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jennifercrowart · 3 years

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D&D Diary - The Yawning Rodent, 11

Refresher: Our adventurers Lugs (grung barbarian), Lurk (grung rogue), Aelia (tiefling cleric), and Valas (drow sorcerer) with tagalong Deku (ratfolk cleric) levelled up to 3, and Lugs and Lurk were able to get their new subclass abilities - Lugs becoming a Path of the Storm Herald barbarian with a swamp storm aura, and Lurk becoming a Soulknife rogue using psychic abilities.

The party went down the well shaft into the lower floor of the Sunless Citadel, lying to Yusdrayl about still needing to find Calcryx down there when, in reality, they'd found her earlier and taken her to the Rat's Nest to recover from her mistreatment at the hands of the Kobold Gang and Goblin Gang. They defeated a bugbear hunter and his two giant rat pets, and looted his old cave room. Next, they found a laboratory, and subdued the goblin interns working there. They found and rescued Chadley Hucrele, one of the Hucrele siblings they were sent to the Sunless Citadel to rescue in the first place. He'd been experimented on by a man they've heard of called Belak, who seems to be the boss running the lower floor of this citadel and controlling the Goblin Gang, so Chadley had started to transform into a plant creature.

Sunless Citadel spoilers!

The party decides to start exploring more of this floor by checking out the large rift that opened up from the back of one of the laboratory's empty rooms. The tunnel quickly becomes pitch black, with no luminescent fungi growing off the walls and providing light like in the other rooms of the temple. Luckily, Lugs has his candle of Continual Flame strapped to his head to provide a source of light as he goes down first.

Chadley asks if the party knows what they're going to be doing, and if he should do anything as well. Aelia tries to check out if he's got what it takes to fight, but in his current state - sickly, beaten-up, and scared, with plant-like growths growing out of his barky skin, and stripped of his armour and weaponry - it's nearly impossible to tell. Not wanting to send him back upstairs alone, they decide to take Chadley with them.

The rift they're going down looks like the earth has split to either side, probably when the citadel sunk beneath the ground. The lower walls and floor are littered with 2-foot-wide holes. As they go further down, they find what looks like corridors to the left and right sides of them - a single corridor of the citadel that had been rendered straight through when the rift formed, offsetting the two halves from each other. They try the left-side corridor first.

At the end of the corridor is a small room, no traps or locks on the door. The lovely tiling in the room has since been shaken up by the earth, crumbling and falling off the walls and ceiling and smashing on the floor. Everything is covered in thick layers of dust and dirt. On the floor in the centre of the room is a decorative circular tile, with writing on it in Draconic, and in front of it against the back wall is a stone statue of a dragon with a tray in its mouth. Deku translates the writing on the tile into Common, stepping back and telling the others that it says, "let the warrior's strength embolden my body."

Everyone starts having a look around the room. As he's normally quite good at investigating already, Deku casts a spell on Lurk to help boost his abilities even more. He opens his purple eyes and a laser grid shoots out, scanning the area. Lurk determines that this place looks like it was made to be a small offering and prayer chamber for the lower class occupants of this citadel to worship the statue. Aelia, recalling her basic archaeologist research about the Sunless Citadel that she'd looked up before they got here, realises that the statue is of a red dragon in particular, and must be of Ashardalon - the red dragon the Cult of the Dragon (AKA Keepers of the Secret Hoard) worshipped when they once lived here, before the citadel fell. Deku confirms this, having read about it in his Cults Around the World book.

Lugs tries putting 100 gold pieces into the offering tray the statue is holding, but nothing happens. Deku, wondering if the people who would come here to pray would do so while standing on the decorative tile, tells Lugs to stand there and copy the words he says in Draconic; "Let the warrior's strength embolden my body."

Although he doesn't really understand, Lugs is eager to play along as he usually does, and mimics what Deku says while standing on the tile. Suddenly, a torrent of blue flames - not real flames, just an illusion - jet out of the tile's seams and wash over him, imbuing him with strength. He tells Lurk that he feels sturdier than before, as he now has advantage on constitution checks and saves for the next while. Happy with this service, Lugs puts 200 more gold into the offering tray. Amazed, Aelia and Deku scramble to do the same so they can get a boost to their wimpy spellcaster constitutions, but the tile and statue no longer react, even when Aelia tries to offer some gold in the tray. Sighing, she returns all the gold to her pockets.

The party goes back through the corridor to the rift passageway, and Lugs, again, goes first while the others try to look out for any traps. The rift splits into an open cavern, full of more of the holes in the ground and lower walls. Just in front of the doorway is a littering of what appears to be goblin bones, picked clean. At the back of the cave, one of the larger holes glows with a warm red and orange light from within. As Lugs walks gung-ho into the cave and his companions talk amongst themselves behind him, the light from the hole starts to waver, and then disappears further down the hole until it's no longer visible. Suddenly, a large red snake with tendrils of flames licking off its head and body looms out from the hole closest to Lugs, the source of the light now clear as it radiates a hot fiery glow from its body. Lugs' frog skin tingles uncomfortably as it starts to dry out from the close proximity. The fire snake hisses, revealing their long fangs.

Aelia, for some reason not phased at all, marches from the thick of the group up to Lugs and the fire snake. As though she was a snake wrangler in a past life, she wastes no time in outstretching her fingers towards the creature and upcasting Guiding Bolt. A huge flash of light sparks from above her head and shoots towards the snake, and everyone tries to cover their eyes, blinded for a moment from the flare. As their spotty vision returns, they find that the fire snake has already been completely annihilated by the extraordinarily strong spell. Aelia blinks, eyes wide in disbelief at what just happened and how strong her spell was, and slowly lowers her hands.

Lurk goes to check out the rest of the snake's cave, the holes clearly leading to a tunnel system beneath the ground that it had made. In its nest at the back, he finds a few gems, which he pockets immediately. Aelia notices but doesn't say anything, like their secret siphoning off of treasure before the rest of the party notices has now become a game between the two. Nothing else is really in the cavern aside from the remains of toasted goblin skeletons.

The party heads back out into the rift, backtracking to find the other half of the corridor from earlier and going down it. Showing a bit of confidence for once, Chadley smirks and flirts, complimenting Aelia on her strong spell, but she doesn't really take any mind. The door at the end of the hall opens up - as they suspected - the final unexplored door from the garden chamber they'd entered into at the start of this floor, after dropping in from the well shaft above.

As they're back here again, they decide to explore the nearby bugbear hunter's cave tunnel that they'd left behind earlier. Lurk tries to go down it, and it's lit with the luminescent fungi, but it appears to fork, with one path leading upwards and the other path leading further downwards, presumably into the Underdark.

They go back through the laboratory, to where Lugs had once passed through the weapon storeroom and found a door to the adjoining unexplored hallway, its walls decorated with etchings of dragons torching cities. Knowing that Lugs had seen another bugbear gardener with a mean sickle-bladed glaive on their back when he'd poked his head in earlier, Lurk goes on to scout ahead, quietly sneaking out the door and hiding behind a pillar. Sure enough, the bugbear is patrolling the hallway, and doesn't see him. He creeps up behind her, and, after quickly coating his scimitar with the poison from his Grung skin, suddenly stabs her in the back before she even realises he's there.

The bugbear yells in pain and surprise and whirls around, lifting her glaive to defend herself while backing away from Lurk. The grung rogue, not bothered by the normally-intimidating height difference, suggests she drops her weapon and surrender, or he'll kill her. Frustrated and badly hurt, the bugbear hesitantly complies, and Lurk snatches up her glaive as soon as it hits the ground. Having disarmed her, Lurk goes and opens the main door from the laboratory, inviting the rest of the party in. The bugbear, dripping a lot of blood from the wound in her back, sinks to the ground to sit against a pillar, defeated.

They try to ask her questions, but the bugbear is flippant. Lurk tries to offer her 25 gold to buy her loyalty from her boss, Belak, sure that it would beat the wage he pays her. She doesn't seem to care about the money. Growing frustrated with her rude behaviour, Aelia steps forward, hands glowing with a spell to finish the bugbear off - but Lurk stays her hand. He suggests the bugbear leave the citadel and go to the Rat's Nest to find honest work, but she spits back, saying she has no idea what's waiting for her on the upper floor if the party of adventurers have already killed Durnn and the other goblins, suspecting Lurk just wants to send her into a death trap. Valas and Deku realise that she may be right, as the Kobold Gang are still upstairs, and would surely kill anyone they perceive to be a Goblin Gang member if the bugbear were to try and pass them. The bugbear also doesn't know how to get to the Rat's Nest at all. Valas comments that she doesn't seem to necessarily be loyal to Belak or to her job, but just nervous about testing her boss' power. She says she took the job here with her best friend - the bugbear hunter, Balsag - because it just sounded interesting and like she'd get to fight. Additionally, she adds that most of the goblins on this floor are just untrained interns doing research jobs for Belak, not fully trained bandits like Durnn had on the upper floor.

The party starts talking about how they want to proceed. The bugbear says the rooms connecting to this hallway are mostly arboretums where the interns are working, as well mentioning a snake being in one. Deku asks how to get to where Belak is, as she says that he must be working as usual, and she gives him the directions which he dutifully scribbles down onto a piece of parchment: go up through this hallway to the northern arboretum, take the southwest door from there into the big dragon shrine, go up through the library, down and along a very long corridor, and there at the end he'll either be in his study, or he'll be at the back of his massive main garden. Of course, Lurk hears that they should start by going north, and he immediately goes south into a different arboretum.

In there, he finds a few goblin interns and a bandit gathering white fungi from the garden beds into little baskets of test tubes. He casually commands them all to drop to the floor, and the interns immediately do so, hiding their heads beneath their hands as they cower. The one trained fighter in the group initially draws his scimitar, but when he sees that the others have surrendered, he drops his weapon and puts his hands up. Valas, Deku, and Aelia set to work on gathering all the white fungi, convinced it must be the same ingredient used to make the potion that Chadley was forced to drink to turn into a half-plant creature. Valas uses his Frostbite cantrip on the pile of fungi they gather, killing off the plants so that no one can continue using them for such nefarious purposes.

Lurk moves on to the southeast arboretum off the dragon hallway. After a cursory look, he sees that no one is in this one. As he's walking through and having a poke around, another fire snake suddenly rears out from a hole in the centre garden bed, poised to strike him. The realisation dawns on him that, although this room was otherwise empty, a lot of the plants here look burnt and charred, which he'd noticed too late. Before the snake can attack, he flees the room and slams the door shut.

Lugs, instead, pokes his head into the same room, as the snake slithers around to face him. Reaching into his pocket, he grabs the strips of jerky pet treats he'd taken from the bugbear hunter's body, and tosses them in front of the fiery monster while rubbing his fingers together and saying "pspspspspspsps" like trying to coach over a cat. The snake stops, staring him down for a few minutes, before it greedily snaps up the jerky. Lugs grins widely, and dashes off to retrieve one of the goblin carcasses slain by Lurk in the laboratory earlier. He eases into the arboretum to drop the body in front of the snake, before running back to hide behind the door, eagerly peering through the crack to watch. The fire snake, again, stares at him, flicking their tongue in and out and trying to gauge the grung's intentions, before they unhinges their jaws and begins swallowing the goblin whole. Lugs tears a small strip of fabric off of his pants and rubs it on his skin, apparently trying to make sure the fabric clearly has his scent on it, and tosses it over to the snake's meal so the snake can get used to his scent. He closes the door all the way, and turns to Lurk, proudly saying that he's feeding his new pet snake, so Lurk should tell the others not to go in there. Lurk's amused.

The party goes back into the laboratory, taking the bugbear gardener with them. Lurk sets to work rounding up all the surviving goblins they'd terrified into submission (as well as waking up the confused and scared goblins who had been sleeping in the bunk room), but is suddenly surprised that the goblins - particularly the untrained interns - are so scared of them now, shaking in terror as he tells them to all line up. He tries to calm them down, but also says that they have a choice: they can either go up to the upper level and face the Kobold Gang, or they can go into the hunter's Underdark tunnel. Valas cuts in, saying that, as an Underdark native, he says it's definitely not a good idea to send them into the Underdark - they'll surely die, as it's such a dangerous place. Deku asks the goblins why they're torturing humans (like Chadley) for Belak, and the bugbear confirms that the Goblin Gang had been taken over by Belak and his aggressive bugbear crew, giving the weaker goblins the choice of either obeying him or being killed - so they obeyed him.

The adventurers decide to take the goblins and bugbear with them, potentially back to the Rat's Nest or to the surface where they can be let free. Finally, Lurk asks the name of the bugbear they've captured. She says that her name is Grimwarg. They start tying up the prisoners so they're linked around the waists by a rope, still able to climb up the well shaft to the upper level but unable to easily escape their captivity.

Before they leave, Lugs ducks his head into the snake's arboretum again, and says in Grung, "goodbye for now, Snakey, I love you!"

They all climb up the vines in the well to the upper floor, with Valas and Deku leading the way. As they climb up, Deku says that he thinks Valas will do a great job of lying to Yusdrayl about Calcryx, and gives him a friendly pat on the back while stealthily casting a charisma-boosting spell. Valas notices the spell, but wilfully ignores it, taking the encouragement.

When they reach the top of the well, Yusdrayl is dozing in Durnn's old throne, still sitting upright with her head leaning on her propped-up hand. The two elite guards on either side of her tap the stone throne so she wakes up with a start, greeting Valas and Deku and asking how they've gone on their search for Calcryx. Valas tells her that they haven't found the dragon yet, but they did find a laboratory where the real boss controlling the Goblin Gang has been experimenting on people. Since they haven't found Calcryx yet, he theorises that this is because Belak must be keeping her with him, not letting the valuable creature out of his sight. Yusdrayl agrees that that's probably the case.

As Grimwarg and the other goblin prisoners start to come up from the well, Valas also tells Yusdrayl about how they captured most of Belak's workers from his laboratory. The Kobold Gang leader is impressed, and mentions how her guards escorted Durnn and the last of his gang members after the big fight out via the tunnel the Kobold Gang has that leads to the surface, used by their foragers to find and bring back food. She suggests that these prisoners be escorted out by her guards as well, but Valas politely declines the offer, saying they have it handled. Grimwarg comments that this must be the Kobold Gang leader that she's heard about before, and Yusdrayl tilts her chin up at her, boasting about how she's beaten the Goblin Gang and chased Durnn out.

Because of his broken arm, Chadley wasn't able to climb up the well by himself. When Lugs reaches the top, he throws back down a rope that Chadley can hold onto with his foot put through a loop at the end, so the strong grung and everyone else can haul him up. When Yusdrayl sees the human, she's appalled, disgusted at his transformed body, and agrees that Belak must be stopped. Chadley looks embarrassed and ashamed.

The party suggests that Chadley can get seen to at the Rat's Nest, though Chadley says he could probably contact his mother to send someone to fetch him so he can be seen by the family's private and expensive medical professionals. While he would like to stay and help find his sister, he's aware he's in no shape to do so.

Ready to leave the Sunless Citadel so they can take the prisoners away and get themselves a good rest at the inn, the exhausted adventurers leave Yusdrayl and continue on their way out.

#dnd #d&d #dm diary #dm diaries #dnd diary #dnd diaries #the yawning rodent #sunless citadel #5e #d&d diary #d&d diaries #dungeon master #session recap

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ratedbangtann · 4 years

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☞DEDITIONEM ↔ bts x hogwarts

⟿ 𝐃𝐄𝐃𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐄𝐌.

❝𝙩𝙤 𝙨𝙪𝙧𝙧𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙧, 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘱 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘢𝘯 𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘮𝘺 𝘰𝘳 𝘰𝘱𝘱𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝙨𝙪𝙗𝙢𝙞𝙩 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘢𝘶𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘺.❞ 𝘽𝙚𝙨𝙩 𝙛𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙨 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙮𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙨, 𝙣𝙤𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙 𝙩𝙚𝙖𝙧 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙖𝙬𝙖𝙮 𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙚𝙖𝙘𝙝 𝙤𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧. 𝘼𝙩 𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙩, 𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙪𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙡 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙥𝙡𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙩𝙚𝙙 𝙛𝙚𝙚𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙨 𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙧𝙩 𝙩𝙤 𝙖𝙧𝙞𝙨𝙚, 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙤𝙣 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙖𝙙𝙤𝙧𝙚𝙙 𝙢𝙤𝙨𝙩 𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙬𝙤𝙧𝙡𝙙 𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙣𝙚𝙙 𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙗𝙖𝙘𝙠 𝙤𝙣 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙛𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙨...

☞ 𝘣𝘵𝘴 𝘹 𝘩𝘰𝘨𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘴 ☞ 𝘧𝘦𝘮!𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳 ☞ 𝘧𝘭𝘶𝘧𝘧/𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘴𝘵/𝘴𝘮𝘶𝘵 ☞ 𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘰𝘸 ☞ 13.5𝘬 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘴

𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘷𝘪𝘢. 𝘬𝘰-𝘧𝘪/𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥𝘣𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘯

DISCLAIMER: This is set post-battle of Hogwarts but BEFORE the kids of Harry Potter and Co. arrive. Also, there is no smut arising until final year, when all participants are 18 and consenting adults. Just a ridiculous amount of crushing on each other and pining. Ta.

Warnings: Unrequited love, angry and bitter behaviour, stalker-ish behaviour, friends to enemies to lovers, deliberate pettiness, implied virginity loss, BDSM, dom/sub dynamic, use of “sir”, magic use, unprotected sex (wrap it tf up)Commissioned via. ko-fi.com/ratedbangtann

*****

“Ah, an easy one…” the grumbling voice of the hat perked up, “Slytherin!” He called, and quickly, Professor McGonagall lifted the hat from your head, ushering you down to the long table filling up with your housemates. The hall filled with the monotonous applause of every other student as you took your place. You sat next to the boy on the end, the boy with the fluffy blonde curls, who held his hand out for you to shake. You took it, gladly.

“Jimin,” he smiled, teeth glittering under the levitating candles.

“I’m _____,” you smiled back. Just as conversation was about to ensue, a relatively short boy tapped you on the shoulder. He was clearly a few years older than you, already wearing his Slytherin robes. He beamed down at you with a bright gummy smile, seeming to mimic your excitement. You wondered if he was aware of your family forged of pure bloods, dating back centuries; most people seemed to be.

“I was aware you were starting this year. Welcome, ____! You’ve got quite the name to live up to, you know,” the older boy gleamed, folding his arms over his chest with a smirk. It seemed your family name proceeded you.

“I’ll rise to it, I’m sure,” you grinned back. He chuckled, Jimin beside you watching the exchange closely. By the wide eyed look on his unblemished face, it was clear he didn’t actually know who you were at all.

“Min Yoongi, prefect. Hoping to be head boy in future,” Yoongi introduced himself. Ah, so he was a fifth year.

“Oh, a min? Wow, I didn’t know you’d come all the way from Korea to England for your studies.”

“Parents want me to live up to my potential. I can’t blame them, much,” he smiled. “May I?” He gestured to the space beside you, where the rest of the first years were soon to be seated as they were sorted into their houses. You nodded.

“Jeon Jungkook!” McGonagall called the name from the scroll in her hands, and up stepped a young boy with huge doe eyes, wide with nerves. He took his seat on the stool in front of the hall, and waited for the judgement call.

“Hmm… Despite the nerves, there is an air of courage to you, boy. A competitive streak you must watch out for. A chivalrous need to do good,” the hat paused, the wrinkles forming an expression of deep thought, before, “GRYFFINDOR!”

Jungkook seemed to visibly relax, his shoulders dropping with the weight of his nerves fizzling away. The hall erupted in cheers again, Gryffindor’s table louder than the rest, but still you continued to applaud him as he stepped down and took his place at his table. You could see him clearly from where you sat, the benches opposite you both remaining empty for the time being.

He looked up and ahead, his eyes falling on you. You smiled sweetly, but watched with amusement as his head lowered to his hands in his lap, his attention then diverted quickly by another first year sitting beside him. Had he known who you were too? It seemed already a few people had, by the looks you had garnered as you took your place to be sorted. Or perhaps, he was just very shy around girls…

Either way, you decided right then and there that Jeon Jungkook was a cutie.

And your belief was only solidified as the first term passed. You wound up in quite a few classes together, and the more you saw of Jeon Jungkook, the more you liked him. And the same could be said for the friends you had made alone the way too.

Jimin was glued to your side since day one; in class, down the halls, in the dorm, breakfast, lunch, dinner, time off. You couldn’t shake him; not that you wanted to. He was sweet, and the pair of you got up to mischief together often, playing pranks on the first years in other houses. That’s how you had met Kim Taehyung.

Taehyung was a Hufflepuff, however you recalled the sorting hat’s turmoil over whether to put him into Hufflepuff or Slytherin. But in the end, his kindness, his loyalty and his patience had won him his yellow-lined robes. Still, when you and Jimin decided to practise a few spells on unsuspecting first years one uneventful Thursday, you had found him to be an adorable boy who quickly gelled with the pair of you.

He’d been sat under a tree in the grounds, peacefully taking some much needed self-study time with a book in his hands. You pointed him out to Jimin, recognising him particularly from your potions class. He seemed a shy boy, never really speaking up - or speaking at all, for that matter. But it made him enticing to mess with.

Yourself and Jimin were sat under a stone arch window, leaning up against the arch and sat opposite each other. You kicked his ankle to raise his attention from the group of third year girls walking down the corridor, nodding in Taehyung’s direction.

“What?” he asked, annoyed that you’d ruined his concentration.

“Watch this,” you said, straightening up and pulling your wand from your sleeve. “Wingardium, leviosa…” you whispered under your breath, swishing and flicking your wand. You had directed your wand at an acorn dangling off a branch above his head, levitating it off its branch and dropping it onto Taehyung’s head. He looked up with a start, an incredulous look on his face. You giggled; he was adorable.

“You can do better than that…” Jimin probed, willing you to continue to mess with the boy. “Here…” He straightened himself up too, pulling his own wand. “Wingardium leviosa…” He held his wand out to the book in Taehyung’s hand, levitating it up above him. Taehyung frowned, standing on his feet to reach for the book but Jimin was quicker, flicking it just out of reach as the boy jumped for it. With his attention diverted, you went in again.

“Accio bag,” you summoned, Taehyung’s tatty satchel filled with books raising in the air and flying to land in your hands. Jimin let the book drop, hitting Taehyung’s head and the boy sighed, sitting back down to find that his bag wasn’t where he left it. He looked around him frantically, only to see yourself and Jimin giggling and waving at him, his bag in his hands.

He stood up again, wondering over to you with his head held low in embarrassment, an adorable blush forming on his cheeks.

