluethunderhead

Spooky because - Is Harry haunting Snape?

If only Potter was a traditional ghost, floating about in a blue halo, transparent and with an air of despair brought on by his current condition.

 Can't Take The Sky

by Cluegirl (2010)

Spooky because - Horcruxes are the spookiest thing in HP. This fic raises the stakes.

"Tell me what you see for him in your oracle glass," Severus said. "Tell me what future we have beyond Voldemort's shadow, mother. Even if it is but a matter of days." His face was calm, resolute; and as tragically beautiful to her as any marble Saint in any vaulted cathedral.

 The Price of Magic

by @ac1d6urn, Sinick (2004)

Spooky because - Ghost Harry and serious apocalypse vibes!

“I am not being stubborn, you just happen to be incorrect, irrelevant, and deceased. Magic can’t be brought back, it’s as simple as that.”

Rec note - This is the second fic on the list from these authors. But I 100% think that's the right choice here <3

#snarry #halloween recs #severusxharry #hp slash #recs #slash fic recs

[newbornwhumperfly]

the ink bled right through...

CW: allusions to attempted non-con

so i love @much-ado-about-whumping and i love their beautiful characters – Déomas and Rhys – and i love writing spinoffs of other works rather than my own stuff (hehe) so here we are!!!

you’re so inspiring & kind, Bel, so here’s A Thing insp. by your boys and your love of sartorial whump!

title from “colour me in” by damien rice

~

Déma is rumpled.

It is the first thing which catches Rhys’ eye as he stumbles upon the slighter figure in the hallway to Rhys’ office. There is at times an aura of disheveled roguery Déma has, making what Rhys would deem sloppy in another person seem dashing. Daring. Charming…like it suited him somehow.

Yet now, there is nothing of the windswept to his hair, auburn strands sticking up here and there like the mop of an unruly child, ruffled by his mother. His shirt is crumpled, creased, unevenly untucked. A button on his trousers is undone halfway up and the lacings are loosened, partially-tied, as though they had been yanked.

Furthermore, the way he darts at Rhys’ rounding the corner puts him in mind of a spooked horse. Rhys glimpses the whites of Déma’s eyes before the man crooks a smile at him. 

“Hey, Rhys. Just heading to grab a quill from your office.”

Rhys frowns.

“Are you alright, Déma?”

The smile is...wrong. He didn’t meet Rhys’ eyes and as Déma tucks a strand of hair behind his ear, Rhys sees - 

“Are you hurt?”

A scuff, berry-red, sits bright on Déma’s temple. But when Rhys goes to brush his hair back, to see, to help, Déma glides back. The whites show once more and the smile flattens, paper-thin.

“It’s nothing, mother.”

“Don’t give me that, Déma, what happened?”

Déma opens his mouth to speak and pauses. His gaze, unsmiling and skittish, darts over Rhys’ face before he shrugs into an airy reply.

“If you must know, Sir Percy and I had a...small tiff. About my...availability to his, ah,  affections. His feelings were hurt but he’ll...he’ll get over it.”

His smile broadens, razor-edged, and now, closer, Rhys sees his rosy lips are darkened. Bitten. 

Rhys’ stomach floods with ice and his hand flies to his rapier.

“Sir Percy? He, Déma, did he hurt you?”

A stupid question. Rhys’ gaze rakes over Déma again, taking the detail in with new horror. 

He imagines the man in question. Taller than Rhys, heavier, threat stocked in wide shoulders and massive arms. A brutish man. He imagines those meaty hands on Déma and the ice melts, boils, turns to anger with a dizzying speed. 

“Where is that bastard?”

He’s gritting words through his teeth, flushed, aching to fight. Déma frowns and narrows his eyes, a cloud darkening in his expression. 

“I appreciate you’re such a gentleman, Rhys, but it’s all quite in the past now. Under the bridge, if you will.”

Déma quirks his eyebrows, grins – thin, sharp, bright as foil – and tosses his head back, flicking Rhys’ concerns away like a fly and the fringe of his hair slips to veil his left eye, to hide the mark on his temple.

Rhys has the sudden thought that this was his intent.  

“Déma, this son of a bitch hurt you, you can’t just expect me to do nothing.”

He’s hot. He’s burning up. He needs to spread that fire to something else, to watch it burn, to hurt whoever saw fit to touch and take and harm because they possessed some modicum of power. 

He grips his pommel harder and harder and doesn't even realize he’s taken an urgent stride forward until Déma starts again and steps back again, putting space between himself and Rhys. The wariness which burns, bright, in Déma’s eyes makes Rhys feels scorched by it. He wants to cry but instead he widens the space by stepping back himself. 

“I’m, fuck, I’m sorry, Déma-”

“It’s fine. Just...just don’t make this-, Rhys, don’t-, just let it go. Alright?”

Rhys bites, hard, on the inside of his cheek, the throb easing the harsh thrum in his veins. His muscles, defined with swordplay and archery, clench around his hot blood, as useless in their strength as his fury-sorrow-frustration is sitting idle in his veins. He feels helplessand he hates it. He trembles with the want – the need– to help.

But…

Déma is glancing up at him through the russet locks, coy – yet his bitten lip is worried by his teeth and there’s a tension coiled through him, the coquettish brace of hands on hips failing to disguise how his slim shoulders are hefted nearly to his ears and his dark eyes are watchful, wary…a plea in the pinch between his brows.

Rhys wants to push but this isn’t about what he wants – it’s about what Déomas wants.  

He also has some sense – an instinct unique to his lover – that Déma is fragile right now and any indelicate word, any sudden touch, will make him spring, snap shut like a mousetrap. So he breathes. Releases his tension with his exhale. Unclenches his fingers from his sword-hilt, palm swirl-grooved from the carved pommel, and – slowly – reaches for Déma’s chin. Cups it, rubs the cleft with his thumb, soothes. Cradles Déma’s neck, thumb soothing there too, circling behind the ear. Tries to cool the heat of his fury to a tender warmth, to pour his desire to protect, his concern, his fondness for Déma into his touch.

“Of course, Déma. Whatever you need.”

Déma sighs and with the breath, the ribbon of tension untwists in his body. He allows himself to be soothed and Rhys knows he made the right choice. Déma’s dark eyes soften and the sharp edge of his grin has dulled when he pecks at the ball of Rhys’ thumb, nuzzling, feline and malleable.

“Thanks.”

Rhys’ heart takes its turn to clench now, like a fist behind his ribs, the muscle seizing in his chest, creeping up to his throat, on all the things he wants to say – vows, reassurances, pleas.

But all he does is pair his palms in a cradle of Déma’s face – so sharp and so soft and so precious – and swoop into a kiss.

Demá hums into Rhys’ hungry mouth and when he pulls away, a bit breathless, he’s bright again. 

“Well, speaking of water under the bridge, I’m all messy anyhow. Want to, uh, help me tidy up?”

Rhys slides his fingers through Déma’s hair, skimming his brow, kisses his mouth again, his little nose, his temple. 

“Of course, Déma.”

It will have to be enough.

For now.

~

Sir Percy was jumped. 

Or at least, that is what the chambermaid whispers to a fruit vendor, the murmured gossip snagging Déomas’ ear as he pays for a plum (and sneaks another, smaller plum for good measure). If the girl was to be believed – and she should really learn to whisper better, not that Déomas is complaining, but honestly – the knight was allegedly accosted by a masked man upon venturing home. The maid caught a glimpse of the aftermath, her master howling and cursing up a storm.

Broken fingers. Busted nose. Battered ribs. Shoulder sprained so badly it was nearly wrenched from its socket. Two black eyes and many a sore spot. He’d also, the little maid recounted with a note of glee, been kicked between the legs quite a lot. 

Déomas did not blame her one bit for her schadenfreude. Sir Percy was well-known for his wandering hands – it is good riddance they are hurting now. Some might call it poetic justice or even divine intervention.

Personally, Déomas scoffs at the notion of a deity and if there was one, they certainly seemed to possess the same biases as mere mortals by dropping further favor into the fat laps of those born favored. However, it is nice that the pervert got knocked down a peg or two.

Déomas rolls his shoulder - the bruise hidden below his shirt still sore, purple shadows lingering from the demanding clutch of meaty, mail-gloved fingers - before taking a bite of his plum.

A thought tickled at the back of his skull but it was swept aside as he wove his way between stalls, hunting and gathering remaining fruits – fresh fat berries of red and black and blue – in preparation for supper. He was baking a tart and it was going to be sumptuous and Rhys would agree.

He wasn’t baking it forRhys – Déomas loved pie. He would certainly do this all for himself, whether Rhys were involved or not. Certainly.

By the time the evening hour rolled around, a crisp, golden pastry is cooling on the sill of Rhys’ office. Déomas had charmed a flask of sherry off the cook and a sparkling compliment had left a glow to her wrinkled cheek as she thrust the bottle at him, grumbling something which sounded suspiciously like insufferable.

Rhys, however, is uncharacteristically late.

Déomas is sipping at a refill of his glass of sherry when Rhys sweeps through the door, apologizing profusely, dropping a soft kiss, another, once more to Déomas’ brow, breathlessly detailing some tale about horseshoes and cobblestones and really believingit would take an hour and Rhys is so fretful that Déomas forgives him immediately, scarcely pouting at all as he mellows under the kiss. He cannot be all that upset with anyone who says Déma so sweetly and is so very handsome.

Déomas blames the quite excellent alcohol for that thought.  

He blames the sherry further for the fact that it takes him a good while to notice that Rhys is…less than perfectly put together.

Rhys’ doublet is rumpled. A closer peek shows a seam has split along the shoulder at one spot, disrupting the perfect symmetry of stitches.

There is a spot of blood, nestled like a gem with the creamy folds of linen.

“Déma, I’m so sorry, I...I lost track of time. i had to take care of something and it got away from me.”

If Déomas were a little more sober, he might nod and smile and tell Rhys not to mention it. He really might just pull Rhys into a chair, straddle him, and kiss him senseless. But Déomas has never left anything he should leave be well enough alone and there’s a nervous weight to Rhys’ shoulders which provokes Déomas’ curiosity. 

“Bullshit.”

Rhys seems to very nearly drop his sword, setting it upon the desk with a heavy thump.

“D-Déma?-”

“Bull. Shit. What’d you do?”

Déomas is not suspicious. Nothing so childish. Nothing so jealous. He is...worried. Rhys looks heavy. A weariness lays over him - he has had to do something, something he doesn’t like, and there’s something about that which Déomas doesn’t like. Not at all. 

Rhys raises his chin, his deep, dark eyes direct and bold in the firelight.

“You won’t like it. But...if you ask me, I’ll tell you the truth.”

Déomas gazes back, just as steady, just as firm, and nods. 

Rhys sucks in his cheek, biting, he does that when he frets, and sinks into the chair beside Déomas.

“I know you told me not too...do anything. About him.”

Rhys spits the pronoun like poison, like he wants to get it out of his mouth, and Déomas doesn't ask him to clarify. He just waits, only the crackle of the blaze in the hearth disturbing the pregnant space between them. 

“I tried to make it random. Something which couldn't be tied to, to anything in particular. But I...I had to. I had to do something, Déma. Someone like him can’t just believe he can do this. To anyone. But especially...especially not to you. Not in my own home. Not ever. So I...hurt him. Nothing permanent. Less than he fucking deserves. But...something.”

He finally looks away from the dancing tongues of orange, blue, red fire to glance at Déomas. His dark face is drawn tight with uncertainty. He is resigned. Resolute. Hopeful. But there is still that familiar tenderness, a concern and a care, to be found in his expression, rolling under and over the anxiety, spilling through the cracks, filling in the blanks. Ever-present. 

“I understand if...if you’re angry with me.”

Seized but an urge, nameless as it was undeniable, Déomas surges from his chair and drags Rhys into a kiss. It is hungry, messy and missing lips for cheeks, scattered, falling again and again, one kiss becoming dozens in his need to touch, to appreciate, to...to be near Rhys, as close as he can be. 

Finally, Rhys gasps for air, weakly chuckling as he presses their brows together and Déomas sinks into his strong arms, feeling folded up and held and safe. 

“You’re a mess.”

“Hardly.”

“Hmm. For you, it’s practically a pigsty. You’re a disgrace to your class, Milord Rhys.”

The man snorts, startled into indignity, as he pulls back to smile ruefully.

“Help me to tidy up?”

Warmth pools in Déomas’ ribs. He kisses - again - Rhys’ cheeks, his eyes, his mouth. 

He’s so beautiful. So good. So...Rhys. 

Déomas never wants to leave this warm room, these warm arms, this feeling, ever again. He does not say so. Instead, he drops a fleeting, final peck to Rhys’ lips.

“Gladly.”

~

well....there we have it!!! a lil’ softness

#i'm SO nervous about this but...ahhhh *throws it anyway* #deomas and rhys #much-ado-about-whumping #whump #whumpee #caretaker #sartorial whump #my writing #angst #emotional whump #hurt and comfort #rhys #deomas #references to attempted non-con #references to manhandling #manhandling

[inmyownlittlecorner5]

libera nos a malo chapter 9: At St Patrick’s Purgatory

A fanfic Novel by la-topolina Rated for Mature Audiences Warnings: Language, Violence, Sexual Content Chapter 9/21

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chapter 10+ >>

libera nos a malo masterpost+

This was quickly becoming an adventure that Miranda had no intention of recounting to her pious mother. As she coaxed her boat, the patient Molly Brown, through the moonlit waters of Lough Derg, intent on excavation and theft, she was almost ashamed of herself. If her mother ever found out that she’d come to the holy site on Station Island as little better than a cat burglar, she wasn’t sure she would ever live down the shame of having disappointed Monica Rose so severely.

The bitter night wind whipped through her cloak, and she pulled the traveling blanket more closely around her shivering body, pushing all questions of morality aside for another day. She’d been hired to do a job. She’d see it through to the end—and let the priest sort it out in confession for her later.

“No perfume tonight, Topolina?” Dante Sanguini asked. The pale moonlight made his face shine with an unearthly glow, and his constant shifting in his seat bespoke his discomfort on the water.

“Not while I’m working.” Miranda’s attention was divided between her companion and keeping the little boat upright with all his squirming. “I don’t guess you could hold still until we get to the island, could you?”

“Over this lake? No. And if I liked you less I would not have agreed to pass over this cursed water in the first place. Let alone twice in one evening.”

“Sorry about that. But I think you’ll find that I kept that difficulty in mind when I set your fee for tonight.”

“Si, you were more than generous. But I will be happy to leave this place behind.”

“Agreed.”

The water was choppy, and by the time she landed the boat ashore, even her usually stalwart stomach was queasy. Dante stumbled as his feet hit dry land, and he shuddered visibly, apparently as uncomfortable on the island as he’d been on the water. Miranda flattened and folded the boat as quickly as her numb fingers would allow, and by the time she had it stowed in a tunic pocket, the vampire had recovered himself.

She braced her feet on the frozen ground to cast her disillusionment charm. An unpleasant, fuzzy feeling began in her toes and crept up her spine, where it settled at the base of her skull. It was disorienting to be unable to see her arms or legs as the charm caused her body to effectively disappear, but invisibility cloaks were as expensive as they were unreliable.

“May we proceed?” Dante asked impatiently, his voice emitting from a shapeless fog that hovered around her.

“Let’s get this over with,” Miranda replied.

In spite of the wind, there was a silence covering the island that felt accusatory to Miranda’s guilty conscience. As she trod over the dead grass, the soles of her feet pricked inside her boots. Over the tops of the barren trees, the cloister and the church gleamed in the moonlight; their modern renovations a sharp contrast to the feel of the ancient earth on which they stood. The arched sign emblazoned with St Patrick’s Purgatory reminded Miranda more of the entrance to a theme park than a hell-mouth. As they went under the sign, the stinging in her feet became impossible to ignore. Acting on some impulse she did not understand, she paused beneath the arch and pulled off her boots and socks. The earth froze to her skin, but at least the damned pricking stopped as she spread out her bare toes in the frosty dirt.

“What are you doing?” the vampiric fog demanded softly.

“I don’t know,” she whispered back.

She could sense Dante’s disapproval, but they did not waste time arguing. As they moved over the well-kept path, she stuffed her boots into her knapsack. The lake lashed at the shore behind them, and even though she knew they were invisible to any mortal inhabitants, she could not shake the feeling that they were being watched. Soon her feet were numb, but she could not bring herself to put her boots back on, as though her pain might make up for some of her sacrilegious intentions.

As they drew closer to the interior of the island, the lurking church and the surrounding trees blocked some of the wind. Miranda trotted silently over the path towards the curved labyrinth that was their destination. The vampiric fog kept pace with her easily, pricking her skin where it brushed her, even under the cover of the disillusionment charm. When they reached the edge of the maze, the fog solidified, Dante’s polished shoes crunching the brittle gravel into dust. Miranda released her charm, shaking off the magical invisibility and numbness as they darted through the twisting path towards its heart.

“Do you feel any better?” Miranda asked.

“No. Worse,” Dante replied.

They reached the center of the maze, and Miranda took the compass that Octavius Pepper had given her from her pocket. It was made of heavy brass, and etched with markings she’d been unable to decipher in the short amount of time it had been in her possession. Its arrow started to swing back and forth, moving languidly but showing no indication of settling anywhere. While they waited, Dante scuffed his shoe in the gravel, and his lip curled to reveal a single, pointed canine.

“Well?” he prompted.

Miranda opened her mouth to tell him to relax when the ground split open. Cursing, she reached blindly for Dante as she clung to the compass, even as the metal began to burn her hand. One of the vampire’s sinewy arms wrapped around her waist, hauling her roughly against his wiry frame. She put her arms around his neck, and though the rubble crashed over them, they glided slowly down into the darkness. The memory of the cave under the One Wood Church and its vengeful Spirit was at the fore of her mind, taunting her with its horrors. She buried her face in Dante’s shoulder and forced herself to breathe.

They landed lightly on a rocky floor. The moonlight filtered down through the gravel and dust that had been kicked up by the cave in, sickly and obscured by the depths. A tremor went through Miranda’s body as she realized how deep they must be, but she was determined to keep control of her mind tonight. Dante pressed his cool lips to her temple, and gave her shoulders a reassuring squeeze before releasing her. She dusted herself off quickly, and pulled her wand from her sleeve.

“Lumos,” she cast.

Dante hissed and flinched back from the light. “Must you?”

“We can’t all see in the dark like you.”

“Figlio di puttana,” he muttered.

“What was that?” she asked archly as she watched the wildly spinning needle of the compass.

“I said, which way do we go now?”

“I’m working on it.” The needle stopped all at once, pointing into the darkness. Miranda lifted her wand to see a narrow cleft in the rock, barely wide enough for them to pass through. “Fuck. Why do I keep taking these underground gigs?”

He laughed and took her hand, tucking it into the crook of his arm as though they were going for a stroll in the park. “For the money. And the company.”

His good humor was contagious in spite of her discomfort with the enclosed space and the gravely dirt that cut into the soles of her feet. “Excellent points. Tell me one of your yarns so that I won’t think about being trapped in this pit for all eternity.”

“Nothing would please me more. Have I told you about the first time I was in France?”

“Not that I recall.”

“Excellent.” Dante let go of her arm to enter the passage before her, but his calm, melodious voice betrayed no concern about the danger inherent in their current situation. “It was in 1389. I remember, because it was the year I turned fourteen, and we were escorting La Contessa Valentina Visconti to finally be wed to Louis de Valois. She was as kind as she was beautiful, and whatever part of my heart that was not full of my path to knighthood was full of her.”

“You rogue. Did you steal her from Louis?”

“No. Everyone loved Louis, especially Valentina. It was enough to love them both from a distance, and to serve them. Life in Melun was good for a long time. I learned to ride, to fight, to write poetry, and to make love to the ladies of the court. I was quick at my studies and unimportant enough that I could slip away to explore on my own.”

