#day nine: magic and mayhem

[super-sons-week]

Super Sons Bonus Days 2023

Day Nine: Magic and Mayhem (Ivy's pollen, kryptonite, time travel, etc)

#day nine: magic and mayhem #Super Sons Bonus Days 2023 #damian wayne #jon kent #super sons #robin #superboy #superman #damijon #jondami #dc comics

[g1rlr0b1n]

Super Sons Week 2023

Day Nine: Magic and Mayhem (Fear Toxin)

Title: The Fear of Losing You

Rated: G

#urgh! I feel like I really rushed this but I wanted to get something in for this event day. 😭 #Hopefully it's not a pile of poo 😔 #super sons week 2023 #Day Nine: Magic and Mayhem #damian wayne #jon kent #robin #superboy #jondami #damijon #supersons #dc comics

[mmriesoftvat]

Verses I had for Chongyun before I moved him here. bonus: characters who also fall under these verses + more.

YAKSHA: chongyun is actually binarius, the missing cryo yaksha. sealed away by rex lapis in a moment of terror when all the other yaksha were falling apart/dying. the seals in place kept binarius alive, his power dormant. but it removed all his memories of being a yaksha. thousands of years later, the seals are breaking, and chongyun, is remembering his life as a yaksha. and doesn't know if he's chongyun or binarius anymore, or some mix of both. bonus: illuminated form is a huli jing, or a nine tailed fox.

ADEPTUS: chongyun took the trials to become an adeptus, a feet that hadn't happened in a long long time. with his own abode underneath mt aocang, chongyun's able to become an arctic fox. this verse is a little character specific. adopted officially by lapidex's rex lapis.

FATUI: chongyun went poking their nose into trouble because they thought the fatui would have some mystical magical cure for their yang energy. chongyun fell down a rabbit hole of lies and conspiracy and became one of them himself. now he's a fatuus with a code name (caesor) and takes orders from the harbingers. angsty verse, because chongyun is so completely dead inside and has lost all hope.

ABYSS: you thought chongyun is human? guess again. chongyun is actually a reincarnated bathysmal vishap who wants to go home. liyue is not home, they don't actually know where home is, aside from a strong desire to go back to inazuma. there's also that weird, bizarre sensation that the abyss order has things right, why are we fighting them?

SUMERU: nothing crazy, but chongyun moved to sumeru to pester their favorite people. cyno, tighnari, and more! lighthearted shenanigans afoot, including mysterious prank billboard notices. who'd ever suspect the innocent looking claymore user with the popsicle?

POPSTAR: chongyun is a heavily famous solo cpop artist. while chongyun loves the stage, loves to dance and sing, they also love their downtime, which includes lots of snacks and naps. wild on the stage, quiet in person. also, chongyun loves to collab with other artists. inspired by chongyun's drummer skin.

YANG DRUNK: just when the yang energy takes control, and chongyun is more unhinged/wild. chongyun tends to be more blunt and wild, gives zero shits about anything. though doesn't attack his friends, he's still slightly more ruthless. and he does remember his episodes when he comes out of it later on. much remorse is to be had.

MODERN: chongyun is a popular ghost hunter youtuber/streamer. ghosts are real, and he enjoys the spooks and delivering them to eager fans.

KAMI VERSION: kaminari works at a library and loves his job. he's a huge bookworm, and has recently started his own online career where he reviews books. turns out, people love that.

HSR: part of the xianzhou Alliance, divination section, chongyun prefers to stay behind the scenes and play video games. They take their job seriously of course, and help out if/when needed.

KAMI VERSION: kami is a hacker who's just as good as silver wolf. he found himself leaning toward kafka's ideals and sees her as the closest thing to an ally there is. there aren't many other options for a puppet on the run, especially when he's got encryptic information inside of him. at least the members of the express crew aren't bad.

SCI FI: part of a mysterious group known as ‘the exorcists’, codename demonbane is exceptionally skilled at tracking ‘ghosts’ or anyone who tries to hack/cause mayhem online. chongyun is the best there is and everyone knows his codename, but no one knows him. he likes it that way. to be changed with plotting.

TWINS: any verse where there are twins. chongyun/jiyu, kami/ren, kami/uzumaki, etc. if they are twins aus, they will be tagged here.

OTHER VERSES:

KHAENRI'AH: albedo centric. takes place back in khaenri'ah days. can also include events and characters that also happened around that time period, give or take a couple hundred years.

#ᴮᴿᴮ ᴱˣᴾᴸᴼᴿᴵᴺᴳ ᴼᵀᴴᴱᴿ ᵂᴼᴿᴸᴰˢ / ooc #list of most of my verses #from before i moved chongyun over here #but now i can work on how to add my other muses to these verses

[moonlight-prose]

HAUNTED HOEDOWN MASTERLIST

note: while i am way behind on posting, i am still writing the fics for this fun challenge! so here's where they will be compiled. i'll add the fics to the character masterlists too, but this is more to keep myself organized. i hope y'all enjoy!

the original post for this challenge can be found here!

DAY ONE: Long & Lost - dark academia + body worship + “you’re like a sickness, a disease, and the only way for me to be cured of you is to let you completely consume me until my body has no fight left.” (steven grant)

DAY TWO: Breath of Life - mythology au + enemies to lovers + possessive + "don’t you know how sick with love i am for you?” (oberyn martell)

DAY THREE: Gods & Monsters - favorite lana song + once is not enough + corruption + “tell me what you want me to do and i’ll do it, no matter the cost.” (jake lockley)

DAY FOUR: Shadows - time travel au + haunted manor + overstimulation/edging + "i can’t stop thinking about how perfect we would be together.” (joel miller)

DAY FIVE: Dance For Me - gothic au + masquerade ball + biting + “worship me. until i tell you to stop.” (din djarin)

DAY SIX: Call of the Sea - pirate/mermaid au + soulmates + breath play + “i would burn the world for you.” (miguel o'hara)

DAY SEVEN: Sweet Talk - summer camp au + sex in the woods + “i’ve killed for you, who else can say that?” (andrew!peter parker)

DAY EIGHT: Beautiful Mayhem - witchcraft au + magical healing + begging + “everything i’ve done.. every horrible atrocity, it’s been for you.” (joel miller)

DAY NINE: Killer - assassins au + toxic exes + hate sex + “do you like it when i bleed for you?” (marc spector)

DAY TEN: Choiceless Hope - zombie apocalypse au + soft!dom + mirror sex + “every moment might be our last, let’s make the most of it.” (miguel o'hara)

DAY ELEVEN: Unbreakable Love - bonnie and clyde au + knife play + “they die for love, you kill for it.” (joel miller)

DAY TWELVE: Blood In the Water - vampires au + ‘i’ll find you in every universe / century’ + hunter/prey + blood play + “forever isn’t long enough for me to forgive you.” (tommy miller)

#haunted hoedown #the fics will probably be sporadically posted when i'm done #cause i suck at staying on time #my writing

[laplaceatelier]

Acacia's Black Book of Beasts - INKTOBER day 1 : The King O' Cats

The true king of all cats, a magical creature who exists to cause the greatest of all mischief. Lord of midnight, Emperor of pride... the King O' Cats.

Name: King O’ Cats

Description: A glossy black furred feline about the size of a normal house cat. Its golden eyes gleam with mirth and it always seems well composed and graceful. One would almost think it was an ordinary cat, if it weren’t for the piercing intelligence of its gaze and its uncanny ability to speak. 

Lore: The King O’ Cats is an immortal creature, the truest essence of a cat coalesced into a single mischievous, regal form. Some say it is a very minor demigod, while others say it is the product of an ancient curse. While normal cats are said to have nine lives, the King O’ Cats’s spirit is immortal, and merely possesses another black cat somewhere else in the world should it be killed. It is a wise spirit, and there are legends of it aiding travelers, but it is deeply mercurial and there are an equal number of legends about its evil intentions. The King O’ Cats is almost never alone, always drawing a crowd of other cats to its side, and it holds yowling courts in back alleys at midnight.

Motive: Hungers for food and wishes for entertainment. Environment/Habitat: Anywhere cats can be found. 

Interaction: The King O’ Cats likes three things more than anything else: Respect, Food, and Entertainment. It will not tolerate those who disrespect it in any way, and its sense of pride is such that anything other than the most differential of behaviors are considered rude. It also expects that it is entitled to just about any and all food, to at least sniff and perhaps take a nip of. Finally, it expects to be entertained, whether that means actively through conversation and harassment of others, or passively by causing mayhem unseen and knocking things off tables with a spectral paw via mage hand. It can be reasoned with and may potentially help adventurers if their goal is entertaining, but should any of these conditions be completely ignored, it will turn hostile.

#inktober #Acacia'sBlackBookofBeasts #d&d #d&d 5e #tabletop rpg #dnd art

[slpublicity]

Sung Kang's '80s-Inspired Horror-Comedy SHAKY SHIVERS Sinks Its Claws Into SCREAMBOX

Following last month's nationwide theatrical engagement, SCREAMBOX Original Shaky Shivers is streaming now. Beware or be were for a night of werewolves, zombies, and ice cream now on SCREAMBOX.

Drawing comparisons to The Howling, Goosebumps, and Booksmart, the quirky horror-comedy marks the directorial debut of Sung Kang, best known for playing Han in the Fast & Furious franchise.

After finding herself bitten by a mysterious animal, Lucy becomes convinced that she will transform into a fearsome werewolf. Joined by her best friend Karen, the two embark on an adventure filled with magic and mayhem as they look to do battle with a throat-slashing creature.

Brooke Markham (In the Dark), VyVy Nguyen (Dogs in Space), Erin Daniels (House of 1000 Corpses), Jimmy Bellinger (Blockers), Herschel Sparber (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), and Skyler Day (Parenthood) star. Kang makes a cameo appearance.

Andrew McAllister and Aaron Strongoni penned the script. Its '80s-inspired practical special effects were supervised by Gabriel Bartalos (Leprechaun, Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives).

"The whole idea was to make this for the old school horror hounds and for them to share it with their families today," comments Kang. "I couldn't be more excited about rolling this film out."

Shaky Shivers joins SCREAMBOX’s growing library of unique horror content, including RoboDoc: The Creation of RoboCop, Terrifier 2, Hollywood Dreams & Nightmares: The Robert Englund Story, The Outwaters, Living with Chucky, Project Wolf Hunting, Creepypasta, Cube, and Pennywise: The Story of IT.

Start screaming now with SCREAMBOX on iOS, Android, Apple TV, Prime Video, Roku, YouTube TV, Samsung, Comcast, Cox, and Screambox.com.