“C-can I have my bag, please?” he stammered, pointing at the thing now resting in your lap. You ignored his request.

“It’s Taehyung, right? We’re in Potions together,” you smiled brightly. He nodded. “I’m _____, this is Jimin,” Jimin waved, still giggling inwardly from the boy’s cute reactions.

“Were you… making fun of me?” he asked, picking at his nail beds with nerves. Immediately, you felt awful. Is that what he thought?

“No! No, oh my god no, just having some harmless fun. You looked kinda lonely…” A silence settled over the three of you, Taehyung not knowing if he should trust you or not.

“I’m starved… Want to come to the Great Hall for something to eat?” Jimin asked, lightening the mood and directing the attention away from the uncomfortable quiet. Taehyung’s head perked up then and he smiled, nodding affirmatively. You and Jimin stood from your seats in the arch, and you handed his bag back to him.

“Sorry, Taehyungie…” you ruffled his hair, and linked your arm with his, pulling him with you into the halls to head off to the Great Hall together. It was an unspoken agreement between Jimin and yourself that you would adopt the boy into your little social circle that was just beginning. After that, Taehyung just kind of meshed well with the two of you.

But Jungkook… It took him a little longer to gravitate towards your friendly trio. In fact, he seemed terrified of you. Every time you’d catch him looking at you in class, he’d hurriedly look somewhere else or pretend to be hard at work on something in front of him. Truth be told, he wanted nothing more than to say hello, but he was most definitely intimidated by you. It took a few months of catching him looking to get a little irritated by it; not so much that you were genuinely annoyed, but enough that you wanted to mess with him, or find some way to talk to him without cornering him completely…

And an opportunity arose in Herbology.

“Class, you need to pair up with someone you haven’t paired with before,” Professor Longbottom announced to the greenhouse. Immediately your eyes fell on Jungkook, who was already staring at you. His eyes bulged when you beckoned to him, a smirk tugging at your lips. But he couldn’t run away now, he was trapped.

“Okay, we’ll be reading up on fungi and their uses today, I want each pair to pick a fungus to explain to the class at the end.”

Jungkook trudged over to you with caution, standing just a little too far from you to be deemed normal at the workbench.

“Hi, I’m _____,” you said proudly, offering a hand to shake. He took it so gently, proceeding with absolute prudence.

“J-Jungkook…” Of course, you already knew that. But you played along.

“Awesome, shall we?” You gestured to the textbook in front of you, skipping through a few pages to discover something interesting to talk about with the class. After making a few notes and earning a few hums of approval from Jungkook, he finally spoke up.

“Why did you pick me?” He asked, his hair falling into his eyes as he looked up at you.

Without missing a beat, without even looking up from your textbook, you replied, “Well, you’re always staring. Thought you might want a closer look.”

His cheeks flushed a brilliant scarlet colour. He had no response to that, no back up at all. He hadn’t expected it. You looked up then, and smiled playfully.

“Relax, it’s fine. You could have said hi, though.”

And that was how you had introduced yourself to Jeon Jungkook. You’d practically dragged the poor boy to meet Jimin and Taehyung in the Slytherin common room; of course, you had to be with him to allow him entry to your house’s common room, and Taehyung had to be with Jimin. But you’d met there anyway, and introduced the younger boy to them as a friend.

Yoongi hadn’t been too impressed; he was a bit of a traditionalist, believing that students needed to stick to their own house’s common rooms, but he allowed it anyway. It wasn’t as if there were any hard and fast rules against it. He had no grounds to stand on. And you were pretty sure he’d snuck Hoseok in once or twice; another fifth year student from Hufflepuff house. But that was his business…

Your friendship blossomed over the first year, all of you growing exceptionally close. Each of you had your niches, your own presence in the school. Jungkook was an exceptionally talented quidditch player, Taehyung was a potions whiz, you were a herbology prodigy and Jimin… well, Jimin was good with the ladies. You often joked that the only spell he ever cast was on the girls around school. He was a notable flirt, never seemingly to get into relationships - he professed he was far too young for that - but always charming some new girl.

That first summer where you had to go your separate ways, there were so many tears. You knew you’d miss your boys terribly, but the promise of a reunion in the months to follow was enough to see you through.

Second year came around quickly, classes changing and new friends being made; mostly in the form of the now sixth year student, Min Yoongi and his cohorts. You knew of Jung Hoseok, the Hufflepuff (no matter how much Yoongi tried to keep their *cough* friendship a secret). But earning their respect had earned you the attention of Kim Namjoon and Kim Seokjin; both Ravenclaws due to their academic prowess, wisdom and wit. Seokjin was more on the witty side, but Namjoon was frankly the brightest student you’d ever met. And despite the age gaps between you all, you seemed to work together well.

Namjoon would often help you and the others with your studies, even giving you extra-curricular activities to keep you ahead of the rest of your year. He was good to you, like an older brother. Seokjin was like your mother and comic relief. Yoongi became a kind of Guardian too, whilst Hoseok seemed to be a kid brother despite the age difference.

Jungkook moved his way up the rankings in the quidditch team quickly, becoming a seeker in the first term of your second year. With his new found vocation, he was an extremely popular guy, as were the rest of you. You hadn’t expected to be quite so popular amongst the entire student body, but through your family name, your likeable personality and the association with the rest of your friends, everybody learned your name quickly.

Third year wasn’t much different from second, other than the impending time limit on your friendship with the now final year students. It was always in the back of your mind, that you’d be about to lose four of your closest friends as they graduated, but all you could do was make the most of your time together and promise to stay in contact.

Their graduation ceremony was a joyous occasion, and honestly, you’d never felt pride like it. But watching your best friends get into the enchanted boats that had brought them here in order to take them home, had broken your heart. Tears had streamed down your cheeks silently as you held back sobs, waving to them as they waved back to you. Jungkook had stepped up next to you, wrapping your hand in his and lacing your fingers together without a word, not even a glance in your direction. But when you looked up, you saw his glossy eyes and his quivering lip and you knew he was just as torn as you had been.

And then along came fourth year, and with it, a different dynamic. There were just four of you now. Jimin, Taehyung, Jungkook and yourself. If anything at all, the four of you became impossibly closer. But complicated feelings started to arise, sending you in a bit of a tailspin.

The first time you noticed it was during a Quidditch match; the first one of the year. You, Jimin and Taehyung had all been watching the games, and despite your prospective houses, you were all cheering for your best friend; Jungkook. Gryffindor vs. Hufflepuff was a fairly easy match, in Jungkook’s eyes. Even Taehyung was first to admit his house team just wasn’t likely to beat Gryffindor.

Still, you sat in the stands cheering and whistling every time Jungkook whizzed past you on his broom. He was truly an incredible player, the kind that others feared being up against. He’d been advised by their team captain to hang back at the beginning of games, because he was just too fast for the snitch. He’d easily catch it and the games would be over. So instead, he’d help his teammates rack up points to create an interesting game, before he got the signal from the captain to go ahead and go in for the catch.

Now, was that time. He’d been flagged down, and told to go for it. You watched in awe as he shot across the field, tracking down the snitch almost immediately and following it for a few minutes before he got close enough, reached out, and grabbed it with minimal effort. He flew for a little while longer as you cheered and screamed for him, clapping your hands and jumping around ecstatically in the stands, before he stopped to hover in front of you and the boys.

He held the snitch up in his hand, earning a large wave of applause and screams that made your heart swell with pride. The brightest of bunny smiles snuck across his face, which in the years since the first, you had noticed had become a little less rounded, and more… angular Had he… had he always been so charismatic? You weren’t sure, but right now…

And then he looked down at you, snitch in hand, and he smiled even brighter, with an accompanying wink.

Right then; that was the moment Jeon Jungkook went from best friend to hopeless crush.

And it only seemed to continue to develop as the terms passed. You noticed little things about him that you adored, that before had just been another Jungkook-ism but now were the most endearing little acts you had ever seen. The way he’d stick his tongue out in concentration when pouring ingredients together in potions. The way he’d giggle at conversation when it was just you and your boys relaxing together. The way he’d get all pouty and cute when he wanted something. They were all just Jungkook-isms, but you loved them. Oh god, you loved them so much.

And then Jimin noticed. Of course, he did. He noticed the way your eyes would follow the back of Jungkook’s head when he left a room, and the way you’d stare longingly at him no matter if he were right beside you or the other side of the quidditch pitch. And of course, he cornered you about it as you were leaving your dorm room one morning.

“_____!” He called your name, giving you a goddamn heart attack and making you jump 3ft in the air, brandishing your wand immediately as if an attack were about to go down. “Whoa, hey! Only me, put… the wand… down…”

Slowly you lowered it, heart racing. “Moron,” you chided, “I could’ve killed you, I hope you know.” Of course, you never would have, but it wouldn’t hurt to threaten him just a little.

“Wanted to talk to you about something,” he grinned, suspiciously gleeful.

“And what’s that, Jiminie?” You cocked your head to the side in intrigue.

“Jungkook.” Even the name sent a wave of butterflies coursing through you.

“W-what about Jungkook?” Your brow furrowed as you tried to act natural.

“Oh, nothing much, just the way you - quite obviously - adore the bones of him. I’ve noticed. Does someone have a little crush on our Jungkookie, hmm?” His eyebrow quirked up and his lips tugged into a smirk.

“No, of course I-“

“Don’t make me enchant your tongue to tell nothing but the truth. You know I can do it, ______.”

“If you say a word to anyone Jimin I swear to god, I will absolutely destroy you,” you threatened, your tone hardening.

“AH, SO YOU DO!” He yelled, but you smacked your hand to his mouth, pushing him against the corridor wall.

“Not. A. Word.” He nodded against your hand, smirking when you pulled yourself off him.

“You should tell him though. You’d be cute together,” he giggled. You smacked his shoulder.

“I don’t wanna hear another word about it, Jimin. Not one,” you rolled your eyes and headed off in the direction of your first class, Jimin hot on your heels. He kept quiet as you had asked him to, but he had a boisterous grin on his face all day. Even Jungkook and Taehyung knew something was up, but one glare from you was enough to keep him silent.

Perhaps you had planned to tell Jungkook at some point, but the time just never felt right. Rarely were you ever alone together for anything other than studying, and when you were… well, you bottled it. And then before you knew it, you were saying your goodbyes again for the summer.

The boys had all come with you to the train station to bundle you and your luggage on the Hogwarts Express, all of them of course having to use a far more convenient mode of transport to head back to Korea for the few months you were apart. You were sadder this year than most, at the thought of being away from Jungkook for so long. You had been so close to telling him so many times but always lost your nerve, and now you wouldn’t have the chance for a while…

“We’ll miss you, ____!” Taehyung threw his arms around your neck, squishing you into one of his signature bear hugs.

“I know, Tae. Won’t be long before we’re back though, you watch,” you wrapped your arms around his middle, burrowing into his shoulder. He pulled back, holding you at arm’s length.

“I know, as fifth years! Already…” he looked so deep in thought for a moment, silence washing over him as his gaze flitted off to somewhere unknown. Jimin rolled his eyes and pushed him out the way for his turn to say goodbye.

“You know, one of these summers you’re going to have to come and stay with us in Korea. You can see the hyungs again, we can show you where we’re from,” he pulled you into a hug then, “and not have to be away from Jungkook for months on end…” he whispered the last part into your ear as he pulled you closer. You swatted his back, staying quiet while you hugged goodbye.

And then it was Jungkook’s turn, and your heart started to race. It seemed just a little over the top to react in such a way to a small exchange like this, but as your crush had developed it had seemingly snowballed into a pathetic level of infatuation. And you were about to be in his arms, the way you always daydreamed of and pathetically longed for.

Jungkook’s hugs were always different from the others. Instead of wrapping his arms around your neck because he was taller than you, he always bent his knees a little to wrap them around your waist, lifting you to your tip toes and holding you tight to his chest. You loved Jungkook’s hugs before you realised your soul-destroying crush on him, but now? Well, they made you feel a little light headed. And today was no exception.

The second his hands snaked around your waist and he lifted you, you were clinging to him like a monkey and burying your face into his neck.

“I’m gonna miss you so much…” he whined, pressing a kiss to your hair as he held you. “Promise you’ll write to us?”

“I do every summer, Koo…” you chuckled, your voice laced with a hidden sadness.

“I know, but… Just wanna make sure.”

The train on the platform wailed impatiently, steam rising out of the front. Jungkook put you down, then, knowing you had to leave.

“See you in a few months, guys!” You waved, picking up your carry-on bag and stepping onto the train to find yourself a relatively private corner to mope in. This was going to be a long, depressing train ride…

Over the summer you still wrote to the boys weekly, except you told yourself that you needed to distance yourself from Jungkook a little more. You were getting far too close, far too clingy and it would do you no good if you wanted to get over your crush. A great plan, in theory. It just meant being a little less persistent in your pining, and by the end of the summer, you felt perhaps a little normal again.

At least, until you arrived back at that same station, ready to start fifth year, and found him waiting for you. Where the other two were, you weren’t sure and right now, you were mentally cursing them out for not being at the platform with Jungkook. Because of course, now all the attention was focussed solely on him, and him alone.

“____!” He grinned, rushing forward to envelope you in a long-awaited Koo hug. Except this time, when he bent to wrap his arms around your waist and lift you, your toes no longer touched the floor.

“Jesus, Koo! Did you grow like, a foot? What do they feed you in Korea?” You laughed, falling immediately into old routines of adoring the boy far too much. He just chuckled at you, setting you back on your feet and rushing to the luggage to pick yours out for you, carrying it with ease under his arms; arms that seemed to have developed into tree trunks. Had he always been this… buff?

“Come on, Chim and Tae are waiting.”

And they had been, in the Great Hall just before the first year sorting ceremony. You wondered in to find Jimin sat on the Hufflepuff table, with Taehyung sat on the bench below them. They had both jumped up to hug you the second you wondered in with Jungkook, as they did every year.

But the reunion would be short lived, when you all had to disperse to your house’s tables for the beginning of the ceremony. McGonagall stood at her head-mistress’ post to start the proceedings.

“And now, onto the appointment of the year five prefects. Prefects this year have been chosen with great care and attention, and I’m sure all fellow students will be more than thrilled for those appointed,” she cleared her throat, readying herself. “For Gryffindor house, Emiline Warburton and Jeon Jungkook.”

Your head snapped to see Jungkook standing from his table, pride washing over you as you applauded and whooped with your Jimin next to you. He deserved this, and frankly, it was inevitable with him being the golden boy of quidditch. And you were sure he’d be made team captain this year too.

He made his way up to the steps to receive his handshake and a pin for his robes, and turned to smile at you as everyone waited for the next announcement. You waited anxiously, hoping that you’d be called. You had wanted to be a prefect since second year, aiming later for head girl when the time came. And now with Jungkook up there, you wanted nothing more than to stand beside him.

“For Slytherin house, _______ _______ and Robert Driscol.” You sighed happily, a relieved smile washing over your face as you high-fived Jimin beside you. You slipped out from the bench and made your way to the platform to take your badge and your space next to Jungkook. He looked at you with so much pride in his eyes, slipping his arm around your shoulders to hug you to him in a congratulatory display of affection.

McGonagall announced the prefects from Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, neither of your other friends chosen but Tae didn’t mind; he’d never shown much interest in it, honestly. And Jimin’s reputation extended to the professors, so no way would he have been made prefect. Nevertheless, he was happy for the both of you. And soon after the first years were being ushered in to be sorted, and the evening festivities were underway.

You and Jimin ate happily together, sharing your food with playful flirting as had become customary of your friendship, particularly amped up since his discovery of your crush on one Jeon Jungkook. His letters to you were forever getting more and more flirtatious over the summer, but always, you knew it was just a joke. This was just Jimin; flirting with everything that breathed.

This was the perfect start to your year. You had high hopes for the following months to come, knowing you had everything you wanted and needed; good grades, good reputation, and your boys. Fifth year would be the best yet.

Or, so you thought…

It wasn’t that your grades went downhill. It wasn’t that your reputation suffered. It wasn’t that you had done anything wrong in particular at all, but things started to change…

*****

“______, can I read over your notes for the potions O.W.L? I wanna make sure I’m studying right,” Jimin asked whilst you and your boys sat around a table in the library. There were months until your June exams, sure, but ever the academic you had corralled your friends together for a weekly study session in order to be prepared for the exams in June.

“Sure, Jiminie…” you chimed, grabbing your potions book from your bag and sliding it across the table to him, sat opposite you.

“Thanks, cutie,” he winked with a smirk, diving into your notes with his quill ready in hand. You hadn’t noticed, but Jungkook stiffened at the pet name, his eyes widening at Jimin’s frankly brazen use of the term. He looked over at you, buried in your books as if it was nothing out of the ordinary. But Jungkook hadn’t seen the way your flirty best friend had been amping up his teasing over the summer, and it didn’t look like it was just friendly anymore…

In fact, Jungkook had noticed the two of you seemed closer, somehow. You had always been together, that much was true. But he’d picked up on the two of you whispering to each other often, or your conversation coming to a sudden stop whenever he or Taehyung approached you both. It was starting to piss him off, feeling like he was missing out on the joke. If the pair of you were going to be together then perhaps you should just come right out and say it, instead of flouting your ridiculous ‘secret’ in his and Tae’s faces.

Taehyung hadn’t seemed to notice much, but it was bothering Jungkook. God, the guy had liked you for so long, his heart swelling at the mere mention of your name since some time in second year. At least, that’s when he’d noticed that his thoughts of ‘wow look at her she’s so cute and smart’ had turned into thoughts of ‘oh holy crap there are real feelings involved here…’

And despite his courageous nature, he had never said anything to you in fear of ruining the incredible group of friends he’d surrounded himself with. The only person who had ever known of his feelings had been Namjoon, and in his wisdom he had encouraged Jungkook to express them. But alas, he hadn’t. And now it was clearly too late.

His subtle waist hugs and smiles in your direction had gone to waste. His technique of building up to it proved to be the wrong avenue to go down. And the sight of you and Jimin trying to keep it all a secret in front of him and Tae was making him feel physically sick.

“I’m going to the hospital wing. Don’t feel well,” he grumbled, standing from his chair and shoving his books in his bag with an annoyed grunt.

“What’s up, Kookie?” You asked, worry in your tone. But he didn’t answer, didn’t even look up at you as he turned and stomped his way out of the library, other students watching him as the noise of his boots disrupted the quiet.

“What’s with him?” Jimin asked. Taehyung just shrugged, pushing his reading glasses back up his nose and getting back to his own studies. Jimin seemed to do the same, but you kept staring at the doorway he’d left through, your brow creased. How strange of him to act this way…

And it only got worse in the months that followed. Jungkook was getting increasingly more volatile as the terms went on. He’d storm off often, snap at you when you tried to talk to him, brush you off every time you’d try to hug him. It was getting absolutely ridiculous. You had tried so hard to get through to him, to get him to open up but he didn’t want to know. Jimin, bless him, had tried too, but received an even more bitter response. Taehyung tried to stay out of it, to keep the peace any way he could but even he had to admit that it was completely out of character and totally uncalled for behaviour.

You had confided in Jimin many a time, often having conversations involving you turning to him with tears in your eyes, devastated that the guy you adored so much had turned so abrasive and rude to you all. He’d comfort you as best he could, but nothing would be of as much comfort as Jungkook’s own arms around you.

“Jimin I just don’t know what to do anymore… I feel like I’ve lost him. Forget my stupid feelings towards him, but I want my best friend back. He’s not the same person…” you sobbed into Jimin’s shoulder one evening, sat on a wall in the grounds of the castle. He wrapped an arm around your waist, pulling you further into his side until your face was buried in his neck.

“I know, I don’t know what the problem is. He won’t talk to us… Even Taehyung says he clams up whenever he tries. I don’t know what to do anymore either. It’d be unethical to use some kind of confessional potion, right?” He half joked, but the thought had crossed your mind also.

You nodded though; you could never do that to him. There must be a reason for all this, but if he wasn’t ready to tell then you would need to keep your concerns and your heartbreak to yourself. You could only do so much before you pushed him away completely, after all.

Jimin didn’t say anything else, instead turning his head to press a lingering, comforting kiss to your forehead. Instinctively, you wrapped your arms around his waist and burrowed further into him, letting your tears flow freely.

Of course, you had no idea that Jungkook had in fact been watching the pair of you from a window. He’d been on his way to the Gryffindor dorms when he caught sight of the two of you, looking mighty cosy as the twilight hours rolled in. Anger boiled in his blood at the sight, his heart thudding in his chest and fists clenching by his sides. He knew it. It hadn’t mattered that you’d tried to hide it from him, to conceal the truth with sniggers and quiet whispers; he could see you both with his own two envious eyes.

That was the final straw.

Jungkook hadn’t spoken to you or Jimin again after that. Even poor Taehyung suffered, only getting short answers from him. He never hung around with you anymore, never spent any real time with you. But you’d often feel his eyes on you, staring - no, glaring at you. The final term of fifth year was the worst yet, with a gloom settling over yourself, Jimin and Taehyung at the notion that you had lost one of your closest friends for seemingly no reason at all. You sat your exams and eventually, summer rolled around yet again.

The goodbyes were solemn, the mood dull and repressed as all three of you were very aware of the presence missing at the train station this year. You cried more tears as the train pulled away, and for most of your journey home. You were absolutely devastated.

But that summer hardened you up. You forced yourself to stop moping, to get yourself out of the slump you’d found yourself in. With Jungkook nowhere near you, and no contact with him whatsoever, you found it a slightly more bearable task to be able to get over him. Or at least, to push the thought of him and the feelings you harboured for the old Jungkook to the back of your head. He wasn’t the same person anymore. You had come to realise that with the help of Jimin.

Coming back for sixth year had been decidedly more depressing than you had planned, but the second you saw the loveable faces of Jimin and Taehyung waiting for you at the station, it melted away into a warmth emanating in your chest. If it weren’t for their slight growth spurts and the more angular jaws they now possessed, you’d have thought time hadn’t passed at all, and they’d been stood waiting for you to return without moving.

As a prefect, your job this year was to gather the first years with the other prefects and guide them to the Great Hall for the sorting ceremony. Jimin and Taehyung had already changed into their robes and headed to the hall, whilst you made your way to the dock to see the enchanted boats in. And then you saw him, carrying out his own prefect duties.

Jungkook was stood with the other Gryffindor prefects, his face stoic and emotionless. He looked different again, somehow thicker, more muscular under his robes. He’d let his hair grow a little, so it now tickled his cheeks and fell in his eyes. Your heart fell to your feet at the sight of him.