“That sounds ideal.” The blue light from her wand cast dancing shadows on the wall, and there was a dread curling in the corner of her mind that one of those shadows would turn into a cat like the Spirit of the Mine. She pushed it down the best she could and listened to Dante’s voice. “Then what happened?”

“I saw battle and earned my knighthood five years later, in the year that Charles was born. I also met two men who were to change the course of my life, each in his own way.”

“Who were they?”

“One was a minstrel, a servant of Louis. His name was Herbelin, and I could have listened to him sing forever. We met in secret of course, but I was good at keeping secrets, even then. And it was amusing to watch the ladies swooning over his dark curls and merry laugh, knowing who it was he moaned for when there was none but the moon to see.”

“How delicious. And the other?”

“Was Nicolas Flamel, and of course his good wife Perenelle.”

“The man who made the Philosopher’s Stone?”

“The very one. A knight off the battlefield is little more than an errand boy, and there were many messages and manuscripts that flew back and forth between Nicolas and the royalty of France.”

“Did you ever get to see the stone?”

“I did. In fact…Cazzo!”

Dante disappeared, and Miranda had not taken a full step before she fell into the dank pit after him. She flailed once, but when she could not find the vampire in the darkness, she changed tactics, gathering her magic to cushion her fall and relaxing her body to be ready to roll when she hit bottom. The impact with the dirt floor knocked the wind out of her, and she coughed as she rolled into a crouch. Nothing leapt out of the darkness to pounce on her, except for a courtly vampire who graciously helped her to her feet.

“Are you in one piece, Topolina?” he asked with a dashing smile.

“I’m fine.” She wiped the dirt out of her eyes, and her hand came away bloody. “Mostly fine. Do you want to take care of that?”

His eyes turned completely black, glowing with an unearthly fire. “Ho un debole per te.”

He ran his tongue over the wound on her forehead, a feral growl rumbling from his throat as he lapped at her blood. The gash tingled, healing under his Undead magic. A familiar thrill went down her spine as he nuzzled the side of her neck, grazing her flesh with the cold pressure of his lips, followed by a single, teasing canine. Guilt and desire tangled together inside her, and she stepped back a few paces to give herself space to breathe. She and Dante had been skirting the line of what even her flexible morality would call decent since they’d arrived in Ireland the night before, and angry as she was with Severus, she still wasn’t certain she wanted to cross it.

“We should keep going. There’s no telling what all is down here,” she said.

He extended his canines to their full length, and lisped like an actor in a melodrama, “I think you know exactly what is down here. Children of the night. My friends.”

As if in answer, a swarm of bats swooped down from the ceiling, chittering as they buzzed their new companions. Miranda ducked as they passed close to her head, hoping they would not tangle themselves in her hair, while Dante lifted his arms, welcoming his familiars. The bats danced around the vampire until Miranda started to laugh, and then flew off into the darkness beyond.

“Va bene, there is the smile I like to see,” Dante said.

“It’s good to have something to smile about,” Miranda admitted, turning her attention back to the compass. The arrow was pointing firmly in the direction the bats had taken. “It looks like your friends know the way.”

“As they should. Andiamo.”

The path was rough with brittle rock that crunched and snapped under them as they followed its twisting progress. Miranda knew without looking that her feet would be bruised and bloodied when they made it back to the surface, but some instinctive part of her brain insisted that she continue as she was. The longer they walked, the rougher the terrain became, snaking upwards at a sharp incline. Pacing her breathing became more difficult, and her fears were ever at the edge of her consciousness, tempting her to panic.

“I think you were telling me about the Philosopher’s Stone?” she panted when the imaginings became too much to bear.

“Allora, the stone. I only saw it once, when I was assisting Nicolas and Perenelle with their travel preparations. There were many who would have liked to claim the stone for themselves, and it required both an Obscuro and to be tucked into Perenelle’s petticoats in order for them to slip away with it.”

“Where were they going in such a rush?”

“It was not the where that was the trouble, it was the who. Madama Bonne had a taste for the stone, and she was less than pleased when she was unable to put her hands on it.”

Miranda had met Bonne de Valois once. It had not been a pleasant experience. “I can imagine. How is madama these days?”

He laughed. “I would steer clear of Italy for another decade or so, were I in your shoes.”

“Thanks for the warning. What happened to Herbelin? Did he become a vampire too?”

“No. He did not.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Not as sorry as I was. But I should go back to Louis. He was the beginning of the end.”

All at once they found themselves in a tiny room of packed dirt, the ceiling of which was so low that both of them had to stoop. A flickering green flame coming from an unknown source lit the space, revealing a mattress of rotting straw, a decaying bowl and spoon on a sagging shelf, and little else. The walls were painted with faded pictures in the ancient Celtic style, and between the crosses and saints were letters spelling out texts too worn to read.

“This is the place,” Miranda said, sliding the compass into a pocket.

Dante’s canines were showing. “I was afraid of that.”

“We’d better work fast.”

She chanted the incantation that Mr Pepper had drilled into her a few days earlier, singing through its chromatic tones in a clear, silvery voice. A white light burst out of the tip of her wand, wrapped itself around the straw mattress, and lifted it off the floor. Another light joined the first, piercing the floor under the mattress until a thin crack appeared. Dante flexed his fingers as they stretched into evil looking claws, and crouched over the crack in the floor to dig into the dry dirt. Miranda’s body flashed hot and cold as she struggled to keep the bed aloft, sweat rolling down her face and neck. The green light began to spin, causing her stomach to lurch. A buzzing chatter droned in the room, and she felt fingers curling around her ankles. She looked down in horror, but saw nothing. Then she blinked, and saw the gnarled hands pulling on her legs; but when she blinked again—there was nothing.

She fought down the urge to scream as Dante jerked a heavy length of rusted chain from the hole he’d dug. He stumbled backwards, grunting as he landed on his backside. Miranda waved a shaking hand, sending a spell to push the dirt back into the hole, then she lowered the bed with a thunk. Still trembling, she opened her bag for Dante to shove the chain into. His teeth were bared with the effort, a red-tinted sweat covered his brow, and his hands look like they’d been burned.

“Are you alright?” Miranda asked as she closed the bag tightly around the chain.

“Never better,” he snarled.

“Are you going to need a drink before we go back over the water?”

He his eyes flashed with a black, hungry fire. “I appreciate the offer, but if I were to start drinking from you now I doubt I would be able to stop. The sooner we get off this island, the better.”

“No shit.”

Miranda took out the compass, stamping her feet in an attempt to shake off the feeling of ghostly fingers. The needle started spinning again, and showed no signs of stopping.

“You don’t think we have to go all the way back down, do we?” she asked.

“We are close to the surface now,” Dante replied. “I can dig us out if need be.”

She paced towards the far wall, unable to remain still any longer. A spiral drawn in a dull red caught her attention, undulating in the flickering light. She traced a careless finger over it, and the spectral flames engulfed her. A scream welled up in her throat, but when she opened her mouth she could only choke on the sulfurous smoke. Hands grabbed at her ankles and wrists; and there was a wailing and gnashing of teeth.

And then there was darkness.

*****

Miranda’s body was terribly sore when she opened her eyes again. She was lying on a narrow bed with clean, coarse sheets and a warm, quilted blanket; and she could feel that someone had taken the trouble to wrap her feet in bandages. The small room was plain, with a crucifix on the facing wall and a little window letting in bright, welcome sunlight. A desk with a lamp and chair completed the space, and her arsenal of pistol, knife, and wand was laid out neatly on top of the desk. Her knapsack sat safely beside the bed, apparently untouched. Wincing, she pushed herself up, meaning to check the bag for their night’s work, when the door to the room opened.

A man in a rough brown robe and worn sandals entered. His curly brown hair was tinged with gray, and his lined face wore a friendly smile. She guessed he was about her father’s age, and his green eyes were bright and kind. He carried a tray set with a teapot and cup, brown bread, and a steaming bowl of soup. Her mouth started to water and her stomach to growl at the homey aroma.

“Good morning, lass,” he said, placing the tray on her lap. “Welcome to Station Island. I think you’ve had quite a time of it.”

She gave him a bland smile. “Good morning, Father. It was about what I expected it to be.”

“I’m no priest, only a simple friar. Brother Ronan, at your service.”

“Thank you.”

Brother Ronan turned to pull the chair out from the desk and bring it to her bedside. While he was busy with his task, she quickly cast a silent revelio venenum, musing that she’d been spending so much time with Severus his habits were rubbing off on her. Her instincts told her that Brother Ronan was trustworthy enough, but his casual acceptance of her magical artifacts—along with her missing vampire—were enough to give her pause.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she said between grateful bites of the hearty soup. “I’m Miranda Rose.”

“Rose you say? You aren’t from County Cork by chance, are you?” he asked as he sat down in the chair to keep her company while she ate.

“Originally, yes. But my line of the family has been in America for four generations now.”

“America? I was there once. It’s a fine country. I wouldn’t want to live there, but I’d not be sorry to visit again someday.”

His easy manner prompted her to be more direct.

“May I ask you how I came to be…wherever it is we are?” she asked.

“This is the pilgrim’s dormitory. I found you and your friend on my way in from Matins. There aren’t many of us here in the off months, but we like to say the hours together in the main church even so.”

“What happened to my friend?”

“I thought it best to give him a room in the basement.”

She raised her eyebrows, but kept her tone even, wondering if she was going to have to Obliviate the friendly friar. “Are you a wizard, Brother Ronan?”

He laughed as though she’d told a fine joke. “Me? No, not at all. But your friend is not the first vampire I’ve seen in my life, nor are you the first witch. He helped me bring you here, and I gave him a bottle of the sort of drink he needs, and a room in the cellar for the day. It was too close to dawn to risk taking you both off the island.”

“Why are you helping us?”

“It’s my duty to help those who need it. I suggest you eat and rest as much as you can for now.”

“Will we be allowed to leave tonight?”

“You’re not a prisoner, Miss Rose. You and your friend may leave at any time.”

His kindness prompted a new wave of guilt, but she carefully concealed her shame.

“Thank you Brother Ronan. We appreciate your help.”

“I’m glad I was here to give it. Is this your first time to Station Island?”

“It is. My first time to Ireland at all, actually.”

His voice took on a note of pride like a fond parent. “You should come back in the summer. Everything is green and you could do the actual pilgrimage then. I suspect you’re hearty enough.”

“The pilgrimage?”

“Three days of fasting and prayer, and the pilgrims visit all the old hermitages of the saints.”

“That sounds grueling.”

“It is. But people come by the thousands to do it. Have since the old days.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

She finished her tray, and Brother Ronan took it, wishing her a good day on his way out. She forced herself to wait to a count of fifty before opening her bag, where she found the rusted chains lying, unharmed. After she’d resealed the sack and warded the door for good measure, she slept again. Her dreams were strange and troublesome, but she could not remember them when she awoke later that afternoon.

Gathering her wand, she went down the hall in search of the loo, taking advantage of the communal showers when she found it. She managed to heal the scrapes on her feet with a few quick spells, and the hot water did wonders for the aches in her muscles. A quick Scourgify made her clothes once again fit for company, and she padded back to her room, refreshed.

Her fingers itched for a cigarette, but she decided she would rather find Dante before indulging in a smoke. After pulling on her boots, she gathered her things from the desk, made her bed, and left a generous tithe in Irish pounds on top of the pillow. The empty dormitory was as simple as her room had been, decorated with candles, crucifixes, and saints painted in the Celtic style. When she reached the cellar, she cast another revelio, which illuminated a door at the end of the hall in a faint blue light. She knew better than to startle Dante when he was sleeping, and she let her feet fall heavily on the floor as she approached. When she reached the door she rapped on it sharply.

“Come in,” came Dante’s voice from within.

The windowless cell was in total darkness, though she could feel Dante’s eyes on her. He flicked on the desk lamp in deference to her mortal vision as she closed the door. An empty bottle and a bloodstained cup sat on the desk near the lamp. Dante was lounging on the bed like a lazy cat, apparently none the worse for wear after their mishap. His clothes and person were clean, and the burn marks on his hands were gone. He rose as she came into the room, putting his hands on her shoulders when they met.

“You are well?” he asked earnestly. “When the hell-mouth overwhelmed you I feared you would be more permanently injured.

“I feel alright,” she replied, shivering at his touch. “A little sore, but alright. What happened?”

He was running the fingers of one hand up the side of her neck, and his eyes were turning black with vampiric lust. “You didn’t expect the chains to go without a struggle did you? Generally hell-mouths dislike being robbed.”

“That’s why they pay me the big money.”

“I’ve always admired your durability.”

His hand tightened on the back of her head, and he crashed his cold lips into hers. She returned his kiss with guilty fury, her body thrilling with the way that his lips turned from ice to fire as they absorbed her warmth. The tingling chill from his touch crept over her skin, causing her to tremble, and she clung to his shirt as he seared a trail of savage kisses down to her neck, where her pulse was beating wildly.

“Does your offer of a drink still stand, Bellissima?” he purred.

“Yes,” she gasped before she could think better of it.

There was a pair of sharp pricks, and then a heady rush of ecstasy as he drank from her. It was as intoxicating as she remembered it—but even as her body sang with pleasure, it was Severus’s name on the tip of her tongue, Severus’s arms she wanted to be holding her, Severus’s lips she craved on her skin.

Dante, ever the gentleman, brought her down carefully, ending the vampiric kiss and healing the wounds on her throat with his agile tongue. Her mental protections were useless against Legilimency of the blood, and she had no doubt that the vampire was well aware of the man whose name was lodged in her heart. He guided her to sit on the bed, and rummaged in her knapsack until he procured a bottle of Blood Replenisher, the contents of which he tipped into her mouth. She nearly choked at the taste of the elderflower and lemon—Severus had created this variant of the potion to suit her personally, and his care for her was yet another lash of guilt.

When she’d gotten it down, she sagged against the wall, wishing she could cry that she might gain some relief from the feelings balled up in her chest. Dante pulled out a pair of cigarettes for the two of them, lighting them with the touch of an elegant finger.

“Perhaps it is time for you to tell me about Severus,” he said wryly after they’d both taken a bracing drag.

She let out a dry laugh. “What can I say? He’s an ass. He’s good at chess, potions, and dark magic. He likes to read and has a voice like sin.”

“No wonder you like him. What’s the problem then?”

“The problem is he’s sunk so deep in the war that’s coming that it’d take a miracle for him to come through it alive. I don’t think I can stand to lose someone like that. Not after David and Isaac.”

“The war is already here. Why don’t you convince him to run?”

She shook her head. “No. I think leaving would kill him, or at least his spirit. He has to see this thing through to the end.”

“That’s a shame. You might have wished for a more sensible partner.”

“I might have wished for a lot of things. I’m sorry to disappoint ��you.”

He took her hand and pressed his lips to it. “No, Topolina. No apologies are necessary between us. Allora, I was telling you about Louis.”

She was grateful for the change of subject. “Yes. Please finish the story.”

“Louis came to a bitter end,” he said, a sad smile spreading over his shapely lips. “His enemies in the Burgundian court sent assassins after him, attacking him in the middle of the street one November night. Valentina never recovered. She died of a broken heart not a year afterwards. Herbelin and I stayed with young Charles, intent on helping the boy regain some order and beauty in his court. And we were successful, for a time, until a fever took my Herbelin from me.”

She laid her head on his shoulder, and he wrapped an arm around her. “I’m so sorry.”

“Life was bitter to me then, but I feared death too much to seek it from my own hands. And as Charles started to play at war, I believed that my time would come soon enough. I thought that it had after the battle at Agincourt. But there are scavengers on a battlefield, and one of them found me.”

“Was he the one who made you a vampire?”

“Yes, but not, I think, on purpose. As he drained me, I latched onto his wrist, biting him in my frenzy. He left me for dead, but enough of his blood had entered my veins for me to rise again.”

“Fuck. What did you do?”

He laughed and kissed the top of her head. “Just what you’d expect. I wandered the countryside in a rage until I found my way to Nicolas’s door. I might have killed him, and Perenelle too. But he tucked a bunch of mistletoe behind my ear, and it brought me back to my senses long enough for him to take me to Madama Bonne.”

“I wish he’d led you to a better Mistress.”

He shrugged. “There are worse, believe me.”

There was a light knocking at the door, and Miranda and Dante vanished their cigarettes before opening it to admit Brother Ronan. If the friar was at all surprised to find them together, he did not show it, for which Miranda was grateful.

“The sun’s down,” Brother Ronan said briskly as he handed each of them a dark bottle. “Best if we get the both of you on your way before anyone starts asking questions.”

“Thank you for your help,” Miranda replied. “I owe you one.”

“You don’t owe me anything, lass. But if you’ll remember me in your prayers now and then I’d be grateful to you.”

“That I can promise you.”

He led them through a winding hallway that opened at last near the shore. The wind was quiet tonight, and the lake was like a mirror of black glass. Miranda pulled the Molly Brown from her pocket and murmured the spell to make her seaworthy. Brother Ronan whistled appreciatively.

“That’s a nice bit of magic,” the friar said.

“I’m fond of it myself,” Miranda replied.

“And if I never saw a boat again, it would be too soon,” Dante laughed.

Brother Ronan held the boat steady while the witch and the vampire climbed into it. When they were ready, he gave it a firm push, and his sandaled feet splashed into the lake as the boat began to cut through dark waters.

“God bless you both!” he called, giving them a final wave before turning and hurrying back towards the church and his brothers.

“As if I didn’t feel guilty enough,” Miranda sighed.

“You must learn to overcome such frailty,” Dante chided, opening his bottle and drinking deeply of its contents.

“You’re probably right.”

Miranda tugged the cork from her bottle and gulped down the cold water inside, parched from the effects of the Blood Replenisher. They were quiet for a time as the Molly Brown made quick progress over the calm lake. Every inch away from Station Island was bringing her home to the problems she’d left behind, and she felt no closer to solving them.

“Did you ever love anyone after Herbelin?” she asked suddenly.

The vampire gazed up at the clear, star-filled sky. “Oh. Many times, Topolina. Some I have left. Some have left me. Some I have laid in the grave.”

“But how can you stand it? Or does it stop hurting after the tenth or the twentieth or the hundredth time?”

He took her hands and his, and the expression on his face made her wonder if he knew her heart better than she did herself.

“It always hurts,” he said. “Every time.”

“But is it worth it?” she persisted.

His dark eyes were wise in his youthful face, and they sparked with a mirth that all his centuries of loss could not dim

“Yes,” he replied. “Every time.”

*****

Station Island is the location of St Patrick’s Purgatory, which has been a pilgrimage site from the middle ages. It is also supposedly and entrance to Purgatory or Hell, depending on the legend. The pilgrimage is as grueling as Brother Ronan describes, and continues to this day. It is performed barefoot, which is why I have the magic of the place prompting Miranda to take of her boots and socks in this chapter.

The adventure of the One Wood Church and the Spirit of the Mine is told in chapter 24 of Moonlight: The Tale of the Three Miners.

Dante is telling Miranda the brief history of Louis, duc d’Orléans (1372-1407) , and his wife Valentine of Milan (1371-1408). Their son Charles, duc d’Orléans (1394-1465) is the author of the Valentine’s Day poem that Severus was musing over back in chapter seven.

Matins is one of the hours of prayer, traditionally said in the middle of the night. It’s the longest of the hours.

Figlio di puttana: Son of a bitch (Dante is cursing at the light, not Miranda) Cazzo: Fuck Ho un debole per te: I’m weak for you Va bene: Good, okay, alright Andiamo: Let’s go Bellissima: Gorgeous Allora: So, then, well

*****

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libera nos a malo masterpost+

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[windlion]

Transmigrator Pile-up Pt 3

In which I cheerfully abuse my protagonist, because that’s what he’s there for.

TW: Animal death.  We’re sad about it, too.  Also cheerful abuse of the Chinese name generator because Author Don’t Care and I can’t do this on my own.

The clue, when it came, was not subtle.  It was, in fact, written in characters that had to be several miles high.  At least.

"What the FUCK is that?!"