#shaky shivers #screambox #sung kang #brooke markham #vyvy nguyen

[haveyoureadthispoll]

Tom Felton’s adolescence was anything but ordinary. His early rise to fame in beloved films like The Borrowers catapulted him into the limelight, but nothing could prepare him for what was to come after he landed the iconic role of the Draco Malfoy, the bleached blonde villain of the Harry Potter movies. For the next ten years, he was at the center of a huge pop culture phenomenon and yet, in between filming, he would go back to being a normal teenager trying to fit into a normal school. Speaking with great candor and his signature humor, Tom shares his experience growing up as part of the wizarding world while also trying to navigate the muggle world. He tells stories from his early days in the business like his first acting gig where he was mistaken for fellow blonde child actor Macaulay Culkin and his Harry Potter audition where, in a very Draco-like move, he fudged how well he knew the books the series was based on (not at all). He reflects on his experiences working with cinematic greats such as Alan Rickman, Sir Michael Gambon, Dame Maggie Smith, and Ralph Fiennes (including that awkward Voldemort hug). And, perhaps most poignantly, he discusses the lasting relationships he made over that decade of filming, including with Emma Watson, who started out as a pesky nine-year-old whom he mocked for not knowing what a boom mic was but who soon grew into one of his dearest friends. Then, of course, there are the highs and lows of fame and navigating life after such a momentous and life-changing experience.

#book: beyond the wand #author: tom felton #genre: memoir #genre: non fiction #year: 2020s

[ameliathefatcat]

Harry Potter/ Hogwarts Mystery OC: Charlie Mosley

Full Name: Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Ariadne Mosley

Nicknames: Charlie, Mayhem Mosley, Charlie M, Girl Charlie, Lottie

Date of Birth: February 18th 1973

Date of Death: October 27th 1996 (23)

Blood statice: Half Blood

House: Ravenclaw

Sexuality: Lesbian

Family: Mary Mosley (mother) Thomas Mosley (father) Joseph (older brother) Michelle (older sister) Wilton (younger brother) Jennifer (younger sister)

Quidditch  Position: Seeker

Friends: Charles Weasley, Nymphadora Tonks, Tulip Karasu, Badeea Ali

Enemies: Her parents (occasionally), Merula  Sndye, Jennifer (occasionally), Skye Parkin (occasionally), Erika Rath (occasionally) Flitch, Snape

Romantic partner: Tonks (ex-girlfriend, broke up for her safety)

Likes: Quidditch, Tonks, ham and cheese sandwiches, muggle comics, drawing comics, Seymour (her cat), kittens, ballet

Dislikes: Bigotry (both muggle and wizard), fish, Seymour being in love with Mrs Norris, going to church, being called ‘Lottie’, not feeling like she belongs

Boggart: Her exorcism

Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Mosley was born February 18th 1973 to Mary and Thomas Mosley. Charlie grew up a mix of muggle and wizarding world (3 of her 4 grandparents are muggles). The Mosley upheld muggle bigotry but disagreed with wizarding bigotry. Charlie went to church every Sunday with her family and hated it. Her hatred to church grew even more when she was about nine years old and she had an exorcism preformed on her. She learned to joke about her trauma to crop with it. Charlie always loved comics ever since she could read. She use to sneak Joe’s comics since comics were for boys not for girls. She hated gender roles, she hated how much her family pushed them. She couldn’t wait to start Hogwarts

She started Hogwarts in 1984 and was sorted into Ravenclaw. She quickly became friends with Charles Weasley and Nymphadora Tonks. Boy Charlie and Tonks were the first people that Charlie opened up to. She eventually open up to Tulip and Badeea. In her second year Charlie joined the Ravenclaw quidditch team. She often didn’t feel like she belong on the team. The only people she truly felt like she belonged with were Charlie Weasley and Tonks. She only sometimes felt like she belonged with her fellow Ravenclaws. The first time she felt like she truly belonged with fellow Ravenclaws was when Badeea gave her a drawing pad and drawing supplies for her thirteenth birthday. Charlie almost never shared her art but she did always showed her comics to Badeea. As Charlie got older she started to develop feelings for Tonks. She knew she could never tell her parents since ‘being gay is wrong’ and ‘all gay people have aids’ she often joked about aids to deal with her parents homophobia. But Charlie and Dora started to date. Charlie often feared being disowned be her parents. When she was in her final year Wilton and Jennifer started Hogwarts. Jennifer say Charlie and Dora kissing and outed them. Charlie got an howler from her parents telling her how long it was for her to be dating a woman. This was one of most modifying moments of life. Tonks knew they had to break up for Charlie’s safety. They were still in love, so much in love knowing dating each other would put Charlie in danger

After graduation Charlie basically left the magical world. She went almost no contact with her family, she was still in touch with Joe and Michelle. She wanted to remain in contact with Wilton but it was hard since she didn’t want to speak with their parents or Jennifer. Charlie made her money by making comics. She was able to make enough money to afford a small flat in London (with a flatmate). She did remain in contact with her friends. She had became much closer with Badeea after graduation both working with art. The two even shared the small flat. Charlie was with Badeea when she was murdered by Death Eaters. Charlie was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, that October day. She was in Diagon Alley when there was a Death Eater attack. Tonks was one of the aurros sent to see the damages.

Charlie’s death was morned by almost everyone she knew. Her friends went through stuff and helped with her will. Badeea found the art pad she gave Charlie ten years earlier along with almost all of her old drawing pads. Badeea found an unfinished letter to Jennifer saying that she wanted to have an relationship again and forgives her for outing her. Jennifer felt terrible for never really having a relationship with her sister and wish she did. Jennifer and Wilton left Hogwarts for a few months to morn Charlie’s death. When Tonks was pregnant with Teddy she wanted the baby’s middle name to be Charlotte if a girl. After the war with the blessing from the four surviving Mosely siblings Badeea had Charlie’s drawing pads publish as a series of comics. ‘Inside the mind of Charlie Mosley’ became one of the most popular books in the wizarding world. All of the money made from it went to war orphans (Joe, Michelle, Badeea, Wilton and Jennifer all agreed that would have been what Charlie wanted).

Joe had a daughter less than a year after the war ended. She was named after her Auntie. Charlotte ‘Lottie’ Sophie Mosley was born in 1999. Lottie was good friends with Teddy Lupin and Victoire Weasley. Bill joked about how similar their friendship was too the Charlies and Dora’s friendship. Lottie, Teddy, Victoire started a comic club at Hogwarts. Sometimes Charlie’s ghost would appear at meetings.

#Harry Potter #hphm #nymphadora tonks #charlie Mosley #tw homophobia #my oc #badeea ali

[rhetoricandlogic]

Many Mansions By K.J. Parker

Issue #313, Twelfth Anniversary Double-Issue, September 24, 2020

“So you can raise the dead.” She yawned. “How clever.”

With women (in my limited experience), ninety-nine times out of a hundred it’s the way they say it. They’re so much better at nuances than we are. It’s what they don’t say, what they imply by voice or gesture, that’s so infuriatingly eloquent.

“Not that I ever would,” I replied. “Goes without saying. Absolutely forbidden.”

She smiled and said nothing. The smile was a case in point. You aren’t impressing me, it said, and God knows, I had no reason to want to impress her, but I did want to, very badly, and I was trying too hard and making a real hash of it. All that, conveyed in one constriction of the facial muscles. Makes you wonder why they talk all the damn time when their silences are so eloquent.

“You don’t believe me,” I said. “Ah well.”

“I didn’t say that.” The smile changed shape slightly. “I’m sure you can do all these wonderful things, if your superiors let you. But they don’t, so really, what’s the point?”

In my line of work I visit the Mesoge quite often, and I frequently stop overnight in inns. After I’ve washed my face in the freezing cold water provided absolutely free of charge and eaten the inevitable house mutton and lentil stew, I take a book and sit by the fire in the common room. I only do this because the common-room fire is actually warm, as opposed to the feeble glow you get in your bedchamber, and there’s enough light to read by without giving yourself a headache. I don’t do it for the company. I’m an educated, refined man, a scholar. I reserve my conversation for the select few who can understand and appreciate it. I most certainly don’t chat up women in taprooms.

“Indeed,” I said. “But it’s like a soldier. He’s trained to kill people with extreme efficiency. But he only does it when his commanding officer tells him to. It’s the same with me and—”

“Magic?”

She only used the word to rile me. Everybody knows, we don’t do magic. The members of my order are not wizards. We’re scholars, scientists, natural and metaphysical philosophers. True, we can do things the uneducated can’t; a blacksmith or a carpenter can say exactly the same thing. A blacksmith can take two metal rods and join them so you can’t see where one ends and the other begins; but that’s not magic, it’s welding. No; some things, some apparently extraordinary and miraculous things, can be done, if you know the trick. Others can’t, no matter how many books you’ve read. That’s what we tell people, and in many respects it’s true.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I only said it to tease you. And you’re quite right. If people went about doing things just because they can, there’d be mayhem.” She smiled again, in a totally different way. “It’s been so nice talking to you. Goodnight.”

And she stood up and walked out of the room, leaving me feeling like a hunter who’s stalked a deer for two hundred yards only to tread on a twig just outside bowshot. But I hadn’t started it. I was sitting by the fire reading Saloninus on conditional uncertainty. She was the one who sat down opposite and said, That looks interesting, not many people read Saloninus these days. And she wasn’t even particularly pretty or particularly young. And anyway, I don’t do any of that sort of thing, we’re not allowed, as everybody knows perfectly well. My guess was, she did it because she could. Understandable and very antisocial, as she’d no doubt have been the first to agree.

I hate the Mesoge. Heavy winter rain had turned the roads to mud, and the cart got bogged down. I asked the carter, how far to Rysart? Two miles, he told me.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll walk.”

He looked at me. “You paid all the way to Rysart.”

I hauled out the sack I carry my stuff in. About thirty pounds, dead weight. “No problem,” I said. “Fresh air and exercise.”

“I got to go on to Rysart anyway. I got stuff to deliver.”

In the back of the cart lay a shovel, two iron crowbars, wedges, sacking; all the paraphernalia needed for getting the cart unstuck. A two-hour job, in the dark, the mud and the rain. Needless to say, I could have got the cart out of the rut and back on the road in five seconds; tollens aequor, a second-level Form you learn in first year. But I’m not allowed.

“Drop in at the inn when you get there,” I said. “I’ll buy you a beer.”

I started to walk. The mud sucked at my boots, the rain trickled off my hood into my eyes, and the weight of the sack made my fingers ache. I trudged fifty yards, which I guessed was enough to be out of sight, in weather like that, at night. Then I muttered a few simple words under my breath. The sack suddenly weighed about six ounces. The soles of my boots floated on the surface of the mud. The rain flew down at me but somehow missed. A light that only I could see illuminated the road, all the way down the valley. I wasn’t allowed, of course, but who was there to see?

I was there because I have a field-officer rating. I wanted that rating about as much as I wanted a sixth toe on my left foot, but you have to get your field ticket before you can be made up to seventh grade, and I’m deplorably ambitious. I’m also a theorist, not a man of action; naturally contemplative, at home in the study, the cloister, the library, the chapter-house. Outdoors, in the wet mud, on my way to deal with problems in the real world, is not where I belong. But they send me because I get the job done—an early mistake on my part. On my first field assignment, I was under the impression that a splendidly successful outcome would win me merit and commendation. Silly me. What it got me was a reputation for being able to do this sort of thing. What I should’ve done was make a total hash of it, and they’d never have sent me again, and I’d be an abbot by now.

(“You understand these people,” Father Prior said to me, after he’d broken the bad news about this job. “You talk their language. You’re one of them.” I didn’t hit him because it’s not allowed. Perfectly true, of course. I was born and raised on a farm, in the horrible, primitive Mesoge. I left it to get away from backbreaking work and stupid people. So, what happens? They keep sending me back there.)