But no, you wouldn’t go down this route again. It was dangerous territory. So instead of joining him, you went to stand with the rest of the Slytherin prefects, easily slipping into conversation. Jungkook’s eyes had flitted over to you briefly, but he rolled them in annoyance and turned his back to you.

And that was how most of year six went. Over time you learned to deal with it, pushing the feeling of despair down and repressing any prior feelings you may have had for Jeon Jungkook. He still spoke to Taehyung, in passing. But Jimin had washed his hands of him completely, knowing how desperately he had broken your heart with his rude and erratic behaviour. How dare he hurt his best friend that way? How many nights had he spent stroking your hair as you sobbed? How many times had he let you rant and rave at him when all he wanted to do was find Jungkook and punch him, knock some sense into him? No, he wanted nothing more to do with him.

Instead, Jimin focussed his attention on you; he’d do anything to make you smile, to earn a giggle from you. He adored you, and while his affections were purely platonic, it seemed the rest of the year group were muttering behind your back, expecting that the two of you would eventually end up romantically involved, if you weren’t already. The rumours were circulating, unbeknownst to yourself or Jimin. Your casual flirting had fuelled the fire, and eventually, it got back around to Jungkook.

It made his blood boil. Ah, so they’re getting worse at hiding it. Fantastic. He was so filled with rage, with animosity towards Jimin more so than you - he could never truly hate you. After all, he was so sure he loved you that he could do nothing more than glare with dark eyes any time he saw either of you; alone or together. Classes became uncomfortable when you noticed he would stare, and you were constantly checking over your shoulder just in case he was there watching, lurking.

He hadn’t gone as far as to stalk you, but every time he saw you, he burned with a rage he couldn’t explain.

And the only person who noticed, the only person who could get close enough, was Taehyung. He knew he had to get it out of him eventually, but Jungkook was a closed book. Instead, Taehyung opted for observing the younger, following him even. He noticed patterns in his behaviours, little giveaways that told him more than Jungkook ever would with his own voice. And he saw it.

He saw the rage in Jungkook’s eyes when he spotted you and Jimin together. He saw the sadness flash over his face before it hardened into a statuesque picture of annoyance. He saw the way he’d glare at you both, turn varying shades of red with each passing second. Then it clicked. Taehyung saw Jungkook for what he was; foolishly and hopelessly in love with you.

Foolishly, because he had done nothing about it. And hopelessly, because he feared it was too late to fix it.

Taehyung stayed quiet for weeks, months, until the end of spring rolled around, and summer was edging ever closer. He figured it wasn’t his place to interfere, but enough was enough. He cornered Jungkook after Quidditch practise, out on the field when his teammates had left. He’d been training the first years, giving them trials and training exercises like any good captain would.

“Jungkook, we need to talk.”

“Not now, Tae. Busy,” he grunted, shoving the bludgers back into the safety locks in their chest. His strength alone was enough to overpower the enchanted balls and shove them to their rightful place, but it didn’t mean it wasn’t tough for Jungkook still. They were, after all, nasty little buggers…

“Yes, now. Stop running away from me,” Taehyung crouched the other side of the chest to get on Jungkook’s level. As he placed the last of the training equipment away, Taehyung smacked the lid down with a force that made Jungkook finally look up at him. “I know.”

“What are you talking about, Tae?” he sneered.

“I know why you’ve changed. I know why you’re angry. And I’m here to tell you you’re wrong,” he explained, a hardened look on his usually soft features.

“I haven’t changed, I’m not angry at anything,” Jungkook tried to bat him away, lifting the trunk with an audible grunt to take back inside. Taehyung sighed, pulling his wand as his friend went to walk away and giving it a swish, watching as the trunk flew out of Jungkook’s hands and across the field. Jungkook barely reacted, simply slapping his hands against his thighs and turning back to Tae with a tired expression.

“You’re being ridiculous. Stop listening to the rumours. Jimin and _____ are not together. They never have been, never will be.”

“Why would I care about that?” he laughed, with no humour whatsoever. Taehyung pointed his wand at Jungkook in a threatening manner.

“Because you adore her, Kook. You always have.” Jungkook shook his head, growing increasingly irritated.

“Whatever,” he muttered, pushing past Taehyung to retrieve the chest. Taehyung tried to grab his arm, but Jungkook acted on reflex, pulling his wand from his belt and casting, “FLIPENDO!” Taehyung flew into the air, tumbling a good twenty foot away from Jungkook and landing in the grass with a yelp. Jungkook’s eyes widened in absolute horror at what he had done. He hadn’t wanted to hurt Taehyung, but… he just… Shit.

He hurried towards the chest, lifting it onto his shoulder and running from the pitch in shame as Taehyung pushed himself up off the floor, every limb hurting. That was it. Taehyung was done with him now.

*****

Year seven was much like year six, only with the added pressure of the N.E.W.T exams looming and the now added responsibility of being appointed head girl. You worked hard for the title, earned it through your years but it felt tainted now, like you couldn’t truly be happy about it.

You spent day in, day out attempting to either hide yourself from Jungkook’s glares or purposefully encourage them to antagonise him. It became a sick little game of yours. You’d make sure he’d be able to see you when you were having your good days, skipping through the halls linking elbows with Jimin or laughing at the top of your lungs with Taehyung in the Great Hall. Even you had to admit, your Slytherin was showing…

Jungkook was the kind of bitter that made him stupidly stalk you in a stupid kind of self-destructive pattern. He knew when you’d take day trips with Jimin and Taehyung to Hogsmeade and follow you. He knew when you had free periods to spend studying in the library. He knew your class schedule, and the routine you’d built around them. And he tortured himself with it, often finding excuses to hover nearby and usually in plain sight.

You knew he was always there, assuming he was just keeping tabs on the group he was missing out on. And in your anger, you played up to it, making sure that the good times you were having were exaggerated in order to sting him further. But it wasn’t until your eighteenth birthday, sat in a booth at The Three Broomsticks that you had any idea that Jungkook’s lingering was solely because of you…

“And finally, the last of us to turn eighteen… To _____!” Taehyung raised his butterbeer in a toast, a grin across his face.

“To _____!” Jimin raised his glass too, and you followed suit, clinking them together and taking a long gulp of the sweetened beverage.

You talked and laughed and drank into the evening, but you could feel it; eyes on you. Eyes that didn’t belong to either of your friends sat with you.

“He’s staring again…” you muttered to the boys, and they both - non-discreetly, of course - turned to look. Jungkook was sat in the corner of the pub, his gaze focussed on you through his grown out locks. Without a hint of a smile, he raised his glass to you with a curt nod, and took a sip.

“Ignore him, ____. He’s just jealous,” Jimin grumbled, turning back to you.

“You’ve no idea…” Taehyung let slip, eyes widening as he realised what he said.

“What do you mean?” You inquired. Taehyung just took another long gulp of his drink, avoiding the question. “Taehyung…” you pressed.

“Okay fine…” he hushed his voice and leaned in a little, yourself and Jimin following suit. “Last year, I kind of noticed… Well, I noticed Jungkook seemed the most aggravated when he saw you and Jimin together. He hated how close you were, he was like, adamant that you two were dating behind everyone’s back. So, I confronted him about it after Quidditch one day…”

He shifted uncomfortably at the memory. Taehyung had had his own issues in dealing with his friend turning bitter and sour towards everybody, but the day he used an aggressive spell on him was one that had upset him to no end. He was a loyal, wonderful friend and to be betrayed that way, and hurt that way… it cut him deep.

“I tried to tell him you weren’t together, but he wasn’t having any of it. He got real mad and when I tried to stop him walking away from me he threw me across the damn field. I’m pretty sure he’s in love with you, ____. And he’s just maddening himself thinking you and Jimin are rubbing it in his face.”

“He did what?” You growled.

“Doesn’t matter, I washed my hands of him.”

“So that’s why you went quiet for like a week? Jesus, Tae…” Jimin chided, “You should’ve said. I’d have had him…”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Tae stopped him. “I don’t think he meant to, but I just… I didn’t want to be around him anymore. He was so focussed on you two.”

You sat in deep thought for a moment. If what Tae was saying was true, then Jungkook had feelings for you… Feelings that were potentially just as strong as the kind you had for him all those months ago. But you’d moved on from that.

At least, that’s what you had told yourself.

His behaviour was erratic and hateful and pathetic and yet, part of you felt sorry for him. You knew the heartbreak you had felt over him - that you were still feeling over him. Was that how he felt?

But part of you was angry. Angry that he’d turn his back on you instead of asking you outright, or having the guts to tell you how he felt. How dare he treat you, Jimin and especially Taehyung this way for so long.

“Jimin, kiss me,” you said without thinking. Jimin choked on his mouthful of butterbeer, spluttering into his beer stein.

“Excuse me?”

“I wanna be sure, Taehyung watch his reaction,” you ordered, turning to Jimin to thread your fingers through his and pull him to sit closer to you.

“_____, this probably isn’t a good idea…” Tae tried to stop you, thinking you’d had one too many steins but Jimin just smirked devilishly. The cunning in him liked your plan.

“Don’t fall in love with me though, will you?” Jimin teased, leaning in and hovering merely an inch from your lips.

“You wish, Park Jimin…” you smiled, pushing your lips to his.

Of course, his kiss meant nothing to you, didn’t alight a fire in your stomach like a kiss should, didn’t erupt your skin into goosebumps, didn’t make your hair stand on end. Jimin was a great kisser, expertly moving his lips with yours, slipping his tongue past to deepen it. After all, he’d had plenty of practise with plenty of girls he’d flirted with. And a few of the boys too, you had found out…

Taehyung scrunched his nose at the sight of the two of you making out like he was disgusted at the notion, but his eyes drifted to the dark haired, brooding young man in the corner. And just as he suspected, his eyes were burning with fury.

Jungkook stood from his seat, downing the rest of his drink and storming out of the pub, back out of Hogsmeade to go back to the castle. He’d seen enough for one day.

As soon as he’d left, you pulled back from Jimin, leaving him a little breathless. Sure, he didn’t feel anything for you either but hey, he’s only human… A good kiss is a good kiss.

“If you were trying to make him even more jealous, it worked,” Taehyung applauded sarcastically. You smirked to yourself. That was exactly what you had been trying to do.

*****

“Class, your N.E.W.Ts are merely weeks away. You must find the strength in yourself to keep studying, as soul-crushing as you may find it,” Professor Longbottom announced to the greenhouse as he wrapped up another herbology class. “That’s all for today, enjoy your weekend.”

It had been a whole month since your birthday, a month since your kiss with Jimin and a month since Jungkook had shown his true colours to you. And in that month, you had been stewing over the idea that he wanted you, that he had feelings for you however dark they had turned. Perhaps you could corner him, perhaps finally get it out of him. Fuck, you’d scream at him if you had to, use magic if you had to…

Perhaps you should. Perhaps…

No, stupid idea. Daft. The tension between you was rife, sure, but to go that far…

As the class packed their books up, you noticed Jungkook trying to slip away quickly and ran after him, books firmly under your arm and bag slung over your shoulder.

“Jungkook!” you yelled as you chased him through the halls, trying your best to weave through the masses of bodies leaving their classes. “Jungkook!”

You saw him duck into a door, confusion spreading through you. He didn’t have a class now…? You were all on a free period?

Still, you followed him into the classroom, shutting the door behind you. It was empty, not another student or professor in sight, but now you saw where you were, you realised that this would in fact be perfect for the idea you had been conjuring up. The room was quiet and still, but Jungkook leaned up against one of the pillars in the middle, bag on the floor, arms folded, and staring at you.

“What do you want?”

“How did you find this place?” you asked. It was known to be part of the castle, sure, but… how did he manage to secure the room of requirement?

“Once you know where it is, it’s easy to find it. It revealed itself to me in fifth year. I needed somewhere I could be alone.” His voice sounded different from the last time you’d heard it; deeper, like he’d grown up so much in the years since you’d last got a word out of him. And well, now he was eighteen just as you were; turning into a fine young man. “What do you want, _____?” he repeated.

You dropped your books to the floor in a pile, letting your bag down with them and taking a step towards him.

“Actually, I had a proposition for you, if you’re finally willing to listen.”

“Go ahead.”

“A duel. If I win, you sit down, shut up, and you listen to what I have to say. If you win…” you gestured for him to fill in the blank with his terms.

“If I win, you leave me the hell alone. For good.”

Your heart ached at the idea. But you could win this, you knew you could. You were a powerful witch, one that had beaten many a student in duelling clubs.

“Deal.” You stepped into the middle of the room, a few metres from Jungkook, and pulled your wand from your sleeve. “We end at the first use of the word ‘deditionem’. Latin for surrender.” He nodded and mirrored you, the pair of you bowing respectively to each other to uphold decorum. You stood up straight again, glaring at each other and readying for the first attack, to see just who would be brave enough to go first.

But you’d had enough of waiting.

“DEPULSO!” you yelled, thrusting your wand towards Jungkook who toppled backwards, tumbling to land with a loud grunt. You heard him growl as he pushed himself up, raising his wand.

“EXPELLIARMUS!” he growled, the spell throwing you back to the edge of the room with a screech, landing with a thud on your stomach. You hauled yourself from the floor, but just as you stood up, Jungkook threw another spell at you. “IMMOBULUS!”

You froze, suspended where you were, unable to move, unable to speak.

“This is pointless, _____,” he warned, taking steps towards you, slow and careful. “You know I’ll win.” He swiped his wand again to lift the spell, your body reanimating and acting quickly.

“INCENDIO!” you aimed at the floor, creating a wall of fire to stop Jungkook advancing on you any further, allowing you time to step back. “I thought you might fight fair, but two spells in one? Cowardly!” you remarked.

The fire died out with another swish of his wand, and he wordlessly flung it towards you, sending a spark your way.

“Protego!” you cast, sending it away from you again.

“Fight fair? Like you have been?” he said, with far too much venom on his tongue for a Gryffindor.

“What?”

“You know very well what you’ve done…. Rubbing it in my face all this time, flaunting it… I’ve had enough!” he threw another spell your way, and you defended against it. He kept going, spell after spell cast your way which you countered every time. Your defence had always been strong.

“I didn’t do ANYTHING… GAH!” you wailed as one of his attacks hit your arm, your wand flying to the floor. The pain was minimal, more like a punch than anything else. But Jungkook was now bounding towards you, backing you up against the far wall and kicking your wand to the side.

Your back hit the stone with a thump, Jungkook towering over you and inches from your face, his hair falling into his eyes and tickling your forehead.

“So, you and Jimin weren’t trying to make me jealous when you were eating each other’s faces in public, huh?” he spat. But now you had him exactly where you wanted him.

“Why would you be jealous, Jungkook?” you said calmly, a smile tugging at your lips. Despite him pinning you against the wall, you were the one who had him cornered.

“Because… wait, be-because…” he stuttered, his bravado failing, his expression changing to one of shock.

“Why would Jimin and I being together, make you jealous, hm?” you practically spelled it out for him, demanding an answer.

“I-I…”

“Say it.”

“Why are you doing this? Why are you making fun of me?” he asked, desperate now. His voice was cracking hard under the weight of the emotion. Jungkook was sure that you were mocking him, rubbing salt in his wounds because you already knew. But he still didn’t know that Jimin and you were most definitely not an item.

“I’m not, Jungkook. Listen to me…”

“Deditionem…” he uttered, stepping away from you and running towards his bag left lying on the floor. But you weren’t ready to let him go; if he surrendered, he had to honour your terms.

You bolted towards your wand and raised it towards to the door, yelling, “colloportus!” Jungkook tried to open the door, but it was no use; the locking charm worked well.

“Honour my terms, Jungkook. Sit down, shut up, and listen,” you commanded. Jungkook had no choice. He had surrendered the duel.

He stopped dead and waited as you stepped up to him.

“Jimin is my best friend. He has been from day one,” you started.

“I know, you don’t need to explain how you fell in l-“

“Silencio,” you cast, halting his words on his tongue. He struggled to speak, as if trying to protest but nothing came out, no sound at all. “I am not, and have never been, dating Jimin. My feelings towards him, are merely platonic. But you… you broke my heart, Jeon Jungkook.” Your voice cracked, tears bubbling at the surface. Your bottom lip quivered and you couldn’t look at him anymore, staring down at the floor to blink the tears away.

Jungkook – still unable to talk – wanted nothing more than to reach out and hold you but he held back, fearing your reaction. How had he broken your heart?

“If you had just… asked me… spoken to me, or Jimin… Even Taehyung,” you spoke slowly, taking deep breaths, “maybe one of us would have told you that you were the one I had a crush on.”

You took a step away from him, rubbing your hands over your face to hide the tears and wipe them away as soon as they fell. Jungkook tried to take a step towards you to comfort you, feeling so horrendously guilty for making you feel this way, but he thought better of it. By now, he was sure you hated him.

“God!” you ripped your hands from your face and angrily started yelling at him. “If you had ANY idea how much I wanted you, Jungkook. If you had any idea how many times I cried over you, how many times Jimin had to pick up the pieces when you started acting like a jealous prick. I had no idea why you’d turned so cold, but suddenly you were this asshole who treated his friends like dirt and I didn’t know what to do. We tried to talk to you, we tried to help you and NOTHING!” you shrieked.

Jungkook stood frozen in place, realisation and utter humiliation sweeping through him. He wanted to apologise or at least start to, because he knew that a simple sorry wouldn’t be enough for this, but he couldn’t; the charm was still holding his tongue.

“And the only way I could find out that you had feelings for me, had to come from Taehyung, only a fucking month ago. For almost two years, I’ve had to sit here wondering what I did wrong, why you hated me and all because you’re a god damn COWARD.”

You knew you were being overly harsh but nothing you were saying was a lie, nothing was false. And he needed to hear this.

Suddenly he lunged forward, and figuring actions spoke louder than words, he grabbed you, pulling you to him and smashing his lips down onto yours in a heated and desperate kiss that you reciprocated without a second thought, gripping onto his robes with tight fists as you finally got to feel how his lips felt on yours.

But when you came to your senses, you pushed him off you with a hard and deafening slap to his cheek. You were hurt. He had hurt you. And he thought he could kiss it all away? That it would make it all better?

You both stood in shock, Jungkook cradling the reddening cheek and staring at you with watery eyes; not because you had slapped him, but because he knew he deserved it.

“Say something,” you whimpered, swiping your wand at him to raise the silencio spell.

“I deserved that,” he rushed to say, seeing the doubt and the guilt in your eyes. “I deserved that, and I deserved the way I’ve felt recently if this is what I’ve put you through… I don’t know how to make it better. Please, I… It just looked… he would called you babe and cutie, he’d hold your hand, kiss your cheek… what was I supposed to-“

“ASK ME!” you yelled. “You of all people know what Jimin is like…”

“I should have… I should have, I’m sorry… God, I’m so sorry. I don’t know how to fix this,” he growled, anger at his own stupidity rising. “I love you, I do, I just… I got so twisted up in the idea of… it’s not important anymore, how do I fix this?” he voiced his thoughts as they popped into his head, too fast for his mouth to keep up.

“Just love me…” you sobbed.

“I do…” he stepped towards you again, wiping the tears from your cheek, “I do, so much…”

You threw your wand to the floor and stood on your toes to wrap your arms around his neck and pull him into another needy and desperate kiss. His arms wrapped around your waist, pulling you flush against him. After so long apart, you both felt the need to be completely encapsulated in one another, the need to feel each other.

You weren’t sure what had possessed you but something inside you needed more from him, needed everything from him. You couldn’t stop yourself from biting down on his lip, from lapping your tongue against his. You couldn’t deny the fire in your stomach anymore, or the pulse of hormones that raged through your body. And apparently neither could Jungkook.

In the midst of such a heated kiss, your hips grew a mind of their own, rutting against him. You heard him grunt, his hands holding you tighter, almost guiding you towards him again, like he wanted you to repeat yourself. When you did it a second time, you could feel it… That wasn’t his wand, you knew that much. He was incredibly hard already, just from the way you had kissed him with fury.

“Want you,” you muttered against his lips, hands starting to push his robe off his shoulders.

“Y-you sure?” he asked, muffled by the way you bit down on his bottom lip again. You nodded, staring up into his beautiful doe eyes that his long hair had fallen into. “Okay… I’ll try and be gentle.” He sprang into action, helping you to remove is robe and toss it aside.

“Don’t be…” you told him, defiant.

“What?” he was confused and frankly, incredibly turned on if what he thought he heard you say was right…

“I said ‘don’t be’. Too much tension, too much anger… Just fuck me. You can be nice another time,” you grinned wickedly, pulling your own robes off your shoulder and lifting your sweatshirt over your head. Jungkook mirrored you with a menacing chuckle, reaching out for the tie still tucked under your collar and pulling you to him.

“Do you know what you’re asking for, sweetie?” he asked, hovering above you dangerously.

“Yes,” you breathed, trying to reach up to kiss him but he stopped you with a finger to your lips.

“I think you should call me sir, don’t you?” Heat pooled in your stomach, arousal flooding through you and starting to soak your panties under your skirt.

“Y-yes sir…”

“Good girl,” he whispered lowly. “I’m going to make you feel so, so good… Do you trust me?”

And even after all this time? “Always.”

Jungkook smirked, taking a step away from you. “On your knees,” he commanded. You had no desire nor will to argue with him, another wave of arousal coursing through you. He picked up his wand from where he’d let it drop to the floor somewhere in the heat of the moment, and yours too, keeping it out of your reach.

He stood above you, poking his tongue into his cheek as he looked down at the pliant girl he had full control over. “Deditionem if it gets too much, understand?”

“Yes, sir…”

“Incarcerous…” he cast, waving his wand in slow and meaningful strokes, summoning ropes to bind your hands together in front of you, prettily tying your arms together. The rough material of it didn’t much affect you over the cotton of your shirt, but being bound and unable to use your hands was affecting you incredibly…

“Those look so pretty on you…” he mused, crouching down to eye level. “Do you like them?”

“So much, sir…” you bit your lip again, your thighs rubbing together for some kind of friction, anything at all. And he noticed.

“So I see… Do you want me to touch you?” he smirked.

“Please…” you whimpered. He reached forward, tracing his fingertips over the ropes and the knots binding your arms together from the elbow to the wrist, letting them wonder over your knees just poking out through the edge of your skirt. He slipped his hand under the hem, feeling the goosebumps raising on your thighs as he stroked them, getting closer and closer to where all the heat in your body seemed to be emanating from.