He couldn't help it if he was loud, that was entirely involuntary!  There was only a sliver of the moon visible; one eighth waxing or so.  That wasn't what floored him.  No, the moon had apparently gotten a new special effects budget because glowing lines of red stretched across the darkened surface like someone had taken a giant calligraphy brush and sketched characters across the surface of the Earth's only natural satellite.  Well.  That was more or less what they did.  Projected by talismans, sorta, and he still really hated that whole bullshit mission because what the fuck was up with putting an array on the moon.

Oh fuck, he knew what that was.

Dimly, he also registered that oh, look, there was more than one natural satellite now: a few chunks of rock glimmered faintly red and malevolent in the night sky aaaaaaaaaaand as he turned to what had to be the south, yes, there was a sparkling belt of shimmering gray like a cloud obscuring the stars in a wide swath that followed the equator.

If he went far enough north, he could probably see the new northern lights and the walls of the post-apocalypse's most exclusive gated community.  He kinda wanted to hate them for existing.

Outside the Array. Mountains.  Eagle.  Fast healing.  Had to be beast tribe.  OG was with the bandits, then.  OG was a big dude with a lot of scars and red swirling tattoos and fuuuuuuuuck he landed in the Mountain King Feng Mahti, didn't he?  

Oh fuck fuck fuck that meant the eagle was Taifun.  He'd killed the Mountain King's bird.  All Taifun had been trying to do was protect him.  His breath hitched and stopped in his chest.  Not fair.  

Grandma Xu shuffled out of the house, cautious and curious as to what had him yelling in the night on the way back from the outhouse.  Because plumbing happened to other people.  She gently touched his shoulder, and he realized he must have sat down. "Hielang-ge?"

"Here." His voice came out choked, and he swallowed before saying lamely, "I'm just. . . having a moment here." Jay finally tore his eyes away from the goddamn horror show overhead and leaned forward, rubbing a hand across his face.  Yeah, not at all subtle.  Shit.  

Jay Cooper was jaegering fucking Feng Mahti falling on his ass in a farmer's field crying his eyes out because the first goddamn thing he did was get Taifun killed and if he ever ran into the Gardens they'd probably try and kill him before he said a word, especially with the hate-on the Lettuces had for Feng-zong for some pretty good reasons.  Like traumatically killing the best character in the entire series Sect Leader Lin.  

Transmigration stories were supposed to be about redeeming and improving the original.  Who let him fuck up this badly?

He sorta . . . blue screened for awhile there.  

He came back around to Grandma Xu gently patting his scarred cheek, then hauling on his arm.  "Come back in, Hielang-ge.  It is not safe to stay outside at night."

The fact that this little old granny farmer was poking and manhandling the bandit with biceps the size of her head made him want to giggle hysterically.  Did they know?  Did they know who he was?  Before he did, no less?

Big bad bandit king obediently got up and followed Grandma Xu back inside to the fire at the hearth and where the family was winding down for the evening, Xu Ming nursing little Yan while listening to A-Mei babble enthusiastically about something.  Xu Jing looked a little startled at whatever he saw on Jay's face and only settled when Grandma gently pushed him back down into his seat.  "It is nothing, just star-gazing."

It was the first clear night since he'd been able to get back vertical. Literally the first time he'd gotten outside after dark.  And there you have it, bam, he was right in the Arrays of Heaven universe. Welcome to whatever was after the end of the world.  

The way Xu Jing cut a glance across at him, he definitely knew more than he was saying.  Shit, they were braver than he was, picking the Mountain King off the floor and trying to get him back upright.  He owed them a solid.  Several of them.  Maybe in gold.  If he had any. . . . He hadn't asked to see or go through the things they'd found with him.  

It had seemed like a bad idea to make a fuss over asking for "his" things back while he was still in their care.  If they wanted to keep something, what the hell, it wasn't like he was going to know.  They were welcome to it.  

So he didn't need Feng Mahti's personal effects, like a stranger collecting someone else's things on his way out of prison.  But there was something he had to do that he really didn't want to, and the sooner the better.  

Xu Jing tried to evade, but Jay was used to literally and metaphorically herding cats and large birds of prey.  Uh.  What used to count as large birds of prey.  Anyways.  He sat down across from him and caught the man's eyes, trying to project calm and implacable.   "I'd been meaning to ask, now that I can get around again. . .  You know where I went down?"

"I didn't. . . I haven't looked."

Jay breathed in, then out. No one had a minor breakdown tonight, no sir. Totally stable. "But you could take me there."

"To the area, yes," Xu Jing hedged before looking up at Jay with misgivings, brows furrowed, "Are you sure?  It might be dangerous."

Someone shot Feng Mahti out of the sky with the low-tech equivalent of a surface-to-air missile in what was probably an ambush.  Yeah, that sorta went without saying.  "I need to see it."

Xu Jing nodded slowly.  "Tomorrow morning, then."

After the morning chores, before the sun had really properly come up to peek over the rise of the mountain ridges, Xu Jing and Jay headed out.  It felt almost weird to be wearing Feng Mahti's proper clothes, even if it wasn't everything.  The boots fit.  It took him a minute to figure out how to lash the sleeves of his underrobe under the bracers, Grandpa Xu's worn overrobe loose on top.  At least the colors didn't stand out; Feng Mahti had favored rusts, browns and darker reds that faded into the forest, if it a bit dark for spring.

Xu Jing's brown and grey were equally surreptitious, and the man handled himself like he was used to hiking, striking out along the stony ridge downhill.  Jay trailed after at a sociable distance, watching out for loose rocks underfoot.  "You come out into the woods often?  Doesn't look like there's any paths."

"Not this way.  There's a village, little trading post, about half a day's walk over there.  That's where I met Xiao Min."  Xu Jing gestured with his walking stick to the east, back away over his shoulder.  "Never a reason to go southwest."

The small glacier lake they'd mentioned was more to the north.  Xu Jing said the bandits watered their birds there. . .  maybe someone had waited for just that.  Stake out the watering hole.  Bastards.

The hike was mostly quiet.  It had the same feeling as going on an S&R where you knew it was a retrieval.  Jay didn't remember any of the woods, just trusted Xu Jing knew where he was headed.  It'd been a week, and it had rained more than once.  Any trail he'd left behind would need a dog to find, now.

After the first hour coming down from the mountain valley, the rest of the morning turned into a long, steady climb uphill.  He must have stumbled his way down.  If any of that was under his own power, anyways.   Xu Jing had been too polite to mention if he'd rolled the entire way down the goddamn mountain.

Finally, they crested a ridge and turned, and Jay caught his breath hard, freezing mid-step.  

That was the sharp little valley that Taifun had banked into, little more than a cleft in a much larger mountain.  And halfway down the opposite ridge. . . yes.  Trees were broken and strewn aside in a line where a bird the size of a small airplane had made its final short, sharp stop.  

He pushed past Xu Jing, already calculating the fastest route.  He dropped off the rock ledge they had been following up, between trees; at this elevation, it was mostly confiers and some adventurous brush that was just barely leafing out for the season.  Dark green, pale shoots, white flowers, a tumble of those brown-red rocks like gravel across the bottom of the cut.  

He had to go slower through the splinters, finding it easier to route parallel to the path of destruction and then move uphill to. . . to where Taifun fell.  

Jay let out his breath in a slow hiss, then regretted the indrawn breath that followed.  Death always smelt like death.  The vultures and other carrion feeders had been doing their job, and the results were never pretty.  One of the wings had been snapped and strewn aside, more a crumple of feathers and bone than anything else.  The other was folded under, and the sheer jumble of flesh and bones was barely recognizable as a bird.  

Jay stepped wide around it, seeing but not seeing until his eyes finally caught on a sharply curving shape.  The beak.  He crouched, pressing one hand, then the other flat against it.  It was warmer on one side that caught the sun.  There, with his hands cradling the immense beak, his heart just dropped.

Fuck. It was worse than seeing the sad wreckage of animals alongside the road.  Senseless death of things in the wrong place at the wrong time, where their only flaw was getting in the way of humans.  This probably wiped out his kharma from never having hit so much as a chipmunk himself.  Taifun was dead because of him.  No doubts about that.  Taifun would have lived until the desert.  Until the oasis where Feng Mahti, desperate and betrayed, drank the poisoned waters to follow him down while Lin-laozi watched.  

He hated that part of the books.  Read it once. Might have had to scream into his pillow in outrage. Lin-laozi had just . . . walked away from the corpses of the bandit king and his bird, left the well dripping with black malice and resentment in a complete 180 of his beliefs and that  . .  Jay honestly tried to forget the whole scene was canon because that was some utter grimdark bullshit.

Taifun deserved better.  Deserved better than taking the hit for his idiot ass, better than that horrible bitter end in the sands.  Lin-laozi would never have done that.  

At least, if Feng Mahti was here now, they hadn't tried to cross the Wastes into the Empire yet.  Maybe Jay could keep the bandits out of that whole shitheap of a plot twist.  Save something.

He rested his forehead against the cool feathers of the flat forehead, eyes closed.  He wasn't really the religious type, wouldn't know who or what to pray to at home much less . . . on the road, whatever that meant for his spiritual existence anyways, but he hoped that wherever Taifun was, the bird heard.  

"I was your end instead of your second chance.  I might not even be Feng Mahti's second chance.  But I can at least try and make some of this better."  

#sometimes I write #nanowrimo #Transmigrator Pile-Up #got a little waylaid by the Magnus Archives #and work being stressful #but I'm trying to chug along in pieces #. . . and I need to stop editing it #see also: bad habits that Nano is supposed to help me break #er - not necessarily bad but the enemy of productivity that is for sure

[drkandraz]

Why Hirohiko Araki Is a Great Writer

Note: add writing saying “I am only going to be addressing JoJo because 1) I have not read his older works, 2) His works before and including Phantom Blood lack what I am talking about here and 3)  I include JoJo spin-off manga under the “JoJo” moniker”

 As the man behind one of the most influential manga of all time, Hirohiko Araki is already a highly praised writer and artist. However, I believe what lies at the heart of Araki-sensei’s writing style is not explored often enough. What I think are the most important factors in the writing of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure are the extremes to which the author takes his creative freedom and his skill in writing relationships between people.

Phantom Blood is the most conventional part of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. It has a structure very similar to other shounen manga at the time: hero has a rivalry, rival becomes obscenely powerful, hero learns martial art to defeat rival, ally dies, other ally narrates, hero wins etc. Phantom Blood’s writing only succeeds in the outlandish concepts introduced throughout: vampires appearing as a consequence of mayan blood rituals with magical stone masks, vampires somehow sucking blood by introducing their fingers inside a human’s skin, the power of the sun channeled (or created) by breathing, medieval warrior zombies, people being cleft in half by chains… frog punching. What also comes out here is a hint of the strategic battles the series will come to be known for, with Dio’s defeat at the hands of a burning sword.

A lot of the quality of the writing comes in the relationship between Jonathan and Dio, two characters who could not be more polar opposites who supposedly die together. While Jonathan is a typical nice guy shounen protagonist, Dio is a somewhat complex villain; he is irredeemably evil, but not unjustifiably so.

The decision to change protagonists was in itself an unheard of prospect at the time, each part bringing its own atmosphere and self-contained storyline, facts which allow Araki-sensei to explore all of them at length.

In comparison, Battle Tendency goes completely off the rails. If Phantom Blood is a cautious dip into the water, then Battle Tendency is a cannonball jump right into the deep end. This is where JoJo starts going from typical shounen manga to a manga characterized by battles of wits and skill rather than of pure brawn; and this change is reflected in its protagonist. Where Jonathan was the perfect gentleman who would never face his enemy anything less than head-on, Joseph likes to screw with his opponents’ heads. To show this change in character, his first major fight is against an enemy comparable to Dio, who is taken out a lot more easily thanks to Joseph’s fighting style. The insanity present in Phantom Blood is taken up to 11: the vampires are mere distractions to the new Pillar Men, Nazis are turned into Cyborgs and Hamon now apparently works on bubbles.

The relationship built between Joseph and Caesar is perhaps the most natural growth displayed in the series until this point. Their friendship grows gradually and culminates not with perfect teamwork, but with a realistic ideological fight between the two, one that Joseph would come to regret for many years to come. Caesar’s death is one of the most natural and powerful scenes in manga history, from the desperate dedication he displays even in his final moments, to Wamuu’s respect for him and to Joseph’s desperate cry for his best friend.

Stardust Crusaders is the start of Araki-sensei’s complete creative control. Stands now allow him to explore any fun and interesting idea he has in battles and to make stands that fit with their characters. The change of the format from single story to monster of the week supports the author’s writing style of throwing ideas at the wall and expanding them to his heart’s content. However, the clunkiness of his inexperience with such creative control is obvious. He is obviously pressured to come up with cool designs and powers for the stands (some of which he will later forget). In the second half of Part 3, getting used to the concept of stands, he starts writing interesting and fun ideas for his battles, like the D’Arby Brothers and Vanilla Ice. The insanity is punctuated by the increasing number of musical references (from Captain Tennille to Oingo Boingo).

Sadly, the characters take a backseat for the duration of this Part. Except for certain minor moments between the Crusaders, the characters don’t really have arcs (except for perhaps Iggy and Polnareff). For this reason, Jotaro, Kakyoin and Avdol are often criticized for having little to no character, which is a fair point. Jotaro himself is more of a superpowered version of the most barebone characteristics of Sherlock Holmes.

Dio’s return recontextualizes Part One as a tragedy rather than a story of sacrifice for the greater good, as well as making Part Three more of a culmination of generations of fighting rather than another story about saving the world. Jotaro vs Dio is still one of the best battles in shounen history because of the weight behind every single action the characters take feeling like the climax of the story.

Diamond is Unbreakable, in contrast to its predecessor, is not in the least an epic story about cleansing evil. It is, for the most Part, a slice of life. Therefore, its stand users have abilities more suited to everyday life (Bad Company notwithstanding), or rather their own special needs. The town of Morioh truly feels like a real (albeit bizarre) place, with a community comprised of people with their own personal goals. The advantage of Part 4 in Araki-sensei’s writing style consists of the fact that the author is no longer chained by the needs of the lengthy story structure that plagued Part 3. He himself pointed out in an interview that he could always go back to continue Part 4 if he wanted to (I could not find the interview again, sorry. If you can find it or correct me, it would be most appreciated).

The character’s relationships in DiU are quite evidently better defined than in Part 3. The main crew of Part 4 is smaller and it never feels restrained to keep everyone around at every point in the story (like Part 3 was somewhat forced to). In this way, characterization and character relationships are better crafted within stories that emphasize only those characters and relationships. Jousuke is never forced to be the main character of an episode; rather, he only is when the story demands it, making for a much better experience. Of note are Koichi, whose growth is signaled within his stand’s abilities, Rohan, whose growth is exhibited throughout the series and within his spin-off series, Joseph, whose appearance is bittersweet to old fans, as the sneaky and crafty Joseph becomes senile and unable to do anything worthwhile and Kira, whose chillingly normal demeanor doesn’t betray his dark tendencies.

After Part 4’s gleeful atmosphere, Part 5 dives right back into the horror-inspired roots of JoJo. Giorno Giovanna, Dio’s son, is a far more dark and cunning figure than Jousuke. Indeed, Giorno and the rebellious cell of Passione he becomes part of are a reflexion of past characters painted in a new, more sinister light, fitting with the new Mafia theme. They are a family, led by Bruno Bucciarati just as the Part 4 gang was led by Jotaro, but because of their jobs, they live in a world almost completely devoid of the fun antics of DiU. However, their relationships are just as well developed: Abbachio and Giorno’s one-sided rivalry is resolved organically, Bucciarati and Giorno’s hatred of immorality is what binds them together and Fugo’s “betrayal” is completely in character for him etc. As a villain, Diavolo is well written insofar as we recognize that his main attribute is his megalomania and his relationship with Doppio is magnificently fucked up in the best way possible.

The fights in Part 5 are brutal bouts for survival. The enemy stand users are trained assassins who will stop at nothing to get their revenge on The Boss. What makes this change even more effective is their motive for chasing the gang, the murder of their “family members” at the hands of Diavolo. Therefore, each ability is more valuable than each of the ones in Stardust Crusaders, since there are just a lot less of them. Each stand is that much more developed and consistent in its use (with the exception of King Crimson, but I’m not going on that rant right now) On the other hand, the concepts introduced for them are just that much more insane: a turtle in which one can enter by putting a key in a hole in its back, a stand that dehydrates everything at long range, a stand that can put zippers on anything etc.

Part 6 is a much more plot focused arc. The whole part focuses on Jolyne’s search for her father’s memory and stand discs with the help of Stone Ocean’s gang of reluctant helpers. This gang feels less like a pseudo-family, more like a bunch of people chasing their own goals and helping each other along the way. This, by the end of the story, is what will bring their demise at the hands of Pucci, Dio’s best friend. Despite this, I can’t say they are not well-written characters. Foo Fighters’, Weather Report’s and Pucci’s characters and arcs particularly are very compelling.

Within this story driven part, the villain of the week format just does not fit anymore. This is why, despite their great ideas and executions, a lot of villains from Stone Ocean are made forgettable especially by the ending, which left almost no hope for a direct continuation to be made. In many ways, it can be said that one of Araki-sensei’s strong points eclipsed the other one completely.  The creative freedom which used to be a leading factor in why the series was so great was now taken to too many extremes (Looking at you, Heavy Weather and Bohemian Rhapsody) which detracted from the story more than they added.

On the other hand, the reboot Part 7 brought was exactly what JoJo needed, in my opinion. Now that stands had been grounded as more akin to abilities than the ghosts they were originally, there was no need to keep them as anything more than representations of the user’s skills. The bizarre nature of JoJo was also given almost complete freedom with the abolishment of continuity and concepts like stand arrows. Instead, Araki-sensei introduces pseudo-scientific and pseudo-philosophical concepts that fit in perfectly with JoJo. To explain the level of insanity, I will summarize the premise of SBR in one sentence: two men, one crippled and the other with the power of ball hamon, compete in a cross-country horse race in 1880s USA, while fighting dinosaurs and the president using powers granted by Jesus Christ. While the stand battles in the middle section are almost as forgettable as Part 6’s, it matters less because the most important aspect is the development of our two main characters.

The characterization in Part 7 is the best it’s ever been in JoJo. Johnny’s hopeful nihilism contrasts perfectly with Gyro’s playful jackassery. The main cast – now smaller than any that came before it – only consists of two characters (if we don’t include the very well written reccuring side characters). Every character gives a feeling of having their own agenda, while also each contributing to one side of the battle between Johnny and Gyro and President Valentine. Interestingly, Funny Valentine is probably right from an ideological stand point, which is an unexpected turn out from a mostly childish manga up to this point.

Part 8 brings Steel Ball Run’s ideological musings into the 21st century with a return to Morioh. Araki’s style has retained its mature edge, but shifted them into science-fiction territory. The characters retain the moral ambiguity found in Part 7. Jousuke would do anything for Yasuho, even torture somebody. Yet the familial aspect that had long been missing from JoJo returned in full force with the Higashikatas and their rival pseudo-family, the divided Rock Humans. This makes Joubin a perfect antagonist despite his seemingly underpowered ability.

The bizarre atmosphere of JoJo’s fourth part returns with the Shakedown Road and the Milagro Man arcs which have almost nothing to do with the overarching plot of the series, but enhance the sense of a world existing beyond the characters. The battles in JoJolion are realistic and brutal to the extent not even Vento Aureo was willing to go, despite the relative bizarreness of the enemies’ stands.

This is how Hirohiko Araki’s writing style changed over the years from simple and restrained to bold, philosophical, dark and bizarre. The overall mundanity of Hamon was slowly replaced by stands and other special abilities, allowing the author to indulge in outlandish ideas that complimented the intelligent, consistent and thoughtful structure of his battles. To conclude, I believe Hirohiko Araki is a great writer because of the balance between his strange, out there ideas and his calm and logical understanding of his concepts (with a few exceptions), combined with his ability for writing strong and believable arcs and relationships for characters.