How can I begin to describe Rysart in the rain and the pitch dark? Yet another nasty little Mesoge village; the smell told me everything I needed to know before the first silhouetted barn loomed up out of the darkness. I knew the inn would be opposite the meeting-house, which would be at the north end of the one broad street. There’s no reason why it always should be, but it always is. It’s the way it’s always been done, you see. Lots of alwayses in the Mesoge.

The inn door was shut, but there were cracks of light under it. I tried the handle, but the bolts were shot. I banged on it and waited for a very long time, during which rain fell on me. I’d cancelled fulvens dissimilis as soon as the smell hit me, just in case, so I was getting wet.

“What the hell do you want?”

I smiled. “A bed for the night, please. You’re expecting me.”

She looked like I’d insulted her, but she opened the door anyway. The smell of dogs and wet wool made me catch my breath. I grew up with it, but when you’re used to a smell, you don’t notice it, until you’ve been away for a while, and then it hits you like a fist. It’s not actually an unpleasant smell, but it said home to me, and I left home a long time ago.

The room was the sort of thing you’d confidently store logs in without worrying too much about mould. The lentil and mutton stew came with a mountain of fermented cabbage. The water had that taste. The fire in the common room had burnt down to embers. “In the morning,” I said, “I want to see the Father and the mayor, and probably the reeve and the constable.”

She stared at me, as though I’d asked her to bring me her son’s head in a cream of asparagus sauce. But my tone of voice was just right. She nodded and got away from me as quickly as she could.

I wake up at sunrise, even when I don’t have a window. It’s a farm-boy thing, and I get teased about it all the time.

Even so; by the time I’d washed and had a good scratch, they were all waiting for me in the taproom, sitting in dead silence; six extremely worried men, the answer to whose prayers was me. They looked at each other as I walked in. I guess they’d had a vote and elected the Father to be the spokesman; fair enough. Did you ever meet a country priest who didn’t love the sound of his own voice?

“Are you—?”

I nodded. Spare him the embarrassment. “My name is Father Bohenna, and I’m from the Studium,” I said. “Now, I know the basic facts, but I’ll need you to fill me in on specifics. Then I can decide whether our intervention is called for, and if so, what the procedures will be, where your jurisdiction ends and ours begins, and so on and so forth. If we could start with some names.”

They introduced themselves. I’m hopeless with names. Unless I write them down, they’re in one ear and out the other. There are men I’ve known and worked with for fifteen years, but I have no idea what they’re called; they told me once, and you can’t keep asking or you make yourself look ridiculous. But I never forget a face, or a voice, or a body odour. So, the names washed over me like the spring floods, but I made a mental note. The tall, thin, crafty looking man, around fifty-five, bushy white hair, was the mayor. The two round-faced bruisers with the red cheeks—brothers—were the reeves. The little rat-faced man was the constable; I knew his sort, looks like the wind would blow him off his feet, but he draws the strongest bow in the village and God help you if you pick a fight with him. The seven-foot fair-haired idiot was somebody’s son, there to open doors for his father and sit still when not in use. A competent body of men. I’ve dealt with far worse.

The Father took a deep breath. “It all began,” he said—

Obviously, you hear some crazy stories in this job. Some of them you can safely discount. It depends on who tells them, and how they tell them. The thing in this case was that the Father couldn’t ever possibly have had an imaginative thought in his entire life. He wasn’t the sort. If you told him you were having a whale of a time, he’d look round the room for a whale.

It all started, he said, when two of the village girls began having fits. Nothing unusual in that, or at least not in the Mesoge. My sister was singularly prone to them; temper tantrums, floods of tears, right up till the day she realised that prospective husbands don’t really like that sort of thing, at which point she calmed down remarkably until the ring was safely on her finger. But these weren’t the usual sort of fits.

There’s something profoundly unsettling about hearing wild, spooky stories told by an utterly prosaic man. He described what the girls claimed they’d seen.

One night— You’re reading this, so you can read, so I don’t suppose you’re familiar with daily life in the Mesoge, so I’d better explain. Our houses have two rooms, one for the family and one for the livestock. The family room is square, with a hearth in the middle. We never quite got around to inventing the chimney, so we pitch our roofs high, to give the smoke somewhere to flock up and hover. We sleep on straw or feather mattresses in a square around the hearth. Rich folk with pretensions curtain off the back end for the man of the house and his wife—we did in our family; I can picture the curtain to this day, it was heavy felted wool painted to look like tapestry, the Ascension, and to the day I die the Invincible Sun will always have that crude, slightly half-witted face, like he’s just been woken up in the middle of the night. Children sleep in a heap, like puppies, on the opposite side from their parents, with the elderly, the poor relations, the dog, and the hired help making up the other two sides of the square. None of this should matter; the idea is that you should come in from work so tired out from your honest labours that as soon as you’ve bolted down your food you go straight to sleep. In practice; yes, we get on each others’ nerves like you wouldn’t believe, which is probably why the murder rate has always been so high in the Mesoge.

Anyway. One night these two girls (fifteen and fourteen) started screaming in their sleep. It took a lot to wake them up, and once they were awake they were lashing out, biting and scratching. Their father laid into them with a broom-handle to quiet them down. When they were coherent again, they said that a tall, well-dressed woman in a white lace cap had knelt down beside them and stuck them repeatedly with a brooch-pin.

Don’t be so bloody stupid, said their father, or words to that effect; but it happened again the next night, and the night after that, and then in broad daylight. Their mother went to see the Father, much to her husband’s annoyance. The Father found himself in a difficult position. He was and always had been a convinced sceptic. He didn’t believe in witchcraft, but he looked in his book—like most Mesoge priests, he only had one—and sure enough, the facts as related were a classic case of bewitchment, and he had no alternative but to treat it as such. He told the parents that their girls were bewitched, then sat down with his head in his hands and tried to figure out what he was supposed to do about it.

Now, so far, the only people who knew about all this were the family and the Father; but shortly after that, three girls in another family on the other side of the parish started doing exactly the same thing. They too were terrorised by an elegant woman in a white lace cap, though sometimes she came as a tall black-and-white nanny-goat, and sometimes she had a goshawk on her wrist. When the Father went to see them, the eldest girl started to tell her story, then broke off and tried to bite off her own tongue; she did quite a lot of damage before her mother got her jaws apart and stuffed her mouth with rags. And then a man in the village jumped out of a tree and broke his back; he lived long enough to say that a fine lady in a white bonnet had scooped him up off the ground, carried him to the top of the tree and pushed him off. A rich farmer in the valley lost ninety sheep to some sort of scouring sickness he’d never seen before. Six hay-ricks caught fire in the space of a week. A man came home from market to find a huge black bear waiting for him on his doorstep, in a district where the bears are brown and never come into the villages. It scratched up the side of his face pretty badly—the scars were plainly visible—he hit it with his stick, and it vanished into thin air.

By this point, the Father’s scepticism was wearing rather thin. He called in the mayor, who sent for the reeves and the constable, who convened an assembly of heads of families in the meeting-house. Needless to say, the meeting just made things worse. Everybody had strong views about the identity of the witch, and no two people had the same candidate in mind. When at last the Father could make himself heard, he told them there was only one thing they could do. And now, here I was, and what did I intend to do, and how soon could I start?

By this point, apparently, the witch was definitely getting above herself. She no longer operated at night—presumably she needed her sleep like everyone else, and she appeared to be operating on a massively overcrowded schedule, so who can blame her? On average there were between six and ten attacks a day, affecting roughly half the families in the village. Although the witch appeared only as herself or the black-and-white goat, there was no recognisable description, because as soon as anyone tried to describe her they bit their own tongue or bashed their head against a wall. She was visible on her own terms, generally only to the person she was afflicting, but very occasionally to three or four bystanders as well. The Father and the other elders tried to meet a few times to discuss a plan of action, but they gave up when she took to sitting down with them, on a chair that hadn’t been there before she arrived but which stayed there after she left. In fact, the same chair I was sitting in right now—

I stood up quickly, then slowly sat down again. “So you’ve seen her.”

The Father nodded. “But please, don’t ask me to describe her.”

I nodded. “No need,” I said.

He frowned, then all the colour drained from his face. “You can see inside my—?”

“Yes. But don’t worry. I’m an expert, and anything else I might happen to see I’m really not interested in.” He didn’t seem reassured, but I couldn’t help that. I mumbled aspergo devictos under my breath and looked straight at the side of his head and through it. “Thank you,” I said. “All over.”

The look on his face; he’d be happier dealing with the witch than me, any time. “You saw her?”

“Clearly.”

The constable said; “She’s standing behind you, right now.”

Nobody moved, especially me. “Is she now,” I said.

No reply. The constable’s mouth was open, but he didn’t seem able to speak. The others were looking down, at the ground, as though they were afraid of catching something really nasty through their eyes. Slowly I reached for my tea-bowl and drank what was left in it. Then I stood up and turned round.

Something lashed out at me. Scutum fidei and lorica will stop practically anything, but I felt the smack. Like a man in armour; the arrow or the javelin is turned and doesn’t pierce, but even so you get a hell of a thump. Instinctively—no, I’m ashamed to say, impulsively, with no proper control at all—I hit back with stricto ense or benevolentia or something of the sort, like you do in second year when you’re just starting on the military Forms; suddenly I’d regressed twenty years and forgotten everything I’d ever learned about fighting. It must have worked, though. I distinctly heard a scream, and then there was nothing there, except a bloodstain on the rushes.

I felt a complete fool. But the constable said, “Did you kill her?” in a tiny voice.

“No,” I said.

“But you beat her.”

I was still feeling disgusted with myself, and I really didn’t want to talk or deal with the public. I sat down again, carefully not looking at any of them. My hands were shaking. “Thank you for coming, gentlemen,” I said. “You can leave it to me now. This shouldn’t take long.”

“You can—?”

“Yes. Now, I think it would be advisable for everyone to stay in their houses for the rest of the day, if that’s at all possible. There’s no immediate danger, but it’s best to be on the safe side.”

That got rid of them, and I sat for a while perfectly still, thinking; what the hell was all that about? A stripe hard enough to put a dent in scutum and lorica, and a twenty-year professional panicking, overriding a lifetime of training and conditioning to swipe wildly with thunderbolts. I wasn’t afraid—there’s no power on Earth, literally, that scares me any more, because I know I can beat them all—but I was bewildered and unnerved and unsettled, and I had to think to remember things that are usually part of the furniture of my mind; the Rooms, the Wards, the precepts of engagement. I felt like I was heading for a duel with a sword in one hand and a fencing text-book in the other.

Still. The hell with it. I was able to outfight tenured professors when I was fourteen years old. I despise fighting, of course. That’s why I’m so good at it. I just want it done with and out of the way.

Someone asked me why there aren’t any women at the Studium. I said, the same reason there aren’t any fish. She gave me a foul look and changed the subject, but it’s a valid answer.

There are things men can do and women can’t (and vice versa, goes without saying) and what we do is one of them. To put it crudely, they don’t have the parts. We don’t actually know what the parts are—we’ve picked over God knows how many brains, looking for a particular blob of mush or twist of gristle, all to no effect. I don’t suppose we’ll ever find it until we get a chance to dissect one of the very, very few women (we figure something like one in two million) who’s got it, and that’s not likely to happen any time soon.