“Spread your knees,” he instructed, and you did as you were told, shuffling to allow him better access. He rolled up his shirt sleeves and his hand slid into the crease where your thigh met your pelvis. Slowly, you felt his delicate touch on your dampened panties. You sighed at the contact, eyes fluttering shut, hips rolling into his touch just a little more…

His smirk grew into a grin with every tiny little response he elicited from you, his cock beginning to twitch in the confides of his trousers. He’d wanted you for how long? And now, finally, he could have you. You were practically laid out on a silver platter.

He pressed his fingers against your mound harsher, quick to find the needy little nub that ached and pulsed for some kind of touch. Your head fell back, neck exposed to him as you groaned. He attached his lips to the skin, pressing hot, open-mouthed kisses to the flesh with a dizzying amount of lust. He pushed the white cotton of your panties to one side, letting his long fingers slide effortlessly through your folds and settling back on the bundle of nerves just imploring for more friction.

“O-oh… god,” you whined, his ring and middle fingers finding a steady pace to circle your clit over and over, his mouth working the spot just underneath your ear. Your arms tensed in their restraints, curling up to your chest as your thighs tightened beneath you.

“This easy to get you worked up, huh? Shit, _____,” he breathed against your neck, sliding his fingers back through your folds to circle over your entrance. He started with one, slipping his middle finger easily into your heat. He groaned at the feeling, so soft and warm around his finger, clenching as you mewled and whimpered beneath him. As soon as he felt you could take it, he slid his ring finger in alongside, stretching you just a little, just enough.

“J-Jungkook…” you panted, hoping he’d start to move but you’d made a mistake…

“That’s not my name, love. That’s not what you call me.” Without removing his fingers, he brought his wand up to your neck in a move that should have felt threatening, however it sent jolts of glee through your body. And then he uttered, “rictumsempra…”

You couldn’t stop the giggles as the tickling curse bewitched your mind into sending enough pulses through your torso to simulate the feeling of hands running all over you, tickling every inch of flesh. You writhed and squirmed, giggling and losing your breath all at once and yet Jungkook didn’t stop. In fact, his fingers started to work their own magic, curling up inside you to hit a place you had never known existed before. Between your giggles, you cried out at the feeling, your chest jolting forward and colliding with his shoulder.

“Pl-please!” you cried, begging him to stop the tickles, to keep thrusting his fingers into you, to just make you cum.

“What do you say?” he asked, stern tone in his voice.

“S-sir… please! I-I’m sorry…” you choked between laughs. With a swish of his wand, the tickles dissipated and you were left feeling nothing but the absolute blinding pleasure of Jungkook’s fingers attacking your g-spot.

“Good girl,” he praised, planting a kiss to your temple and manoeuvring his thumb to tread circles across your clit. It felt like electricity jumped between the bundle of nerves and the spongey spot inside you that he kept attacking, setting your nerves alight. “Cum for me, sweet thing…” he whispered against your temple, watching your reactions so carefully with hunger in his eyes.

You unravelled in his hands like a ball of yarn, your eyes rolling back as your orgasm built and built to a head. Your thighs tensed while your arms went slack, wrists hitting against your thigh as they fell. Your thighs parted even more, until your butt was practically touching the floor to steady yourself and you could feel yourself shaking, vibrating as Jungkook aided you through it.

“That’s it, good girl… So good, for me…” he mumbled against your forehead, slipping his fingers out of you and wrapping his arms around your shoulders, holding you to him. “Lay down for me, love,” he helped to lower you onto your back, the stone flooring cold against your skin despite the shirt you still wore.

Jungkook was hovering over you in an instant, brushing the hair out of your face and peppering kisses onto your cheeks and jaw, hands working the buttons of your shirt to spread it open. He was desperate to see more of you, his imagination no longer able to quench the thirst inside him.

With your wrists and elbows still bound, he couldn’t slip the material off, instead leaving it open just enough to expose your bra underneath; a pretty white lace t-shirt bra. Nothing too special, but it seemed so pure, so virginal that Jungkook practically salivated, his erection beginning to cause quite the problem.

He dipped his head back down to your neck, peppering kisses down in a strategic trail through the valley of your breasts and down to your navel, where the hem of your skirt hid the rest of you from view. His hands worked their way up your thighs as he kissed your stomach, pushing the material up to your waist and showing off the soiled panties you still had on. They had to go, and fast.

He sat up, dragging the white cotton down your thighs, past your knees and over your ankles. The grey knee highs and shoes could stay on, he thought. He liked that look…

When he came face to face with you again, your tied arms above your head, he looked at you with a softness in his eyes, a raw passion and adoration that had you seen yourself, you would have been aware that you mirrored. After all this time, all this angst, all this hatred… it was still there. You saw it now; the care, the affection, the want…

The love.

He pressed his lips to yours with a gentle kind of devotion, his fingertips grazing your chin, both of you fluttering your eyes closed. He hummed against your lips in satisfaction and almost disbelief, realising now that he finally had you. Years of pining and ridiculous behaviour and in this moment, you were finally his. It wasn’t until your hips rolled up into his that he was reminded of the now throbbing erection still hidden from view.

“Do you really want this?” he asked you, needing to make sure.

“Yes… Please, Jungkook,” you whispered, tears starting to spill from the corners of your eyes, dripping down into your hair. He brushed them away with his thumb and then whilst balancing on one hand, he used the other to loosen his tie and undo the buttons of his shirt.

“You’re so beautiful… Fuck, I want you so bad,” he groaned, dipping back to your neck and sloppily slapping his lips to your jugular. He could feel your heart rate quicken with his lips.

“Take me, please sir…” you moaned, laced with wanton lust. And the use of his name lit a fire in him again, the greed he felt over you returning. Suddenly he was sitting up, unbuttoning his slacks and pushing them down to his knees with his underwear. He lifted one of your thighs to sit on his hip, and positioned himself at your entrance.

You couldn’t help but marvel at how stunning he looked like this; a thin layer of sweat on his brow, sleeves rolled up, defined sportsman’s chest on display. His arms were tensing and veins standing out, long, damp hair falling forward and lips parted. Your gaze followed his to the space between the two of you, finally seeing the tops of such toned thighs and his impressive length just ready to be sheathed inside you. Seeing him this way; it just made you want him even more.

Due to your previous orgasm and the fact that you were so unbelievably wet from it, when Jungkook started to push himself inside you, you felt no pain at all. A slightly uncomfortable stretch to begin with, sure. But it was more of a foreign feeling than a bad one, and one you quickly adjusted to and grew to adore. You watched in awe as Jungkook’s jaw clenched, obviously holding himself back, savouring the feeling.

Once fully enveloped, Jungkook checked on you, searching your face for any discomfort or any regret but he found none. You were perfect; you felt perfect.

Steady, languid rolls of his hips had you gasping as he worked up a pace, his hands gripping your waist and holding you tight. He rolled his hips in news ways until he found that perfect angle, the perfect direction to roll into you that made your toes curl and your bound arms tense in their restraints. Lewd moans filled the air around you, like music to Jungkook’s ear and he was getting high on them, addicted to them already and working his hips to earn more from you.

“Shit,” he huffed, his fingers digging into you, “You feel so good. So, so… fuck.” He’d wanted this, wanted you for so long. He never bat an eye at anybody else, not even when he thought he’d lost you. Quidditch team captain and academic scholar, Jeon Jungkook, with the eyes of every girl at Hogwarts on him, only ever wanted you. Now that he had you, he couldn’t quite believe his luck, nor hold back the outpouring of affection he had.

“S-sir… harder sir, please…” you begged. The name should have triggered a primal response in him but it didn’t feel right anymore, and neither did your bound wrists. Who was he trying to kid? He didn’t want his first time, much less his first time with you to be so… crude.

He reached beside you where he’d lay his wand to rest, picking it up and pointing it at your restraints. “D-diffindo!” he cried, cutting the ropes and letting them fall to the floor. And then he was dropping his wand again, hoisting you up to sit chest to chest with him, his nose pressed against yours. His arms wrapped around your back to hold you up, bringing your arms around his neck to keep you both close; as close as he could be as he bucked his hips into you. He’d been apart from you for too long; no more.

You could see the turn in him through his eyes, through the way they glossed over and his cheeks grew red. You could see the vulnerability, and the heartbreak in his face. You just wanted to kiss it all away, so you did just that. You took time and care to kiss lingering kisses to his cheeks, to his nose, landing on his lips finally and moaning against them.

Feeling close to him like that had been a craving of yours for so long, after having no contact whatsoever in years. Those deep-rooted feelings burned inside you like a fire, hotter than ever. They were making your whole experience heightened.

“I love you…” he hurriedly said against your lips, desperate to let you know, as if he might never get another chance to tell you. “I love you so, so much…”

“I know… I love you… too, shit,” you could feel your resolve weakening, the familiar pressure building once again. The new angle in this position had him reaching every wall, every distant nerve ending that you’d never once found yourself and it was euphoric.

“I-I’m… I’m gonna cum, _____...” he panted against your lips, neither of you really kissing, instead just hovering so close together, lips grazing with each thrust. You moaned at the thought, wanting him to finish, to feel his own high. The idea brought you closer too. You knew it also wouldn’t be long.

When he starting to trace rapid circles on your sensitive clit once again, you lost your composure quickly; quicker than you had before. Your whole body shook as if a fever were tearing you apart. Your arms locked in place around his neck and you buried your face into his shoulder, biting down on the material of his shirt that hung from his frame.

Jungkook felt the way you clenched on him, the way your walls sucked him further into you. He felt the gush of wet warmth as your orgasm exploded on him, and he lost it.

He pulled out of you just as he was cumming, – not the most effective method of birth control but under the circumstances it would have to do – and spilled stripe after stripe of white onto the skirt bunched up around your waist. A series of grunts and what sounded like yelps escaped his throat, but you were too far gone to even really notice, still settling back down after your own intense high.

The both of you let several moments pass by in blissful silence, regaining control of your breath and your senses all at once. When you finally looked up, you had no idea what to say to each other. Instead, you both just smiled, grinning like the pair of loved up idiots you were and pulling at each other to cuddle into the other’s hold.

“I ruined your skirt,” he laughed, nuzzling into your hair and taking a deep breath in; oh, he’d missed the smell of cherries and almonds that seemed to never leave you.

“No, you didn’t,” you smirked, reaching for his wand and placing it in his hand. “Tergeo, remember?”

“Oh, right…” he pointed his wand at the mess he’d left on your garment, “tergeo…” The mess simply faded away, no evidence at all to suggest what had occurred minutes ago. Another silence settled over you, and you couldn’t help but stare at him with yearning. You pushed his damp hair behind his ear, stroking your fingertips over his defined jawline, gently tracing them over his lips. You missed him so much.

“Come back, Kookie…” you whimpered, swallowing a sob as tears spilled down your cheeks. “Come back to us.”

“Don’t cry, sweetie,” he soothed, kissing the tears away. “Will they have me back too?”

“Taehyung, in a heartbeat; you know what he’s like. But Jimin… he’ll need some convincing. I’ll talk him around,” you promised, smiling through the tears. “I’m sorry I kissed him like that… That was fucked up.”

“Shh, no… What’s fucked up, is how I’ve treated you and the others. I tried to fight against my feelings, but do you know what?” he smirked, pressing a light kiss to your nose.

“What?” you giggled, eyes scanning his face as if committing every tiny detail to memory.

“Deditionem…” he whispered, before enveloping your lips in a sweet, doting kiss.

Commissions & tips: ko-fi.com/ratedbangtann

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tommykaine · 4 years

Text

Careful What You Wish For

Fandom: Boyfriend To Death 2

Characters & Pairings: Lawrence Oleander / Original Male Character

Warnings/contents: Hogwarts!AU, implied character deaths, student/teacher crush, romantic horror, underage (NOT sexual!)

Prompt: Be Careful What You Wish For

Summary: While a series of mysterious student disappearances seems to plague the Hogwarts School of Magic, Basil just wants to get closer to the object of his crush, Herbology Professor Oleander. Little does he know that the apparently sweet and shy professor might hide a deep dark secret...

AO3 Link: X

Tumblr version after cut

The first time that Basil saw him, he thought he looked like an angel.

Professor Oleander had long blond hair, which he always kept tied up into a low ponytail, except for a messy fringe that fell in front of his forget-me-not blue eyes, underlined by dark circles - some students whispered that the man never slept. He had gentle features and was always clean-shaven, although the dark shadow on his otherwise pale skin suggested that his beard was not as light as his hair.

His demeanour was quiet and he always seemed kind of nervous, but he rarely ever got angry with the students.

He was always, always seen around the greenhouses behind the castle. Even during meals he rarely seemed to show up. He hadn't been at the teachers' table when Basil had been sorted into Slytherin, or he would certainly have noticed him.

Instead, their first encounter was during his very first Herbology lesson.

Professor Oleander was already there, wearing a shy smile and a dirt-smeared robe as he stood in front of a table full of empty vases.

"Alright, so... this is your first lesson so I won't give you anything too hard to do. Uh, you all have your copy of One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi, right? So-". The man interrupted himself as a short red-haired girl from Ravenclaw shook her head. "Oh, you, you don't? Err, well, can anyone... you two could share it, right? Ok... so, we'll be going around and I want you to try and recognize as many plants as you ca- hey, please don't touch the Fanged Foxglove, it won't like that". He glanced at Kevin Simmons - a dark-haired boy who shared his dormitory with Basil - looking rather panicked. The student hurried to retreat his hand, moments before the harmless-looking plant split in two and revealed a set of sharp fang-like thorns on each side, letting out a menacing hiss.

Immediately all the students moved away from it, while Professor Oleander sighed and took out a small vial, approaching the irritated plant and pouring it in its soil, causing it to calm down and compose itself once again.

"Ok, so... ugh, where was I?". The man scratched the back of his head, shifting his weight from one leg to another and looking increasingly nervous with each passing second.

Basil timidly raised his hand.

"You... you were saying we'd go around and try to recognize the plants?".

Professor Oleander looked at him with surprise for a moment, then he smiled in relief and nodded.

"Right! Right, so we'll be going around...".

The rest of the lesson went on without a hitch, with the man guiding them around the first greenhouse and then in the outside garden, even going close to the forest before warning them they should never venture there unless they were accompanied by an adult from the staff, and even then they should still be careful.

"Alright, so, that will be all for today", Professor Oleander said once they got back to the greenhouse. "For the next lesson, I want you to study the plants we saw today, especially those of you who could name less than ten".

Basil heard a couple of groans, mostly from a few other Slytherins. He hadn't done too bad but he still felt he could have done better. He never thought he would want to excel in Herbology of all subjects, but the thought of getting praised by the professor made him feel giddy. He had only seen him smile once, when Harmony Rogers was instantly able to recognize a Mimic Marigold which had disguised itself as a common daisy, and his whole face lit up for a moment. Basil wanted to see that again, he wanted the man to smile at him like that.

By the middle of his second year, Basil was the top one in his class. He'd never been particularly passionate about plants but he wanted to impress his professor. Melina Eliopoulos from his same year was quite irked about it as she usually excelled in all subjects so she started calling him a teacher's pet, but Basil didn't care. He was more than happy to spend his time learning more fascinating facts about magical plants, or even to stay behind to help out the man after his lessons sometimes.

"Ah! That's... really not necessary", Professor Oleander had tried to say the first time, blushing a little.

"I don't mind", Basil had insisted. "I like plants".

"Yeah, plants are nice", the professor had replied, smiling a little. "Better than people", he had murmured, speaking so low that Basil wasn't sure he'd been supposed to hear it.

"You don't like people?", he'd asked, clearly catching him off guard.

"A-ah, I mean...". The man laughed nervously, clutching on one arm with his other hand and looking away. "Never mind. You should go".

Basil had cursed himself for his unnecessary questions, feeling disheartened as he left the greenhouse.

What was it about plants that the man liked so much? He truly wanted to find out.

"Have you heard about Emil Kowalski?".

"No? What happened?".

"He hasn't come back to his dormitory, apparently he sneaked out during the night and hasn't been seen since".

"When was that?".

"Two days ago".

Basil tried to pay no mind to the gossip, but it was hard when it was happening right next to him.

"Isn't that scary?", Kai, a chubby black-haired boy who always tailed along behind him asked Basil. "I wonder if the professors are searching for him. They must be, right?".

"He probably got lost somewhere and still hasn't managed to find his way back. He's not particularly bright, even for a Hufflepuff", Basil replied with a shrug, shoveling more porridge in his mouth.

"For two days?", Kai insisted. "Plus, I'm sure after three years he must have memorized the routes. What if something happened to him?".

"If it did, then the professors would have told us", Basil replied. "You worry too much".

He glanced to their table. As usual, Professor Oleander was nowhere to be seen.

Basil wondered if he always ate alone. He didn't seem to like people much. Basil didn't know why that was the case. He'd never had the courage to ask again, after the first time.

"Wanna play Wizard's Chess later?", Kai asked, interrupting his musings.

"I can't, I told Professor Oleander I'd help him trim the Bashful Bushes".

"Hmpf! Why are you always hanging around him?", Kai complained. "He's creepy".

Basil glared at him.

"That's not true!", he snapped at him, raising his voice. He blushed when he noticed that a few other Slytherins had turned his head to look at him. Lowering his voice, he leaned in closer to Kai to speak again.

"He's just awkward around others. He's actually really nice. Last time, he gave me a sprig full of Everlasting Berries".

"Don't you find it weird that he never leaves his plants? I think he lives there. Plus, you ever noticed we never have lessons with him before it's dark? And those circles under his eyes... what if he's a vampire?".

"A vampire", Basil scoffed at him. "If you must know, he's got sensitive eyes".

"Sensitive vampire eyes", Kai replied, swinging his fork in the air as if to emphasize his words. "Let me tell you, there's something wrong with that man".

"You're just annoyed at him because you're always flunking his tests", Basil replied, shaking his head. "Seriously, how hard can it be?".

"It's plants. It's damn boring. I don't understand what either of you sees in it".

"Plants are nice", Basil replied, looking down at his mostly-empty plate. "You know what to expect from them. They can't disappoint you".

He felt like he was starting to understand his professor's feelings more and more with each passing year. He couldn't manage to relate to most of his peers. Even with Kai it was more like the other had attached himself to him and decided he was going to be his best friend. Not that Basil disliked him but he could be annoying sometimes.

What if Kai had been the one to disappear instead of Kowalski? Would he have missed him?

Basil wasn't sure. Maybe he would have, but...

How horrible of a person would he have been if his answer had been no?

The start of their fourth year was tense after the Kowalski incident. Some of the students weren't allowed to come back after their summer break.

No matter how much the Professors and even some Aurors searched for him, no one was able to find him again.

It was like he'd vanished without trace.

There were all sorts of rumours floating around. Some said he managed to sneak out of Hogwart's confines and Disapparate somewhere despite his young age, some said he got eaten by some creature roaming inside the Forbidden Forest, some believed he found a secret passage and got stuck inside of it, claiming they could hear him moving through the walls and faintly asking for help.

"That's absurd", Basil had told Kai when the other boy had told him about it. "The Professors have searched everywhere in the castle. Including the secret passages. If he was still in here, they would have found him".

"Then where did he go?".

"I don't know". And I don't care, he thought, but he made sure to keep that to himself.

He had other things to worry about. Such as the fact that he'd started to look at Professor Oleander with different eyes.

"Ugh! It's so annoying! 'Professor Oleander' this, 'Professor Oleander' that, it's like you're in love with him", his little sister had said once while he was back with his family, to which he'd turned red and threatened to feed her to his Carnivorous Camellia if she didn't shut up.

Ever since then, he hadn't been able to stop thinking about her words.

"...It's like you're in love with him..."

Is... is that why I like him so much?, he couldn't help but wonder, blushing at the thought.

He'd never had a crush on someone before. His sister was in the first year and she already had plenty of them, her latest one being their Quidditch Captain Ricardo Torres.

How would he even know if he liked the professor in that way?

It can't be. He's much older than me and... a wizard.

Not that it was entirely unheard of but he didn't think he'd ever heard it mentioned in a positive way. His father had once mentioned something about wizards who had relations with other wizards and it had been with a disdain normally reserved for Mudbloods and Squibs.

Not that his father was always right about everything. Kai was technically a 'Mudblood' but he was pretty gifted, just not in Herbology. He was the top of the class at Charms and often beat him at Wizard's Chess too. Meanwhile, Emily Thompkins was a Pureblood witch and she was dumber than a Troll.

"Hey, Kai?", he asked him one of those afternoons, when the other boy was busy teaching him some kind of card game he'd learned from his Muggle mother.

"Yeah?".

"Have you ever... you know, is there any girl that you like?".

The other boy had looked a bit nervous, his ears turning red.

"I... well". Kai cleared his throat, scratching the back of his head and looking away. "Y-You know Martina Belli from Ravenclaw? I... I think she's pretty cute... I guess".

"Huh". One of the Chasers in Ravenclaw's Quidditch team, with curly blonde hair and green eyes. She was cute, he had to admit. "And... how do you feel when you think of her?".

"I... I don't know". For the first time in a while, Kai seemed rather uncomfortable. "I... I feel all happy and giddy when she smiles or talks to me and my tongue is tied, it's like I have butterflies in my stomach and I get all nervous. I... I want her to look at me but I also feel scared she might judge me so I'm scared of getting too close. And-". He interrupted himself, the redness spreading from his ears to his cheeks. "Why do you ask... uh? Basil? Basil, are you ok?".

"A-ah, yeah!". Basil forced himself to laugh, hoping he didn't sound too nervous.

Shit. I do have a crush.

In fifth year, their Herbology lessons were a lot more challenging.

They were actually handling some of the more dangerous plants, plants that could injure and even kill in the worst case scenario, although Professor Oleander was quick to reassure them that nothing bad would happen if they followed his instructions.

Basil had tried to distance himself during the fourth year, but that did not change his feelings. If anything, the longing towards him had become even worse.

"Hawthorne, what... what are you doing here?", the professor asked him one of those evenings, when Basil showed up at the greenhouse. He seemed quite surprised and a little worried as well. "You... you shouldn't be around this late. It's against the rules".

Since the disappearance of Kowalski, students were forbidden to be out of their Common Rooms after dinner.

"I couldn't sleep", Basil replied, taking a few steps towards him. As always, the man's clothes were covered in dirt and he was wearing thick gloves to cover his hands. There were a few leaves trapped in his blond hair, which made Basil want to pick them out, but he refrained from following his urges. "I... I thought I'd come here, because... because taking care of plants is relaxing".

The professor smiled a little at that, although he still seemed cautious.

"Yeah, it is... but you really should go back to your rooms".

"Please. I won't be at risk as long as I'm around you, right?", Basil asked him in an almost-pleading tone.