Edit: If you want more details about the first four parts of JoJo, I wholeheartedly recommend Super Eyepatch Wolf’s videos on the subject, as he can go into much more detail in those.

#jojo's bizarre adventure #jojo no kimyou na bouken #jojo #jojo stands #hirohiko araki #araki #joseph joestar #jonathan joestar #jotaro kujo #josuke higashikata #jousuke higashikata #jousuke #jotaro #josuke 4 #josuke 8 #giorno giovanna #jolyne kujo #jolyne cujoh #jjba jolyne #johnny joestar #gyro zeppeli #pizza mozzarella #tequila joseph #tequila joseph is best girl #essay #analysis #article #Opinion Piece #sorry i wanted to put the part 5 dance in but there was no gif for it #how does king crimson work

[dlthrack]

   The adventuring party returned from their rout of nearby marauding goblins, coming in to the Ironvein Mining Company’s mining settlement toward the end of evening meal. Over dinner, they related their progress eliminating the recent goblin threat to the camp foreman and obtaining some useful scouting information for the likely paths to follow the next morning.

   They got provisioned and set out early the next morning, heading north along hunting trails, but the ranger Iname quickly found signs of Cor Ironvein’s expedition several weeks back. As the path grew rougher and more rocky, Fortis and Taney took to riding the saddled donkey they had borrowed from the mining company, to better keep up with their taller companions’ strides. Eventually the path led to a rockslide which had clearly newly opened a previously inaccessible valley, and they turned eastward along a stream at the bottom of a canyon flowing down from the Vingaard foothills.

   As the canyon opened up, they followed tracks into a small hidden valley, where they began to see traces of paving stones, then increasingly preserved sections of road working toward the mountains. At the end of the road, they reached the northern edge of the valley where it ended in a cleft in the rock wall. The carved entrance had been long obscured by a rockslide, and details could only clearly be seen from up close near the entrance. There they found Cor’s large travel pack resting under the eaves of the carving, with clear weathering signs indicating it had not been touched in weeks. His pack contained the overdue library book the acolyte had requested be returned, and a bookmark showed he had been reading about the geological makeup near an area called Crown’s Hollow.

   They tethered the donkey and Fortis left Mouse perched nearby rather than bringing him underground. A square carved hallway headed straight into the mountain, with unlit sconces regularly lining the walls. Fortis lit each one as they passed, allowing the group to see cracked frescoes lining the walls that depicted a solemn procession of armored and robed figures bearing bodies on stretchers. After a few hundred feet, the cat Mittens, who had been scouting ahead, suddenly stopped, hissed, and ran back to Korg. Mittens bristled visibly, as they drew close enough to see a pool of dried blood and a smear leading forward and along an angled fork off to the left of the main path.

   The rest of the group waited as Iname scouted down the fork carefully, and each step she took was closer to a room lit with an unseen blueish light. She warily leaned around the corner and saw a room dominated by a marble statue of a kneeling woman depicted weeping over a crystal bowl. Beneath the statue was a large stone altar, and between the altar and the hallway were rows of stone pews carved out of the same granite as the floor. Iname held her breath as she saw a crumpled form at the end of the last pew and a seated figure in armor, sitting apparently unmoving. She watched but could not tell if the armored figure was breathing, then quietly retraced her steps and recounted her observations.

   After some inconclusive strategizing, the group all attempted to stealthily creep down the hallway, but failed miserably. However, the seated figure didn’t seem to react, and finally someone called out to it as Fortis attempted to smack it with mage hand. The mage hand dissipated before reaching the figure, who turned to look at the party, and raised his sword.

   The knight demanded to know if the newcomers were allies to the thing in the basement, and seemed appeased by learning their intentions and purpose in coming. He lamented he was unable to leave to warn or protect Cor Ironvein, who died after being set upon by minions of the dark being in the inner sanctuary. He formally introduced himself as Sir Dalton “The Brave,” visibly grimacing at the title bestowed upon him, insisting it would have been more fitting to call him “the lucky” instead. Dalton said he saw divine guidance in the party’s presence, and begged the group to help him by preventing the evil man in the basement from using the Ironvein heirloom amulet’s power to break open his tomb and finally defile the entirety of this resting place he was charged in protecting.

   The party asked for information about the shrine’s paths and current abominations, and while Dalton was explaining a small clink alerted the party to a fallen object resting in the bowl held by the statue. Iname having heard the source of the sound best, investigated to find a blue crystal in the shape of a tear just over an inch long laying the bottom of the basin. It emitted a faint blue light. Dalton expressed shock at seeing a tangible gift from the goddess Mishakal, and told the group it could be used to cleanse or remove corruption, showing the first hope since they met him.

   The group set out to reach the lower levels of the temple crypt, and encountered a pair of animated whose heads were overgrown with mushrooms. The party attempted to subdue them stealthily, but were detected by the creatures, which clicked and turned to attack. They were easily taken down, and the group learned from their observations to ensure only one additional fight with a patrol of raised skeletal knights before finding the stairs downward.

   At the bottom of the stairs they found an enormous set of wooden doors bound in bronze with a large bison head in the center, corroded nearly beyond recognition. They tested Dalton’s suggestion by holding the tear to the central figure on the door, which cleaned the corruption from the bust and restored its original finish. At the same time, the light in the tear was noticeably diminished but not extinguished.

   Beyond the now easily opened doors, the group continued downward, with Fortis lighting each light they came across, allowing them to see opened alcoves and paths inward with broken stone sarcophaguses from which the shambling skeletons had presumably been created. Continuing onward, the group found a brightly lit room ahead and quietly peered in to see a robed figure standing next to a large highly decorated sarcophagus in front of a platinum dragon fresco. Having successfully crept up on the figure, they prepared to strike, and Iname began the fight by tossing her dagger into the back of the man in an attempt to interrupt him.

   Shockingly, the man chose to speak rather than immediately retaliate, asking who the intruders were before declaring it did not matter because he had been commanded here by his god, and he had already succeeded. With that, the group watched in horror as he reached down to touch the amulet where it lay on the sarcophagus. It completely rusted, and the cover stone to the tomb cracked and the front fell open, knocking the tarnished medallion to the floor. The cleric reached inside drew out a broken longsword covered in dried blood, pointed it at a pile of skeletons on the floor and invoked his god Morgion, and the blood of Takhisis to form a whirlwind of bones. They drew together to form a blood red skeletal ogre held together with mushrooms towering over the group, and the battle began in earnest.

   Korg prevented ambush from behind by molding earth in the doorway behind them, and the group coordinated their attacks to prevent injury to any but Iname, who had charged the cleric. The robed figure let out clouds of spores, which the group was luckily able to resist. With quick wits and tactical coordination, they were able to wear down the monstrosity and with a powerful wave a thunder, the cleric was thrown against the wall where he lay in a heap unmoving. After all seemed still, the group debated what to do with the man, but fearing the spores he unleashed Iname suggested it might be best to simply burn the body from a safe distance. Fortis tried to incinerate the corpse, but it suddenly transformed into a swarm of scurrying rats that escaped before they could react.

   The group retuned the sword to its resting place interred with Sir Dalton’s remains, and cleansed it with the tear. With multiple casters in the group working together, they were able to mend the damaged stone and once again seal away the tomb. After cleansing the medallion, and restoring the sarcophagus, the braziers that had been burning with an oily blank smoke burned cleaner and the room was illuminated with a brighter whiter light. The air itself felt cleansed for the first time since they had entered the place, and began the trek back to the fountain of Mishakal. The hallways were clear of enemies, and it appeared the last vestiges that had been corrupting the catacombs was lifted.

   Upon entering the statue chamber, the party heard flowing water and found the statue had begun once again to weep into the bowl for the first time since the Cataclysm. They also discovered the body of Cor Ironvein had been carried away by some divine force.

#dragonlance #d&d 5e

[kenisu]

DuckTales turns 30 on the 18th of this month, and a friend of mine, Jason Schlierman of DAF Radio, wanted a banner for his Facebook group, so I went full Don Rosa and illustrated a collage of some of the most memorable Duck stories (except, unlike Rosa, I'm focusing on the animated series)! Starting with the left margin... TOP ROW, left to right: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗲𝗮𝗴𝗹𝗲 𝗕𝗼𝘆𝘀' 𝗵𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗼𝘂𝘁. Seen in various episodes, but depicted here is its appearance in "The Money Vanishes", after the Beagles teleport Scrooge's entire vault contents their way with the use of a special ray gun. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗲𝗮𝗴𝗹𝗲 𝗕𝗼𝘆𝘀. Namely, Bigtime, Burger and Bouncer, the typical "Big Three" players in most episodes featuring the Beagles. Bigtime is holding the ray gun from the aforementioned episode. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘚𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱 𝘗𝘩𝘰𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘹 (the rocketship from "Where No Duck Has Gone Before"). Scrooge visited the studio of the kids' favorite sci-fi TV series, "Courage of the Cosmos", and told Gyro to build a new set for it, making the spaceship "as real as it can be". Well, to everyone's shock, the 𝘗𝘩𝘰𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘹 actually blasts off during the big unveiling, with Courage and the kids inside - Gyro DID make it real! 𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗱'𝘀 𝗮𝗶𝗿𝗰𝗿𝗮𝗳𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗿. Donald spends most of the series in the Navy, but a small handful of first season episodes do feature him, and when he does pop his head in, you can usually bet the aircraft carrier he serves on will at least make an appearance as well. 𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗱 𝗗𝘂𝗰𝗸. Here he is in his Navy outfit, running away from the Beagle Boys (Bigtime is pointing the teleporter ray gun at him). No such scenario occurred in the series, but I wanted the characters to interact with each other amongst the margins. SECOND ROW: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝗹𝗼𝘀𝘀𝘂𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗗𝘂𝗰𝗸𝗮𝗽𝗼𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗼𝘂𝘀, from "Home Sweet Homer". This is one of those classic episodes that immediately comes to mind when someone thinks of DuckTales. It sort of retells the story of the Odyssey (with tons of creative license, of course), except that it takes place AFTER Ulysses has made his voyage, and his "nephew" Homer is the stand-in character. The Ducks, in a sailboat, approach a cleft between two cliffs, only to have a magical tornado sweep them up and send them back to Homer's time. They sail into the cleft, but the sorceress Circe uses her magic to move the cliffs together in an attempt to squash the Ducks. This causes the Colossus statue, which stands with its legs splayed apart, either leg to a cliff, to crumble away until only its feet remain, making clear why that's all that's left of it in Scrooge's time. I remember, when I was in 9th grade, the English class I was in actually watched this episode on its old laserdisc, when we were studying the Odyssey (though I did nudge the teacher a little into that decision). And when _The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring_ came out in theaters, I immediately thought of this DuckTales episode during the Argonath scene (I hadn't yet read LOTR, so it was new to me). Now that I think about it, I wonder if the Argonath inspired the writer of "Home Sweet Homer" to some extent? 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘀, again from "Home Sweet Homer". How could I make a reference to that episode without also referencing what I still maintain is the scariest scene in all of DuckTales? (Though I guess the fake Scrooge and fake nephews from "Nothing to Fear" are a close second.) This version of the Sirens is terrifying to me. They come across as beautiful female ducks... except... you can tell from the get-go something's wrong with them. Never mind their croaky singing voices; the fact that they're packed up to their heads in what looks like purple mud, with no visible limbs (evoking some grotesque parody of a Pez Dispenser), and that they sway creepily as they sing, makes the whole package VERY Uncanny Valley. When Scrooge is lured to their island, a gigantic ogre-like head with arms and a massive gaping mouth emerges from the mud beneath the Sirens, and we see it's all one hideous creature. To be honest, I think the over-the-top mud monster does take some of the bite out of the subtlety of the horror of seeing the Sirens by themselves and knowing there's something wrong but not knowing what that is, but five-year-old me would probably beg to differ. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗚𝗼𝗹𝗱𝗲𝗻 𝗚𝗼𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗮𝗻 𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗵 𝗶𝗻 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗹. The very last episode (technically, two episodes) of DuckTales involved a golden idol in the shape of a goose that gave Scrooge the Midas Touch. The Beagle Boys stole it for Flintheart Glomgold, and after a big struggle in Part Two over ownership of it, it transformed into a live goose, going on a wild spree transforming everything in sight into gold. Eventually the Goose shed its gold coating, and this is where things got epic. The gold it shed onto the ground began to spread, covering all of Duckburg and continuing on to the rest of the world. In order to reverse this process, Scrooge and his few remaining allies had to return the Goose to the fountain it came from, in a monastery in Barkladesh, before the entire planet was lost. There's a particularly memorable space-view shot of the earth as the gold creeps over its surface (so much for the Blue Marble), and I knew I had to depict that in this picture. 𝗗𝘂𝗰𝗸𝘄𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗵 (Scrooge's butler), and 𝗕𝘂𝗯𝗯𝗮 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗧𝗼𝗼𝘁𝘀𝗶𝗲. In "Pearl of Wisdom", Huey, Dewey and Louie race through a hallway toward their room, to gather their marble collection together for a big tournament. They jostle a stand on the way, knocking a vase off and into Duckworth's hand (Duckworth's expression doesn't change). Then, Webby comes tearing through after the boys, bumping into a second stand with a duck bust, which Duckworth catches with his foot (again, without changing expression). It's one of Duckworth's funnier moments, and I really think he doesn't get enough credit. "Duckworth's Revolt", for instance, is one of the best episodes of the series, and he certainly deserved more than just that one focusing on him. Of course, here I change the reckless character from the usual kids to Bubba the Caveduck and his pet triceratops Tootsie. Bubba takes a lot of flak from critics, and he too I think wasn't nearly as bad of a character as some claim. Heck, I remember just being thrilled at his debut episode, "Time is Money", and sure that had a lot to do with the fact that it was the first new DuckTales episode in nearly a year (an eternity to a six-year-old), but it's actually a really touching story, and Ron Jones really brings that out in the hefty handful of new music score cues he composed for it. There's also the episode "Bubba's Big Brainstorm", which for all its flaws contains an adventure I love it to pieces for. I don't care if you think I have bad taste. THIRD ROW: 𝗚𝗹𝗮𝗱𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗚𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿. Here he is freaked out by the fact that Magica has Scrooge's Number One Dime, evoking the plot of "Dime Enough for Luck", except that the manner in which she's procured it suggests "Magica's Shadow War". I fudged a bit here and depicted her shadow in its "super" form, which it takes on after it casts a spell to be freed from the flesh-and-blood Magica, even though here it's obviously still "attached". Magica's shadow could only grab the shadows of things and not the things themselves (though these objects would float through the air to keep up with their shadows), so here it grasps the shadow of the Dime's glass case. This is another great episode, and the original script is even online for us all to read. Check it out! It's awesome to see everything that didn't make the cut (spoiler: there's a scene where Scrooge and the kids cut through a department store to escape the shadows). And as for Gladstone, he was hypnotized in "Dime Enough" into handing over the Dime to Magica (side note: again, going back to LOTR, Magica actually makes a One Ring reference once she's back in her lair with the coin: "One Dime to Rule Them All", she cackles). Gladstone's character is notorious in DuckTales, because while his classic infuriating luck is there, he doesn't have the kind of gloating personality his creator Carl Barks gave him in the comics (Well, sort of. We do get a quick glimpse of what he's REALLY supposed to be like when he loses his luck and says: "I'll have to get a JOB like normal people!"). If you only watched the cartoon, you'd never know Gladstone was created to be unlikable, as he constantly makes his cousin Donald hate life by winning every contest he enters and rubbing in the fact that he never has to lift a finger to earn his next meal. This is exactly the impression I had of him as a kid, where the only Barks story I read in my youth that had Gladstone in it was "The Billion Dollar Safari", and there isn't much in that tale to indicate I should hate this character with every fiber of my being. 𝗠𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗰𝗮 𝗱𝗲 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗣𝗼𝗲. Magica is my favorite recurring villain in both the DuckTales episodes and the Barks comics, and I think it's a shame that she only gets one more episode once season two starts up, and even then it probably only featured her because she was in the Barks story it was a direct adaptation of. Seasons three and four are quite inundated with Flintheart plus-or-minus Beagle Boys episodes, and it does grate on one's endurance after a while. As for Poe, he's actually Magica's brother turned into a raven. We never see what he looked like before the transformation, but supposedly if Magica successfully melts the Number One Dime into her amulet, it'll give her enough power to turn Poe back into his old self. This is a bit of a contrast against Magica's raven in the comics, Ratface, who was in fact an actual raven. Kinda reminds me of the different takes on Splinter between Ninja Turtles comics canon and 1987 cartoon canon. 𝗠𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁 𝗩𝗲𝘀𝘂𝘃𝗶𝘂𝘀. Magica's lair. In the comics she lived in a small hut on the slopes of the historical Mt. Vesuvius in Italy (usually these exterior shots have lots of inkwashed surfaces/sharp relief for atmosphere!), but in DuckTales she lived IN the volcano itself (which for some reason was isolated in the middle of the ocean), and Vesuvius was even shaped like her head. I was beyond thrilled when WayForward turned the final stage of DuckTales: Remastered into Mt. Vesuvius, it was so perfect. CENTERPIECE: That's the 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 on the top left, the 𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘆 𝗯𝗶𝗻 on the top right, and on the bottom, the 𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗶𝗹𝗼𝘁 𝗲𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲, "Treasure of the Golden Suns". After Scrooge makes the mistake of opening all three doors in the vine-strewn temple, the giant discs lining the valley catch the rays of the sun and reflect off of each other to trigger the valley's final, horrifying trap: the molten gold deep in the temple's well rises to melt the temple and leave the Ducks stranded on the roof, seconds away from their doom, before Launchpad shows up in the nick of time. Again, I must tip my hat to Ron Jones, because the music in this scene is incredible, to match the visuals. Now, the right margin... TOP ROW, left to right: 𝗚𝘆𝗿𝗼 𝗚𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗹𝗼𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗟𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗲 𝗛𝗲𝗹𝗽𝗲𝗿/𝗟𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗲 𝗕𝘂𝗹𝗯. They're sitting inside the Time Tub, which Gyro invented in "Sir Gyro de Gearloose" to escape the drudgery of always having to be the Mr. Fix-It (or "Gadget Man") of Duckburg. Most probably recognize this episode as the source of the shot in the opening sequence on the lyric "...or rewrite history!" The Time Tub also made an appearance in "Time Teasers". 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗗𝘂𝗰𝗸 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗜𝗿𝗼𝗻 𝗠𝗮𝘀𝗸, from the episode of the same name. The face behind the mask is that of Count Roy, an old friend of Scrooge's, whose twin brother Ray overthrew his rule and cast him in prison wearing the mask. 𝗚𝗼𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗲. In the flashback scene in "Back to the Klondike", this is how Scrooge first sees his main love interest, on a stage in a saloon, sitting on a swing while singing a song about her love of gold nuggets. SECOND ROW: 𝗠𝗿𝘀. 𝗕𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗹𝗲𝘆. She's knitting the colorful scarf that would go to Skiddles the penguin in "Treasure of the Golden Suns, part 4". (Maybe I should have had her brandishing a tuning fork?) The 𝗠𝗶𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗮𝘂𝗿 from "Raiders of the Lost Harp". DuckTales just can't get any more vintage than a chilling reveal of a giant statue early in an episode, then the statue coming to life once the treasure it protects is stolen, and spending the rest of the episode pursuing the thief. Scary stuff for a five-year-old, and still pretty effective for an adult, too! 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗚𝗮𝗿𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝗢𝗻𝗲 from "Sphinx for the Memories". Specifically, the iconic scene of the crescent moon lining up behind the sphinx, a beam of light passing from the head decoration to a similar decoration worn by Donald, to complete the possession of Donald by the ancient spirit. I know I already showed Donald on the left margin, but I figured I could cheat for a scene as epic creepy as this. THIRD ROW: 𝗚𝗶𝗶𝗶~𝗶𝘇𝗺𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝗸! Man, the introduction of Fenton Crackshell to the series may have taken some of the wind out of Launchpad's sails when it came to the role of the "heroic" character, but Gizmoduck is too awesome for me to have wanted it any other way. His debut story, "Super DuckTales", was just a blast all around. Blathering blatherskite! 𝗙𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗿 𝗕𝗿𝘂𝘀𝗵𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗹, an uncannily talented door-to-door salesman. This is a DuckTales-exclusive character from "Much Ado About Scrooge", the story of a race to uncover the lost play of William Drakespeare (that's the play Brushbill is holding under his arm). The late, great Chris Barat speculated Brushbill was, in the early draft stages, intended to be Gladstone in his debut episode, and I think he was right - after all, Brushbill does exhibit the obnoxious personality traits one would expect from Gladstone, and has the right kind of voice, to boot. 𝗙𝗹𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗚𝗹𝗼𝗺𝗴𝗼𝗹𝗱. I know it's probably hard to tell since I drew him so small here, but he's eating his hat - holding up his end of the deal from "Treasure of the Golden Suns, part 2". I designed the margin this way to suggest a character interaction: Filler Brushbill is running away, play in hand, from a frustrated Glomgold, only to be stopped by Gizmoduck. 𝗖𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗹𝗲 𝗠𝗰𝗗𝘂𝗰𝗸 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗖𝗼𝘁𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗠𝗰𝗗𝘂𝗰𝗸. "The Curse of Castle McDuck" is my favorite self-contained DuckTales episode (as opposed to the multi-part arcs). Scrooge takes the kids to visit his chilhood cottage in Scotland, only to discover that his ancestors' castle across the stream is haunted by a bloodthirsty hound, and occupied by druids. While Scrooge and the boys set traps for the druids, Webby ends up separated from the others and wanders into a misty forest behind the castle. The others look for her and, in the forest, find themselves confronted by the hound. Just a GREAT spooky atmosphere all around, helped marvelously along by, yes, the music - in this case, there are a number of electronic cues that lend a truly surreal and dreamlike feel to this tale. FOURTH ROW: The 𝗧𝗲𝗿𝗿𝗮𝗳𝗶𝗿𝗺𝗶𝗮𝗻𝘀 roll toward a pillar to smack against it in competition for the Great Games. This depicts "Earth Quack", an adaptation of Barks's "Land Beneath the Ground". I was terrified of earthquakes as a kid (even though I've always lived in areas not particularly susceptible to them - but then, maybe never experiencing any made the fear worse), and I've always suspected it was this very episode that introduced me to the concept of earthquakes. FIFTH ROW: 𝗟𝗮𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗵𝗽𝗮𝗱 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗗𝗼𝗼𝗳𝘂𝘀 in the orange helicopter. And, if you can't tell, that's the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook Doofus is holding. Doofus is another character that got the shaft post-season one. Some people were happy about that, but he really never bothered me, even in his biggest moments of overbearing hero-worship of Launchpad. 𝗔𝗿𝗺𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗴, from the episode of the same name. Gyro invents a robot that can outperform Launchpad at seemingly any task Scrooge can give him, but Armstrong eventually turns on the family and becomes bent on world domination, and it's up to Launchpad to stop him. It's a nice, solid episode, and I gotta mention the music again, as this was actually Ron Jones's audition for DuckTales composer, and you can tell he really gave it his all. 𝗙𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗚𝗮𝗹𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗖𝗶𝗻𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗼𝗻 𝗧𝗲𝗮𝗹. These two actually never interacted, being from two completely separate episodes ("Double-O-Duck" and "Spies in Their Eyes", respectively), but as both episodes were spy-themed, I thought it appropriate to have them teamed up here in a sort of "Charlie's Angels" pose. Except their weapons aren't guns. Instead, Feathers is wielding her tube of poison lipstick, and Cinnamon is sort of gesturing toward her hypnotic eyes. Anyway, there are loads of other episodes and characters I could have included, but only so much can fit inside Facebook banner size specifications. I hope I properly captured the better part of what makes DuckTales so iconic! #DuckTales30