No great loss, is how we see it. What we do, the power we have, is of very limited practical value. We’re theorists, pure scientists; we aren’t actually very much use to anybody, and where we could make ourselves useful—wiping out armies, destroying cities, sinking whole continents under the sea, bringing the dead back to life—we don’t allow ourselves to, for obvious reasons. Stripped of all pretences, euphemisms, justifications, and obfuscations; the main reason we do magic is because we can. Generally speaking, though, either it’s useless or it mustn’t be used. Now, why would women, who are so much more sensible and practical than us, want to bother with something so pointless?

Witches are, of course, the exception. It’s a sad fact that, out of the tiny number of women who are born with the talent and figure out how to use it, ninety-nine out of a hundred go on to make insufferable nuisances of themselves; hurting, persecuting, terrorising the district with acts of petty spite.

My learned colleagues say that this is because in everyday life, women are powerless and marginalised; they have no way of striking back against a society that subordinates and belittles them. Thus, when one-in-two-million suddenly finds herself powerful, her first instinct is to settle scores. Personally I dispute this. Anyone who says women are powerless never met my mother. What they really mean is, upper-class women are powerless and marginalised—which is entirely true; and of course, that’s the only sort of women my colleagues have ever had dealings with. But most witches are your basic peasant stock, simply because so are most people. There’s no higher incidence of witchcraft in the gentry, and so the oppressed-and-victimised theory doesn’t convince me. Myself, I figure that anyone, man or woman, who has the talent but isn’t identified and whisked off to the Studium at age ten to be taught polite behaviour would naturally use such powers to bully and torment others because that’s human nature for you. Let any man pick up a stick and he’ll use it to hit someone else, unless the other man’s got a stick too. And nothing will ever change that, believe you me.

My colleagues and I, however, are civilised, educated men. We know what to do in practically every eventuality. Which is why we have nothing whatsoever to be afraid of.

Finding her was no problem. Insignia verborum; you learn it in third year because it’s nominally a restricted Form; God only knows why, it’s harmless enough. It lights up a glowing trail, like a phosphorous snail. A tiny drop of blood, or a hair, or a nail-clipping, is all you need. I picked up one of the bloodstained rushes, and I was off.

It was raining again, and when I opened the door I could see the trail winding away over the hills and far away. I considered requisitioning a horse, but I hate horse-riding, my back gives me hell for days afterwards. You’re not supposed to use Forms just to keep from getting wet and muddy, but who was there to see or care, and if they did, so what? It’s the Mesoge. Nothing that happens there matters worth a damn. I fortified myself discreetly and set off on my long trudge.

It was well after sunset when the trail petered out, and by then I’d walked further than I had since I joined the Studium. Forms can give you strength, but they can’t stop your feet aching. But anyhow, I found myself on the wrong side of a gate set in a thick hedge; the quality live here, it said. Gates don’t hinder me much, locked or unlocked. On the other side, I saw a short drive leading to a large square black shape. I tweaked the view a bit with lux in tenebris and made out one of those fortified manor-houses that you get in the Mesoge; half farmhouse, half castle, our legacy from the Troubles three centuries ago. Curious, I thought. No reason to assume my witch was the lady of the house. Probably between fifteen and twenty women would live in a house that size, most of whom would be working for a living. My witch could just as easily be a scullerymaid or a cook.

But she wasn’t. I looked for her—standing in the pitch dark, with rain dripping off my hood—with victrix causa and spotted her in the great hall. She was sitting on a stool by the fire, sewing a cushion. A few feet away, her husband was serving the loops on a new bowstring. He was about fifty, a fine-looking man with a neatly trimmed grey beard and broad shoulders. Two sons played chess on a low table; twins, most likely, around twenty. A greyhound slept on a bearskin rug. Your ideal picture of the country gentry at home, a beatific vision of aspiration for yeomen farmers and uppity merchants. Awkward. I had a problem.

I was, of course, entirely within my rights to burst in, seize her by force, and blast anybody who tried to stop me. I was perfectly capable of all that. I had the power, the strength, and the authority. But you don’t do stuff like that just because you can. It’s insensitive and uncivilised, and we aren’t thugs or bullies. I was going to have to wait until they’d all gone to bed. I went and stood under a tree, from where I could watch the windows. The bedroom would be on the first floor of the big round tower; it always is. After an eternity, a faint light flared in the narrow window. I muttered victrix causa and peeped in.

Country squires in the Mesoge are old-fashioned, and they don’t throw out good furniture just because it’s two hundred and fifty years old. The bed, therefore, was a huge thing, size of a small shed, with heavy tapestry drapes. I’m no voyeur; I cut the Form and gave them plenty of time to undress, get into bed, and blow out the candle. The window went dark. I gave them another eternity to fall asleep, then squelched in my sodden boots up the drive to the front door.

Any fool can draw bolts with summa fides, but it takes real skill to do it quietly. There’d be servants and dogs sleeping in the hall, and anybody I woke up would have to be put back to sleep with benevolentia or some other unpleasantness. But I’m really very good at all the sneaking-about side of things. I’d have made a good thief or assassin; now there’s something to be proud of. I climbed the stairs without a sound. The bedroom door had old-fashioned leather hinges, and the floor was spread with rugs. Perfect.

She was fast asleep, her head on one side, her hair loose. When we met at the inn, she’d had it done up in those horrible spirals, like wicker mats; it suited her much better au naturel. She was still neither particularly pretty nor particularly young, but a part of me envied the silver-haired gentleman lying with his back to her. Still; if there’s one thing I hate, it’s being made a fool of.

I slipped into her mind, exactly the way she’d do it. I kept my scholar’s robe, because that’s what people see when they look at me; not the prematurely bald head or the weak chin or the silly little snub nose. I wanted to be sure she recognised me.

You can’t take anything into someone’s dream; you have to use what you find there. In her dream, on the bedside table lay a fine old silver and amber brooch, heirloom quality—my guess is, a real brooch she’d always hankered after but never managed to acquire. I picked it up and unfolded the pin. In her dream, she was fast asleep. I stuck the pin through the lid of her closed eye, then pulled it out.

She opened her eyes. One she couldn’t see through, the other stared at me. “Hello,” I said.

In her dream, she yelled. I shook my head. “Nobody can hear you,” I said. “We need to talk. You’ll find me at the inn.” Then I stuck the pin in her other eye and got out fast.

She hadn’t moved, though her eyes were tightly screwed up. Her husband was still fast asleep, so I guess she was a restless sleeper at the best of times. I blew her a kiss and went back down the stairs. I think a servant opened one eye and saw me as I thumbed the latch of the front door. So what?

I slept well that night. Genuine Mesoge sleep; healthy exhaustion after a hard day of useful, profitable work.

Some fool woke me up while it was still dark outside. Just as well for him I have perfect control; there are horror stories of servants at the Studium being blasted into cinders after waking up senior faculty members who weren’t morning people. There’s a lady to see you, said whoever it was. Note the choice of noun. He sounded deeply impressed.

I’m afraid of nothing, but I’m still capable of embarrassment. How do you start a conversation with a witch you recently blinded in her sleep, who also happens to be the local bigwig’s wife? As I pulled my hose on I decided I’d better be cruel and heartless, though I know full well I’m not very good at it. Probably she’d see through it straight away. As I stuffed my feet into my boots, which were ice-cold and clammy with last night’s rain, I thought; the hell with it, I’ll just be myself. Not a part I’ve ever been happy playing, but it’s less of a drain on my limited imaginative faculties.

She was sitting on the chair she’d conjured up and then not known how to dissolve. I don’t think she meant anything by it; probably she didn’t recognise it. A spiteful man would’ve vanished it with her still sat in it, but I’m not like that. I had no idea how to address her, so I settled on ‘Madam’, which is usually correct in the country.

She looked at me. Her eyes were bloodshot. Also, she had a cut on her cheek, just starting to scab over. I hadn’t noticed it the night before, so presumably she’d been lying on it. I did that, I thought guiltily, lashing out like a schoolboy. She was wearing a white lace cap and a heavy wool cloak, fastened at the shoulder with a simple silver starburst brooch.

I cleared my throat. “The cap,” I said. “Indiscreet.”

She shook her head. “I wear it all the time, so naturally nobody sees it any more. I assume you’ve told them.”

I was shocked. “No, of course not. I think we ought to find somewhere a bit more private.”

That made her grin. “Are you suggesting I go up to your room? I don’t think so.”

“Allow me.”

So, I wanted to impress her; of course I did, from the first moment I saw her, in the inn. So what? A show of power would terrify her, let her know she was dealing with someone infinitely stronger than herself; it would serve a useful purpose and therefore was allowed.

I touched her shoulder with the tip of my finger and took her to the third Room.

It’s just occurred to me that you may not know about Rooms. You’re not supposed to. Rooms are classified top secret, not to be mentioned or hinted at in front of unqualified personnel. I could get in big trouble if I were to tell you anything at all about Rooms. Basically, it’s like this.

Imagine you’re in a big house, or a palace, or a government building. There are lots of rooms in it, but for some reason I can’t begin to imagine, you’ve lived your entire life in just one of them. The concept of a door is so weird and unnatural to you that either you dismiss it as some crazy fantasy or else it terrifies you—anathema, abomination, and other words beginning with A to convey pious disgust.

At the beginning of second year, the class tutor shows you how to make a door. It’s the most extraordinary thing that ever happens to you, and you remember it for the rest of your life. After that, your sense of wonder gets work-hardened; miracles make you yawn, inconceivable wonders are just another day at the office. But your first door is always with you. It’s the moment when the world changed for ever.

In theory (and if I do manage to get tenure, it’s the area of theory I intend to devote the rest of my life to) there’s an infinite number of Rooms, linked by an infinite network of doors, stairways, and passages. In theory, you could get so good at this shit that instead of going to the Rooms, you could just sit there and all the Rooms would come to you. In practice, there are seven Rooms, and if you’re really brave and incredibly skilful and outrageously lucky, you might get to visit six of them by choice before you end up in the seventh very much against your will. In everyday life, you use three. I chose the third Room on this occasion because it’s always been my favourite. If there’s anywhere in the world this Mesoge farm boy is at home, it’s the third Room. When I’m there, I’m in control.

Normally, wherever and whoever you are, you aren’t in control. You may think you are, but you’re not. If you’re the Great King of the Sashan, brother of the Sun and bridegroom of the Moon, and you happen to let your favourite crystal goblet slip through your fingers, it’ll fall on the marble floor and smash into a thousand pieces, and if you cut yourself on one of the pieces and get blood poisoning, you’ll die. But when I’m in the third Room, if I drop something, it needs my permission to fall. Don’t get the idea that it’s like that for everyone in the third Room, by the way. I know a tenured professor of applied metaphysics who wouldn’t go in there if you paid him, because there are monsters under the bed. I know how he feels. You wouldn’t get me in the fifth Room if the rest of the world was on fire; yet my friend the professor goes there to relax and hide from his married sister when she calls for a visit.