"I... I guess". the professor scratched the back of his head, looking away. "Sorry, I'm not... I won't be of much company. I'm very busy".

"That's alright. I like your company".

Basil hadn't meant to blurt it out like that. He immediately blushed as the man looked at him in shock, before looking away again while his cheeks also turned a little pink.

"I'm... uhm, okay then".

He seemed nervous. Basil hoped it wasn't because of his gaffe.

They spent a few hours together, before Professor Oleander insisted to accompany him back to the entrance of the Slytherin Dungeon.

"It was nice spending time with you", Basil shily told him.

His professor smiled and shrugged, before looking away.

"I don't... I normally don't like to be around people. But... it's not so bad with you. You're quiet, and...". He looked at him intensely, before leaning in closer.

Basil froze up as one of those gloved hands reached out towards him, but the man only took something out from his hair. A small twig. He relaxed, although a part of him was a little disappointed.

"Good night, Hawthorne".

"Good night, professor".

From then on, Basil had sneaked out a couple times to meet the object of his interest. The more time he spent with him, the more his feelings grew, just like the vines of a persistent infesting plant.

It wasn't like they exchanged many words, but Basil was content just being around him. At least, for the time being.

He knew it wouldn't be enough for long. He couldn't help but want more.

He wanted to know more about him. Wanted to know if he really spent all of his time with his plants, wanted to know if there was a way to get through the thorny walls he had put around his heart. From the few things that had slipped past his lips a few times, Basil couldn't help but think that, in truth, the man was quite lonely.

"Plants, they never leave you alone when they grow tired of you", Oleander had said once, sounding almost more as if he was talking to himself rather than to Basil. "They can't even go anywhere, they wouldn't survive without me. They need me". He had smiled then, a genuine smile. "That's why I like them".

"I think that's wonderful", Basil had said, his comment seemingly startling the man, almost as if he'd forgotten he was still there. "Wouldn't it be nice, to have someone who would need you as much as your plants do?".

"That... wouldn't be possible", Oleander had replied, looking away and hurrying to move somewhere else, watering a few pots of Wolfsbane.

Basil had stared at the man's back, his feelings burning inside him like a flame.

To be needed so deeply and completely...to have someone who entirely depends on you, who wouldn't even live without you... what a wonderful thing.

Now he knew why Oleander liked plants so much.

That was how he liked him too.

If only he could find away to keep him all for himself, uproot him and confine him in a little vase where he would never escape him... how wonderful that would be.

"Have you heard about Andrew Robinson?".

"No, what happened?".

"Apparently no one's seen him since yesterday".

"No way! You think it's another Kowalski?".

"I hope not... my parents almost didn't let me come back to school after that".

Basil couldn't help but overhear the conversation as the group of Slytherins chatted next to him at the table.

"I can't believe it's happened again", Kai noted, sounding quite worried. "Say, I heard you come back quite late the other night... I don't think you should stay out at night, what if something happens to you too?".

"Shh! Do you want everyone to hear?", Basil scolded him, before lowering his voice. "I'll be fine. I've just been visiting the greenhouses".

"What? Why would you do that?".

Basil looked down at his pudding, not sure of how to answer to that.

How could he explain to the other boy that he wanted to spend more time with Oleander? Surely he would think it was weird.

"I'm worried about the next test. I just want to make sure I'm prepared".

"No way, you always ace every Herbology test. If anything, you should give me some extra lessons".

"You're a lost cause. You could make a cactus die of thirst".

"Hey!".

Thankfully he managed to change the subject without much difficulty, but he couldn't manage to shake the thought off of his head.

Once could have been an accident, but twice?

What had Robinson been up to? And Kowalski, for that matter? Where would they be headed, that late at night?

Basil wondered if Oleander might have seen anything. After all, the man seemed to stay awake until late. From one of their conversations, he'd gathered that the man preferred to sleep early in the day and wake up in the late afternoon, just in time for his lessons. If someone else beside him had sneaked out in the middle of the night, he might have seen them.

He would have to ask him about it, next time.

"Huh? Tuesday night?". Oleander looked at him in surprise, then he frowned. "Can't... can't really remember anything, sorry. I've been... busy".

Basil could tell that he was upset. He'd become quite good at reading the man, even if he couldn't always tell what he was thinking. Maybe he was worried about Robinson, but that seemed uncharacteristic of him.

"You really shouldn't be out here this late. It's... not safe", Oleander said, looking at him in a strange way. He didn't really seem worried as much as...

Threatening.

A cold shiver ran down Basil's spine. He quickly tried to shake off that feeling.

"I'm not worried", he lied, taking a few steps closer to the man. "Not while I'm here with you".

Oleander smiled at him, but somehow it was anything but reassuring.

"The plants are not the deadliest thing in here, Hawthorne".

Basil gulped loudly. Oleander moved in closer and he retreated, until he felt his back pressed against the vine-covered wall, some of them slithering around his ankles and wrists.

His heart was beating fast, he could feel its pulse in his throat, especially when Oleander's hand closed around it.

"P-professor, please", he whispered, eyes filled with terror as he saw the man's face twist into an hideous grin.

"You're always coming back here. I kept telling myself I shouldn't... but you're like a stubborn weed, you made your way into my mind and I couldn't stop wondering... what would you look like, without your branches".

He had a pair of shears in his hand, a dangerous glint in his blue eyes. They seemed to shine even in that faint light, almost as if they were ignited from the inside.

There was a smell to him... Basil always thought it came from the plants, but no, it was emanating from him.

It smelled like...

Death.

"Please", he begged, his eyes filling with tears. "Please".

"Shh... don't worry. I won't get rid of you. I want to keep you". Oleander glanced at his shears and his smirk grew wider. "Well... not all of you".

Basil looked into those bright eyes and he knew. He knew what had happened to the other students.

But he would not be able to tell anyone.

Not after Oleander was done with him.

#bad things bingo #bad things happen bingo #boyfriend to death #btd2 lawrence #lawrence oleander #lawrence/OMC #mywriting #writblr #fanfic

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xantchaslegacy · 4 years

Text

Forgiven, Ch 2

Chandra had seen plenty of strange sights on plenty of different worlds; it came with the territory of being a career planeswalker/renegade/aspiring hero. She’d had days full of zombie hordes, days where she’d defied gods (with mixed success) , and days where she clashed with everything from dragons to giant demon frogs.

Today seemed set on one-upping all of that.

She’d expected to see some interesting things when Vraska asked for help with the reactivated eternals terrorizing the undercity. It was new territory, even if the foe was an old one. Still, the sewers of Ravnica were a bigger and more tangled maze of tunnels, caves, and entire districts than Chandra expected, stuffed with more variations of fauna, flora, and fungi than she had seen in one place. The izzet cyclopses who’d come along to assist in the clean-up were some of the oddest allies she’d ever had (their voices were so high pitched...and how were their heads so tiny?). The eternals, their blue lazotep now covered with an additional layer of fungal plates and clinging moss, had looked strangest of all-

-at least until an imp with a bow-tie offered her dinner.

“I insist, it would be shabby in the extreme if Pivlichino’s accepted so much help without offering a hot meal in return.” The imp, Pivlic, wrung his hands together imploringly. He hovered just in front of Chandra, taking conspicuous care not to drift close to the grimy walls or knee-deep filth of the undercity tunnel.

“It’s fine, really.” Chandra glanced back at Samut, who just shrugged. “We’d have to clear out the eternals here even if the tunnels didn’t run under your, uh, restaurant?”

“Ravnica’s newest, grandest restaurant, club, and bar,” The imp exclaimed with a bow and a flourish. “And please. Consider it a gift on behalf of the entire city. These metal monstrosities have been a blight on our streets, and to think there are still a few lurking about...”

Samut tensed in the corner of Chandra’s eye, but said nothing. Quietly, efficiently, she continued to lay out the still bodies of eternals along the dry side of the tunnel.

“...it’s truly a blessing to know such capable mages are seeing to the elimination-”

“Thank you,” Chandra cut the imp off. “And sure, we’ll take a meal. We should be done with for the day in an hour or two.”

“Excellent!” Pivlic clapped once, the crisp sound echoing down the tunnel. His attendant, a stooped ogre with a collar and bow-tie pressed crisply against his bulging neck, stepped forward, holding out a small silver tray Chandra. On it were two silver-embossed slips of paper, which Chandra took with a furrowed brow.

“What are-?”

“Show those tickets to the maitre d’ and she’ll see you sat at one of our best tables. We’ve got genuine Gruul folk musicians playing this evening; the perfect compliment to a hearty meal!” Pivlic bowed, spun in the air, and flew off up the service tunnel that led back to the streets. His attendant followed, ascending by ladder slowly, grumbling under his breath.

“Are we getting a feast in our honor?” Samut was sitting up against the sewer wall, next to the neat row of eternals, a tired smile and a raised eyebrow aimed at Chandra.

“Fancy dinner.” Chandra waved the tickets and slumped down next to Samut. The ground was filthy, but they’d gone through waste up to their shoulders several times already that day, so the added grime barely registered. “Um, I hope that was alright that I accepted the offer for both of us. If you’d rather not-”

Samut waved the apology away. “I was going to ask if I could buy you supper for all your help and your company anyways, so all the better.”

“All the better,” Chandra echoed. She tucked the tickets into a satchel on her belt. “So...what do you think so far? One last bit of Bolas’ magic keeping them going? Maybe he had another necromancer waiting in the wings with the Golgari?”

“Either. Both. That would make sense if the false god is half as clever as all who know him claim. I wonder though…It doesn’t seem as if touching them endangers our sparks any longer. If it was the false god, well you’d think those enchantments would still be in effect.”

Chandra nodded. She had bare-handed grappled at least two of the eternals that morning, and gotten away with nothing but scrapes. “Maybe. Must have been a pretty exhausting spell to maintain.”

“Probably. Either way, one less spell desecrating my sisters and brothers.”

“Oh yeah, about that...” Chandra looked across Samut at the broken Amonkhet warriors. “Should we, um, say anything? Do you have some kind of burial rite or…?”

“I’ve said what needs to be said.” Samut leaned her head back until it rested against the stone. “You know, I don’t have a clue what burial customs my ancestors had. The false god left our viziers with the practice of mummification, but none of our proper rites of remembrance.” She sighed. “Nothing to be done but to say goodbye to them as warriors.”

Samut lapsed into silence. They sat listening to the rush and gurgle of the sewers for several long minutes before she shrugged and stood.

“My comrades and I have a lot to re-discover, if we survive the coming years.”

“Yeah,” Chandra nodded and stood as well, “I uh...I can imagine that’d be, uh...” Her mind grasped for the right words to continue this conversation she’d started. “Actually, I guess I couldn’t. I am very sorry, though.” She pointed at one of the growths on the nearest eternal’s armor. The fungus was grown in the patterns reminiscent of the Golgari undead, with spongy masses and plates forming crude, partial armor. “Do you want me to burn any of that off, at least?”

“It’s no worse than the lazotep,” Samut laid a gently hand on the smashed skull of the closest metal-coated zombie. “And since we haven't seen any partial eternals moving under the control of the growths, I don’t think it’s much of a danger anymore.

“Thank you, though,” She added.

Chandra nodded. Her hands fell back to fiddling with the cool wrist of her gauntlets. One of the eternals had cast a volley of arrows through a gas line, puncturing it in over a dozen places. Chandra had resorted to fire-free means of fighting for the rest of the day while the izzet cyclopses struggled to fix the ruptures. She could still hear them further along the tunnel, stomping through the muck, sifting for any remaining zombies in the area.

Vraska had approached each of them separately about the renewed eternal problem. While Bolas’ death had brought the entire force to a standstill, the vengeant ravnicans had not destroyed all of them. A significant number had made their way into the sewers and waterways before they’d been deactivated. Some, for whatever reason, had congregated in dead-ends and abandoned shafts, where they had simply hunkered down and seemingly waited for the war above to end.

That would have been easy enough to clean up. Then a blue-metal hippo had attacked Zonot, killing three researchers before the guard-krases could put it down. The Simic had assumed the fungal growths were the result of some rogue project gone awry. A week later, a squad of spear-wielding eternals attacked an underground Rakdos poetry slam, and this time there had been no mistaking the Golgari fungi covering the attackers.

“Which is a bad look for the swarm,” Vraska had explained. “I could point to the half-a-dozen attacks on our own undercity territory as counter-examples, but no-one wants to hear it. Even if my guild wasn’t at war with itself regularly, other would just say I sent those attacks as plants to throw suspicion off of myself.”

Chandra had agreed to help immediately, just for something to distract from her latest bout of restlessness. She had almost even turned down the gold Vraska offered for the job.

It was quite a lot of gold. The gorgon seemed to still feel bad about how things had gone with Baan, as if that creep’s fate had been anyone’s fault but his own. Chandra hadn’t asked yet if Samut had been offered the same price for her help. It was clearly personal enough for Samut regardless, and ambivalent as Chandra felt about payment, she couldn’t imagine offering Samut the same without it being at least somewhat insulting.

“So just, uh...leave them for the Izzet grunts to move?”

“Yes.” Samut nodded. “I’ll trust the natives do what’s best for their own plane.” She looked over the line of fallen warriors. “A whole lifetime perfecting our bodies for the afterlife, and it turns out the best we can hope for after death is that we lie still and unused by evil.”

“I...I’m sorry.”

“Yes, you said that.” Samut smiled faintly. “I’m not much for being sorry about what’s past. I’ve lost a lot of my life already...I need to focus on making the future better.”

“Better life...” Chandra stared across the tunnel at the opposite wall. “What do you have in mind?”

Samut nodded, lips pursed.

“Dinner would be a good start.”

* * *

Pivlichino’s (or Pivlichino’s IV, as the sign outside read, for some reason), was spacious, crowded, and loud. Chandra adored it. The tables were laid out in a patterned sprawl, built to every size and shape needed for accommodating the different bodies of Ravnica. Groups of goblins shared drinks at long, short-legged benches. Minotaurs and elves and humans wolfed down meals at an array of middling tables. Chairs with legs the size of tree-trunks loomed large against the near wall for the odd giant diner. Waiters bustled among the diners, hefting barrels of bumbat and platters of every kind of food. Plates of steaming intestines. Sliced fruit arranged over sweet ices. Bowls of beetles drenched in vinegar.

The maitre d’, a harried-looking Viashino, had taken one look at Chandra and Samut, and escorted them to a small side room before they’d made it ten steps into the building. There, they’d been presented with a huge selection of fancy clothes to change into.

“Seriously?” Chandra had asked, pointing over the maitre d’s horned shoulder at a troll lumbering into the restaurant. “She’s covered in spiders.”

The maitre’d had sniffed. “They are not sitting at our best table.” She waved her arm at the tiers of clothing covering the walls “You may have your pick of the lot. Our thrulls will even clean your current...garments. If you would like.”

Samut had picked a tiered red-and-gold formal dress, then replaced the skirts with a set of pale white trousers and fancy riding boots. Her stride through the dining room was confident and fresh, and not at all like someone who had been trudging through sewer-muck all day. Chandra, on the other hand, was very much showing the day’s labor as she ambled beside Samut in a hastily-thrown-on set of Selesnya robes that reminded her of Ghirapur-style dresses, in cut if not in color.

Still, despite the fatigue, the heads they turned and eyes they caught were definitely aimed at her as much as Samut, and Chandra felt a little swagger sneak into her walk, even as she gawked like a tourist at the main dining room.

Pivlic practically glowed with delight at Chandra and Samut’s reaction as he escorted them to their table. He needed no encouragement to show off every detail of the establishment, from the “authentic Gruul wall-art” to the “specially Simic-grown kelp-thread carpets.”

“-and of course, our mealtime entertainment for the evening.” Pivlic gestured toward a group in Gruul hides dragging instruments into the main dining room by a side door.

“Real...real popular place you’ve got, huh?” Chandra commented, consciously restraining herself from stopping and watching in awe as a trio of demons devoured a tower of chocolate ice the size of a small house.

“Patrons from every guild and guildless walk of life enjoy the fine food and facilities of Pivlichino’s,” Pivlic beamed. “Paid for with Orzhov gold, of course, but co-owned and run with the best cooks, entertainers, and brewers of the Rakdos and the Golgari. A true symbol of collaboration and goodwill among guilds.”

“Impressive,” Samut replied, absently. She was glancing all over, at every diner and dish and decoration in sight. Chandra would have thought it just enthusiasm of the newly sparked if she hadn’t been gawking herself.

“We have a few private rooms, but I can tell you two will be happier with a full view of the action.” Pivlic gestured to a set of tables on a raised dais, right next to a small balcony. There was a clear view of the setting sun down a long boulevard through the window, and a panorama of most of the dining area on the other side of the table. The chairs were made of wicker and resin, and the cushions looked suspiciously like Simic oozes, but were soft as silk, and Chandra felt every bruise on her shoulder slide away as she leaned back and peered at the pedestrians walking a few stories below.

“Start our dear friends with a round of Appetizers Allegiant,” Pivlic dictated to a waiting minotaur waiter, standing at blank attention with a red cloth draped over his forearm. “Our special until the end of Seleszeni,” He added with a wink. “Variation without spoiling your appetite for more.”

The band started setting up as they waited for water and appetizers. The Gruul had brought several large drums, carved horns, and a massive string instrument that had clearly been carved out of a six-foot chunk of rubble. They hauled everything onto a raised stage in the center of the dining space. A serviceable place to play music, though something about it made Chandra think of a fighting ring.

“Do you like music?” Samut asked, nodding at the stage.

“Some of it. We have the best dancing music on my home plane. You have to come listen to Kaladeshi qawwali singers someday.”

“I think I’d like that. Anything you can move your feet to is best.”

“Yeah. I bet Gruul music is good for dancing” Chandra eyed the band. The largest of them, a towering centaur, had wrestled the rubble-harp upright, and was plucking at it experimentally. “Though I guess even if it is good to jam to, there’s not much of a dance floor.”

A quick glance around the massive room confirmed this. Chandra frowned.

“Huh. I thought Pivlic said this place was a club too.”

“What does that mean, ‘club?’”

“Oh! Ummmm….” Chandra bit her lip. “I guess they can change from place to place, but like...I guess I think of a place with music where you can dance. Sometimes fancy, sometimes not. I prefer the latter.”

Samut nodded. “We’ll have to incite some dancing tonight.”

Chandra accepted a glass of water from their returning waiter and raised it to Samut. “We should hang out more often.”

The ‘Appetizers Allegiant’ arrived on five small plates, each showing off a fusion of tastes each guild was known for. The Golgari slow-roast slider with Rakdos pepper sauce was fantastic, as were the thin slices of thrull pate with a minty Azorius-inspired jam.

The band started playing as they worked through the dishes. The first song was a low, slow-building rumble of a song. The lead singer, a barrel-chested goblin, rasped out lyrics about the setting sun setting the world on fire.

“Interesting,” Chandra nibbled on a bite of toast points made from Boros rations and an organic mash of Gruul vegetables. “I was expecting more smashing-themed songs.”

“I like it,” Samut said. “Reminds me of the training songs from back home. Most of them are about the sun.” She made a slight face. “We’ll have to come up with some new lyrics now, I suppose.”

“How...how are things back home?”

Samut frowned. “Better than we feared, but harder than anyone could have imagined before...well, before. We’ve scraped together an outpost at Hashep, but just about every stretch of the desert is hostile even without the dangers of starvation or exposure. It’s about all Hazoret can do to keep the horrors at bay.”

“I’m really sorry to hear that.” Chandra looked down at the table. “I, uh, went back to Naktamun, a few days ago. I hadn’t even thought to look for the survivors.”

“We’re a plane of fighters,” Samut replied, low. “No need for you to feel bad about having other concerns. It seems like every plane has its share of horrors. And things aren’t so dire that I can’t spare time to see to matters here. To try and find help for my plane on other worlds.”

“Have you had any luck?”

“Vraska has put me into contact with one of the guild leaders here. Ral Zarek.”

Chandra nodded. “I’m familiar.”

“He’s come twice so far to survey the land. The land and what equipment we’ve been able to scavenge from the ruins. He’s confident that we can construct a device to bring the rains more frequently, which, basically, is to say at all.” Samut sighed. “But we persevere. We are strong. I find that I am able to best serve my people by assuring them our betrayed comrades and ancestors have been put to as honorable a rest as I can make for them.”

“If I can help at all...I can’t imagine the hardships your plane is going through, but whatever I can do...”

“I was actually going to ask if your lover was still around,” Samut replied. “-and if she would have the time to visit Amonkhet. Our excavator mages have made immense strides in re-discovering connections with the plane, and using them to coax new growth, but it would help to have someone of her talents who can travel with her own reserve of mana.”

“My…? Oh.” Chandra’s ears got hot, and the looked away, out the window. “That’s not...you mean Nissa. It’s um, it’s not like that, anymore. I mean, I could definitely ask, but...” She trailed off.

“Oh? Oh. Oh, I’m very sorry, I had just- will, I saw the two of you when she joined the battle, and afterwards, well, I just thought...”

Chandra jerked her shoulders in a small shrug. “Sure. I guess I thought so too.”

“It can be hard, when a fight goes wrong,” Samut offered. “It was the same in the trials. Even in training. The closest crop can feel disunity when faced with an overwhelming trial.”

“We’re just not right for each other,” Chandra said. She picked up a mizzium fork from the small plate in front of her, its tongs woven through with some kind of...blue roasted worm? “That’s all. We talked about it.”

“Didn’t like each other as much as you thought?”

“No, I...” Chandra set the fork down and frowned. “I’m still working that out.”

“Mm. Didn’t work it out when you talked?”

“Well...it wasn’t that long of a talk, I guess.”

Samut grimaced. “You ended your relationship before you knew why you wanted to end it?”

“Would you believe I told myself it was because I didn’t like girls?”

“The way I saw you look at her when we first met in Naktamun?” Samut’s grimace twisted into a smirk. “The way you two looked at each other when we felled the false god? No, I don’t think I would believe that at all.”

“I mean, she might have been the only one, for all you knew.”

“Only one?”

“Only, you know...” Chandra twirled her hand through the air, not quite sure what sort of gesture she meant to make. “The only girl I liked.”

Samut raised an eyebrow. “Was she?”

Uh...” Chandra’s hand fell to her lap. “No. She wasn’t the only one. She isn’t the only one, I guess.”

“Oh?” The smirk widened. “Well, who could blame you? When there are women like me in the world...” Samut shrugged, throwing both hands up in the air and tossing her hair.

Chandra rolled her eyes. “Anyways, I guess I was just grasping at reasons, so I told myself anything.”