#DuckTales #Duck Tales #DuckTales30 #Uncle Scrooge #Scrooge McDuck #Huey Dewey Louie #Webby

[gcnenineteen-blog]

HE COMES HERE. HE HAS A BURNED HAND.

     She had begun seeing the graffiti about four months ago, appearing in stark crimson spray paint first on the alley wall of the deli six blocks from her office building, then on a park bench near her usual bus stop in Brooklyn. The lost pet posters she was used to; she checked them regularly out of habit, the way someone might read the classifieds with only a vague sense of what they’re looking for, but rarely made an effort to look for the people they described, largely uninterested in her civic duty toward her fellow undead. But when the can-toi stooped to such obvious warnings, you took notice, because it meant that more subtle methods hadn’t worked to eliminate the problem - it meant that the person they were after wasn’t just an inconvenience, but a danger. 

     She knew about the Burned Man, of course - what vampire in NYC didn’t? He was the latest fashionable urban legend, something thrilling and frightening to gossip about in the Dixie Pig on Saturday evenings: a figure taken straight out of Dracula, an Abraham Van Helsing for the modern age, and he allegedly did his hunting with horrifying efficiency. They said he could smell the death in you, would know you for what you were at a glance - that he had some sort of glam that hid him until it was too late. She knew there had been too many disappearances lately, too many to blame them all on vampires growing bored with New York and picking up stakes - no pun intended - but she had never credited the rumors. It was too fanciful, too storybook, tailored too perfectly to vampiric primal fears; the Burned Man was no more real than the Jersey Devil, which had after all been nothing but a mutie goat that had wandered into the Pine Barrens through a thinny and mauled no more than a handful of hikers before expiring in its own tumorous juices. She’d thought, at most, that ‘our irish setter - one wounded paw’ was a psychic, someone the can-toi wanted for the Breakers. Someone they’d have under control in a month.

     But she was standing a block from her new bus stop now, looking at the back wall of the pub across the street, reading the warning there - no whimsical chalk stars or comets, just red text that shouted at the eyes. They were dead serious. The direct servants of the Crimson King not only believed the Burned Man was real, that he was a threat - they believed that he had been in no fewer than three of the places she frequented regularly. It wasn’t just unsettling - she had bypassed unsettled days ago. It was actually frightening.

     It had been nearly fifty years since she’d genuinely been afraid of something. The disease stole compassion first, because a predator wouldn’t survive if it could empathize with the animals it was supposed to hunt, but over time all of the other emotions seemed to go too - it was like progressively going colorblind, and after awhile you almost forgot what things like yellow and orange had looked like, until they returned without warning and scorched your eyes. She was afraid, but she also needed to work if she didn’t want to depend entirely on the good graces of Richard Sayre and his cronies - and the mistake that would undo her, on this gorgeous late fall afternoon, was the simple, universal assumption that nothing truly bad can happen in the middle of the day. 

     She sat at the bus stop, back stiff, smoothing her dark brown hair with a slender, olive hand. Her nerves were rattled, yes, but she felt fine - the overblown incompetent she did secretarial work for was so prodigiously fat that she could afford to drink from him twice a week, and she had left him in his office in a daze, totally unaware that it wasn’t his cock she had sucked. She’d started to notice small sores at the corners of his mouth, and wondered how much longer it would be before she needed a new job. She wondered if he’d given what he’d caught to his wife - if the woman could even bear to be touched by him at all. She wouldn’t have blamed her if she couldn’t, not at all. 

     Fifty years ago, she might have felt some stirring of horror at her own train of thought, at how casual and flippant it was - she could even remember a time when she had felt horror over it, long ago - but she had, as they said, lived since then. Why should she care if her fat, lecherous boss died of the GRID? Why should she care if his wife, or even his wife’s mistress caught it? What should she care if the whole of the tri-boroughs caught it? If she had learned anything about people in the last half century, it was that there were always more of them, much the same as the last had been, and that only the calamity of all calamities would ever succeed in wiping them out entirely. It was none of her business.

     She wrinkled her nose at a sudden waft of unpleasant odor - the tang of whiskey, overlaying a smell that reminded her vaguely of a fish market. Her back stiffened a little further when a tall, lanky man dropped down on the far end of the bench from her: he was obviously homeless, bundled in a ratty coat and jeans faded to the color of dishwater, leather shoes whose expensive brand she could only excuse by their battered condition - he had pulled them from a dumpster, probably, and worn the tread threadbare since. There was no debating the source of that stench, and she felt a ping of irritation and contempt, avoiding the man’s haggard face with the reflexive ease most Haves experience when confronted with a Have Not. Don’t make eye contact, the maxim went, and she wouldn’t, because he might ask for change, or take her attention as an invitation to begin some delusional panegyric. Christ, but he stank. 

     The homeless man sat blessedly silent and unobtrusive beside her, hands jammed into his pockets and face buried in the collar of his coat, but she still felt a flood of relief when she saw the bus approaching, and shot to her feet with a haste that bordered on rudeness. She didn’t care - the homeless were, in her own opinion and that of many of her friends, useful only as a very last resort. If one had to stoop to feeding from vagrants, one was either incompetent or desperately ill - or possessing unaccountable poor taste.

     She boarded, paid her fare, and chose a seat halfway down the length of the bus, preparing to settle in with the half-finished book in her purse. Another wave of that stench stopped her before she had even opened the cover. The homeless man had boarded the bus behind her, slotting coins slowly into the farebox, and she firmly glanced away the moment he turned down the aisle, holding her breath as he passed. He took a seat near the back of the bus - probably planned to sleep there until he was kicked out at the end of the circuit - and the driver pulled away into the thoroughfare, leaving her in a steel box with that horrible stink.

     After suffering it for five minutes, she glanced cautiously to the left and ahead of her, gauging the reaction of the other passengers - really, it smelled so bad she thought someone else must have noticed it, but none of the other commuters seemed bothered. The old woman sitting across the aisle from her had glanced toward the back of the bus once with an expression of sadness, or maybe pity, but that was all. Humans had weaker senses as a rule, but she didn’t know how they could miss it - that horrible, pervasive scent of raw fish. 

     And...and something else, she thought. The overlaying smell of alcohol made it hard to pick out, but there was something beneath it, too - a sort of musky, polecat odor that made her think of roadkill. She curled her lip at the thought, then frowned at a tickling of familiarity the smell tried to bring her. It was a vague thing, and she couldn’t quite seem to get it, fleeing further away the harder she tried to focus on it. Shaking her head like a dog trying to clear its ears of water, she determinedly opened her book and tried to read.

     She managed twenty minutes of the hour-long drive across town before she finally gave into the urge to actually turn around in her seat and look at the man, whose presence she didn’t seem able to completely shut out. She had been prepared to look away immediately if she thought he might catch her, but she found that she needn’t have worried: the homeless man did indeed appear to have fallen asleep, his forehead pressed to the grimy bus window, mouth a little ajar, breathing slow and even. He was older, long, steel gray hair shot through with strands of shock white, but just looking at his pale, bearded face, she couldn’t have said if he was fifty or seventy. She got the sense that he might have been remarkably handsome, once - in the strong cleft of his chin, the shape of his jaw, the evenly spaced eyes - but she couldn’t bring herself to find any beauty in the dirty ruin of a thing he was now. She felt another surge of contempt for him, stronger this time.

     He had stuffed one hand into his coat as if to hold in the warmth, and his other hand rested lax on his lap, tough, pitted fingers curled between the V of his bowed knees. He looked dead to the world, and she thought the odds that he would get off before her stop extremely slim. She thought of mentioning the man to the driver and asking to have him removed, but she had seen him pay his fare, and no one else seemed the least bit bothered by him, or even aware of him.

     She tried to read again, actually angry now, but after little more than a page or so found her mind wandering, snagging again and again on that lingering sense of familiarity that was trying to become memory somewhere in the back of her mind. It niggled at her, like something important that she knew she had forgotten, and she smoothed her hair again, didn’t see the single silver disc of an iris gleaming at her from under coal gray eyelashes. The elusive memory began to infuriate her even more than the smell, and she was glaring intently out the window when the bus passed Tom & Jerry’s Artistic Deli, and the muscles in her lower belly tightened into a stone.

     All at once, it recurred to her: she remembered this smell from the first time she had seen the graffiti, on the alley wall of that very deli. She had had to pass through the alley to get to the subway station from the Italian restaurant across the street, where she had stayed late with a date she had ultimately decided she could do better than. She had noted the graffiti then, passed it by, and then had given herself quite a scare along the following blocks toward the subway. It had been that smell - not the booze, but the fishy stink, and that underlying, musky odor that tickled something in her lizard brain. She had fancied she heard footsteps behind her, been absolutely convinced at one point that she was being stalked, and had made the trip down the last block at a clipped walk with her keys clenched between her fingers, thinking Burned Man, Burned Man, Burned Man. 

     But she had reached the station safely, mingling among the night shift commuters unharmed. She had looked up the street before descending the stairs underground, and all she had seen had been-

     Had been a homeless man, staggering across the street toward the bar on the far side. 

     She sucked in a breath between her teeth, first resisting the urge to turn and look again, and then giving into it, turning her head very slowly over her right shoulder so she could see him, across the aisle and three rows back. He was still asleep; his face had slid a little down the pane of the bus window, pulling up the top lid of his eye to reveal a crescent of cornea, and his breathing was still slow - and in his lap sat an unblemished hand. She was about to turn around again and scold herself for being stupid when her eye fixed on his right arm stuffed into his coat - hiding the hand.

     They’re whispering his name through this disappearing land, but hidden in his coat is a red right hand.

     Who wrote that? It didn’t matter. A flicker of real fear had begun to take the place of paranoia, and she desperately tried to place his face, to determine if she had ever seen it before. It was hopeless; she hadn’t seen the face of the hobo that night by the subway, and who in New York paid attention to the faces of the homeless anyway?

     God, but what if that was it? They said the Burned Man had a glam, something that kept him safe from notice until he was right behind you, but why would he need a glam when every New Yorker worked so hard not to see vagrants by choice that it eventually became second nature? A homeless man was the only type of person in the city who never looked out of place, and as a result never drew any especial attention. 

     Her heart hadn’t beat in over half a century, but she felt as if it had lodged itself in her throat, and when the old woman across the aisle gave her a curious look, she turned stiffly to face the front of the bus again, fear crawling on her back like a skittering insect. She was safe - she had to be. Who could look less like a vampire than she did? Middle-aged, middle-class, pretty but not beautiful, modestly dressed, second-generation immigrant from Italy - there were tens of thousands of women just like her in this city, and to think that she might be suspected of anything so far-fetched was ludicrous. The homeless man was human - foul-smelling, but undoubtedly human. She had nothing to fear.

     The homeless man snorted, then belched, face sliding a little further down the pane. If he was pretending, he was very good, and she tried again to convince herself that she was being silly, shutting her eyes tight, and trying to clear her mind. She wasn’t such of a much as far as power went, had never been all that potent even among her own class of vampires, but her senses were still keen, and with concentration she could call upon them - call upon them to hear the quiet rasp of his steady breathing. And the steady thrum of his heart, thud-thud, thud-thud.

     Too fast. The man’s heart wasn’t just clipping along, it was racing, and all at once she was in a paroxysm of terror, absolutely certain of his identity. Certain that she was trapped in a bus with the Burned Man, and that there was nothing she could do. Cry out? Make a scene? No, she would look like the aggressor, with him feigning sleep so artfully back there, and even if she didn’t simply provoke him into pouncing on her immediately, she could be detained, and he could just wait in some alley for her to leave. Ask to be let off the bus, go somewhere crowded? She’d give away that she knew, then, and he might simply follow her. No matter where she went, it would close eventually, and she would have to leave - he’d just have to lie in wait. 

     Home. She would have to go home, exactly as she had intended - she had a gun in her closet, and once she was inside she could call in at the Dixie Pig. If she said the Burned Man was outside of her house, the can-toi would be at her door in minutes, and he would either be caught or driven away. If the latter happened, she would just appeal to Sayre to relocate her. It would cost her a few more years’ debt, but she could cope with that for peace of mind. Yes, there - that was a solid plan.

     But the last fifteen minutes of the drive felt like an eternity, constantly aware of his slow breathing and dark polecat odor somewhere behind her, and it took all of her willpower not to run off the bus the moment the door was opened. She walked slowly, forcing herself to look absent, natural, and preoccupied, and when she reached the curb she even took a moment to glance at her watch - in reality, glancing over it at the bus window, where the homeless man was apparently still sleeping, his breath visibly fogging the window. He stayed there, unmoving, even as the bus door closed and it began to pull away with a shriek of gears and exhaust. She watched, nonplussed, as it chugged on down the street and turned onto the adjoining avenue, and out of sight. 

     And just like that, he was gone. Swept out of her life, and after another minute of standing she had to make herself turn in the other direction and begin to walk. For the average person - and, for all that she had died sixty years ago, in mindset at least she was an average person - six blocks of walking is more than enough to begin doubting the memory of an irrational fear. What feels so visceral and absolutely true in the heat of the moment becomes vague, uncertain, because the mind is eager to discard the confounding, and will look without thinking for reasons to do so. 

     By the time she stepped into her brownstone and considered actually contacting Sayre, she didn’t just feel silly - she felt ridiculous. Was she really going to give Richard Sayre and his bookies a foot through the door of her privacy because she had gotten spooked by a sleeping homeless man on the bus? It was two in the afternoon, for Christ’s sake - broad daylight! The idea that that haggard man on the bus might have planned their meeting and deliberately stalked her now, when the world was alive with light, was stupid and absurd, and even if he had gotten off at the next stop, he would have had no way of knowing where she’d gone from there. She was not going to call Sayre.

     She did take the revolver out of the closet and load it, but she placed it on the coffee table when she sat down in her loungewear to read and listen to a record, and after an hour she had nearly forgotten about it. By four, she had forgotten about it, and got up to make herself a late lunch, leaving the gun in the living room. When she discovered that the trash was full beyond her ability to jam it back down into the can and, grumbling, slipped on shoes to take it out, she did not take the gun with her. 

     The sunlight had taken on a darker hue as early afternoon became late, but it was still a gorgeous day out, and she took a moment to breathe it in before padding down the front steps and heading around to the dumpster between her building and the next. It didn’t smell half so pleasant in the alley - it didn’t matter how much money you paid per month, alleyways in New York always smelled like wet garbage - and she held her nose as she flipped the dumpster’s lid up and dropped her bag inside. She held it, and did not smell that musky polecat odor when it mingled with the rest of the alley stink. If the shriek and crash of a car accident close by hadn’t startled her into turning, she would have died immediately. 

     A heavy carpenter’s hammer cut through the air inches from her head with a sharp whoomp, and she uttered a breathless scream, turning to see the man from the bus, his shock-white hair windblown, chapped lips drawn back over his teeth - shock and fury mingling in a pair of wide, wild, red-rimmed eyes. She tried to scream again, but could manage nothing, because it wasn’t the hand holding the hammer that had arrested her attention, but the other one, clutching what she realized had been her book, forgotten on the bus - her book, with her name and mailing address written inside the back cover. And the hand that held it was hideous, mottled - and a dark, livid red. 

     “No, no, no, please,” she hissed, backing away from him, further into the alley. He advanced on her, and in the avidity of those pale eyes she thought she read not just rage, but fear. Was he scared? Afraid now that his ambush had been foiled and the element of surprise was lost? She was afraid, oh yes, but she was also a predator, and even a fearful predator is crafty - perhaps especially then. Always looking for the way out.

     “Please, I don’t understand - I haven’t done anything to you!” Her voice cracked and quailed, and as she made her body small and held up her tiny hands in a warding off gesture, she was sure this time that she saw him hesitate, saw him swallow, saw those pale eyes flicker. The thing inside of her with its low cunning scented the air, smelling vulnerability. “I don’t have any money - it’s all inside! Bu-but...but you can have my jewelry!” She started to frantically remove her sapphire earrings, then went for her emerald ring as well when she saw an expression of horror dawn on his face. “Here, take them!” She shoved her palms out at him, and he actually took a step backward, holding up the disgusting ruin of a hand that held her book as if to say ‘oh cripes, I’m so sorry, my mistake’, mouth working soundlessly.