I’m a bit of an old fusspot when it comes to décor. I know what I like. My small-r rooms in the West cloister of the Old Building are small, cold, and damp so I can’t really be bothered with them, but I’ve fixed up the third Room exactly how I like it. The walls are panelled oak, sort of a dark honey colour, with genuine late Mannerist tapestries depicting scenes from Chloris and Sorabel. On the floor I’ve got a rattan mat, because I love the smell and the way it cushions your feet. The ceiling is plaster mouldings with the details—birds nesting among the acanthus leaves, that sort of thing—picked out in gold leaf, because what is life without a few restrained splashes of vulgarity? The furniture is dark oak, almost black; two carved chairs, a table, a bookcase which only occupies half a wall but which somehow manages to hold all the books I ever want to read; three brass lamps; my grandfather’s sword on the wall just above my head, nice and handy if ever I need it; a footstool. And the nice thing is, I can go there for a whole afternoon and when I get back, I’ve only just left.

“What the hell?” I said.

I don’t usually swear in front of women, especially upper-class ones. I stared at her. She smiled.

It was the third Room, because I’d brought us here, up the second staircase, across the dark landing. I’d opened the door, my thumb on the old-fashioned wooden latch. More to the point, I was in front of her. It’s different when someone gets into a Room ahead of you, or you go in and it’s already occupied. I’m always very careful about that, believe me. But no, I’d opened the door and walked in, and then she followed me. “What have you done?” I said.

She pushed past me and sat down. There was only one chair. I had to make do with a low three-legged stool by the fire. She picked up her embroidery and carried on where she’d left off the night before. The boarhound lifted its head and growled at me.

“You can’t bring dogs into the third Room,” I objected.

“Can’t you?”

“It’s against the rules.”

“Then the rules are silly,” she said, licking the end of her silk before threading her needle. “You wanted to talk to me about something.”

I stood up. This wasn’t right. I headed for the door, which wasn’t there.

Father Anthemius taught me how to make a door. The shameful fact is, I was a slow beginner. All the other kids could do it, I couldn’t. Not for want of trying; but it’s one of those things where effort is useless, bordering on counter-productive; like falling asleep, the more you try, the less you succeed. It’s easy, they all told me, you just think of a door and there it is.

So I thought of a door, and there one wasn’t. All right, they said, try this. Think of a door, but you can only see it out of the corner of your eye. Didn’t work. So they explained to me about peripheral vision, and how you can see things without looking straight at them. Made no difference. I was ashamed and desperate. If I couldn’t make a door, I couldn’t learn anything else, they’d have to send me home, back to a two-room shack in the Mesoge. I wasn’t having that. In all other respects I was well in advance of the rest of my year and I’d already sneaked a look at the basic military Forms in the textbook. I reckoned ruans in defectum standing in front of a mirror would do the trick nicely, and there wouldn’t be enough of a body left to be worth shipping home.

Enter Father Anthemius. He had retired from the teaching staff the year before I arrived and nobody was sorry to see him go. He was a miserable old bastard who hated kids, and he’d only got into teaching because he couldn’t make the field grades, which was all he’d ever wanted to do. His students had hated him, partly because he was hypercritical, judgemental, and mean, partly because of his habit of farting loudly during tutorials; the smell, they told me, had to be experienced to be believed. He found me in a corner of the cloister, crying my eyes out. He looked at me.

“You’re pathetic,” he said.

I looked up at him. “I know,” I said.

He sighed. A stupid little kid bawling like a girl because he couldn’t do the simplest thing in the syllabus. “You’re trying too hard,” he said.

“I know.”

“No bloody good you knowing if you keep on doing it.” He slapped my mind with eget regimine and I squealed, which made him even angrier. “You’re disgusting,” he said. “The sooner they throw you out and you go back to mucking out pigs, the better for all of us. They shouldn’t let you people in here in the first place. You’re no good for anything.”

I think he was trying to provoke me. He could see I knew some military forms, and if I lashed out with one of them he’d be justified in blasting me till I glowed. He filled my head with bees and locusts so I couldn’t think, then started up again with eget regimine. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it; they call it the teacher’s friend, because it hurts like hell but leaves no marks or traces whatsoever. I tried to get up and run, but he’d locked me down with something or other that made me feel like the whole building was pressing down on me. I could hardly breathe. He was grinning at me, and I felt him inserting something into my mind; memories, false ones, about having fits when I was a baby. Clever; he’d crush me until a blood vessel burst and I had a stroke, and when they looked inside my head they’d find memories of similar attacks going right back through my life. I wasn’t sure why he hated me as much as he did, but there was no doubt in my mind at all. Something about me was so objectionable that I couldn’t be allowed to continue, and he was going to see to it that I didn’t. I felt his hand pass through my skull, feeling for the vein he was going to pinch shut. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of a door. I jumped to my feet, wrenched it open, tumbled through, slammed it shut, and collapsed.

“See?” said a voice. “Nothing to it, really.”

I looked up. Father Anthemius was sitting in a carved oak chair with his feet up on a footstool. “This,” he said, “is the third Room. Most kids your age wouldn’t make it this far, but you’re precocious.”

I turned my head and looked at what I was leaning against; a massive oak door, studded with nails, like you see in castles. The nails are clenched over to hold the plies of wood together. You lay six plies with the direction of the grain alternating at right angles. A door made that way is practically unbreakable, even with a battering ram.

“You came here because it’s safe,” he said. “Once that door’s shut, nothing can get in unless you want it to. Nobody taught you that, you figured it out all by yourself.”

“I made a door?”

He laughed. “I certainly didn’t, so you must have, mustn’t you? I told you it was easy.”

I lashed out at him with ruat caelum. He swatted it aside. “Too slow,” he said. “Do it again.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what I was—“

“Do it again.”

Nobody taught me ruat caelum. I do it better than anyone else in the world. I’d been practising it for years on birds, flies, anything really small and fast, before I found out it was called that. To do it right you have to focus on a pinprick. I narrowed everything right down and let him have it. But he wasn’t there.

I stared. Had I hit him so hard he’d completely disintegrated? But then a door opened in the wall and he stepped through. “Which proves my point,” he said, sitting down and putting his feet up. “Rooms are everything. Doesn’t matter that you’re faster than anyone else I’ve ever seen. All I have to do is go next door and you can’t touch me.”

I felt as though a tap had been opened and my soul drained out of it. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I got mad.”

“Of course you did,” he said. “You were angry with me, instead of yourself. And before that you were afraid of me, instead of afraid of failing. You could be good at this. But you won’t ever be unless you stop feeling sorry for yourself all the damn time.” He stood up. “Like I said, you’re pathetic. If I hadn’t taken pity on you, you could’ve gone on trying the rest of your life and never got there. Lucky for you I’m such a sweetheart.” He stood up. “Till we meet again,” he said. Then he walked through the door he’d made and closed it behind him, and I was sitting alone on a stone bench on the cloister. I never saw him again; he died that afternoon. I didn’t find out he died until a week later. Apparently he was born at Spire Cross in the Mesoge, just a few miles downhill from where I used to live. Small world.

Anyway, the point is, ever since then I’ve been really good at doors. I can make one in a flash, and my doors go to places my esteemed colleagues would never dream of being able to reach. It’s the one thing I’m supremely good at. Hopeless at many things, good at doors, that’s me.

I tried to make a door. Nothing happened.

She yawned. “You can try again if you like. Won’t do you any good. This is my place. I’m in control here.”

I fixed my eyes on her so she was the centre of my field of vision. At the edge there should be, had to be, a door. There wasn’t.

“You’re pathetic,” she said. “Did you know that?”

“Actually, yes,” I said. “Let me out of here right now, or I’ll kill you.”

She smiled. “I wouldn’t,” she said. “I’m sure you could, you’re so much bigger and stronger and more aggressive than me, but then you’d be stuck in here for ever and ever, since you can’t make doors. Of course you wouldn’t be entirely on your own, you’d have the dog for company. But he farts. It can be pretty unbearable in a confined space, believe me.”

That draining feeling I told you about. Only the second time in my life I’d experienced it, but once endured, never forgotten. “Fine,” I said. “You win.”

She clapped her hands together in girlish glee. “Do I really? How nice.” I felt a searing pain in the backs of my knees, as though someone had cut the tendons. Then I slumped forward, kneeling before her. I couldn’t feel my feet at all. “Now then,” she said. “The thing is, I don’t know how to do the next bit, never having been to college. But that doesn’t matter, because you do.” She smiled. “Much better really,” she said. “Why should I give up years and years of my life sitting in draughty libraries learning stupid old theory when all I actually need to do is open up your head, and there it all is, ready for me to use?”

My head was splitting; now there’s a coincidence. “It doesn’t work like that,” I said.

“Doesn’t it?” She reached out and picked up a book, the only one in the room. She opened it, and I screamed. It was as though she’d pulled the two halves of my skull apart, like opening a clam. “What a pity. No, you’re wrong, here it all is.” She ran a finger down the page. “Chapter six, how to steal someone’s mind.” She turned a few pages. “Doesn’t look too hard. Shall we have a go?”

I slashed at her with stricto ense. She parried with the cover of the book. I yelled and clamped my hand round the gash in my cheek. Blood was gushing between my fingers.

“Let’s see,” she said, turning a page. “It’s all pretty straightforward by the look of it. Stands to reason, really. If it was hard, you couldn’t do it.”

Desperately I tried to remember about Room theory, but I couldn’t.

“I feel a bit guilty,” she said, as I felt my mind emptying. “Playing all those nasty pranks on my neighbours. They’re stupid and dull as chicken broth but there’s no real malice in them. But it was worth it, to get you down here. I knew it was the only way. I’d never be able to go to your stupid college or read your stupid books, so all this wonderful talent I’ve been given would just go to waste, and where’s the sense in that? But then I thought, what’s a book? It’s the inside of someone’s head put down on paper so anyone can see it, and it’ll never, ever die. Do you know I can’t read? Women don’t, not even delicately nurtured ones like me, it’s not ladylike. So it’s just as well I’ve got a wise, clever man like you to do it for me.”

“Please,” I said. “Don’t.”

She looked at me over the top of the book. “You’re pathetic,” she said, and carried on reading.

I tried ruat caelum, which I’ve known since I was thirteen years old. I couldn’t remember it. I tried to think of a Form, any bloody Form. They’d all gone. She looked up and folded down the corner of a page. The pain made me howl like a dog, and the boarhound lifted its head off its paws and growled again. “Don’t set him off,” she said, “or he’ll start barking.”

And he farts, I know, you told me. I could feel slices of myself falling away like apple-peel in spirals, things that had been a part of me before I was truly myself. Meanwhile she read, calm and steady, and each time she turned the page I screamed, and she took no notice.

“I don’t know what you’re making all that fuss about,” she said. “Anyone would think I was skinning you alive. It’s only knowledge, after all. When I’m done I shall turn you loose, and then you can live the rest of your life the way I’m supposed to live mine. I think that’s only fair, don’t you?”

I didn’t have the strength to argue, or the words or the wit to argue with, or even enough understanding to know if she was right or wrong. The only argument left was strength; she was strong and I was weak, so presumably everything she was doing to me was just fine and exactly how it ought to be. I can live with that, I remember thinking; it’s so simple even I can understand it, and if it pleases her to spare my life and let me crawl away, I’ll be grateful and worship her for her goodness and loving kindness.

She knew what I was thinking, of course. “You’re pathetic,” she said. “But I guess you know that.”

“I’d sort of gathered.”