“Are you though? Pansexual?” Samut asked, with a straightforwardness that caught Chandra out of nowhere.

“Uh, bisexual, I guess?”

“Bisexual?”

“Yeah, guys and gals. Love ‘em both.”

Samut tilted her head. “Ah. There’s so much more than just men and women in the world, though – oh, I shouldn’t have assumed-” She flushed slightly. “Is it just humans on your home plane?”

“What…?” Chandra tilted her head as well, quizzically. “Oh! Oh, no we’ve got plenty of – I don’t have a preference of genders.” She shrugged. “I mean, I’ve got a type, but, you know, it’s just one of many types.”

“I’ll toast to that.” Samut nodded. She raised her glass of water. “Here’s to everyone.”

“Yeah!” Chandra knocker her cup against Samut’s, spilling a few drops on the tablecloth. “The whole buffet!”

Samut burst out with a sharp laugh. “Buffet?”

“Okay maybe it’s not a perfect metaphor, I just mean...you know, curry is all well and good, but sometimes you want a-a mango, you know?”

“I’ve not tried either of those things, but I take your meaning.” Samut wiped a small tear from the corner of her eye.

“My guests!” Pivlic flapped up to the table, the minotaur waiter in tow. “Enjoying everything so far?”

“So far,” Samut replied. Chandra nodded, guiltily stuffing the last small plate – a Simic-bred eel-shrimp on a bed of selesnyan lettuce – between her lips.

“Is womderfulf,” she managed through her full mouth.

Pivlic beamed. “Splendid. And any thought on your entrees for the evening? I’m happy to go over the specials.” The waiter moved up and offered Chandra and Samut several crisp sheets of fine parchment. “We also have an extensive house menu, new to this iteration of Pivlichino’s.”

Samut looked both overwhelmed and delighted with the wealth of options, and listened eagerly as Pivlic listed the special dishes. Chandra zoned the imp out, and flipped through the sheets, which listed options for hot dishes, vegetarian dishes, and dishes for undead patrons.

“Errr...maybe just a steak...” Chandra scanned the meat options, looking for an animal she was familiar with.

“Mmmm, that does sound good,” Samut said. “Not very balanced though. Hardly the whole buffet.”

Chandra looked up from her menus. Samut was peeking over the edge of hers, grinning. Chandra stuck her tongue out. Pivlic looked between the two of them, a politely puzzled look on his face.

“I mean, if you only want the meat menu.” Samut extended her hand and beckoned with her fingers. “I’m happy to look at the rest.”

“Well it just so happens I am in the mood for a steak tonight,” Chandra shot back, a smirk of her own twisting the corner of her mouth.

“But just look at all these options!” Samut held up her stack of menus dramatically. “Greens and grains and all kinds of sweet treats! A whole world of food in front of you!” She gestured at Pivlic. “And the soups of the day, Chandra! Did you hear about the soups?”

Pivlic nodded graciously.

“I like meat just fine,” Chandra shot back. “Look at this: ‘side of beef with raze-boar bacon. Who could want more than that?”

Samut made a mock-offended face, and clutched a hand to her chest “Well, people with taste, for one.”

“I know what I like!” Chandra said, trying to stifle another laugh, but shouting instead. Thankfully it was only a little loud, the diners in the closest tables only gave her slightly affronted looks.

Pivlic coughed into his hand. “If I may, miss Nalaar, I don’t think your friend here is suggesting you aren’t interested in the, ah, side of beef. I believe she is merely suggesting that’s not the only menu you’d order from.”

“Oh, we covered that bit already,” Samut said, then turned aside and smoothly transitioned from the beginning of a belly-laugh to a feigned coughing fit.

“Right, right.” Chandra buried her face in the menu. “Um, a few more minutes, please.”

“Naturally.” Pivlic bowed and fluttered backward from the table. “No rush at all. I’ll be back shortly.”

Chandra fanned herself with the inside of the menu before setting it down.

“We were just talking about dinner just now, right?” Samut was straining visibly to restrain an even bigger smile than the one already stretching her cheeks.

“You’re awful.” Chandra rolled her eyes. “Sometimes a meal is just a meal.”

Samut held up her hands. “Fair, fair.” Her smile faded slightly. “Does it make you uncomfortable? I don’t mean to joke if it does.”

“It’s fine.” Chandra looked out at the band, taking in the current tune. “Thinking I was straight was a pretty ridiculous thought to have. I’d laugh at it if it wasn’t so pathetic.”

The new song was slow, with more focus on the percussion. The singer was speaking in some language Chandra couldn’t recognize. Guttural, but with the instruments it was, admittedly, a very pleasant sound to close the day with.

“Still not much to dance to,” Samut remarked, engrossed again in the menus.

“Mmm.” Chandra’s gaze wandered from the band to the nearby tables. A few patrons were engaged in watching the band as well, but most were well into their meals. Trolls. Humans. Vedalken. Centaurs. Goblins.

Elves.

A spot of blue among the tables caught Chandra’s eye. Jace was walking across the dining room with Vraska, Pivlic leading them along. He had caught sight of her as well and waved. Chandra grinned, pumping her own arm in the air. Jace said something to Pivlic, and the imp looked to Vraska, who nodded. The three of them changed course for the raised seating area.

“Chandra.” Jace surprised her by offering a hug when he reached the table, which she jumped into. Vraska she exchanged a handshake with. It was nice being on friendly terms with the gorgon, but she still felt more like Chandra’s employer than a friend.

“You clean up pretty good, Mr. Belts-and-Cowls,” Chandra teased, landing a light punch on Jace’s arm. He was wearing his customary blues, but instead of a cape and hood, he had a neat pair of trousers, boots, and a wide-collared shirt with gold buttons up the front. “Is that a loaner from the restaurant, or just a good illusion?”

“100% Ixalan threads.” Jace patted his thigh. “and I could say the same to you. Looking very sharp for someone who’s been in the sewers all day.” A look of concern flashed across his face, and he looked from Chandra to Samut, who was introducing herself to Vraska. “Is this – we’re not interupting a date, are we?” he asked, suddenly whispering. “I mean, I figured you and Nissa were still - I mean, that you had...”

“It’s fine,” Chandra whispered back. She could feel the smile slipping from her face despite her best efforts to keep it in place. “I’m happy to see you. Both of you,” she added, louder. “Would you like to eat with us?”

“As long as my wonderful date doesn’t mind?” Jace threw an unbelievably cheesy-looking grin at Vraska, and Chandra, once again unable to control her face, felt her eyes roll back a bit. Vraska just smiled, and actually blushed a bit.

“Yes, let’s have some tables pushed together then,” her golden eyes scanned the nearby settings. “If there’s one to spare…”

“Naturally; how fortunate to have so many friends of Ravnica joining us this evening!” Pivlic snapped his fingers and their waiter appeared seconds later, a table cradled in his hands, and a chair slung over each horn. “And have we decided on an entree?”

“Krovod steak and beans,” Chandra said, handing the menu back and shooting a defiant glare at Samut. Samut just rolled her eyes and ordered a vegetable stew, ogre-style.

Jace’s eyes glowed blue very faintly as he sat down. “Chef’s soup, please.”

“A very excellent choice, sir. Our most-”

“-popular dish this evening?” Jace finished. “Yes, I noticed.” He winked at Chandra.

“Rat roast,” Vraska said, not even glancing at the menu as she sat. “As rare as your chef feels up to.”

“Splendid all around.” Pivlic signaled another waiter to bring forward a pitcher of water, and bowed. “Your meals will find you shortly.”

“And the spirits for the evening, please!” Vraska called after the minotaur as she settled into her seat.

“So, um...” Jace looked between Chandra and Samut. “What were you both talking about before we got here?”

“Diet preference,” Samut said, raising an eyebrow at Chandra.

“Oh?”

“The conversation was wrapping up, actually,” Chandra said. “What have the two of you been up to?”

“Guild work.” Vraska rapped her fingers against her cup of water. “We’re trying to integrate the Kraul fungal farms with our larger food supply network, but there’s quite a lot of internal faction-fighting to put to bed before that can happen.

“To say nothing of the undead invaders you’ve been so helpfully taking care of,” she added.

Chandra and Samut both accepted the thanks with a nod.

“Leadership is, ah...rather stressful?” Chandra ventured. “I hope you’re getting enough down time. I can’t imagine being in charge of that many people.”

Vraska smiled back at Chandra. “I’m sure you did you’re best, Abbot Nalaar.” There was something very sad in her eyes, despite the grin, just as there had been when Chandra had first volunteered to help with the eternals.

“Abbot?” Samut asked.

“Like uh,” Chandra rolled her hand, looking for the right words. “Like a religious leader.”

Samut failed to stifle a laugh. Jace grinned broadly as well across the table, and Chandra presented them both with a flaming middle finger.

“Sorry, sorry.” Samut took a pull of water to settle herself. “You were a religious leader? You just...well, I suppose every world is different.”

“Speaking of worlds,” Jace said. “How is Nissa? Is she still on Zendikar?”

“Oh, uh, I think so.”

Jace frowned. “Is everything alright? Have you seen her recently?”

“Nissa is one of your planeswalking companions, isn’t she?” Samut interjected. Jace turned to her, and hopefully missed Chandra’s smile falling away a second time. “What has your crop been doing since the invasion?”

“Oh, um...” Jace started counting off on his fingers. “Kaya and Teferi are both back on their home planes at the moment; they’ve got matters they wanted to settle on their own, but they’ve promised to check in if they need a hand. Chandra, well you know what she’s been doing, and me…well, I’ve been making sure the esteemed Golgari guildleader takes some time off-plane to relax when she needs it. Um, as for Nis-”

“What sort of relaxations?” Samut asked.

“Oh, the usual silly couple things,” Vraska said, squeezing Jace’s hand on the tabletop. “Cafe dates. Visiting bookstores. Some off-plane piracy here and there, and of course-ah! The food!”

The waiter strode up to the table, a tray and folding table loaded with steaming plates in one hand, and several bottles cradled in the other. The food set Chandra’s mouth to watering, and she was immensely relieved when Samut started on her own dish right away, so she had an excuse not to wait while Jace and Vraska picked out a bottle for the table.

The steak was about two inches thick and incredibly tender. A pepper gravy coated the cut, and a large helping of butter beans sprinkled over with bitter herbs filled the rest of the plate. Chandra ate through almost a third of the plate before Jace and Vraska settled on a wine; a round blue bottle that they turned over in their hands, exclaiming about its color (and...viscosity?) in excited whispers.

“You two have a lot of interests in common,” Samut observed. “Books, piracy, wine?”

“Yes, well.” Vraska speared the cork with her knife and ripped it out. “We’ve been exploring many more common interests since we started therapy, haven’t we?”

“Cheers to that,” Jace grinned, holding out his glass. Vraska tipped the bottle and a blue, sweet-smelling wine splashed out.

“Therapy?” Chandra asked through a mouthful of beans. “For real? You guys are like...well, Jace acts like he’s a hundred years old sometimes, but you guys are a little young, right?”

“What’s a therapist?” Samut asked.

“Well, apparently it’s never to early too protect your investment in another person.” Jace exchanged a glance with Vraska, and they both grinned. “Tomik said that. He was the one who recommended an Orzhov specialist to us. Same one he and Ral see.”

Chandra wrinkled her nose. “Orzhov? The ones who were basically keeping Kaya captive?”

Vraska nodded. “I was about as enthusiastic as that. But it turns out it’s about the one service the syndicate offers that isn’t just part of an extortion machine. I mean, sometimes it is, but we’ve been lucky enough to take advantage a genuinely good specialist through the guildleader’s professional connections.”

“So you go and tell a ghost about your relationship problems?” Chandra turned aside to Samut. “Therapy is like...well I don’t know how it is on Ravnica, but they have people in Ghirapur who like, help people who have problems with their lives, or sometimes they help people who have problems with relationships.”

Samut nodded. “A confidant, or something like that?”

“Yes, though usually someone who’s trained to listen and give advice.” Jace sipped his wine. “Ours, for example, is an Orzhov advokist trained in mediation and dispute settlement.”

“And do they help?” Samut leaned in. “When you tell them about your problems?”

“So far,” Vraska said. “It’s funny. There are things you don’t realize are causing problems.”

“Or things you do recognize as problems that you just never talk about until someone helps you see the need for it.” Jace reached out a hand and took Vraska’s. “Sometimes it’s nice just to have good advice.”

Dinner rolled along with an ease Chandra hadn’t felt in months. They laughed, shared bites of their meals, and swapped stories. Chandra related her mother’s recent accomplishments with the Ghirapur consulate. Vraska dropped bits of low-level guild gossip. Jace and Samut engaged in a minor debate over the use of illusions in combat. Chandra tried a glass of the wine, and found it about the same as she did most other wines, but enjoyed the soft buzz in the back of her head to accompany the warmth in her stomach.

When the last ray of sunlight slipped out of sight, the band fell into a soft, almost wistful song, mostly focused around the huge flute-player, who swayed and pushed out a long, rolling stream of notes while the singer threw himself into a raspy spoken-word bit about a cyclops falling in love with the moon.

Pivlic re-appeared as the dishes were cleared away, bearing slices of cheesecake dripping with drizzled lines of jam and honey, and hot mugs of ogrish coffee. The hot, bitter drink snapped Chandra out of her post-meal drowsiness enough to enjoy the end of the Gruul set. The band had set their instruments aside, and for a moment it looked like they were packing up. Then they began dancing around one another in tight circles, beating their breasts. The big flutist started up a chant. One of the drummers, the viashino, began clapping out a sharp, precise rhythm, and the flutist took center stage, weaving his arms through the air with slow, jerking movements. The chant became a call and response tune that some of the patrons seemed to know, and were enthusiastically singing along with. Jace even knew a few of the words, and pumped his fist in the air each time he called out.

“Gruul riot anthem.” He whispered to Chandra between calls. “Very popular at Rauck-Chauv.”

Applause and a chorus of hoots filled the dining room at the song’s conclusion. Pivlic fluttered over to loudly and grandly thank the band. Vraska tapped Jace’s cheek.

“Not too shabby, blue-boy. I want to hear that much enthusiasm next time the crew does drunk shanties.”

Jace grinned sheepishly. “Are there other kinds of shanties I don’t know about?”

“Shanties?” Samut exchanged a look with Chandra. “A piracy song?”

Chandra nodded back. “A pirate song. It’s important that you know how funny it is to me to imagine Jace singing one.”

“Jace has many fine pirate qualities.” Vraska ruffled his hair with a free hand, sipping coffee with the other. “You’d both be welcome to join us sometime. If that sort of thing interests you, of course. It’s mostly taking gold from vampires, which is as noble a cause as you can find in the multiverse.”

��That could be fun.” Chandra rubbed her hands together thoughtfully. “I like the sound of Captain Nalaar, in hot pursuit of gold and adventure.”

“Hot pursuit?” Jace smirked, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s a phrase, blue-boy.” Chandra snapped her fingers, lighting a single flame on her index finger. “But since you mention it, just imagine the terror of being pursued by fire on the open sea.” She twirled the flame around, then doused it in the last bite of her cheesecake. “Uh, not that I would make an open flame on your ship, Vraska. Well, not without permission.”

Vraska laughed. “That’s fine. Glad to see you’re burning with enthusiasm. It’s a good trait for a pirate.”

Chandra rolled her eyes as Jace chimed in. “Yes, Chandra has a lot of good qualities that could, uh, light a fire under a reluctant crew.”

“Mmm...” Samut’s eyes glittered. “Like her warm personality.”

Chandra stuck out hr tongue and stood up from the table. “Beltwurms eat you all. I’m going to go get another drink.”

A second group of musicians were setting up on the stage now, and the waiters were clearing away a large swath of the tables around them, creating the dance floor Chandra had wondered about. She skirted the growing space while checking out the new band. They were a mixed group: two women wearing Rakdos colors with no instruments, an grey-bearded Izzet mage, hooking up his gauntlets to a large device that crackled with electricity, and two vedalken, on the drums and lute, respectively, that didn’t seem to be wearing any guild colors at all.

A number of the patrons from dinner had clustered around the bar that ran along one long wall of the dining room. New patrons were slowly filing in to add to the small crowd; a noisier bunch than most of the dinner crowd, and more eager for drink.

Chandra ordered an Uzvar and gin from a half-demon bartender, then perched up on a stool to bask in the crowd and the chatter of ravnican voices. Groups of guildless youths toasted clay mugs of pale ale. Two Azorius officials, looking out of place in their white robes, sipped green liquor from shallow glass cups. A centaur trotted past as the bartender slid the cocktail across the bar, and the look she flashed Chandra nearly made her drop the glass.

Damn it’s been too long. She almost followed after to ask the centaur her name, but an elf, also in conclave garb, greeted the centaur as soon as the thought occurred to her, and pressed her own lips against the centaur’s.

Taken. Figures.

The Gruul band was lounging just as short distance down the bar, laughing and chattering with a clutch of other patrons. The singer was entertaining a pair of young women in Orzhov robes with some kind of impression, and the drummer was in a hot debate with a vedalken and two older humans. Chandra’s eyes slid past them to the musician who’d been playing the huge flute, a tall, long-haired hunk whose arms were on full display under a vest of woven vines and bones. She lost herself in a stare as he reached over the counter with one arm and easily hefted a tankard of beer half as tall as he was.

Definitely into girls , Chandra thought faintly, sipping her drink and vaguely aware her feet were carrying her in the direction of the band . But that’s alright too.

“Play here often?” The words were out of her mouth before Chandra could fully think through her approach. She compensated for the lack of planning with her winning-est smile and a smooth slide against the bar toward the Gruul hunk.

He blinked and looked down at Chandra, and for a second said nothing. Chandra held up her smile for that second, wishing she had a smoother come-on. Then, mercifully, the hunk grinned.

“Ah, first time, actually. I, uh, only joined a few months ago, but Skelly-” He gestured with his drink at the goblin on the bar, who was doing puppetry for the Orzhov fans using a pair of mouse skulls “-plays all over. He’s even did a set at the Juri Revue once!”

Chandra wasn’t entirely sure what that was, but grinned and nodded all the same. “That’s a big gig, I guess?”

“Oh, uh, yeah, pretty big. Plus Rakdos himself did the encore that night. Or so I’m told. I, Uh, wasn’t really in the scene back then but-”

A muffled burst of sound cut the hunk off mid-sentence. The new band was jamming, the beat was quick and exciting, but it sounded oddly faraway.

“Local enchantment,” the bartender said, catching Chandra’s confused look. “So folks can talk at the bar. And so I can actually hear orders.”

“Oh...makes sense.” Chandra threw back her drink and tapped the hunk on the arm. “Wanna dance?”

“Hm?” The hunk looked from Chandra to the dance floor. He set his tankard down on the bar, grinned, and cracked his knuckles. “Absolutely. Let’s show ‘em how it’s done.”

The band boomed louder as soon as Chandra’s boot hit the floor, raising goosebumps along her shoulder. This music was sharp, rapid, and loud. Perfect for dancing however wildly and badly you wanted to.

Through the other patrons, Chandra caught glimpses of Samut coming down the few steps from their table to dance floor She paused right at the edge of the crowd, watching them for a few seconds before diving in, and Chandra lost sight of her. Jace waved from the table, behind the spot she’d disappeared.

Want me to keep an eye on you two? Maybe check in a little later? He kept his mental visit brief, but Chandra was happy to hear his voice. She flashed him two thumbs up and turned back to dance with the hunk.

She had to laugh. The big guy had looked totally natural bobbing and pounding to the Gruul music, but whatever dance you were supposed to be doing to this more hectic, energetic Izzet-Rakdos stuff...well this definitely wasn’t it. He looked like he was having a good time at least. Chandra moved in closer and the hunk winked at her before making an absolutely absurd motion like he was hula-hooping with his shoulders. He was doing it on purpose.

Chandra hooted, and they danced close circles around each other, dodging and weaving through the wild thrashing of the other dancers.

Samut flashed in and out of sight through the crowd. She had already mastered the jerky new dance form, and was adding her own spins. A small ring of other dancers formed around her about seven songs in, howling and clapping as Samut threw a daring backlip into the routine, and cheering as she landed perfectly on her feet. Jace and Vraska were just beyond that, sitting at the table and overlooking the dance floor. They were both seated, but leaned up against each other, swaying to the music and whispering in each other’s ear.

The hunk finally started to look winded after a few dozen songs, and signaled that he was going to go sit for a while. Chandra followed him off the floor, and pretended to slip a little on the edge of the bar area so she could fall and steady herself on his side.

Solid, and just a lil’ soft. Awesome.

All good? Jace asked in her head.

All good. Chandra waved back. Now shoo; gonna work my moves.

“SooOoooOwO, what do you say you and me get out of here and go hang out at your place, big guy?” Chandra forgot about the muffling enchantment, and shouted slightly louder than she meant to. A vedalken just behind the started, and knocked over a (thankfully bare) drink table.

“Uh, why don’t we sit for a while. I’m still a bit dizzy from dancing.” He stooped and picked the table up off the floor one-handed, and sat on one of the stools. Chandra hopped up on another to join him.

“You’re pretty...pretty strong.” Chandra slammed her elbow on the table and flexed her fingers. “Let’s see what you got.”

The hunk chuckled, and laid his own elbow down, taking Chandra’s hand. The rough leather of his gloves was rough, but made it easy to get a grip around his palm.

“Alright.” Chandra squinted in concentration. “Three, two, go!”

A few seconds later, it was over, and Chandra was massaging the back of her hand.

“Sorry,” the hunk said, with an apologetic, almost shy smile. “No mercy is the Gruul way, after all.”

Chandra beckoned for the bartender to bring them over another round, then pouted into her hands, both elbows on the table.

“If Nissa was here she would have totally kicked your butt.”

“Who’s Nissa?”

“An elf. We um...we used to work together. Really strong.”

The hunk laughed. “A strong elf? We had a lot of those in the conclave. Still do, I guess. Some of my toughest friends were elves.”

“Mmm, not strong like Nissa, I bet. She was depcep...decepticaly...deceptively strong. Like a slender tree, but strong like an oak.” Chandra took a pull of her drink and slammed the cup on the tabletop for emphasis. “Do any of your elf-buddies have eyes that glow like they’re magic?”

“Uh, sometimes.” The hunk sipped his drink thoughtfully. “Usually when they cast spells.”

“It’s really cool, right?”

The hunk chuckled. “I suppose. I’ve got a couple eye-glowing spells myself. Should ask around if I look cool enough when I use them.”