     “Please, I don’t want to die.” She played up the pathos as much as she could, hearkening back to decades-old memories of what it had been like to feel, and he staggered back another step, arms dropping to his sides, bamboozled by doubt. When his fingers went lax around the handle of the hammer, she knew she had him, and lunged.

     There were vampires more powerful than she - most of them, in fact. She walked by day in exchange for her weakness, but even she could dominate this human given an opening - her strength would surely match his, even if it didn’t exceed it. Serpentine fangs slitted through her gums with shocking abruptness as she pounced on him, wrapped her arms around his neck and locked her legs around his waist like a lover - but when she sealed her lips to his neck, she both felt and intended nothing but ruin. 

     Her teeth did not so much as graze his skin. The second her mouth made contact with his flesh, she was overwhelmed with that stench, that dark animal musk that had been lingering under the smell of raw fish like a dirty secret - it hit her like an open-palmed slap to the face, and she immediately began to heave, driven away from that primeval pheromone by instinct that was now wired in her blood. Not for you, that smell said. He is not for you. You are not allowed. Unclean. Unclean. 

     She staggered away from him, gagging, and in the moments before her death - her final death - she looked up and saw a horror. There was a sickly, bruised blue aura hanging around the old man’s head like a miasma, slicked over his cheeks and his chin and down his neck like glowing paint, staining his tongue, his teeth. All at once she knew that roadkill stench for what it was - the mark of the Unclean, who had drank of the Old Blood but not changed. Not dead, not undead, but never again truly living, cast out from the natural order into a no man’s land where neither side would greet them as kin. She had heard of it as a form of punishment, but never of a time in recent history when it had actually been done.

     “Unclean-” She moaned, gut still wrenching, and for a moment the man looked absolutely thunderstruck with what some dim, forgotten part of her recognized as anguish. He looked gutted, wretched - and then furious, and when he swung the hammer back over his head, she screamed. And because this was New York City, even her neighbors that were home on a weekday afternoon did not look out their windows. 

     The homeless man stood in the alley in the aftermath of what he had done. He looked down at the crumpled pile of untenanted loungewear, the shock of brown hair, the little pile of teeth. Old-fashioned fillings - couldn’t have been done any later than the forties. After a moment he listlessly scuffed the teeth down a storm drain, and kicked the hair into a pile of garbage, where it looked like a discarded wig. He knelt down and reached for the clothes, then stopped. For a long moment he simply knelt there in the alley - then, very slowly, even fearfully, he traced the sign of the cross in the air in front of himself, and spoke with the voice of a man expecting to be struck.

     “May the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and of all the saints, whatever good you have done or suffering you have endured, heal your sins and reward you with eternal life. Amen.” Silence reigned again, half-expectant, but no thunderbolt descended from the cloudless sky to smite him. Perhaps even the Unclean were permitted to dispense sacraments when the cause was just - because the woman who had left her copy of The Collected Works of Robert Browning on a bus in Queens two and a half hours ago was not undeserving of prayer.

     Because she, like a Saint Bernard that once lived in Castle Rock, Maine, had always tried to be a good person, and had never wanted to hurt anybody. And like that poor dog, she had stuck her head into a cave and been bitten by a bat, and all of the misery that had followed, both for her and those around her, came down to no more than a virus. The disease had stolen her humanity, rather than her reason, and if the woman she had been today had willfully contributed to the spread of the AIDs crisis, the woman she had been once could not be blamed for it. For that woman, who had been dead indeed for nearly sixty years, it had never been a matter of choice. 

     The man in the alley picked up the clothing and jewelry, and dropped them into the dumpster, then pulled a few bags of trash over them. Even if they were discovered when the woman’s disappearance was noticed, he wasn’t concerned - what evidence was there of murder? The teeth had already been washed away in the greywater, and the hair might be perplexing, but would lead nowhere. He left the alley the way he had come, and wandered back down to the bus stop. 

     When the 4:30 bus arrived, he boarded it, and when he saw the bar he had had in mind out the window, spotted the graffiti on the bench in front of it, he decided to stay on a few more stops - and the city swallowed him, because it was hungry. The city was always hungry, and not all of those it devoured were unwilling. 

#;; DRABBLE #;; MUSE : CALLAHAN #me: has like five perfectly good drabble prompts in my inbox #my brain: hey but how about this totally unrelated idea? #me: wow buddy you're absolutely right #anyway here's 'don callahan is a reverse-cryptid - the vignette'

[cleftmomph]

Cleftmom confessions: Things ive learned that I wish I knew before. A list from a mom of special kids❤️ I actually dont know how to address this list, I think I've realized these because I have 2 kids with "special" needs. But it may also apply to moms in general, Im sure all of us will have one or two of these thoughts or circumstances in our crazzzy momma life☺️ 📌I am not INVINCIBLE I need God. I am nothing - this is not because Im bring myself down, but because I am humbling myself. Im surrendering. I am nothing in this world compared to His greatness. Given how well nourished, well educated, or how powerful, how big your house is, you are nothing without God. YOU NEED HIM. Crazy as it may sound but with all the fear I felt, the next thing I realized/felt was this. I was HUMBLED. I know He's caliing me. I was reminded of how great he is and who am I in this world. This is why 2 COR 12:9 is one of my fave verses: But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me 📌Take one day at a time I know you have so much to give, but I also know theres only so much you can take. We have limits, we are mortals, remember? If you will look past your now, sometimes it gives you serenity. Skipping the harder days, the surgeries etc. The power of hope. But in your darker days, when its just hard to find aomething to make you move forward, remember you have now, and what you do today, now, is what matters. Enjoy it, days goes by faster than you think. With all the hustle and bustle of this generation, sometimes its hard to remember this. But until your child hits another milestone, you wont stop to enjoy life and savor that moment with your kid. You will realize that they're growing too fast and there's that pinch making you ask "why so fast?". And then there's this joy, the assurance that they are doing well coz they're hitting those milestones just in time, sometimes a lil early, sometimes a lil late, but what the heck, they DID and that's what matters. Savor the moment🙂 📌Cliché as it may sounds: things will get better This!!! This cliche was pressed on me numerous times already. This is proven. I want to say by me, but well... i'd be lying, and you know it coz you've been there, done that😂 When reassuring new cleft parents I always say this line, which maybe doesn't help much hehe (but I know they'll realize one day that it's true😎). It's just hard to look beyond the firsts, beyond the uncertainty specially if the mom has not yet delivered. I totally understand that (i've bern there, didn't believed this line as well😂😂😂). But the most recent encounter with this lesson was because of our Jacob. I still get hotheaded while on our review sessions (di po ako ipokrita 😂), but he makes me more proud because of that. Because as I always say, he tries, he tries his best! Before, during his exams week, review sessions would be after school till bedtime and it wasn't even enough parin --- That's with prior review sessions pa. Before he cant even read a story book, it would take us an hour or two to finish those short stories. Before during exams He wont have time to do his kumon booklets anymore. But he did improved. He did better in reading books, he's good in math, he gets perfect scores in exams. Recently was his summative exam, he was able to finish reviewing all his subject before exam week started. so it was just a quick review for him during exam week. I felt how positive he is, how confident he is now specially in math and reading. I felt how happy he was that he could still do other things after reviewing. Things got better for me, but more for Jacob.❤️ 📌Downing moments are vital You wont have glorious days without your gloomy days. They make your success more sweet. If you let them eat you whole, you'll lose. Don't let trials win, empower your will to get back on your feet. Some days are harder, but that's what make you tougher. 📌You have to be worry sometimes ...So you wont put your guard down. 📌You need Two words:CLEFT TEAM If it would be possible go to them. NCF / PBM. Period! Google will help you with what a legit cleft team consists of💪🏼 📌This prayer help me calm myself❤️ I want to share it with you because in times my heart is in trouble, And I would say this prayer I would instantly feel calm. So much betteeeer❤️ The serenity prayer God grant me the serenity To accept the things I cannot change; Courage to change the things I can; And wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; Enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; Taking, as He did, this sinful world As it is, not as I would have it; Trusting that He will make all things right If I surrender to His Will; So that I may be reasonably happy in this life And supremely happy with Him Forever and ever in the next. Amen. 📌God's plans for you is bigger Learning about Gabbie's cleft hit me hard. I comfort myself knowing that God has His plans and He definitely know better. It's really hard to know what it is, its hard to foresee but He asked me to have faith, Even as small as the mustard seed. I know my faith is far bigger than a mustard seed, because you know what, never as in NEVER He has forsaken me! JER 29:11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Prov 3:5-6 "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. 📌Go with your instinct Mother knows best. Also, this means you are the one responsible for your parenting style. Don't let others pressure you into a parenting style that is not YOU. You be the kind of mother YOU want to be, not the society, your doctor, your priests, you family ask you to be. You are the only person who knows what's best for your child😉 listen to their opinion or advice, pick what suits you, junk what's not and move on. Don't let them and their side comments affect you inside. 😉 📌Google will bring you horror, dont let it. Use it to your advantage. I will be honest, researching made me anxious. By the time we discovered Gabbie's a cleftie we only have around 8weeks to prepare for her special needs. I havent joined any support group, i tried searching but didnt found one (till gabbie was 2months old ata) so I have no clue what's the best kind of surgeon to go to, what will she need etc. google would redirect me to cases from across the globe, Mostly US, many patients in the US had over 10 surgeries, so yes, that scared me. Ear tubes, yup they did scare me - alot!!! Repeated palatoplasty? Complications per age, complications during surgery.... hell yes!! Speech problems?! Heart problems and syndromes!????! Like whaaaaatttt!!! I want to give birth already just to find out if she has any of it!!! But the internet provided me a vital information for our cleft journey - name of our surgeon. Dr. Glenda De Villa ❤️ learned what bottles we need, what to look out for, that yessss, I could breastfeed!!!🙂 the internet also provided the criteria of a CLEFT TEAM/CLEFT CENTER, and Dr. De Villa's team is a SURE WIN!💪🏼 📌You have to love your doctor. Trusting your surgeon is vital. After meeting her, my worries just fluffed their way out of my chest. She's an inspiration. She's also the one who told us about NCF. If not for her and our trust to her, our family won't have the privilege of knowing those who are behind NCF and their patients ☺️ 📌You are not alone I repeat. YOU.ARE.NOT.ALONE I treat my co-cleft moms and dads as my family. No one could understand me than someone who's going Through a journey like us. Yes, our families and friends are backing us up, they're always there. Always. But the STRUGGLE IS REAL! Haha there are certain things no one could relate to unless they have a "special" child. Noordhoff Craniofacial Foundation patients have a support grp - https://www.facebook.com/groups/IbahagiAngNgiti/ And https://www.facebook.com/groups/CleftSupportGroupPH/ is open to all clefties and their families 🙂 📌Be thankful. You are blessed. I always say God gives the hardest battles to His bravest soldiers. Wonder where our cleftstrong babies got their strength and spirit? Its from US, their parents. I was also in doubt at first😁 God chose us for a purpose. Be proud of the privilege and responsibility that God entrusted us🙂 1 thess 5:18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Stop self blaming. Dont be too hard on yourself. Stop asking yourself if you did something wrong during your pregnancy. Accept that you too have shortcomings, and that's ok. Your kids still love you just the same because you are morethan ENOUGH!❤️ *list to be updated, usually in the wee hours of the morning I cant sleep.😂

#cleft mom confession #cleftmomconfessions #cleftmomph #jadegabrielle #cleftstrongph #cleftmomma #cleftmomandproud #diaryofacleftmom #gabbiesjourney #adhdMomma

[forbidden-creepypasta]

Wampus Collection: The Doctor’s Orders

Here's a story from /x/ credited to some chick named Wampus. Nothing in this thread has been edited in anyway. This is good shit. Shit that can shrivel Josef K's manhood. - Tower ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Since it seems /x/ related, I’d like to tell you some stories about my family. I’ve never really thought to write this down, but people seemed to enjoy my last thread so I thought I’d share more. Plus, /x/ is a little out of sorts tonight, and I’d like to help if I can. Hopefully there are people around still interested in hearing. In my last threads I talked about my mother’s side of the family, and their curious beliefs and practices down in the Deep South. I told those stories, not because they were especially paranormal but because I’m most comfortable with them. My childhood was filled with them. I grew up down here, and although it’s a strange place, these are eccentricities I understand. Unfortunately, while the stories about Often and my mother are cute and occasionally spooky, they don’t really compare to the /x/-factor that leaks down from my father’s line. If it's okay with you guys, I'm going to repost the backstory before I begin since I don't think the thread is in the archive yet. I can also post the first story if that would help too, but there's no plot or anything, so it's not important to the grand scheme of things. To say that these stories have been difficult to come by might be sugarcoating it. Up until a few years ago, I had always assumed that my grandmother’s family was filled with a bunch of alcoholics or petty criminals. Something vaguely tragic but hardly interesting enough to warrant juicy gossip. Asking after them would usually make my already cold grandmother clam up and either deliver a smack to the wrist or tell you to go play in the yard (read: in traffic). Recently though, she’s started to open up about her strange past. I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe she realized that after all these years of running from it, that world has finally died off. Maybe she’s actually begun to look back at her life and miss what she had. I don’t really know, and I guess it’s not that important. What is important for you, /x/, is that my grandmother ran away from the circus. And not just any circus. She ran away from a travelling medical show. As always, I make no claims toward the truth behind these stories. Most of these are cobbled together from my great grandfather Max’s journal and the notes of his brother Arthur. Max may or may not have been somewhat of a drunk, and Arthur really only wrote about things his good nature and soft heart would never allow him to speak out loud. My grandmother gave my brother and me these journals a few summers ago, and I was hoping to get some scanned pages for you, but if I keep waiting for my brother to do that, you may never get to hear these stories. What I do know for certain is that these people did exist. I’ve changed around some of the names and locations to protect those involved because it’s surprisingly easy to Google them. So whether or not you choose to believe Max’s stories, know that he is real, as is the show and the performers mentioned. The only thing I’m adding are some adjectives, transitions, and the supporting details my researching drummed up. The stories included are only a few from the years and years they spent on the road. These are the ones I find most /x/-related and in some cases most disturbing. I’ll start before my grandmother was born. If you like these stories, I’ll continue. If not, that’s fine too. While I’m no expert on anything relating to circuses or performances therein, here is what I know. Max and Arthur were brothers. Max was a bear of a man who spent his youth winning boxing championships and had hands so fast his favorite game was to dodge the hammers of men driving tent stakes into the ground. Arthur was more sensitive, a gifted musician and talented gymnast. Both were absolute gentlemen and both loved to put on a show. The brothers somehow fell in with a man who went by the name of Doctor DuMonde (like the café in New Orleans). The Doc, as they called him, was likely not a real doctor, but he prided himself in his travelling show of medical wonders. The show featured acupuncture, herbal remedies, medical oddities, and the usual circus acts to catch the less scientifically minded. Arthur and Max performed as magicians, acrobats, clowns, assistants, barkers, and anything else the doc needed, while other performers included an amazing trick rider, a man who performed with bears and dogs, a sword swallower/fire breather, and a psychic. Over their years together, DuMonde came to appreciate the fact that Max and Arthur’s many talents made them valuable allies, while the brothers came to appreciate the fact that the Doc was a couple rings short of a circus. Doc was forever hunting down medical oddities, if not to recruit them then to at least examine them. While he may not have held a medical degree, by the end of his life, no one could claim they knew more about the abject horrors the human body could produce. So when Max answered a knock on his wagon one early August morning, his stomach had good reason to lurch with unease. “Max, my boy,” Doc greeted. “We have an errand to run.” If you need a title, you can call this one “The Doctor’s Orders” or “What became of that unfortunate soul.” Unlike the larger circuses that dominated the railroads, the little medical show still puttered along in the old ornate wagons and trailers. This made travel much harder but allowed for the doctor to make his own curious, meandering paths. Max often wondered how his life had been hitched to every whim of this strange little man, but as Arthur reminded him, if he really cared that much they could have just quit. This particular detour had led them to a small town in eastern Iowa. A brutal drought left the fields near scorched, and summer heat made the small crowds sluggish and irritable. The morning sun had only just begun to crawl up above the treetops and already Max felt his shirt clinging to him. The Doc wore his standard three piece suit and kept time with a polished cane. The old man rarely ever showed the wear and tear of the roads. Probably because his trailer had an icebox. As they made their way on foot, DuMonde informed Max that this was a house call. He was responding to a letter mailed by a desperate family seeking help for their unfortunate child. And why had he brought the former boxing champ along? Simple a precaution, rest assured. The young man had his doubts, but the farm house they were aiming for was no more run down than any other lonesome homestead in the middle of nowhere. As they approached, a solitary donkey sounded the alarm, and his braying brought the owner of the house out the door. He was a short, stout man with a weathered face and an unnaturally tired look. Max thought he saw others peering through the windows at them, but after very brief introductions, they were lead away from the house and over to a storm cellar. “Heard about you coming to Des Moines last season,” the man explained. “Thought you might be able to do something about this.” He threw back the cellar doors and led them down into the darkness. It was difficult to see much of anything with nothing but the morning light shining in to guide them. The stench down below was unreal. The unmistakable odor of rotting meat and feces reminded him of neglected monkey he had once seen locked in a barren cage. The only thing that kept him from gagging was the fear that the smell would get into his mouth, and even the decorous doctor covered his nose with a handkerchief. Once Max’s eyes adjusted to the lack of light, he realized there was a pile of badly stained blankets near the wall to their left amidst piles of dung and fly-ridden scraps he couldn’t identify. The farmer took a rake that had been resting near the stairs and poked at the lump. The thing that shot out from beneath the blankets was such a confusing flurry of limbs that even Max had a hard time understanding what he was seeing. It was human, though really only by technicality. The boy crawled about on four twisted limbs, but a fourth and fifth leg jutted out from his midsection and right thigh respectively. Though shriveled, these forgotten appendages twitched and flexed as he scurried about. His mouth was torn by a severe cleft palette, though that didn’t stop him from hissing and snapping with teeth grown long and somehow sharp like rodent incisors. He was naked but covered in sores, growths, mud, shit, and rust colored stains Max didn’t want to think about. One eye bulged out slightly, causing it to look off in a different direction, though the odd shape to the iris raised doubts over its ability to see anyway. The boy darted wildly to the end of the rope that had been tied around his neck and presumably anchored somewhere out of sight. He nearly choked himself trying to reach for the three men, and when that didn’t work, he resorted to spitting and finally pissing at them. “Don’t have a right mind,” the farmer said as he stepped away from the spray. “It’s our second boy, but you can see why we keep it down here. Eats just about anything and doesn’t do much but raise hell. Killing it would be a sin against the Lord though.” Max had to hold his tongue to keep from asking what that made keeping the boy alive down there. “Very unfortunate,” DuMonde agreed. He kept his face covered with the handkerchief, but leaned in as close as he could without getting hit. For a terrifying moment, Max thought the Doc might actually take the boy. While he understood wanting to put it out of its misery, accepting the thing instead meant trying to integrate it into the show. And that meant Max would have to deal with it. “I am sorry,” DuMonde said finally. “While this is a very sad case, I’m afraid I have no room for such a child in my show.” “What?” the farmer asked. His look of detached exhaustion gave way to a visible wave of grief and then rage. “You said you handled this kind of thing! You take these monsters off those folks’ hands! Now take this away!” The man’s rising tone made his son launch into a frenzy of yowling and jumping. Max was more focused on the rake the farmer was brandishing, however. He stepped between the farmer and the doctor and took in a deep inhale. He instantly regretted doing so, but at least it puffed out his chest and straightened his spine. The farmer was no weakling by the looks of him, but Max was well over six feet and nothing but muscle. He stared the man dead in the eyes. “Now, the doctor said there was nothing we can do. We’re real sorry about your son, but that’s all there is to it. If you don’t mind, we’ll be going now.” Max let his words hang in the foul air between them for a moment before waving his hand for the man to lead them out. The farmer looked as though he might argue but swallowed whatever bile he had brewing and said not a word to them as they took their leave. The only response a farewell from the Doc got was a spit straight into the dust. The pair got the message and wasted no time getting back on the road and putting the house far behind them. “Such a shame,” DuMonde murmured as the safety of their tents slowly came into view. “Such a poor, poor child.” “I’m glad you didn’t take it though,” Max admitted. “I would have made you carry that thing back.” If the story ended here, I’m sure that everyone would have had a good laugh, learned a little something, and the credits could roll safely. Obviously, that’s not the case. This wasn’t nearly the last time Max and DuMonde had to deal with the Unfortunate. Their troubles were only beginning. The next night, Arthur was called to the ticket booth by one of the few roadies that travelled with them. Max was tied up helping with the bears, and DuMonde had no interest in dealing with the ordinary nuisances of running the show. He approached the depressingly short line and was directed to a wooden box sitting off to one side. “A wagon rolled up and dumped it off here,” the roadie explained. “They ran off before we could stop them. Thing split open and some kind of animal jumped out, but crawled off into the bushes faster than we could catch it.” “What kind of animal?” Arthur asked, but the roadie only shrugged. “Didn’t get a good look. It didn’t look like a dog though. Too big to be a cat. One lady said it might have been a person, but who knows.” “Box’s firewood then, I guess,” Arthur replied. Secretly he hoped it was a monkey. Arthur loved monkeys and never did understand why their show had horses, mules, bears, birds, and dogs but not a single monkey, especially now that Ringling had Gargantua the Gorilla. Later in the evening once everything had closed down for the night, he mentioned this to Max. Max went pale and stared at his brother as if the young man had grown a third eye. “Was it a person? Did they see? Was there a man in that wagon?” “I’m sure there was a man in the wagon,” Arthur answered. “Someone had to drive it.” Max was in no mood to argue with his brother. Instead he rushed off to DuMonde’s trailer, and Arthur followed close at his heels demanding to know what was going on. When Max gave a hurried explanation, Art shut up and helped pound on the Doc’s door. Dumonde listened to their concerns with his usual stone-faced quiet. When they finished, the older man smoothed out his heavily waxed moustache and nodded. “Gather the dogs. Tell the young ladies to remain in their wagons. Search the area for it, but if you find nothing, then I suppose we have nothing to worry about. “ Max roused Carl, the dog and bear trainer. Carl was a short man who loved alcohol and had been occasionally accused of letting his beloved bears drink with him. His dogs came in all shapes in sizes, and though he insisted during the act they were all purebreds, he had once admitted to Arthur they were nothing more than strays he couldn’t possibly turn away. They gathered up the four largest mutts and a couple of guns, and met up with the other roadies Arthur had called out. The only woman among them was Ellen the token bearded lady who was probably at least as strong as half the men there and refused to be left out of the fun. “We’re looking for…something,” Max tried to explain. “You’ll know it when you see it. Just be careful.” “That narrows it down,” Arthur muttered helpfully. They took up lanterns and fanned out through the brush surrounding the campgrounds. They’d taken up temporary residence in a lightly wooded area on the outskirts of the small town. Much to Max’s dismay there were plenty of places for an evil little monster to hide, and every rushing bush or snapping twig made him jump a good foot in the air. He wasn’t entirely sure what the boy could actually do to them, but the pit that was weighing down his stomach told him nothing good could come from this situation. Unfortunately, he didn’t have to wait long to find out. Two men’s screams shattered the nighttime stillness, and Max and Carl went racing towards whoever was yelling. One voice rose above the other in obvious agony, and the pair tore through the bushes fueled by instinctive panic. They arrived close behind another search group, but that didn’t stop Max from nearly getting clubbed by a hammer. “He broke my hand!” a roadie leaning against a tree wailed. “My hand!” “There was a monster on you!” the one with the hammer insisted. Max took the weapon away from him anyway. The man’s eyes were wide with shock and terror. “And then you broke my hand!” the injured man yowled. The man had more than a broken had to worry about. According to the pair, a monster had rushed out of the bushes and attacked the man, clawing like a monster and ripping a good chunk out of his arm. In an effort to save his friend, the roadie had swing blindly but was too slow to connect with the creature and instead had shattered the poor victim’s hand. “You think that thing had rabies or something?” the roadie asked Max as they dragged him back to the camp. “You think I’m gonna get sick?” Max thought back to the conditions the boy had been held in and didn’t have the heart to tell the man about it. He ordered everyone else back to the camp. Searching the brush in the dead of night was just going to get more people hurt or worse. Instead they opted to lock doors, sleep with guns, and get the hell out of this place as soon as dawn hit. With all the yelling and nervous energy in the air, every animal in the show was riled up beyond hope and the humans weren’t all that much better. Max and Arthur found themselves sitting up in their trailers, playing cards and casting nervous glances out the window. “Why would they dump that thing on us?” Arthur asked. “Because they’re cowards,” Max replied. “They’re probably hoping we’ll kill it for them, and then we can go to hell instead.” “Is it really that bad?” his brother asked. “You can let me know if you get a good look at it,” was all Max would say. Some time after midnight they had both managed to dose off. Max was fading in and out of restless dreams, and the incessant barking of Carl’s dogs kept jarring him back to the waking world. He had almost gone under for the last time when a sudden sharp yelp of pain and vicious growling made him leap out of his bed and grab his gun. Both he and Art flew out of their trailer, but though they were the closest and first to respond, they were already too late. In the moonlight the Unfortunate was even more hideous than in the dark of the cellar. Its twisted spine heaved and pressed unnatural ridges against its skin, and the greasy, patchy hair on its head hung in oily ropes down to its shoulders. What skin wasn’t covered in blood and filth was a sickly white-gray, and its vestigial limbs were flicking wildly at the air. The monster had gotten one of the small dog’s cages open, and it was in the process of ripping the poor animal to shreds. When the boy jerked his head up to look at the brothers, the dog’s neck tore with a wet, meaty rip. The animal continue to try to yelp, but the only sound it could make were gurgling, trembling gasps as it shook and bled out. Max was too stunned to quickly read his gun, but another figure was on the scene. Carl took one look at what the boy had done to his beloved dog, and the little man’s face actually grew red with wild fury. While the Unfortunate was distracted by the brothers, Carl took the opportunity to jump onto its back. The thing thrashed and howled, trying to buck the man off or at least get in a good gouging bite, but this was a trainer who routinely wrestled bears, both friendly and not. Carl bellowed out obscenities and slammed the boy’s misshapen skull into the remains of the cage, and when those gave way from the pummeling, he pounded the monster into the earth instead. There was finally a sickening crack as the Unfortunate’s skull split from the force. When Max and Arthur finally dragged Carl off the boy, only his frail, shrunken limbs still flexed reflexively at the night air. By this time the whole camp was awake and watching the commotion. Doctor DuMonde made his way through the small crowd too look upon the remains of the fight. There was still a strip of the small dog’s neck between the boy’s rodent-like teeth, and Carl was now covered in blood and whatever else had been on the child. He was panting and staring at the body of his pet, making no effort to fight the brothers as they pulled him away. Pools of human and animal blood soaked into the dry ground beneath them. “What a shame,” DuMonde said, shaking his head. “I’m so sorry, Carl. Max, when you get a moment, carry the body to my office if you please.” The Doctor’s office was a wagon where he held many of his exhibits. At least the ones that weren’t living. The walls were lined with shelves filled with glass jars and odd creatures pinned to the walls like grotesque butterflies. There were some workers who refused to set foot in the place, but after so many years the brothers had grown accustomed to the good doctor’s collection. Max had to wrap the corpse in a blanket to avoid touching the filth, and ignoring the smell and the unpleasant stiffening setting in by the time he gathered the courage to pick the monster up was no easy task. The Doctor, however, could not have been more pleased. Not two days later, the stuffed and posed corpse had a place of honor on the wall behind his desk.