That made her laugh. “You’re just a book, see?” She held up the book. She had it upside down. “All those clever men spent years copying things into you, and now I’ve copied them out again. Actually, not copied.” She grinned. “A real book must be a wonderful thing. It can be read over and over again and it’s not diminished. You’re not a book after all, you’re just a barn.”

“Make your mind up,” I said. It cost me the last of my strength. One last wisecrack and now I’d be stupid for ever. Ah well. Everything was, no doubt, all for the best.

“I ought to thank you,” she said. It was one of those books that has clasps and a hasp for a tiny lock. “But screw that. The hawk doesn’t thank the sparrow, because it’s rude to talk with your mouth full. All right, you can go now. I don’t need you any more.”

A door opened and swung wide. She wasn’t looking at me. She had her nose in the book. I tried to stand up, but my legs were numb, so I started to crawl toward the door, pulling myself along with my elbows. I had a horrible feeling that I wasn’t going to like what lay on the other side of that door. The sort of life she’d have had if she’d been born normal, without the talent. I’ve come across some terrifying things over the years, inside Rooms and out of them, but nothing quite as bad as that. We use the phrase fate worse than death frivolously, like children playing with a spear they found in a corner of the barn; but there are things much worse than simply being dead, and a life like that would be one of them. Somehow, though, I didn’t seem to have a choice. She was just stronger than me, that was all.

The boarhound lifted its head again and made that ominous grinding noise. I pulled myself a few inches closer to the door, and the boarhound sprang up and leapt at me—over me—

I turned my head in time to see her on the ground, the huge dog standing over her, worrying at her neck locked between its jaws. It used its shoulders and back to rip her throat out; a quick, spasmodic movement, a snatch. It’s rude to snatch, my mother used to tell me. Now I could see why.

The dog lifted its head and swallowed, two big gulps, all gone. She’d stopped moving. The dog sat up straight and farted.

It was really bad, enough to make your eyes water. When they cleared and I could see again, Father Anthemius was sitting in a chair. The room was different. There was a big, broad table covered in clutter—rolls of paper, books, empty cups, chunks of mouldy stale bread, rat droppings—and a fireplace. The fire was lit. That room was always too hot, I remembered people telling me. What with the heat and the godawful smell, how was anybody expected to learn anything?

He was reading a book. He closed it, looked at me, and tossed it into the fire. The pain, which was worse than anything I’d ever felt before, lasted as long as it took the book to burn. He reached over with the poker and pounded the dove-grey ashes into dust, then looked at me.

“Well?” he said.

I nodded. It was all back again, everything she’d taken from me. I felt as though I’d had a big brush, like the sort sweeps use to clean chimneys, shoved down my throat and pushed really hard until it came out through my arse. “I saved your life,” he said. “Again. You’re pathetic. But you know that.”

“Yes.”

“Obviously I didn’t do it for your sake,” he went on. “You’re worthless. I did it simply in order to survive. If you were stripped of your talent, where would I go? I would be lost, like the only copy of a book burnt in a fire. That would be a tragedy. Naturally, I couldn’t allow it to happen.”

“Naturally.”

“Even so,” said Father Anthemius, “I suppose I owe you a certain degree of gratitude. Don’t you think?”

I nodded. “You were dying,” I said.

“I was,” said Father Anthemius.

“You knew you didn’t have long. It made you angry.”

“Very angry. If there’s one form of vandalism I can’t stand, it’s burning books.”

I reckoned I could afford one wan smile. “Quite,” I said. “You’d spent your entire life writing all that learning and wisdom into a book, and the moment you write the last word, it’s snatched away from you and thrown into the fire. Where’s the sense in that?”

He nodded. “I don’t mind cruelty,” he said, “But I can’t abide waste.”

“So,” I went on, “you considered Room theory. It’s always been your best thing. Whenever there’s any danger, you just duck into another room. You showed me that, when I got angry.”

“Fancy you remembering.”

“You saw me,” I went on. “And you saw that I was—“

“Defective,” said Father Anthemius. “Or would you prefer inadequate?”

“Defective, thank you. You saw I wasn’t capable of making a door. I could do Forms and other stuff, but I was missing the ability to make a door, which meant I could never progress any further, or qualify, or be a practitioner. Which meant they’d throw me out of the Studium and I’d have to go back to the Mesoge and spend the rest of my life ploughing and herding pigs.”

“Actual useful work.” He grinned. “Perish the thought.”

“So you pretended to teach me how to make a door,” I said. “But that’s not what you did. You got me scared out of my wits so I wouldn’t see what you were doing—“

“Like a fly,” he said, “laying its eggs in a wound. A dreadful thing for a man of my distinction, but what choice did I have?”

“You turned my head—me—into a Room,” I said. “Your body died, but you weren’t in it. You were—”

“Plenty of space in there,” he said, “which you weren’t ever going to use. Admit it, I’ve been as quiet as a little mouse. You never even knew I was there. And thanks to me, you became a great wise scholar, which you never ought to have done.”

The maggots of wisdom, I thought, gnawing away at me and building nests of scholarship in the holes they’d made.

“Without me,” said Father Anthemius, “you were pathetic. You were as weak and useless as a woman. Actually,” he added, “I take that back. I was tempted, you realise. She was so strong, more natural untrained ability than I’ve ever seen in one human being in my entire life. I could have slipped into her mind and she’d never have known I was there, and I’d have had access to more strength, more sheer ability than I’d ever thought was possible.” He shook his head. “But she was still a woman,” he said. “Even with me to guide her, nobody would ever have taken her seriously. And then what? She’d have ended up making war on the whole world, like she did on the people in her silly little village, out of frustration and sheer spite. I hate waste,” he said. “I would’ve been wasted on her. So I decided to stay with you, even though you’re pathetic.”

But very good at Forms nonetheless. I formed stricto ense in my mind and aimed it at him. He smiled at me. “Sure,” he said. “Go ahead. You kill me, I die, you’ll never be able to make another door as long as you live. Well, get on with it. I’m waiting.”

That was a long time ago. He’s still waiting.

I met the mayor and the constable on my way out of the village. All done, I told them.

“You found out who it was?”

I nodded.

“Who was it?”

I took a deep breath. “Tell you what,” I said. “Give it a week, then ask around. Whoever hasn’t been seen for a week, that’s who it was. All right?”

They wanted to ask me questions, buy me a drink, hold a parade, give me money, put up a statue, make speeches, rename the village after me, all that sort of thing. Go away, I told them. I just want to get out of the horrible Mesoge. I think I offended them. So what?

I can raise the dead. Not that I ever would, it goes without saying, because it’s absolutely forbidden. Actually, I always assumed that was a convenient cop-out on the part of the profession—yes, we could do it, of course we could, we can do anything. But we don’t, because it’s illegal and unethical, so you’ll never know if we’re telling the truth or not. Big deal.

But yes, I can do it. Crazy, really. I can call back the dead, take those ashes and that dust and turn them back into pages. I can unburn books, but I can’t make a simple door. A bit pathetic, really, but there you go.

And it was the Mesoge, for God’s sake.   There was nobody to see me do it, and if someone did see, nobody would ever believe them, because all country people are superstitious idiots, everybody knows that. A talking rat with LIAR branded on its forehead would stand more chance of being taken seriously by my esteemed colleagues at the Studium than anyone born within fifteen miles of Spire Cross. So why not?

I won’t tell you the Form, not that it really matters. What matters is standing in the narrow passage off which opens the door to the seventh Room. I’d been there before, but this time I was all too painfully aware that he was there with me. I couldn’t see him, but the lingering stench of dog fart was unmistakable. Never mind. I knocked on the door. “Come in,” she said.

She was sitting in front of the fire, embroidering something. “Oh,” she said. “It’s you.”

I stood in the doorway. Believe it or not, I was in no tearing hurry to go fully inside the seventh Room. You’re all right if you have one foot firmly planted in the passageway, or so they tell me. How they would know that I have no idea.

“Don’t give me that look,” I said. “I didn’t kill you.”

“No, your dog did. Big difference.”

I grinned. “Actually, I think it’s a moot point whose dog was whose, if you see what I mean. You go through life thinking you’re the owner and it’s the dog, and then you realise, who’s actually walking who?”

She gazed at me. “You’re an idiot,” she said.

“I suppose I must be,” I replied. “All that time and I never realised. How about you?”

“Oh, I always knew, right from the start. I knew I was better than everybody else in the whole world, but they wouldn’t let me be myself.”

“So you took to sticking pins in people. To show them how much better you were.”

She shrugged. “Not through choice. If I’d been allowed to use my gifts and realise my true potential, it’d have been thunderbolts, not pins.”

“What did they ever do to deserve it?”

“What did you ever do to deserve what you’ve got and I could never have?” She put down her needlework and took in the room with a wide, circling gesture. “I spent my whole life stuck in this place,” she said. “And now I’m dead, and look where I end up.”

The Mesoge, I thought. It’s where you go when you die, if you’ve been really bad. Or you’re born there; same difference. The Mesoge is where I belong.

Just because I can do something, it doesn’t necessarily follow that I want to. Or that I should. Besides; giving her back a life like hers—I don’t think I could be that cruel.

So I left her to her vengeful wallowing, which I regarded as pathetic, and went back to the third Room. But I couldn’t stay there for more than a minute, because of the smell.

© Copyright 2020 K.J. Parker

#K.J. Parker #short story #long post #Many Mansons

[newmusicradionetwork]

Brian K & The Parkway Set To Release “Straight Through” featuring Cat Popper March 1