Chandra snorted into her drink, and set it down. The hunk did have nice eyes. Thoughtful and fierce like Gideon. Playful like Liliana. Kind like-

“So, uh, your elf friend-”

“Girlfriend,” Chandra blurted out. “Um, I mean ex-girlfriend?” she looked down at the table. “I uh, I’m not sure. I think I might have messed things up with her. I mean, I for sure did, but...”

“Oh.” The hunk nodded, a different sort of apologetic smile on his lips. “That’s...I’m very sorry. That’s um...that’s always very hard to go through.”

“She was like, really my type, you know? Big strong pair of arms to hold you. That’s like, the hottest thing someone can have, honestly. But she’s really gentle, you know? Like, treat you like you’re a flower gentle, but not like a delicate flower because all the plants she works with are as strong as she is.”

“A nature mage?”

“Yeah! Oh, you should have seen the gardens that she kept while we were here on Ravnica...they would have made every nature guild jealous. She’s like...one of those people who always smell like their work, right? And she’s always working with flowers and plants so she smells like paradise.”

“I’m sorry she couldn’t come tonight,” The hunk said with a smile that almost looked...sad? “I hope I’m not prying but is she, uh, is she not from Ravnica?”

“Huh? Oh. no.” Chandra waved her hand in front of her face. “I mean, I’m not either. We all came back here for the war, you know?”

The hunk look puzzled for a moment, then his eyes went wide, and he nodded. “That is impressive then.”

Chandra cocked her head. “What do you mean?”

“Well. I mean, uh, that is, I’ve heard about the ones who walk from other worlds...there’s a lot, I’m told? Of worlds. If there there are dozens of worlds that each of you could be on.”

“Hundreds,” Chandra corrected, raising her drink and eyebrow for dramatic effect. “Thousands. No one’s counted them all, even.”

“Meeting a...a friend that’s precious to you? Over infinite worlds? That sounds like something special.”

“Yeah.” Chandra set down her glass. She heaved a breath, and realized she wasn’t feeling nearly as wired as she had been a few minutes before. “Um...I guess that’s how I felt when I first met her. Like, I’d been to so many places in the multiverse. That’s what we call it,” she added, “and, well...have you ever looked at someone and just thought, like, ‘that’s it, that’s the person that feels real?’”

The hunk nodded. “I think I know what you mean. Sometimes something new in your life is just obviously right for you.”

“Right!?” Chandra put her glass up for a toast, and the hunk obliged with a clink of his tankard. “And like, it was really great with her because when we traveled together after that...well, she made me feel that way no matter where we went.”

“Comfort and constancy.” The hunk leaned back on his stool. “Sounds like a very special person.”

“Yeah.” Chanda looked blankly at her glass, vaguely offended at the absence of any more liquor at the bottom. “You know, maybe I don’t want to, um, hang out after all.” She looked up at the Gruul hunk shakily. “N’offense or anything; you’ve been real fun to talk to.”

The Hunk put his hands up. “None taken, miss. I uh, think I’m a bit too old for you anyway.” He picked his own tankard up and swilled it in his hand. “No offense.”

“Pffft, sure.” Chandra slumped in her stool, elbow on the table, chin in her hands.

“I spent a long time living a very different life than the one I have now,” The hunk offered “A life I thought was the only right path for me. When I finally had my moment of clarity, the moment that brought me to the Gruul...” He bit his lip. “...I don’t regret the life I led before that, and I don’t regret my choice to live a life that would’ve been unthinkable for me before. I guess...you’re young. Don’t be afraid of trying things you’re unsure about. Life’s too short.”

Chandra stared up at the hunk, blinking.

“Sorry; too corny?”

Chandra snorted. “A bit? But point taken.”

They lapsed into silence.

“Your friend looks awful concerned for you.” the hunk’s eyes flicked up and over Chandra’s shoulder. Samut had come off the dance floor, and was lounging by the bar, eyes on Chandra and the hunk. She had a few other dancers hanging around and talking at her, but she didn’t seem to be paying much attention to them.

“Better get back to the gang.” Chandra slid off the stool, and offered her hand to the hunk. “Chandra, by the way. ‘S been fun.”

“Ghired.” The hunk’s grip was solid, and the bones sewn into his sleeve rattled slightly as they shook. “Hope we meet again, Chandra.”

“Yeah.” She mimed a swat at his midsection. “Keep working on your dancing til then.”

Ghired laughed. “I’ll think about it. Come to the stomping grounds if you ever improve your arm-wrestling prowess.”

Chandra stuck out her tongue and trotted over to Samut.

“Thanks for keeping an eye on me.”

“I trusted you could take care of yourself,” Samut said with a shrug. “But it’s always good to have some solidarity on the battlefield.”

“That what this is?” Chandra leaned heavily against the bar. The warm buzz in her head and the thrum of the music felt like a blanket. She didn’t much feel like dancing again, but right now it was enough to watch the other ravnicans having fun.

“Life is.” Samut perched up next to Chandra. “All of it.”

Chandra laughed. “What are you? 18?” She put an arm around Samut. “You’re way too young to be so down on life.”

“We’re not that much older, grandma Nalaar.” Jace heaved himself up onto a stool on Chandra’s other side. He sighed and rubbed his thigh. “Though I sure feel pretty ancient right now.”

Chandra shot an outraged glance at the dance floor, then back at Jace. “Don’t tell me you were dancing and I missed it. Did you turn yourself and Vraska invisible??”

“No, she’s not the dancing type either,” Jace sighed. “Just a lot of standing around and talking to people we’d rather not talk to. “Guildmaster PR, that kind of thing. “She told me I should go sit down.”

Sure enough, Vraska was standing up on the dais, near their table, having a hushed (or as hushed as the noise in the room allowed) discussion with a frog-faced mage in Simic biomancer robes. Long, elvish ears poked out from behind the frog-mancer’s eyes, and they didn’t appear to be having nearly as much trouble as Vraska hearing over the music.

“Ah.” Chandra bumped Jace with her shoulder. “Boy-toy blue-boy banished while the adults talk?”

Jace laughed. “Oh, nothing like that. Vraska knows I don’t like the extended standing and talking. She’s...very good at recognizing when I’m uncomfortable. I guess we’ve both been very good at that, and now we’re working on acting on it more often.”

Samut cocked her head, quizzically. “Was that a problem before?”

“Not at first,” Jace replied, pursing his lips. “but it was hard for a while after what happened here. I think it took more out of us than we wanted to admit, and it was affecting how we acted. That, and Vraska does so much for her guild. It’s like...well, it’s like a dozen full-time jobs, and I wasn’t supporting her as much as I should have.” He smiled at Chandra and Samut, and the smile, small and tired as it was, reached all the way to his eyes. “It’s been tough but, well I really think whatever we have is worth it.” He blushed a bit, and a second later Chandra recognized the signs of a minor illusion fluttering over Jace’s face, hiding the red in his cheeks.

“Still working a little on being honest though, huh?” Chandra elbowed him in the side, then threw her arms around Samut and Jace.

“A little,” Jace laughed. “I’m lucky to have friends who still call me out.”

They sat together and watched a while. The Rakdos musicians showed no sign of slowing down, nor did the dancers. Samut nodded off on Chandra’s shoulder after a few minutes.

“So, uh, it’s helped, then?”

“Hm?”

Chandra looked at Jace out of the corner of her eye. “The therapy? Talking to someone?”

Jace nodded, slow, then reached into his cloak. “I don’t know if they take clients still, but I can put in a word through Ral if you want.” He scribbled an address onto a scrap of parchment and handed it to Chandra.

Chandra nodded. “Thanks. I think that’d be good. I’ll um...I’ll let you know.”

Jace just smiled and took Chandra’s hand. They remained a while longer, as midnight slipped away into the early morning hours.

The above is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.

#mtg #mtg fan fiction #forsaken #Gruulfriends #forgiven

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calculatingminutiae · 5 years

Text

And Then He Was A Zombie

Ch. 1/?

You are beginning to regret your life choices. Mostly, you ponder as you sink nearly shin-deep into slowly fermenting brain, you lament your audacious decision to exist.

Not a soul has seen height nor hair of Mituna Captor for weeks, which is concerning considering that he's seldom let you forget about him before. The four sweeps you've known him have felt like a neon-coated, caffeine-laced retro fever dream, and the stark absence of that unabashed presence, that sheer bravado from someone so contemptible is tangible. You.

You don't miss him. Not really. You may have, once, but the long nights of your friendship passed as you grew up on diverging paths, as his unwavering confidence in his abilities (outwardly; you were privileged with the knowledge that his "natural psychic talent" came from practicing with his psi until odd hours of the morning in order to make his anxieties and excess energy recede until he could sleep) eroded at your patience, until his unrepentant criticism of your studies and etiquette (you are most certainly not a "TToTTal fuckiin bulgewrench hiigh off [y9ur] own ego iif you TThiink you're TThe only guy people are giiviin' 2hiiTT TTwo for b2 rea2on2," nor any variation thereof, thank you very much) became so great (why does she have to like him so much can't she see he won't treat her well, not like you can, he can't even treat himself well) that you drifted apart. You haven't spoken in at least two perigees, and even then the last two sweeps have only included game-related correspondence. Even if you find him irritating, even if his "prophecies" and grim predictions are clearly nonsensical and demoralizing, you must admit his abilities are valuable to the team. You are aware he must know that all twelve of you will be at a great disadvantage should any of his several, several deaths stick.

So how dare he? Drag you out here? (#unsanitary, #b9dy h9rr9r, #w9uld it kill you t9 have a deep pers9nal quest that includes air c9nditi9ning?)

Except he hasn't actually dragged you out here at all. His absence has started to concern your mutual friend (his datemate, somehow) to the point of anxious episodes, which you should have known he'd cause sooner or later. Selfish as he can be, you'd almost thought she meant more to him than this, leaving her high and dry in the metaphorical torrent of suspended ambivalence. He could well be fine, could well not. She has no way to know. Neither do you, but you foolishly volunteered to find out. You hadn't exactly thought about the consequences of reconciling, let alone explaining to her, what it is you really find.

Brains. Fire. Case closed. You knew that going in, of course, as did she, but the name of this planet seemed significantly more superficial before you had to smell it.

The air carries the caramelized odor of constant decay, beyond the blood of your own ironically-clad planet and into the territory of viscera you are entirely certain that no soul should ever actually witness outside of a morgue. The smog only makes it worse. Each sweltering, ragged breath is physical pain, and you are certain you've been burned from exposure within the first two minutes of your journey. Cranial nerves serve as pale-pink branches on trees formed from the wet, undulating flesh forming the islands you stand upon as not to plummet into the infernal abyss below. You need to throw out these shoes. Immediately. And your sweater, and yourself, a pitter-patter of droplets from above, finally, r

It's cerebrospinal fluid.

That is definitely cerebrospinal fluid.

God.

Damnit.

And, by the game's logic, it's flammable too, stirring a flare-up of the fires roaring near the borderline of this islet over the horizon, at which point you decide that you can afford to burn all of your clothes after this if it allows you to sit in the dubious shelter of one of these brain-trees and wait out the storm.

The terrain directly in your line of sight is vast, but you feel an incessant need to give your status updates to the group. Calm down. Stare at your phone, your eleven (Ten? It may well be ten now, you consider, a shiver as you banish the thought) remaining followers in this post-apocalyptic wasteland will no doubt praise your perseverance. Even as your fingers become so disgustingly slick with Actual-Fucking-Brain-Juice that you have to give up your comprehensive progress report and actually bother to take in your surroundings.

There aren't any enemies on this island. No imps, no ogres, no basilisks or other "no-thank-you's" which you stopped having a use for long ago, their resources trivial when you consider yourself to have made a rightful living quarters at long last. Finally, no cullers to tell you what to do. Just a meager living, one you miss at the moment as you idly watch the glistening "rain" wash its way over small pale rocks in this sparse savannah.

You'd thought you were walking into woodland, but consider you may have been mistaken. The thick woods behind you beg to differ, however, but you elect to ignore that little fact just as well as you ignore the treads in the ground from what you are positive must have been a battle with more than a few psionic lasers. You must admit, you still aren't entirely sure how he does that.

He's always been psionically gifted, of course, for as long as you've known him, and he's always had the audacity to complain. To be culled by the empress herself, to be of the highest rank in his class, to be lauded and loved and lucky, so, so lucky, and complain. Even his headaches could reveal incredible things, privileged facets of the near-future, while yours. Yours bought you time locked up in your block, bouncing from culler to culler as your health fluctuated, so fragile, you, and nobody cared to deal with you. Nobody listened to your ideas, nobody took you seriously, no matter how hard you tried to become an educated, upstanding member of society on your own. And yet, once, you tried to vet his problems. "Problems," when he'd argue with you at odd hours about rock bands and the oxford comma, or putting on matching socks or not or the heat death of the universe. Problems when you'd stay up, some mornings, just to see when he'd finally run out of steam. Problems when you knew you'd helped him tire himself out and all that pent-up anxious energy released and sometimes you'd smile to yourself for a job well done from halfway across the district.

You find yourself laughing a little. Almost fond.

He'd trusted you with his insecurities, as you trusted him with yours. You thought you weren't tall enough, that your pants came up too-too high on you if you wanted the legs to fit. (He'd told you to wear them anyway;"iiTT'll be a TThiing by nexTT 2weep, The hiigh waii2TT. iiTT'll be, liike, riighTTeous, dude, you're a TTrend2eTTer 2o long a2 you own iiTT. TThey ju2TT don'TT geTT you yeTT." You have, truthfully, under your sweater, in spite of another dear friend telling you exactly how you dress like a travesty. You won't be controlled. Entirely.) He thought he was only ever given a second look because he has his ancestor's face. You.

You wish you would have told him n9, Mituna, y9u're a w9nderful individual as y9u are, but instead, you were too focused on his new co-op partner. The same girl playing some MMO with fanciful hats and discussing legal precedents on forums you'd found in your research, it was far too unlikely to seem true but once you'd made the connection it was inescapable. She'd gone inactive, disappeared because of him. She gave into that anti-intellectual sniveling drivel because of him, a brilliant mind squandered, he ruined your chances with

The flames rise in the forest behind you, driving you into the clearing. At least, if you want to keep your ass firmly un-toasted. You do.

It's strange, anyway, his actual, tangible absence from your life. You're by no means co-dependent, but it doesn't feel quite right. Like a building on your commute's gone out of business, or perhaps like an old tree in the schoolyard has been hacked to the ground, leaving behind the stump where it once joined the ground, it's. Surreal. You find this surreal, but maintain confidence that you will, eventually, get over it. Life moves on. (It is Doom that lingers.)

The rain abates, leaving you temporarily distracted from the direction you were initially headed in and entirely susceptible to tripping over something in this clearing while you idly admire how nice and tan your retinas must be getting from looking at the sky so much.

C-rRck .

A trail of bone shards fly from your shoe, much to your temporary horror, until you realize the crucial factors that A. this skull is not that of a troll and B. it's actually partially buried in the ground, so it may well be a fossil of some kind, you suppose. In fact, it looks as though it's been picked clean by time, or some very efficient fungi. You almost feel bad for this poor ex. . . Snake? This may well have been a snake, at one point, you determine by looking under the hands that prevented you from faceplanting into cerebral cortex and discovering that what you thought were "rocks" are actually the ridges of a very, very large snake's spine. The ridges etched into the surrounding brain matter, truthfully, deviate from the folding pattern of the rest of the ground. There is a stick planted at the head of the site that you hadn't initially noticed, a ruler hastily wedged into the mush. Penance, you ponder, for the additional rocks washed up in this clearing. Perhaps that explains why you have failed to run into any friendly lizard civilians in this place to offer you directions. Surely, you've merely committed a lizard-social faux pas by wandering back-asswards into an Important Game Landmark. Yes. Obviously.

You decide this will not appear in your reports, and press on.

The planet maintains itself, just as before, equally disgusting in its crags and valleys and hills and rivers of you've-stopped-caring-keep-trudging. Really, if she hadn't seemed so upset, you question whether or not you could have brought yourself to look for him. He, by and large, had his shortcomings. Bouts of belligerence in violently vacillating mood swings, calloused comments with so little tact that it was hard to excuse his lack of social etiquette; he hardly seemed to be trying. Verbally belittling himself, constantly, even in the presence of those doing quantifiably worse than him in the same categories. You know social cues didn't come easy to him, he told you as much. You still don't think that's an excuse not to correct yourself the nth time you laugh at a "fail" compilation including serious injuries.

He was as sore a winner as loser, in those days, considering himself accomplished for having posted artwork before and thereby actually knowledgeable on the subject, or at least moreso than anyone who told him that he could not, for the life of him, draw properly-proportioned arms and hands. He'd repeat the same mistakes, content to call them inevitable or very much a choice. He poured himself into his favorite games, between practices, to the point of obsession. To the point of being outwardly off-balance should he be knocked from his proud number-two (for number one, evidently, was for those unskilled enough to calculate exactly where they need to be) spot on the leaderboard. Always in twos. Two different socks, two different shoes, two different bright red-and-blue eyes, always even, lest something go amiss. "The FaTTe2 don'TT liike TTwo be mocked," he'd tell you on the subject of threes and parallelisms during your early-morning chats, though you'd never truly understood his fascination yourself. It's an old legend, in the community of psionic yellowbloods, that three incarnations of fate bestowed them with the powers of electrokinesis and prophecy, "TTwo make 2ure TThe Dyiing are wiiTTne22ed when TThey, liike, reTTurn TTwo TThe bounTTy of co2miic liifeforce and whaTTever. TThaTT 2omeone geTT2 iiTT before you go, yknow?? 2o nobody ha2 TTwo be alone."

You sigh, officially Hopelessly Lost. You take a seat atop some maroon rocks, which you are absolutely confident are actually. Bricks. And scraps of drywall, the rough texture under your fingers as they drift over this cleft piece of what was part of a block, at some point. His block, from the oil pastel staining your fingers. You run like you didn't know you could before, overtaken by a sudden need to know exactly what happened here. The pastel isn't quite baked to the surface yet, and it may not be too late. You hope for her sake, that it is not too late. You hope for your sake, that it is not too late. You need to tell him something before he's allowed to leave again.

Your name is KANKRI VANTAS and you, begrudgingly, have regrets.

The hive is in complete disarray once you find it. You let yourself in, considering the entrance is missing, let alone the staircase to the top of the tower the two of you had built upon entering the Medium. You remember that he didn't want this wall here, or that block there, and his load gaper is still firmly defenestrated and stuck in the ground even though you know he could have put it back by now. It's much easier to look at that than the maelstrom of dirty laundry and magazine pages covered in ambiguous tv-dinner sauce in the main livingsblock, a proper mountain of crushed cans of toxic Appleberry Blast that nearly cancel out the smoke encrusting your lungs. You knew he was somewhat a slob, compared to you, but if the place weren't still standing you'd swear a tornado went through here. Old microwave trays are covered in mold. There's no telling how long this has been this way.

"Mituna…?"

There is no answer. You can't say you expected one, heading further up through the vertical labyrinth.

The floors pass you by in slow motion, blurring into a singularity as you refuse to acknowledge the little things about the remains of his hive. How it feels you've walked into a ghost town, how there's a deep ochre staining the carpet at the bottom of the stairs, how the smell of decay somehow only gets worse as you ascend. Worse, and. Sweeter. Sickeningly sweet, like candied excrement, the tang of touching your tongue to an outlet emanating from a block you haven't seen in a very, very long time.

The roof to his respiteblock is missing. Entirely. It's been blown off, debris around the room, the place soaked from the rains and exposed to the enemy and yet apparently untouched. He did not come up here often, so it seems, the block mostly barren save the diagrams and prophetic scribblings on the walls, a leather-bound book and a pile of broken glass.

You, in spite of your better judgment, take a look at the book.

It's his sketchbook. One with pictures you've seen before, of )(er Radiance and Meenah, younger and almost caricatures of a happy household. It's immediately followed by Meenah's snaggle-toothed grin, by Radiance (dubbed "Radz", in these pages, the marked messy handwriting of a younger child ) and her icy, gaslighting "disappointed" pout. Abstract works, impressions of his old biclops, experiments with colors (always the primaries; he can only trust the primaries, so notes the back of the page, upon learning he is colorblind) and drawings of the psionic roundtable he was forced to sit at. A child sits surrounded by people ten times his age because of his visions of the end of days. He's exaggerated them, made fun of them, save the ones he liked. A childhood spent drawing, trying to capture the likeness of the Archiver, connector of the stars, among other things. The portraits have odd titles. "maybe ii can'TT iinvenTT The iinTTerneTT, bu7 ii'll be 2omeTThiing you'd be proud of."

There are large gaps in drawing quality, from then on, from starting and stopping and meeting new people. You find he's drawn portraits of you, even, and of Latula, so many of Latula. Never flattering ones, either, in the strictest sense; he seems to have poured a lot of time and effort into a drawing you've never seen before, a sketch of her laughing over the webcam during their matches. Her nostrils flair a bit, a few hairs out of place, and yet every freckle on her face has a degree of life to it. He may have held himself to an impossible standard, but this picture you are certain would make her cringe is so thoughtfully put together that you are positive that she has never seen it.

Then you entered the game.

The sketches rapidly deteriorate into scrap paper, holding notes and lists written in a hurry. Prophecies, you gather, in a shorthand reserved for the empress's board of elite psions. A way to convey ideas quickly and efficiently in the confused daze in the wake of a vision (a way to keep anyone from effectively snooping, as you are, since the symbols appear near-incomprehensible to you). The text only becomes sloppier over time, to the point that you don't hazard to guess what it could possibly mean. You suppose he'd distilled the important parts into his reports in the groupchat.

The less important parts are written plainly, without a care for who may see. Notes like "Charon ii2 a liil biiTTch abouTT TThii2 whole que2TT junk, hone2TTly," and "noTT enough iimp2 come by TTwo ju2TTiify TThe TTrap2 anymore." Like "ii2 a popTTarTT really a raviiolii," or "by TThe TTime you 2ee TThii2, ii have noTThiing for you." Scribbled prophecies in purple, drawing your attention to the pink and violet powder of pastel on the ceiling, what must have once been a drawing. A gaze staring directly into his heart, artificial, requiring him to always blink first. Unless he could act first.

The next several pages are stuck together with a highlighter-yellow substance, the source of the sweetness in the air. If you were to peer under his desk, you'd note the glass shards fit perfectly into the shape of an empty jar.

A sprawling note on the next available page, stained by the toxic honey and pale yellow tears. You fail to stomach reading beyond the first line.

"laTTTTiie,

iim 2orry."