#creepypasta #horror microfiction

[fwittrocknews]

The Gentleman Caller Cometh: Finn Wittrock on the Endurance of ‘The Glass Menagerie’

By Drew Grant • 03/16/17 6:00am - Posted on Observer.com (This interview goes along with the photoshoot in the previous post)

The first time I saw Finn Wittrock, he scared the shit out of me. As Dandy Mott in the fourth season of American Horror Story (that would be the “Freak Show” one, for those not keeping up), Wittrock, 32, was a rich mommy’s boy-turned-serial killing clown (because in a Ryan Murphy production, one naturally follows the other) who turned matricidal when he didn’t get his way. Wittrock, with his cleft chin and movie star good looks, has a polish that tends to cast him in a darker light: as mere mortals, it’s hard for us to imagine anyone that attractive hasn’t just been over-compensated for some defection of the soul. Which is why he’s made such a good foil in the last three seasons of Murphy’s seasonal anthology, playing everyone from Dandy to Rudolph Valentino to a vampire/male model named Tristan (and that was in the same season!) to, most recently, a backwoods inbred cannibal in American Horror Story: Roanoke …a role that required the actor to transform himself with so many prosthetics that he was barely recognizable.

But outside of AHS, Wittrock has enjoyed a killer career trajectory, beginning with an off-Broadway stint in 2011 for Tony Kushner’s The Illusion and a year later, on Broadway in Michael Nichols’ production of Death of a Salesman, a rendition made famous by its applauded reviews and Philip Seymour Hoffman’s performance. (Wittrock, along with future Spider-Man Andrew Garfield, played Hoffman’s prodigies.) Wittrock, like his AHS co-star Evan Peters, seems at home playing smaller parts in larger ensemble films, like his turn in Adam McKay’s The Big Short (where he played a young garage investor, Jamie Shipley) and most recently, as Emma Stone’s clueless, pre-Gosling boyfriend in La La Land.

Luckily, Wittrock didn’t manage to be part of the coterie on-stage during the epic #OscarFail of 2017, as he was in rehearsals for his return to Broadway in Sam Gold’s The Glass Menagerie. (Prior to that, he’d been working with Gold for New York Theatre Workshop’s production of Othello.) As he splits his time between Los Angeles–where he lives with his wife–and New York, where he performs alongside the likes of David Oyelowo, Daniel Craig and Sally Field, Wittrock sat down with us on his day off about Tennesse Williams, Ryan Murphy, and while he’ll always be brushing up his Shakespeare.

What do you think will surprise people most about this production of The Glass Menagerie?

I think people are surprised by how many laughs there are in the show. I was surprised when I first read it.

I don’t know how Sally Field managed to embody both my mother and my grandmother at the same time.

I heard she did some research on that, talked to them about it.

The play struck so close to home, the last third act I was just muttering into my hands “Shut up shut up shut up, you’re making it worse!” Both to your character and Field’s.

A lot of people have felt that it’s close to home, and maybe not in a totally comfortable way.

My first experience watching you was originally on American Horror Story, when she showed up in season 4 as the rich brat-turned-clown-serial-killer. But I had always wished that I had been able to see that performance of Death of a Salesman that you starred in with Philip Seymour Hoffman.

That was a life-changer.

Was that your first big introduction to theatre?

Not with theater as an art. I’ve been doing theater since I was a kid. But it was definitely like, in terms of my career, a big break for me. And just artistically too, working with those people opened me up, I would say, in a big way. So it’s kind of cool, looking back at what I think is five years ago, now.

You were what, in your early twenties?

I turned 27 during the production. It’s fun and beautiful to come back to Broadway, to see how I’m different, how my confidence is different.

As the Gentleman Caller, Jim O’Connor, you’re VERY confident.

Well…I’m acting that way. But I still feel like a kid when I’m onstage.

I was reading The New York Times‘ profile of Sam Gold putting on this production, and they gave you guys a glowing review. And I guess I hadn’t known that Madison Ferris, who plays Laura, has muscular dystrophy. That wheelchair she sits in through much of the play isn’t a prop. I just thought she was making a very specific character choice for a part that only requires a slight limp.

I think Sam is very sincere in trying to expand the pool of what we’re used to seeing onstage, and trying to crack that open; trying to crack open the norms: the normal shapes and sizes and colors of what we see onstage.

I imagine that makes the production extremely hard to block around. The scene where you are trying to get her to dance, and you knock over a figurine…the entire time, all I could think was “They must have rehearsed that scene endlessly.”

The blocking was very specific and very intricate. Though it seems very simple, there’s a lot of work that goes into making it seem that natural. The analogy is perfect for the whole production because the set looks completely bare-bones, but if you see that Times piece, you see there were, however, many thousands of pounds of concrete poured onto the stage. All the sprinklers. This contraption to make the table move back at one point, that’s an incredibly elaborate contraption of shifts and levers and things. Which, basically, no one notices. Because it’s all to make a table move back, seemingly on its own, when the spotlight is elsewhere. All the work that goes into making something seem effortless. But that’s the kind of magic of it.

I haven’t done theater since high school, but even then, I remembered just how exhausting it was. The everyday grind of it all. Rehearsal, rehearsal, rehearsal, opening night, all these performances…and that’s just like, a high school production of Guys and Girls. I can’t imagine what that must be like on Broadway, especially coming off doing television and film.

It is, it’s very different. The fundamentals of acting are still the same, but the kind of athleticism of doing a play is just more demanding.

I imagine everyone has to be in just really good shape.

Internally, too. Also, I think the biggest difference to me, is, say, I have a tough emotional scene to complete in a movie or a show. That will be like, a really tough day at work. It will be like 8-12 hours that are really rough, having to go there. And then it’s over; it’s done, and I never have to touch it ever again for the rest of my life. It’s in a can, it’s in a computer program somewhere and someone edits it, and it’s gone. But if I have an intense scene in a play that goes well one night, I have to go back the next day and do it again. There’s no finale, you know?

Your character, Jim, reminded me so much of most of my ex-boyfriends. One of these guys who means well, but is always trying to–for lack of a better word–“mansplain” everything. He’s a little bit of a blowhard.

I think he’s a guy who lives by self-help books. He’s a guy who lives by an idealistic, gung-ho America kind of thing. But I think he believes in it genuinely. And I think the trap is having him fall into a lecture-y egotist. I think he is selfish, but completely unconsciously. I think he is trying to help her, and the scene does play deeper.

The way he’s just hitting that beat over and over, that her problem is a lack of confidence.

I think he’s like a lot of people. A believer in hard and fast solutions. I started reading this book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie. It’s one of the first kind of real self-help books. It may actually have been….Tennesse Williams might have taken some inspiration (for this character) from it. The way Jim speaks is very, very similar. So I read that every night before I go on stage.

At its core, the book actually has a nice message. It’s like “Make it about the other person, don’t make it about you.”

And explain their personalities to them.

That’s the trap, yes.

In general, I’m not the hugest Tennessee Williams fan. Melodrama is its own certain thing, and where we’re at right now as a country, it feels like watching a show that’s so claustrophobic in its view of family is maybe a bit…melodramatic. But the way Gold did the show felt very modern: there was a lot of physicality, the way the characters are constantly touching each other, that I’m pretty positive Williams didn’t write into those bare-bones stage directions.

I think Sam is always looking to how to be faithful to the play as written, but also be very affecting for people in 2017 walking into a theater. How to do both things at once, but always leaning to the side of what will affect people the most, rather than playing homage to another dead playwright.

At the very opening of the play, after Tom’s speech, someone right behind me yelled out “Sounds like Trump!”

Oh yes. I remember that. The line was about “the huge middle class of America was matriculating in a school for the blind.”

That’s a great line.

I know, Tom has all the best lines. You think of these plays as sort of dated, but it does become amazingly pertinent when you strip it down. And the stuff Jim says about America…it still hasn’t aged. We haven’t aged out of that mentality.

I think the play is really harkening back to a time that is simpler. Because the play is written just at the cusp of World War II, but is set in the 30s. Tom is looking back at a time just before the world blew up with a kind of nostalgia, but also, things weren’t so great then, you know?

No, it seems almost…uncomfortably tight.

Tight, exactly. Claustrophobic. The family as the microcosm for the national blow-up that was about to happen. And I feel like there’s a sense of that now. People are, even from a few months ago, nostalgic about the past.

Oh my god, do you remember a couple months ago? Things were great!

I know right? The world was so simple!

The play is about memory, and that never gets old. You don’t think about memory in a vacuum. Every memory you have is connected. You feel something about that memory. Anything you harken back to, you feel a certain way. Your stomach is connected to your head. I think that’s what the play was after: really stripping memories down and making them about bare-bone human essentials.

Let’s go back a little bit. You said you did theater in high school?

Even before that. I was born in Massachusetts, in Lenox, and my dad worked at this theater company called Shakespeare and Company. Mostly summer, but they do some stuff year round with Shakespeare. I kind of grew up running around the hills of the Berkshires, listening to actors do Shakespeare and being like the pageboy for whatever play was happening at the time. So that’s where I caught the bug. I was young.

Were you a big Shakespeare fan?

Yes. I would say so. It was nice, I got to Othello right before this with Sam, which was great. So that’s where I began, and then I moved to LA when I was 12 and went to this arts high school, called LA High School for the Arts.

Then you came here, did Death of a Salesman…so how does this lead you back to Los Angeles and getting hooked up with the Ryan Murphy crew for American Horror Story?

Ha, it’s funny how life becomes like a domino effect, right? You can track back like “How did I meet that, from that, from that?” I was in a movie called The Normal Heart, which Ryan directed, which Mark Ruffalo was in…and actually, so was Joe Mantello (from Menagerie). He was in it on Broadway, but plays a different part. It’s a beautiful movie. I just got that from an audition. Salesman had exposed me to a lot more casting directors at the time, so I started going out a lot when that was over, and I went out for The Normal Heart and found out three months later that I got it. And then shot the scene…I mean, it’s a nice part, but it’s a smallish part. Really intense and cool, though.

I met all those guys, and then Ryan one day on the set was like, “I have this crazy idea for a character in my show. Do you want to do it?”

What he doesn’t tell you is that the following season, you have to play two characters.

Or I’ll have to wear so many prosthetics that no one recognizes me.

American Horror Story: Roanoke, will live forever in my memory as “the season we barely saw Evan Peters or Finn Wittrock.”

Yeah, it’s the season where everyone showed up and immediately died.

Well, to be fair, that’s often how AHS plots develop.

But that’s the thing about the show! Being dead doesn’t mean you’re not going to work! Kathy Bates I think, talked more AFTER she was dead.

Are you a dancer as well?

(laughs) Who told you that?

In the Hotel season of American Horror Story, you have a great tango with Lady Gaga. I thought “This guy has some moves!” And then watching the heartbreaking way you “dance” with Laura in the Menagerie…

Oh, that’s sweet. I’m married to a dancer, actually, so maybe she’s rubbed off on me through osmosis. They do make me dance on that show, that’s right. They don’t make me sing, luckily…for everyone’s sake.

I have to say, for a lot of my friends, Dandy from American Horror Story: Freak Show is their fan favorite character.

That’s cool. That’s pretty wild. He creeps me out, personally.

Ryan Murphy is heading up approximately a million projects right now: AHS, American Crime Story: Katrina, Feud….are you going to be involved with any of these projects?

You know, Ryan is a very loyal guy. I’m sure I’ll get an email from him one of these days with something to do, and I’ll inevitably say yes.

So, let’s talk La La Land. You had a small role in the film as Mia’s boyfriend. Were you there at the Oscars?

No, I wasn’t. The nice thing about doing a play is it makes for a perfect excuse not to have to go to those things. Or anything else. I guess I might have been there, if I had been in LA.

Did you watch the now-historic moment when La La Land handed the Best Picture Oscar to Moonlight?

Yes, I watched the whole thing. It was…tense. I would say the word “tense” could be used.

But it also made for some great live television.

It did, it did. I have to say, I felt bad because the Oscars had done really well, up to that moment. The show was going really well, it was a relatively diverse year, the jokes were pretty funny, people had nice speeches…and the ONLY thing people are only going to remember this fiasco. The last few seconds.

But yes, it did make for a great moment on live TV. I just don’t know you’re supposed to compare La La Land to Moonlight; it’s like comparing two totally different art forms.