Brian K. Pagels and Stephen Russ, the DC-area duo, Brian K & The Parkway, are releasing their second single, “Straight Through” featuring Cat Popper, known for her band Puss N Boots with Norah Jones and Sasha Dobson and for her work with Jack White, Ryan Adams, Willie Nelson, among others, who provides guest vocals on the track out March 1, 2024 – Pre-Save HERE. But how did a new band that’s just starting out secure Popper on their debut album?  The answer is simple, just ask. Pagels has been a fan of Popper’s vocals since he first heard her sing on Ryan Adams & The Cardinals’ album Cold Roses. “I was immediately struck and moved by her voice,” says Pagels. So, when he heard she was working on releasing her own solo material, he decided to take a chance and reach out. “I filled out a form on her website and asked her if she would consider singing a duet with me,” says Pagels thinking the message would go into a black hole of webforms. “Instead, she responded within an hour with ‘damn dude, I love this tune!,’” says Pagels. After emailing back and forth and talking on the phone “everything came really naturally from there, including the vocal arrangement which I was honored to lay out for Brian and Cat,” says Russ. “They both brought their own touch to it, Cat delivered an incredible vocal take, and that’s the magic you hear on the song.”  Adds Popper, “This song was so fun to sing on and was stuck in my head for weeks!” Brian K & The Parkway just released their debut single “Wind The Clock” January 12 – Listen HERE. On release day, Unrecorded named it a “best new track.” Mayhem Rockstar Magazine said it’s “…a light, infectious composition” while Alchemical Records says the song, “…really highlights this focus on songwriting and storytelling while embracing an energetic and uplifting musicality that is guitar driven, rooted in rock and roll…” “Wind The Clock” which opens with a lilting guitar riff and drum groove, is a commentary on tribalism and the extreme black and white thinking that has materialized in society today. The song offers a means to expel the frustration of it all while expressing a spirit of hope and solidarity with those actively fighting for a better world despite all the forces working against them. “I wanted it to be an anthem for ‘my people,’ those who value peacebuilding, justice, equality, democracy, and universal human rights,” says Pagels. The duo are set to release their debut album, Killing The Bear, March 29, 2024. Most of the work on Killing The Bear was done by Pagels and Russ, but it was mastered by Justin Perkins (North Mississippi Allstars, The Replacements, Lydia Loveless), co-engineered by Zac Thomas at The Jam Room in Columbia, SC, and co-produced and mixed by Collin Derrick. The nine-song collection, a nod to the ‘70s rock sound of artists like Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, and Warren Zevon, is guitar-based, roots-oriented rock, infused with a healthy dose of soul and R&B. Piano and organ play a critical role in establishing the sound along with some horns thrown in for good measure. The duo dubs their sound “coastal heartland rock,” reflecting the fact that their major influences are artists that hail from coastal areas such as New Jersey, Florida, and California, but are known for their own mix of classic heartland rock. Pagels and Russ formed Brian K & The Parkway in 2021. Pagels is from Springsteen’s hometown of Freehold, NJ, Russ is from the Carolinas, both share an innate connection to The Boss and are acutely inspired by him. Although the guys refer to the band name fondly as “very Jersey,” it denotes Pagels‘s name and the fact that The George Washington Memorial Parkway connects the route between their Northern Virginia homes; Pagels lives in Alexandria, Russ lives in Arlington. Killing The Bear’s overarching theme is about our ever-increasing inability as humans to deal with the source of our problems and instead, look to surface-level, near-term solutions, and then declare immediate victory. The songs serve as vignettes about the things we do to cope, for better or worse. Now, with their debut coming, Brian K & The Parkway can’t wait to get out on the road to play it for audiences up and down the east coast beginning this March. They will be kicking off their east coast tour with a special all ages album release party at Jammin Java in Vienna, VA on March 29. Tickets are on sale now HERE. Additional dates below, including a stop in Brooklyn, NY with Diane Gentile. More dates to be added soon. TOUR DATES: March 29 – Jammin Java, Vienna, VA – All ages album release show April 25 – Tin Roof, Charleston, SC April 26 – Curiosity Coffee, Columbia, SC April 28 – The Pinhook, Durham, NC April 30 – The Camel, Richmond, VA May 1 – Quarry House Tavern, Silver Springs, MD May 3 – The Berkeley Oceanfront Hotel, Asbury Park, NJ May 4 – Faces Brewing, Boston, MA May 5 – Sleepwalk, Brooklyn, NY (with Diane Gentile) Brian K & The Parkway Website Instagram Spotify Facebook Substack #  #  # Read the full article

[roxsannel]

Festive Fates: 11 Spirited Holiday Tales by Kyndra Hatch, S.E. Smith, Candace Colt, Winnie Winkle, Stephanie Harrell, Cassandra Chandler, Natalie Palma, Jill Wallace, Eliza Sinclair, Electra Gajdos, Pauline Baird Jones.

It is the festive season, and everyone seems to be happy, filled with love and ready to spend some quality time with those around them, but is this the same on every planet?

Story number one "Twas The Fight Before Christmas" involves a family gathering where one of the guests is more familiar with fighting than with singing carols, but will that change this year?

Story number two "Home For Christmas" talks about the importance of family, home and love as one woman's meditation leads to unexpected consequences, but will she learn anything from this experience?

Story number three "Unwrapping The True Spirit" deals with a non-earthbound festival where gifts are exchanged and love abounds, but when one billionaire forgets to buy a gift, can he figure out what the perfect gift for his mate could be before time runs out?

Story number four "Christmas Trapping" Baxin and Miaxa are two aliens who are protecting an Earth family, the Maddox's, but when they learn about Santa Claus, they are determined to stop him in his tracks, but will they succeed, or will a peaceful Christmas reign?

Story number five "The Winter Queen" is a charming story of one man and his big heart as he tries to win over one which has been cold as ice for a long time, but can he really melt it, or will his become just as cold?

Story number six "Retired But Not Forgotten" is all about recapturing life as a retired detective takes to the streets once again as a PI with a cheerful partner and a determination to solve her cases, but can this lonely and jaded woman be won over and find joy in the Christmas season once again?

In Story number seven "Sunshine's War" it is WWII and one South African reconnaissance pilot is severely injured during service, but when he wakes up being nursed by a stranger, will he be able to find a new sunshine, or will he lose it all?

Story number eight "Wicked Beginnings" amid a works Christmas party, two colleagues have feelings they try to hide and bury deep within themselves, however, when they finally have a chance under the mistletoe, will they take it, or miss out again?

Story number nine "Magical Mayhem" a bartender finds out that her job is much more than meets the eye when Halloween comes around and new responsibilities are thrust upon her as a Keeper, but can she figure out how to corral the magical creatures who frequent the establishment, or will magical mayhem reign?

In story number ten "Seshka's Gift" one girl must overcome her past to create a new future by learning that adversity can be a strength, especially when things go drastically wrong in the Mageguild Academy during the Harvest Moon, but can she do it?

Finally, story number eleven "Searching For Thanksgiving" tells the tale of a group of young Dragonlings who go on an adventurous quest to find Thanksgiving, but with only half a story and one map to go on, can these youngsters save the day, or will danger find them first?

This anthology spins these short stories with festive flair which will envelop you in feel good vibes and sweet romances from different points of view while you go on a whirlwind adventure through the universe.

#journey of a lifetime #chronic illness #invisible illness #cvid #common variable immunodeficiency #zebra #zebra strong #fibromyalgia #spoonie #spoonie life #spoonie reads

[super-sons-week]

Hey Guys! So, that's officially a wrap on Super Sons Week 2023! Thank you to all who participated!!! 💖💖💖

What to expect going forward from this blog:

If you still have late submissions for Super Sons Week 2023 fret not, we will continue to monitor this page. I had previously said I would monitor until 01/01/24 but I figured I'd just keep doing it until next year's Super Sons Week starts. Speaking of which...

We do intend to have a Super Sons Week 2024!!! It will start around the same time as 2023's but there will be more involvement from you guys! (because we won't be rushing 😅)

Please be on the look out for polls and interest surveys!

#Happy New Year!!! 🥂🍾 #UPDATE!!! #super sons week 2023 #day one: the first time #day two: partners in crime #day three: masks & missions #day four: masks and missions #day five: languages and culture #day six: friendship #day seven: tricks and treats #day eight: legacy and family #day nine: magic and mayhem #day ten: in another life #damian wayne #jon kent #super sons #dc comics #that's a wrap

[darling-lost-boy]

Danny’s Semester End Project for Digital Art

Danny makes a concept board for a project (either for school or something personal) — include 200 words on what the project is; additionally, write a line or two about why you included each image (must be ten images)

ASSIGNMENT: Concept board for your final project. Must include a 200 word synopsis of the project and a one to two sentence description of why each image was chosen for this particular story. 

Pitch: A family of superheroes who retired after their sister was killed is pulled back into the action when they realize that she may still be alive. Only, now, everyone is boring and has stupid jobs and families. Only the youngest still believes in what they had once done. He tries to relieve the good days, but his older sister won’t listen to him. 

Out of the blue one day, they get a ransom note proving their sister is still alive, they band together once again to attempt to get her back. It will take all their skills, as well as that of their families and friends, to bring their big sister back home safely. An adventure through magic and mayhem, secret lairs and private jets, the family goes through trials and tribulations. They must learn to work together and, most importantly, believe, in order to save their sister. 

Summary: The main conflict is not only getting the sister back, but also the relationship between the two main characters who have been separated since the oldest sister’s death. In order to fix things, they have to bury the hatchet and learn to get along again. 

Key words: Anger, grief, superheros, magic, family, siblings, lost

Image One: I want the whole world to feel magical, especially once the family starts their quest. This just gives those vibes and the people in the corner of the page add to the image.

Image Two: Similarly, this is a magical road trip vibe which is exactly what I am going for.

Image Three: Main character portrait. Water is my favorite element and I plan on it featuring heavily as a metaphor.

Image Four: Frodo is one of my favourite literary characters, incorporating his personality and vibes for the main character feels important.

Image Five: I just think a floating ship on the back of a giant sea creature is awesome and I want to incorporate it somehow.

Image Six: This one is a little darker, so not exactly the vibe I want, but I was really into the details of this one.

Image Seven: I like the imagery of dripping paint; watching paint dry, etc. I don’t know, I just think it brings some interesting malleability to the plot.

Image Eight: As I said, I want water to feature heavily, as well as these greens and blues. The empty room also gives a sense of emptiness of the characters when they begin their journey.

Image Nine: Houses are interesting thematically, especially considering the childhood memories you make with someone that tend to go away when you both grow up.

Image Ten: This is an accumulation of many of the other images in this folder; it gives a sense of fantasy and whimsy, childhood and maturity.

[sources: x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x]

#swynlabors #lost #this is the spiritual successor to #the swynwrimo i did about the #comic that danny will write eventually #he is obsessed w his fam #it's cute

[grand-theft-auto-vice-citrl]

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City [trainer +20]

💾 ►►► DOWNLOAD FILE 🔥🔥🔥 In order to enter and activate cheat codes in GTA Vice City, you must first select the cheat code you are looking to enter. With almost cheats available on offer, you'll find cheats that range from infinite ammo, disabling your wanted level, infinite health, item and vehicle spawns, as well as plenty more. Once you have selected your desired cheat code, simply type the phrase or press the button combinations on your controller while playing the game. These will need to be added in a consecutive manner and rather quickly, if you're too slow, you'll need to re-enter the cheat code. You will know if the cheat is successful by looking for a pop-up that will appear in the top corner of your screen, which will indicate that the cheat is now active in-game. The lists below show all of Vice City cheat codes, just scroll to the console you are playing on. Note that below this section are in-depth explanations and more for each individual cheat code. The following GTA Vice City cheat codes are some of the most useful and popular cheats in the game - not to mention the most fun. These cheat codes can be entered with a keyboard or an Xbox, PlayStation, or Nintendo Switch controller at any time during gameplay. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City has several cheats that can improve Tommy's arsenal, increase his overall health, and add some much-needed extra money to his account. Here's a complete list of the weapon, health, and money cheat codes:. Watch as Vice City turns into a chaos-filled playground as both physics and internal logic all go straight out the window. So whether you're looking for NPC manipulation, explosive vehicles, or something else, here is a complete list of all gameplay cheat codes:. Cars will gain the ability to drive on water. This cheat is helpful when going after hidden packages in the water. Entering this cheat will kill your character instantly and will result in your outfit being reset. All vehicles will fly in the air. Press UP while you accelerate to make the car hover off of the ground. From the dark and stormy weather to the sunny days of Vice City, here's a list of all-weather and time cheat codes in Vice City. Whether it's increased traffic, turning vehicles a certain color, or one of the plenty of codes that can be utilized when getting behind the wheel, here's a complete list of all traffic, vehicle, boat, plane, and motorcycle cheat codes. To get infinite sprint, complete Level 12 of the ambulance mission. Tommy will be able to sprint indefinitely without getting winded. Once you have dropped off people during Taxi missions , you will unlock Boost, which allows you to jump using the L3 button whenever you're in a taxi. Drive-up next to a hooker and wait. If you're driving a swank enough car, she'll start talking to you. Eventually, she'll get into the car. At this point, drive to a quiet spot and let the magic happen. The car will start rocking, and your "health" will grow from to Your pocketbook will take a hit though. This health-up only works until the next time you die. Go to the hotels save point. When the game asks you if you want to save, select a game and click it. When the "Overwrite? You will have full health. Edit Status Wishlist. Click the links below to jump to Be warned that Rockstar doesn't recommend saving after using cheats due to potential issues that may hinder further progress. Achievements can be permanently disabled once you've used them too, so it's usually best to reload a previous save after causing cheat-enabled mayhem. Was this guide helpful? Leave feedback. In This Wiki Guide. In real life, hijacking motor vehicles just leads to trouble. Taking place in the s, this installment has you stealing more than unique era-appropriate vehicles. You'll have in excess of 40 weapons at your disposal to handle the dirty work, and there are more than nine hours of music to listen to on your collection of stolen car stereos. Initial Release.