#Finn Wittrock #Interview #Observer #The Glass Menagerie #Broadway #American Horror Story #AHS #La La Land

[swipestream]

An Excerpt from AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND

AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND is an epic collection of four of John C. Wright’s brilliant forays into the dark fantasy world of William Hope Hodgson’s 1912 novel, The Night Land. Part novel, part anthology, the book consists of four related novellas, “Awake in the Night”, “The Cry of the Night-Hound”, “Silence of the Night”, and “The Last of All Suns”, which collectively tell the haunting tale of the Last Redoubt of Man and the end of the human race. Widely considered to be the finest tribute to Hodgson ever written, the first novella, “Awake in the Night”, was previously published in 2004 in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-First Annual Collection. AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND marks the first time all four novellas have been gathered into a single volume. 

The monsters still howl for him, months after he fell. In the gloom, I can sometimes see one or the other, sometimes both together, wolfish beasts with leathery hides and dark bristles, and they raise their grinning, shark-like mouths to the black clouds above and utter their cries.

Impossible that such horrors could love a child of Man, and be faithful; impossible. Yet they do not molest the body, nor even approach it.

My brother Polynices lies in plain view on the baked black salt of the Night Land. The hollow where he fell has a smoke-hole in its center, some five yards beyond his motionless, outflung hand, and the smolder from the hole casts a light across his form.

He lies many miles below the armored windows of our redoubt, but even so, the spy-glasses and instruments of the Monstruwacans (those scholars whose business it is to watch the horrors of the Night) leaning from the balconies, can pick out minute details.

The fingers of his gauntlet are stretched out, as if he were reaching for the little warmth of the smoke hole as he perished. He lays on a slight incline, for a circle of salty mineral surrounds the smoke hole and slopes toward it. His boots are toward us. The smoke hole is to his left. His helmet fell from his head, and rolled a yard down the salty slope. The little trail the helmet made as it fell is still visible. There has been no wind, no earth tremors, to disturb the salt crystals and erode the trail. The haft and great wheel of his disk-ax weapon lay to his right, and the shadow of his body falls across it, making details difficult to make out, even under the immense magnifications of the Great Spy Glass. The hair I used to tousle has continued to grow as the months have passed, and now falls across the shoulder-plates of his armor and spills onto the salt. I cannot see those wild locks without wishing for my comb of nacre to put the tangles right. He was always careless of his appearance.

Because of the angle of his fall, I cannot make out his face. Did he die calmly? Or is a rictus of hollow terror and despair frozen forever on his features?

His right forearm is hidden under his body, as if his teeth were seeking the lethal capsule buried under the flesh of his forearm when he fell. Did he fall too swiftly to bite the capsule, and slay himself wholesomely, before his soul and spirit were Destroyed?

There is no blood visible. There is no sign of wounds.

When we were young, my brother and I found a long-deserted balcony lock, and from a previous life he remembered the word to open it.

He and I would climb through the broken armor of the window in one of the abandoned cities in the base level of the Pyramid. With fearless hearts and unsteady feet we would pick among the tilted slabs of imperishable metal, and find a little niche, about five hundred yards above the Night Land, open to the thin air and stinking fumes. We would sit with our lunch basket and spyglass on the corroded lip of some ancient corbel, our legs dangling and kicking above the smoke and darkness of the Land, and we would hear the voices of monsters muttering and hissing underfoot, see the glinting eyes of remote and cyclopean faces, or feel the dull throb of their malice beating against the sheath of energized air surrounding the Pyramid.

There was a series of irregular stairs leading down and down from a little ways below that spot, but we never dared to venture down.

I remember I wore short-pants then, like a boy’s. During my childhood, before I had a name, I was called Païs or Meirax, or something of the sort; the servants called me Annasa, of course.

Because my father was the Castellan, the nurses and tutors had no credible threat to make when I defied them, or tore my girlish pink bloomers to shreds. Later, when I was old enough to know what grief my antics caused my father, or what pleasure my father’s critics in the Opposition Seats, I dressed more demurely outwardly, though inwardly, I suppose, I was much the same.

From the steles we found on that hidden cleft, at the top of those forbidden stairs, we knew this place had been made by the Labdaciteans, great-grandfather’s people. The locks recognized our life-patterns, and called us by his name.

We knew the tale. Before even grandfather was born, Labdacus eroded the power of the Architects, by making climbing paths not shown on their charts, to run from window to window between the levels, that his loyal retainers might circumvent the blockades, when Architects cut power to the inter-municipal Doors, or grounded the great Lifts. Grandfather Laius, when he came of age, rose to preeminence on the promise that all such unlawful paths and places would be destroyed, and the Last Redoubt brought once more into honest conformity with the Great Central Survey of the Architectural Order.

As an adult, I know the horror of wondering if there is some gallery, portal, or open window, unwatched and unlocked against the subtle malice of the enemy, a hole a spider could wriggle through, or a crack to admit a weft. Even we, young as we were, were scandalized to see the breach of Labdacus. His crime was solid before our eyes, as plain to touch as the smooth hole cut in the armor. The massive, ill-made blocks of crooked stair lead down from it as a blood trail leads down from a wound. But it was a pleasing scandal, and our fear made us grin sickly grins, for it was our great-grandfather who had committed, not a petty crime, but a great one.

We promised each other we would never do anything so wicked as meddle with the walls and wards by which Man lives.

But we were also pleased to have a secret known to none, a place only those of the blood of Labdacus could pass. We considered our promise fulfilled by vowing to tell no one of our find. The idea that we should have immediately sent for the Architects, or the local Officer of the Watch, never crossed our young minds.

We were the children of the Castellan, after all.

Not long after my age of majority, not long after my father’s death and the ascension of Creon to power, I came to tread these same broken slabs of ancient metal again.

This time, my footsteps were not as sure as a thoughtless child’s would have been, nor was my costume as suited for the adventure. I wore a skirt to my ankles and a blouse buttoned to my throat, and my hair was pinned up and coiffed in a fashion I envied when it was forbidden to me, but which was now a bother to dress and maintain. My gloves clutched the corroded wall as I inched in my foolishly heeled shoes across the sloping face of the armor, a dizzying drop to the lands of darkness opening up behind and below my bustle.

The child I had been would not have known me. Païs had been so unafraid, and I was so fearful now. Once only I looked over my shoulder. In the light of a recent volcano, I could glimpse the tall shadows of two kiln-giants, their heads together as if in consultation. One of them raised a heavy hand and pointed at me, while its lamp-eyed companion nodded. This unnerved me, so I clutched the metal beneath my gloves more firmly, and returned my eyes to the task.

I made it around the last turn and came with relief to the sturdier footing and broader step of the ancient and unused corbel.

Polynices was in his armor, standing where once he’d lunched as a child. The long handle of his disk-ax weapon was in his hand, and he leaned upon it in an attitude of alertness, his head staring down at the darkened Land.

He was listening.

Up from the gloom underfoot came the mournful, haunting sound of a Night-Hound, baying. Having found his hiding place, I did not wish to speak, lest I startle him. I had the mental image of him dropping his Diskos over the side, or, worse, himself.

He said, “Rightly or wrongly, the dogs are mine, and I must feed them.”

I said quietly, “They are monsters. They are howling because they thirst for your blood, not because they love you.”

Polynices shook his head grimly, not bothering to look back at me. “Draego saved my life from the Abhumans. I fed him from my hand, and he knows not how to eat from any other. See! Even now he will not hunt among the crags and chasms of the Night Land, or worry pale flesh of slug-things from their lightless holes or blind fish from poisoned lakes. He starves, and stands before the gates of the Last Redoubt, and howls his love and sorrow for me. Dracaina is often with him, and joins her weeping voice to his.”

“Monsters. Do you not understand the word? Enemies of Man.”

“Not these. Love can break even the power of the Night. My dogs are my friends.”

“They are not dogs! They are Night-Hounds!”

He said nothing, but listened to the mournful howling of the monsters far below.

On and on they wailed. Once, both Night-Hounds fell silent, when the Great Laughter began to issue from a buried country to the east, a deep trench whose upper crumbling banks are visible from the Last Redoubt. Another time, the Hounds were silenced again when a deep and monstrous Voice from a cold volcano cone called out in a long-forgotten language, uttering a rough shout that traveled and echoed across the Night Land like a clap of thunder, traveling away to the North. The Night-Hounds were hushed for a while, perhaps cowering in terror, but then their howling and lamenting began again.

“I had a dream that you would die.” I told him.

He said, “I will find a way to smuggle food out to them. I do not fear the law.”

The Great Laughter issued from the eastern hills and canyons at that moment, trembling across the strange and barren landscapes of the Night, and this seemed a fitter answer than anything I could devise.

An Excerpt from AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

[hazecat-blog]

Pathfinder Adventure p.4

previous –> next

Summary: In this session, our party manages to finish off the mini-dungeon we stumbled upon in the last session in approximately the correct order.

The party (decided I should include a list like this for reader reference, and so I can remember how to spell everyone’s name right)

Phoof (played by me) - blossoming treant bard Altaei Nacriex - mysterious (human?) ninja Elisi Urenie - fiery human monk Kaito - kitsune pirate barbarian Valeriy - aquatic elf water witch and adopted sibling to Ash Ashcaul - pirate kitsune magi June - androgynous mixed-blood half-orc spell-caster Noggan - weird rogue floating skull embedded with jewels Zakhar Nikolaev - human alchemist living in Sandpoint

Further on past the prison -- after crossing a rickety bridge -- the Heroes of Sandpoint found a small, abandoned torture chamber. The equipment was still there but had all rotted and rusted away. In a small side room, they found three doors with strange symbols on them as well as a few dozen scrolls ripped in half.

Zakhar and Phoof started sorting through the scrolls, but it started taking too much time and Elisi and Altaei opened the other door from the torture chamber to continue exploring while they did that. It led to a suspicious staircase built in a cleft in the rock by having wooden slats extend from either wall as stairs -- they were sure it was a trap that would dump them into the abyss. Altaei kept searching for traps at every step, but it never did.

When they got to the top, Phoof, having given up on the scrolls to join them, warned them she felt death within the room. They opened it and found a freezing chamber with wooden palettes covering a checkerboard of deep pits, from which moaning noises could be heard. This was even more obviously a trap, so they hesitated a while until Elisi and Altaei entered the room.

It was a trap! Or, well, an ambush. A three-armed mutant goblin dropped from the ceiling and attacked Elisi with an axe. He got in a couple of deep hacks, then retreated away to blow fire on the three of them! Altaei attempted to block the flames from Phoof's body, but the tips of Phoof's branches ended up singed. Elisi followed the goblin to punch him some more, while Altaei hung back and threw kunai. Kaito circled around to try to flank the goblin, while Val moved in with a trident, taking Elisi's place after she took another dangerous hit and had to pull back to drink some potions. Together, they took down the goblin and -- since he was quickly regenerating -- slid the lid off of one of the pits and chucked him to the bottom, where the ghouls started eating him to keep him from standing back up.

Meanwhile, another enemy -- that looked like a rotting zombie with a tattered robe and blank white eyes -- advanced on Altaei. They appeared to be blind and possibly deaf (since they were immune to Phoof's piercing screech), but it didn't seem to keep them from flailing around with their fists and occasionally connecting.They were tough -- hitting them was like hitting a pillar of wood -- but between all of them, they finally managed to take them down right around the time the trio from below (Zakhar, June, and Noggin's valet) finished with the scroll room and rejoined them.

The three of them had only found a couple of intact or even repairable scrolls. It seemed most of the scrolls had one-half missing. Behind the doors, they'd found various mutated creatures -- one with a giant head, one with a rib cage down to his pelvis and tiny legs, and one with three arms, like the goblin they'd just fought.

"Oh, by the way," Phoof said, "I'm pretty sure that goblin was one of the goblin lords I read about. The one supposedly hiding in an unknown cave?"

Kaito frowned. "Didn't he have a magic sword?"

Phoof nodded.

Kaito sighed. "Then I guess we have to fight whatever's in that pit."

That turned out to be easy enough -- Zakhar tossed a bomb in, killing the zombies, and Kaito was able to borrow Phoof's rope and slide down to strip the goblin of his weapons before he could wake -- assuming he was ever going to since the fire might have stopped his regeneration.

Sure enough, his sword was magical. No one in the party really used longswords as a primary weapon, so they agreed to sell it and split the proceeds. Kaito did claim a silver dagger for himself, to add to the bandolier he'd stolen from another goblin earlier.

While they healed up -- because several of them had taken a lot of damage in that fight -- Val wandered off (with Elisi close behind to keep an eye on her) to find her isopod familiar, who was missing. She found him back in the prison, flipped on his back. It wasn't clear how he'd gone missing in the first place, though.

At any rate, they eventually moved on. Past the Cold Zombie Storage, they found a short hallway leading to a scary room. It was plated with some weird red metal, and black lightning would periodically crawl up the walls and form strange glyphs that no one could read. Val gave Zakhar a comprehend languages spell, but he didn't want to touch the lightning.

He did want to read the book floating in the middle of the chamber, though. After an experiment with an empty vial, to verify that objects could be added and removed to the cache in the center of the room without incident, they retrieved the objects to examine them further. Phoof claimed a forked wand (that later turned out to be 'shocking grasp'), Zakhar the book (on the worship of Lamashtu, the god of madness and monsters) and a scroll, Kaito the bottle of wine (a nice vintage, but being in stasis probably meant it wasn't as aged as its bottling date would indicate), and June took the dead crow, for unknown reasons, but didn't want all the tasty maggots that came with it.

While they were futzing around with the chamber, the rest of the party headed through a side door to investigate a spiral staircase. It ended in a pile of collapsed rubble with some sort of weird scary glyphs that appeared, wrote out scary things in abyssal, and then disappeared. Phoof, in particular, got a very bad vibe just by being on the stairs while Noggin's valet was fascinated with the effect and had to be dragged away from it against his will.

Since that avenue was apparently played out, they decided to head up the other flight of stairs, west of the statue, and examine the pool flanked by human skulls. It was another ambush! But this time only by one skull-monster with creepy entrails, that didn't really get to do much before being sliced to bits by the party's combined efforts. Past the pool was another staircase, this one leading up, but also ending in a pile of rubble.

That left only one hallway to investigate, way back near where they'd broken into the strange complex, that they were starting to gather was a temple of Lamashtu. Following the tunnel quickly confirmed it, as they arrived at a shrine with a clear pool of water in an altar on one side of the room.

Kaito was interested in the water, which didn't smell safe to drink but did give off a sense of power. He called in Zakhar to identify it, but all he could tell was that it was a powerful, cursed transmutation effect.

"Maybe I should drink it? I could shapeshift back afterward, right?" Kaito suggested, not convincing himself. He and Zakhar took samples, though, to possibly use later. They also dipped the dead crow in the water to see if it would trigger the effect, but nothing happened.

"We should test on wolf," Zakhar suggested, referring to the goblin dog that June had tamed in the basement of the glassworks, which was still following him around.

"Noooo!" Elisi shouted. "I won't let you hurt wolfy! If you want to try it out so bad, you should drink it yourself."

"You should do it," Kaito added. "You're always drinking mutagens anyway, aren't you?"

Somehow, that convinced him, and Zakhar downed the vial... and then collapsed to the floor, screaming in agony, as his body twisted and mutated. Phoof screamed in horror with him as he transformed.

He didn't get an extra arm. He got an eye in the back of his head, although he lost one of his original eyes to compensate. He lost all his hair, one of his legs shrunk to half its normal length, and his body twisted 90% in the middle of his abdomen leaving him pointing sideways. Worst of all, he took a *huge* (-5) penalties to his INT and DEX, which were his primary stats.

GM: "I was looking at the effects, and when you said you were drinking it I was like 'noooo'!"

Kaito: "Okay, I don't want to drink it anymore."

Once the alchemist had recovered -- or at least, as much as he was going to -- they pushed open the heavy stone door and entered what looked like a temple chamber. There was a fountain in the middle with a ring of skulls on spikes, and the room was dimly lit by a shaft of yellow light emerging from another pool in the back of the room, up on a sort of stage 15 feet off the ground.

There was no sign of habitation, so the sneakier party members crept into the room quietly. Zakhar stomped in holding his sunrod without caring. But it was Elisi, who was the first to climb the stairs to the stage, who got the demon's attention.

Demon: "Who are you, who dares violate my sanctum?!"

While she waited for a response, Elisi turned to the rest of the party, behind her, and hissed out, "Psst! Guys! What's a sanctum?"

That was not the correct response. The demon flew up into the air and slashed her own forearms, dripping blood into the central pool, which spawned a quartet of ghoul-looking but not-ghoul sinspawn... and then the faint light from the pool flickered out as it used up the last of its power.

It was a fight against an enemy hovering 20' up in the air. Elisi started flinging sling bolts at it, and could at least hit it, while Kaito tossed the silver dagger and missed. Altaei suddenly hunched over and sprouted a pair of black feathered wings from his back, and flew up to duel the demon in a sneak attack.

It was a short duel. The demon could see through Altaei's invisibility and paralyzed him, dumping him into the pool below to drown. Phoof ran in to save her, but it was at the cost of being stuck in melee with the sinspawn and unable to do much. Thankfully, Phoof's natural armor protected her from most of their attacks, and Kaito and Zakhar joined her in fighting them off since they had no good way of hurting a flying creature. The bites from the sinspawn tried to infect Phoof with sinful thoughts, but Phoof's mind was too pure to be infected. Zakhar, on the other hand, received a bite that left him in a daze for one round. The other players asked what kind of things Zakhar was thinking about.

He said, science. Dirty science.

Meanwhile, June tried shooting the demon with scorching rays...it took a couple of tries to hit, and of course, she resisted fire. Still, he did enough to gain her attention, and she commanded him to leave.

Noggin's valet was up on the podium, searching for some place to hide to make sneak attacks with his bow. Since he couldn't find any he instead spent his time educating the party on the resistances of demons -- they resisted fire, cold, acid, normal weapons, magic weapons, and were immune to lightning and poison. To fight her effectively they'd need weapons of Cold Iron or Good. They did not have any such weapons available.

The other option was to hit her with bursts of massive damage to get through the DR, which was hard when she was flying...until Elisi remembered that she had a potion of Enlarge Person. That would make her ten feet tall, with a ten-foot reach...and the ceiling was 20 feet up. She wouldn't be able to escape.

She didn't *quite* take out the demon with one punch, but it was close. Altaei finally shook off the paralyses and flew back up to strike the finishing blow, after which it was simple to mop up (or in Elisi's case, stomp down) of the remaining sinspawn.

Elisi stared at Altei's wings. "Are you an angel?"

Kaito peered at her. "I think she might be a Tengu."

Elisi was confused. "Is that a kind of angel?"

Kaito shrugged. "Well, it's not a kind of demon."

Altaei refrained from commenting on their theories.

In the aftermath, they examined the fallen demon. She had a magic dagger (which they let Altaei keep) and Noggin's valet identified her as a Quasit -- like the quasit that had been helping the old priest's daughter transform herself. They were pretty sure she wasn't the daughter herself since she was a full demon and the daughter had been trying to finish the transformation, and also because she was in a weird cave temple and not at a place called 'Feathertop'.

They also found 1000 platinum pieces in the glowing yellow pool on the platform. It took some work to get them out since the pool was boiling hot, but mage hand and patience (and eventually, the use of Phoof's rake-like weapon and Kaito's buckler as a broom and dustpan) managed to fish them out.

They were rich! Well, okay, not that rich since it needed to be divided *nine ways*, but still. Much better off than before.

Time to shop! And to beg Zakhar to brew them potions to replace the ones they'd used up. And for Zakhar to beg the village priest to heal his transformation for a steep discount, since he couldn't afford to actually pay for it.

After the fight: GM: "Why didn't you use your rage? I had a magic trap set up for when you raged!"

Kaito (ooc): "Um... I only had a few rounds left and was saving it for when I had a chance to hit the demon, but I never actually got the chance?"

So, hooray for dumb luck. n.n