[gta-vice-city-story-cheatbt]

GTA Vice City cheats | All codes for Xbox, PC, Switch & PlayStation | Radio Times

💾 ►►► DOWNLOAD FILE 🔥🔥🔥 In order to enter and activate cheat codes in GTA Vice City, you must first select the cheat code you are looking to enter. With almost cheats available on offer, you'll find cheats that range from infinite ammo, disabling your wanted level, infinite health, item and vehicle spawns, as well as plenty more. Once you have selected your desired cheat code, simply type the phrase or press the button combinations on your controller while playing the game. These will need to be added in a consecutive manner and rather quickly, if you're too slow, you'll need to re-enter the cheat code. You will know if the cheat is successful by looking for a pop-up that will appear in the top corner of your screen, which will indicate that the cheat is now active in-game. The lists below show all of Vice City cheat codes, just scroll to the console you are playing on. Note that below this section are in-depth explanations and more for each individual cheat code. The following GTA Vice City cheat codes are some of the most useful and popular cheats in the game - not to mention the most fun. These cheat codes can be entered with a keyboard or an Xbox, PlayStation, or Nintendo Switch controller at any time during gameplay. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City has several cheats that can improve Tommy's arsenal, increase his overall health, and add some much-needed extra money to his account. Here's a complete list of the weapon, health, and money cheat codes:. Watch as Vice City turns into a chaos-filled playground as both physics and internal logic all go straight out the window. So whether you're looking for NPC manipulation, explosive vehicles, or something else, here is a complete list of all gameplay cheat codes:. Cars will gain the ability to drive on water. This cheat is helpful when going after hidden packages in the water. Entering this cheat will kill your character instantly and will result in your outfit being reset. All vehicles will fly in the air. Press UP while you accelerate to make the car hover off of the ground. From the dark and stormy weather to the sunny days of Vice City, here's a list of all-weather and time cheat codes in Vice City. Whether it's increased traffic, turning vehicles a certain color, or one of the plenty of codes that can be utilized when getting behind the wheel, here's a complete list of all traffic, vehicle, boat, plane, and motorcycle cheat codes. To get infinite sprint, complete Level 12 of the ambulance mission. Tommy will be able to sprint indefinitely without getting winded. Once you have dropped off people during Taxi missions , you will unlock Boost, which allows you to jump using the L3 button whenever you're in a taxi. Drive-up next to a hooker and wait. If you're driving a swank enough car, she'll start talking to you. Eventually, she'll get into the car. At this point, drive to a quiet spot and let the magic happen. The car will start rocking, and your "health" will grow from to Your pocketbook will take a hit though. This health-up only works until the next time you die. Go to the hotels save point. When the game asks you if you want to save, select a game and click it. When the "Overwrite? You will have full health. Edit Status Wishlist. Click the links below to jump to Be warned that Rockstar doesn't recommend saving after using cheats due to potential issues that may hinder further progress. Achievements can be permanently disabled once you've used them too, so it's usually best to reload a previous save after causing cheat-enabled mayhem. Was this guide helpful? Leave feedback. In This Wiki Guide. In real life, hijacking motor vehicles just leads to trouble. Taking place in the s, this installment has you stealing more than unique era-appropriate vehicles. You'll have in excess of 40 weapons at your disposal to handle the dirty work, and there are more than nine hours of music to listen to on your collection of stolen car stereos. Initial Release.

[starry-sky-stuff]

Historical Romance Recommendations Pt 2

Now that I’ve read more HR books, I’ve decided to expand on my original list (you can find here). 

Warning for potential spoilers

Marriage of Convenience:

Devil in Winter by Lisa Kleypas

The Duchess Deal by Tessa Dare

When a Scot Ties the Knot by Tessa Dare

Compromised Into Marriage: 

Secrets of a Summer Night by Lisa Kleypas

Devil in Spring by Lisa Kleypas

The Duke and I by Julia Quinn

The Viscount Who Loved Me by Julia Quinn

Do You Want to Start a Scandal by Tessa Dare

Undercover Duke by Sabrina Jeffries

The Truth About Cads and Dukes by Elisa Braden

The Heiress Hunt by Joanna Shupe

Lovers That Start Off Antagonistic:

To Love and to Loathe by Martha Walters

It Happened One Autumn by Lisa Kleypas

No Good Duke Goes Unpunished by Sarah Maclean

Married By Morning by Lisa Kleypas

Bound By Your Touch by Meredith Duran

For the Duke’s Eyes Only by Lenora Bell

Childhood Friends:

A Rogue By Any Other Name by Sarah Maclean

A Rogue of One’s Own by Evie Dunmore

Because of Miss Bridgerton by Julia Quinn

Seduce Me at Sunrise by Lisa Kleypas 

The Duke Who Loved Me by Jane Ashford

Friends to Lovers:

My Fake Rake by Eva Leigh

The Duke Who Loved Me by Jane Ashford

Second Chance Romance:

The Day of the Duchess by Sarah MacLean

The Sins of Lord Lockwood by Meredith Duran

Female Leads That Are Widows:

When He Was Wicked by Julia Quinn

Waiting for a Scot Like You by Eva Leigh

Wicked Intentions by Elizabeth Hoyt

Thief of Shadows by Elizabeth Hoyt 

Cold-Hearted Rake by Lisa Kleypas 

Devil’s Daughter by Lisa Kleypas 

Devil in Disguise by Lisa Kleypas

Books Where the Lead Has a Job:

Forever Your Earl by Eva Leigh

Scandal Takes the Stage by Eva Leigh

Temptations of a Wallflower by Eva Leigh

The Rules of Scoundrels series by Sarah MacLean

Tempt Me at Twilight by Lisa Kleypas

Marrying Winterborne by Lisa Kleypas

Self-Made Heroes: 

Dreaming of You by Lisa Kleypas

Again the Magic by Lisa Kleypas

Secrets of a Summer Night by Lisa Kleypas

Scandal in Spring by Lisa Kleypas

Tempt Me by Twilight by Lisa Kleypas

Marrying Winterborne by Lisa Kleypas

Chasing Cassandra by Lisa Kleypas

The Wallflower Wager by Tessa Dare

Regarding the Duke by Grace Callaway

A Portrait of a Scotsman by Evie Dunmore

Books That Involve a Mystery:

The Duke Dynasty by Sabrina Jeffries

Do You Want to Start a Scandal by Tessa Dare

A Lady’s Guide to Mischief and Mayhem by Manda Collins

Series Centred on Female Friendship:

The Wallflowers series by Lisa Kleypas

A League of Extraordinary Women series by Evie Dunmore

Girls Who Dare series by Emma V Leech

Girl Meets Duke series by Tessa Dare

Books Where the Female Lead Isn’t a Virgin:

Bringing Down a Duke by Evie Dunmore

Forever Your Earl by Eva Leigh

The Raven Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt

When He Was Wicked by Julia Quinn

Thief of Shadows by Elizabeth Hoyt

Never Judge a Lady By Her Cover by Sarah MacLean

Older Heroines:

Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake by Sarah MacLean

Daring and the Duke by Sarah MacLean

A Rogue by Any Other Name by Sarah MacLean

Raven Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt

Scandalous Desires by Elizabeth Hoyt

Thief of Shadows by Elizabeth Hoyt

Devil’s Daughter by Lisa Kleypas

Devil in Disguise by Lisa Kleypas

Lead is a Writer: 

Dreaming of You by Lisa Kleypas

Suddenly You by Lisa Kleypas

And Then He Kissed Her by Laura Lee Guhrke

With Seduction in Mind by Laura Lee Guhrke

Rake Romances:

Devil in Winter by Lisa Kleypas

To Love and to Loathe by Martha Walters

A Rogue of One’s Own by Evie Dunmore

When He Was Wicked by Julia Quinn

Dreaming of You by Lisa Kleypas

Married by Morning by Lisa Kleypas

Devil’s Daughter by Lisa Kleypas

Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake by Sarah MacLean

Forever Your Earl by Eva Leigh

Scandal Takes the Stage by Eva Leigh

The Good Girl’s Guide to Rakes by Eva Leigh

Wicked Intentions by Elizabeth Hoyt

The Devil is a Marquess by Elisa Braden

Bound By Your Touch by Meredith Duran

The Lady Gets Lucky by Joanna Shupe

Non-Rake Romances:

Thief of Shadows by Elizabeth Hoyt

My Fake Rake by Eva Leigh

Temptations of a Wallflower by Eva Leigh

Lord of Darkness by Elizabeth Hoyt

Age-Gap Romances: 

What I Did For a Duke by Julie Anne Long

Any Duchess Will Do by Tessa Dare

Governess Romances: 

The Governess Game by Tessa Dare

What a Difference a Duke Makes by Lenora Bell

Married By Morning by Lisa Kleypas

Political Plots: 

A Lady’s Code of Misconduct by Meredith Duran

Confessions From an Arranged Marriage by Miranda Neville

League of Extraordinary Women series by Evie Dunmore

Amnesia Plots: 

Regarding the Duke by Grace Callaway

A Lady’s Code of Misconduct by Meredith Duran

When the Marquess Was Mine by Caroline Linden

Devil in Disguise by Lisa Kleypas

Inter-Class Romances: 

Again the Magic by Lisa Kleypas

Secrets of a Summer Night by Lisa Kleypas

Marrying Winterborne by Lisa Kleypas

Chasing Cassandra by Lisa Kleypas

Devil in Disguise by Lisa Kleypas

Wicked and the Wallflower by Sarah MacLean

Brazen and the Beast by Sarah MacLean

An Offer From a Gentleman by Julia Quinn

Girl Meets Duke series by Tessa Dare

Any Duchess Will Do by Tessa Dare

Would I Lie to the Duke by Eva Leigh

Thief of Shadows by Elizabeth Hoyt

Dearest Rogue by Elizabeth Hoyt

Duke of Sin by Elizabeth Hoyt

Duke of Pleasure by Elizabeth Hoyt

What a Difference a Duke Makes by Lenora Bell

Love is a Rogue by Lenora Bell

Girl Bachelors series by Laura Lee Guhrke

The Duchess Hunt by Lorraine Heath

The Duke Heist by Erica Ridley

#historical romance #romance tag #book tag