You skip to the end. At least, the end of what you can see. It's another portrait, one of an event you recognize, of the first anniversary of your entrance into this hellhole. Meenah baked you all a cake, as you recall. The group quickly split up and stratified, but in this sketch. In this sketch you can stand one another, huddled together around the mystery ahead, in various stages of smiling and excitement. You all were happy, then. Most of you. Most of you were just as happy as he paints.

You realize that, in all of these pictures, including this group shot, he hasn't once drawn himself.

There is the unmistakable sensation of a hand, not gentle nor rough, planted firmly on your left shoulder.

You came to this planet alone.

The shadow looming over you does so by about half a foot, your immediate instinct to tack on "n9 matter what he says" identifying the corpse it belongs to long before you raise your head. You can tell it's a corpse because of the sudden intense smell of putrification in your immediate vicinity, of rot and decay, of something seared and burnt like overcooked grubloaf disposed of with lighter fluid and a careless match. Your epic quest, as shitty as it's been, is over, and your prize is presenting itself to you on a bloodstained, honey-soaked carpet.

It could be looking at you. He, could be looking at you, this thing that used to be a friend of yours. He could be looking above your head, for all you know, or at the glimpse of his psyche you've stolen, claws curled into fists, venom dripping from his fangs, frozen in space and time when you finally look at him. Overgrown bangs obscure his eyes. It wouldn't matter much anyway, considering you can't tell where those hidden eyes point when they begin glowing a bright, bilious green, either.

His bright yellow jacket (you should have known you'd never see him without it, even in death) is singed and slashed to shreds, more obviously steeped in dark ochre than the plain black shirt underneath. Torn jeans can no longer contain a leg broken at such an extreme angle, dragging behind him as nothing more than a counterbalance to the tall, spindly form. His ribs art particularly obvious now, looking as though he should snap in half at the waits with a breeze that, of course, never actually comes, on this planet. A hand (hesitantly?) reaches for your shoulder, calloused and scarred, showing off the kinds of skin-boiling horrors only concealed by the general unassuming dark neutrality of (most of, spare that damn jacket) his attire. Webbing red and blue scars, like veins, like lightning travel up from his fingers to his wrist, creep up his neck, epicenter unknown but almost certainly obscured somewhere in the cesspool of a body lumbering towards him. The figure-- no. The shell of Mituna, advances, pauses, and keeps advancing.

You are aware that he must know. Must know your guilt, your conflictions, the overpowering sense of dread sweeping in with the scent rotting flesh. The bright, bright green light flickers, flickers, and glows. You could swear you see a slight sly smile on his face.

Someone finally understands.

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shera-dnd · 5 years

Text

Day 8: Free Day/AU

Hmmm, what should I do for AU day? My posts are already part of an AU so that gets a little redundant, no? I KNOW! How about an AU within an AU? Everyone following my blog knows our players are currently playing a little sidequest in the plane of Ravnica, so how about we take a not so little peek into their backstories and find out how Find Broker Catra and Arrester Adora met?

Summary: Working for the Azorius is never easy, but perhaps Adora can find someone to make it a little easier.

It was a cold and windy autumn night in the city of Ravnica, but the largest city in the multiverse doesn’t stop due to some bad weather. The Izzet are still experimenting, the Rakdos are still reveling, the Dimir are still skulking and the Azorius are still risking their lives to protect the city. This was a reality that Adora was just being reminded of.

Her job tonight was supposed to be simple. Find the Gruul rioters and arrest their little. What she didn’t account for was that said leader would have a pet rhinoceros - she really should’ve thought of that considering the other things the Gruul have around their camps - and that said pet rhinoceros would chase her until she jumped into a nearby canal.

Now there she was. Struggling against the current, fighting to reach the surface again as her plate armor dragged her to the bottom of the canal. As she finally lost consciousness her last thoughts were of the pile of paperwork she would have to fill if she survived all of this.

When she finally woke up she wasn’t met by the clean white stone of the Azorius infirmary, but by the blackened rotting wood of a ruined building. The room she was in looked like an old ruin slowly being reclaimed by nature. Fungi and weeds grew all around her, but it did not seem abandoned.

The mattress she was laying on seemed almost new, the broken windows were covered by improvised curtain and parts of the ceiling looked like it had been patched up recently. Who would live in a place like this? The answer came to her along with the smell of rotting flesh. The Golgari.

Adora tried not to choke as the acrid smell reached her nostrils. “By Isperia. What died in here?”

“The real question is ‘what hasn't died in here?’” Came a voice from the corner of the room. Adora quickly turned to stare at her would be ambusher. Her hand instinctively moving for her sword. She was pleasantly surprised to find that she had no pains from last night and that her sword was still with her.

A figure slowly emerged from the shadows in the corner. The first thing Adora noticed were the figures eyes. One bright gold and another clear blue, both filled to the brim with mischief. “And the answer to that is ‘you’, so I would like a thank you at least” The figure continued. Now clearly that of an elven woman with dark clothes and disheveled hair.

Adora gave her a quick bow and said in her most practiced tone “The Azorius are grateful for your aid” if that woman could roll her eyes any harder they would probably fall off her head “Now if you could show me the way back to New Prav I will be sure to reward you for your aid”

“Not gonna happen” came the elf’s quick response “You may not feel like it, but you’re still recovering and until I am 100% sure you’re not gonna die on our trip back, you’re staying here with me”

“I must return as soon as-”

“Doctor’s orders. I know it is hard for you Azorius folks, but you’re gonna take the day off and relax” The elf was very insistent and considering the events of last night, Adora could use a day off. She just gave her rescuer a weak smile and nodded.

“Great. I’ll show you around the Undercity. The name is Catra, by the way”

The infamous Golgari Undercity. The network of sewer tunnels, support structures and abandoned buildings that ran deep beneath Ravnica. Adora heard of the bleak catacomb like structures, covered wall to wall in rot. What she did not expect was the beautiful sight that greeted her.

What once were abandoned and dilapidated buildings were now covered in new and colorful life. The light of the morning sun giving every structure a breath taking emerald glow. After years living in the clean and sterile corridors of New Prav this was a view she was not prepared for. Catra laughed at her awestruck expression and dragged her forward by the wrist. Today was gonna be a good day.

And so it was. They walked, talked and enjoyed sights Adora never expected to see in her life, but most important of all, they relaxed. Unfortunately all good things must come to an end and as night fell over the Undercity, Catra finally showed her the way back to the surface.

“Thanks for taking care of me, Catra, I was not expecting yesterday’s mission to end so well for me” She laughed a little at her own comment. Wow, was it just yesterday that she was being chased around by a rhino?

“About that. We find brokers work with a little finders keepers system” Adora sighed, she knew this moment was coming “And it would be nice if you found a way of showing me your thanks”

“I’ll be more than happy to repay any money you would get pawing off my armor” Adora responded with cold politeness.

“We could do that or” Catra paused for a moment “you could save that money for now, use it to pay for a lovely dinner date and maybe I’ll convince you to get off that armor in a different way”

Adora was taken back by that offer. Was Catra seriously flirting with her? She stared into her mismatching eyes, looking for any sign of malice, but she found none. Mischief? Absolutely, but no malice.

“That sounds like a lovely proposition, but why?”

Catra seemed surprised by the question, but the mask of sly mischief quickly returned to her face “For the pleasure of your company, of course” once again she paused for effect “And bragging rights for managing to seduce an Azorius officer”

Adora rolled her eyes, but tried to supres a smile. “You’re gonna have to save all that bragging for after our first date”

“Second date” corrected Catra “Or what did you think we were doing all day?”

Adora sighed and waved her goodbye, but as Catra left Adora couldn’t help but watch her leave and right now no view in all of Ravnica could ever compare to the sight of that woman.

#catradoraweek2018 #catra #adora #catradora #dnd!au #ravnica

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agentsofvenn · 5 years

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The Hunt

Sunlight didn’t get this far down, instead a carpet of bio luminescent lichen far above gave the vast tomb complex a blueish, dappled light. The damp ground squelched below Rakshain, each careful step in the moss-covered ground accompanied by a testing grind to ensure the ancient masonry held. A thin scowl lined a lean, stubble-coated chin as the assassin advanced, his dark, lank hair swaying gently in whatever charnel breeze there was. His blade was held low in both hands, the bound fang of some enormous beast sharpened down to a fine edge.

The smell was awful. A combination of rotting flesh and fear. That was nothing new this far under the surface though, it was a deservedly unpleasant locale. What WAS out of the ordinary were the whispers that permeated the tomb; the malignant chattering in a language one would hope not to understand lest that understanding be a sickness of its own, skirting the senses, seeming to come from the walls themselves. A pervasive wrongness, and one that would be excised come the morrow if the Devkarin assassin had anything to say on the matter.

The aberration was not difficult to track; it had left a carpet of foul, slightly acidic slime as it went, like some nightmarish snail. These tracks were all over the tomb, but these were fresh; there was an absence of small creatures that had drowned in it. He was on the right track. It wasn’t until he heard it that he realized just how close he’d come though.

A heavy wheeze, like old bellows, rasping at an unpredictable timbre with no apparent rhythm. The sound of the being’s morbid, slug-like bulk being dragged bodily over the stone, and whimpers of pain as the pressure of its own advance pressed stray shards of masonry into its soft underbelly. This was it. The target.

Steeling his resolve, he moved into the next room. It was more cramped than he would have liked, its roof sloped and clearly not long from buckling in on itself. The once-paved ground was rife with mud and ichor, playing host to shelves of angry-looking fungi. And then...It turned. Rakshain was being very careful, and making no noise, it must have had some otherworldly method of finding him.

Hearing it was bad enough, but seeing the target turned even Rakshain’s ironclad stomach.

It dragged itself along in what appeared to be a bloody, membranous sheath, as though it had nestled in its own oversized placenta. The oozing outer flesh did seem to be part of it though, as it bled from multiple open wounds on its underside. The skeletal, vine-choked being that emerged from that profane base had the form of an eviscerated human, its tattered nerves still winding around it like a morbid anatomical diagram. From the clearly broken neck sprouted three horse-like skulls, dripping cerebrospinal fluid from every desiccated orifice, the hollows of its eyes choked with multifaceted lenses like a fly’s. Its forearms ended in mantis-like claws which gleamed in the not-light.

It screamed from every face at once, and it was all the Devkarin could do to keep standing. The wrongness of the sound was at odds with the world, and his heart longed to end it more than it longed to flee. A grim snarl on his face, he leapt at the abomination, blade extending, ready to end the life of this being, if its tortured existence could really be called a life.

“What happened then? Did you kill it?” Anais demanded from across the table, causing Rakshain’s gaunt jaw to shift in amusement.

“So eager. One would think you were my superior, demanding a report.” Analla shook her head with a little smile of her own as they ate, looking down at their daughter. She hadn’t eaten a bite since Rakshain had started talking, though typically it isn't because of the graphic nature of what was being recorded. THAT was Analla’s job, and he could already tell that telling such a grotesque story at the dinner table would earn him a scolding harsher than the experiences of the story themselves. Still.

“So did you?” He clasped his hands, resting his chin on them as he sat forward.

“I am still here, am I not?” “You could have ran away.”

“Do I ever run away.”

“Not from a fight.” Intervened Analla, with a pointed look. Rakshain had to fight to hide the subtle barbs her words bore. It was going to be a long night…

“Well, it lashed out at me, screaming its maddening scream, but I knew something it didn’t…”

“Don’t think she likes my stories?” The tower the family home was built into opened up into a neat little balcony that looked upon their cavernous home for miles around. Rakshain leaned against the stone wall, tense and frustrated. He felt a gentle touch against his elbow, and in spite of himself he could feel his form start to deflate a little. Analla always knew how to bypass his defenses the way no horror from the depths of the undercity could.

“No, I dare say she likes them a lot. You have a lot of them, and they’re all very thrilling and captivating to a young mind.”

“But?”

“...But there’s precious few stories of her. You are missing your daughter growing up.”

“Tch. I’m here often enough.” A little stung, he brushed the fragile touch off. She sighed, running a hand over her braided hair as she eyed the back of his head.

“I don’t think you are. Take some time off.”

“You don’t just “take time off” from the Ochran.”

“What is the alternative Rakshain? Your daughter growing up without a father?”

“Analla, you think I don’t miss you both terribly? When I’m out risking my life?”

“I think you do. Just not enough to actually do anything about it.” Her hand landed on his back. “Don’t shut me out. Let me in. You know we’re bloody unstoppable when we put our heads together.”

“...Yeah...look, it’s...difficult. I’ll try and be around more for her. For you.” Finally he turned, tugging his dusk-skinned lover into a tender embrace.

“Not for me. For her.”

“For her, but hey. You’re worth spending time with yourself, you know.”

“I’m trying to make a point…”

“And I’m trying to give a compliment. Looks like we’re at an impasse, madame.”

“...Ugh.” She shook her head, but this time there was a hint of a smile. “So be it.”

#Golgari #Contact #Anais

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dailyaudiobible · 5 years

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04/01/2019 DAB Transcript

Deuteronomy 18:1-20:20, Luke 9:28-50, Psalms 73:1-28, Proverbs 12:10

Today is April 1st. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It is great to be here with you today as we step into this brand-new month, the fourth month of the year and it's our opportunity to step into the second quarter of the year. So, well done. We are well on our way. Our reading today will be from the book of Genesis chapter 1 and will be reading from the Street Bible.

First off, nothing but God, no light, no time, no substance, no matter. Second off, God's is the word and whap! Stuff everywhere. The cosmos in chaos, no shape, no form, no function just darkness total and floating above it all, God's Holy Spirit ready to play. Day one. Then God's voice booms out, “lights!” And from nowhere light floods the skies and night is swept off the scene. God gives it the big thumbs-up but calls it day. Day two. God says, “I want a dome. Call it sky, right there between the waters above and below” and it happens. Day three. God says, “too much water. We need something to walk on a huge lump of it. Call it land. Let the sea make its edges.” God smiles and says, “now we've got us some definition but it's too plain. It needs color, vegetation, loads of it, a million shades, now.” And the earth goes wild with trees, bushes, plants, flowers, and fungi. “Now give it a growth permit.” Seeds appear in every one. “Yes”, says God. April fool's everyone!!!

Welcome to the month of April in springtime here in the rolling hills of Tennessee. Oh, I have so much fun with that. Believe it or not, that is actually in print. I like, find these obscure, strange, partial or full translations of the Bible and bring them out here on April 1st. I love it. April fools, we are all awake now and we are aware that we are in a new month although it's been a while since we've been back in the book of Genesis but nice to visit there in an odd sort of way for just quick second. We’re really in the book of Deuteronomy and we’ve been working our way through the book of Deuteronomy for a while now, listening to the final things that Moses has to say to his people before he becomes…before he dies, becomes part of their past. So, we’re really reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week. And today, Deuteronomy chapter 18, 19, and 20.

Commentary:

Okay. So, all joking aside about April Fools' Day and all let's go back to Psalm 73 that we read today because it's very revealing. So, Asaph is the author of this Psalm and he pours out his heart with questions that probably are familiar, probably about things that we’ve thought about. And he is basically saying, “why is it that the proud and wicked people get to have an easy life, get to be healthy and prosperous while I’m here trying to do my best, to be good and to be devout, but all I seem to do struggle? So, am I trying to do good for no reason and does any of it matter because what I see in the world makes me feel bitter? That's…that's pretty honest, right? That's pretty stark and we’ve probably all had shades of those feelings in our lives from time to time. And, so, we can see that the Scriptures are inviting us into honesty, into being honest with ourselves with what we’re seeing with God. It was really only until Asaph went into God's presence that he began to understand. He realized that just complaining about everybody else's life and comparing his life to everybody else's life was ignorant. In his own words he said, “I must have seemed like a senseless animal to you.” So, what we see is a Asaph realizing that his identity, his purpose, who he is is not found by comparing how well he might be doing with someone else's life. His identity was found in knowing God and he found that, he reoriented himself to that by going into God's presence. And once that happened and his heart was reoriented to the fact that he belonged to God, well, then there was hope in being God's child. He said, “I still belong to you. You hold my right hand. you guide me with Your counsel leading me to a destiny that is glorious.” We may feel, we may sense the things that Asaph observed and lamented about but we have to follow the same path into God's presence because we’re all invited into life, into this collaboration on this planet with God that we call life. And when we lose sight of that because we've placed our eyes on someone else's life then we’re no longer freely living hours, we’re attaching ourselves in all kinds of ways to compare to get some sort of identity but it's false. It's a total distraction. We can’t find our identity like that. Our identity is found in God's presence. And, so, along with Asaph today, let's pray these words from the Psalm, “As for me, how good it is to be near God. I have made the sovereign Lord, my shelter and I will tell everyone about the wonderful things you do.”

Prayer:

Holy Spirit, we invite You into that. It's something that we see often in the Scriptures because it's part of our human experience to compare ourselves, how well we’re doing, how superior we are, or how inferior we are when we’re asking the wrong questions and looking in the wrong places. And, so, we come into Your presence where true identity dwells and where everything that we need is because we are Your children. Come Holy Spirit into this brand-new month that we have, lead us forward into the changing of the seasons and may we find You in everything and may we see clearly where You are leading us in the days ahead. We pray these things expectantly because You have offered these things to us. And, so, we pray these things expectantly in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, its where you find out what's going on around here. So, stay tuned, stay connected in any way that you can, any way that you will.

This is a busy month for us. The More Gathering is coming up. This is the month of Easter and this is a month of…well…there’s gonna be a wedding in my family, China’s gonna be getting married. So, it’s a busy month for us. Thanks for your prayers. We’re looking forward to all of this even though it's a busy time.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There is a link. That link lives on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com. If you are using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment 877-942-4253 is the number to dial.

And that's it for today. I'm Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Greetings DABbers, this is Theodore from Ohio. I just wanted to just praise God that everybody got back safely from Israel. It was just a wonderful hearing all of the synopsis of what was going on there, the episodes, it’s a beautiful thing. It made it…people here feel like they were there. I want to thank you Brian and Jill for everything that you’ve done. I want to thank those who’ve been praying for our son Sachin who is in Europe now, the soccer guy. He’s signing today as a result of the prayers of the people from the Daily Audio Bible. I also called in specifically to give hope to those who are in challenged marriages. I and my bride, Crystal, we’ve been married 26 years and in the first year of our marriage she had Graves’ disease. She lost all of her hair, her eyeballs bulged out, her throat was that of a bullfrog, her fingernails fell off, she was down to 110 bpm heartbeat, hundred and five pounds, and the doctors said she would never have any children. But the Lord blessed, healed her, and restored her beauty, resort her body, and restored her womb. And, so, we know that God can do anything at any time to anyone if their heart is open. And I’m praying for those who are going through challenges in their marriage just to let you know that it’s not something that I just read the book but actually the book is real, and it’s been a blessing for us for these past 26 years. May God bless you and keep you in the palm of His hand.

Hi everyone, this is Bridget from New York City. I just want to share a little bit about my own personal testimony. I was raised with seven brothers and sisters. You know, my mom had multiple fathers for my brothers and sisters and it’s just been…it was a pretty tough upbringing. So, I’m just sharing that with you because since I was younger as a kid I’ve always experienced supernatural things. I used to see my mom get possessed when I was 8, 9 years old. I witnessed it on many, many occasions. The called it a nervous breakdown but she told me she would hear a voice and the voice would __. So, long story short, my sister has been struggling with different types of mental issues. Doctors diagnosed it as bipolar and schizophrenic. I diagnosed it as spiritual. I know that she’s definitely has to relearn certain things but I know more than anything that it’s spiritual. So, I’m asking you guys right now, she had a fight with my niece Kaylan, my sister’s name is Reagan, they have had their ups and downs. Kaylin and Reagan were going to church with me and we were very involved in the word right before my son-in-law was killed and then my son-in-law was killed and everything just kind of fell apart. So, my niece stopped going to church my sister stopped going to church and it’s just really been an uphill battle for them. If you could please lift them up in prayer, ask God to give my sister a sound mind and to give her the help she needs. Please, please, thank you.

Good morning Daily Audio Bible family this is Julie. I’m reaching out to the caller that just called. She’s been a listener. She’s calling for her daughter Amanda. I am praying so hard for Amanda. Her mama says she was hurt very badly very recently. She has two children. The mama says she can’t reach her. I felt her tears…I swear I did. She says that Amanda just doesn’t want anything to do with Jesus. I’m praying Lord that help Amanda, protect her, guide her, let her feel Your love and I’m praying Lord that You help her mama. Dry her tears, give her strength, help her through this, let her not be afraid. Let Amanda feel the faith, know…know how much You love us the Lord and come back to You and run to You in her time of need instead of away, as many of the lessons today. I’m also praying for Bridget. I’m praying for Angela. I’m praying for You Michelle, for Your mother. I’m praying for Your mother. She lost feeling in her legs. She says they’re not sure why. Lord, please protect her mother. Heal her. Let her feel her legs. Please Lord let her walk again. And I’m praying this morning for Dash. Dash if You’re listening, something from this morning just jumped and made Luke 8:25, “where is Your faith”, spoke to me in front of my own anxieties and fears and hopefully it will give You strength. I thank the Lord for this word and I pray, you know, in our lives…let our lives ask the right things, let us run to You let us not run away, let us run desperately to You and stay by Your side always and I pray…

Hello Daily Audio Bible family this is __ your sister the Pacific Northwest and I need…I need prayers for…to help me stay on the right track to allow God’s will to be done to be distracted by temptation. It’s a long story, it’s complicated, but I met a man of God who I became very attracted to but not my husband. And my husband is not saved. So, it’s very confusing to me. I just need guidance, or I need to understand God’s will. I think I know what His will and it’s not in our marriage. Let’s just pray. That’s what I want to do, is get my head __ but getting my heart and mind is __. So, it’s a strange and confusing situation and this person, this man of God has as an amazing heart, and is not married but is far away still, thankfully, that’s good, but I’m not sure what the path forward is. I’m trying to trust God, but I think I keep making mistakes in letting my heart get carried away…

Hi, this message is for the woman that called with her daughter named Amanda who is suffering. I just want you to know that you’re not alone. There’s so many of us out here that have daughters that are so messed up. I just…you just brought me to tears today listening to your prayer because my heart has been hardened against my daughter because I can’t take her drug addiction anymore and I really really believe that God wants me to help stop the cycle of addiction in the family and let her hit rock bottom. I love her. I just want her to be redeemed in Christ and let her know that she is loved, and she is beautiful, that Amanda is loved and beautiful and a joy to you her mother. We all pray for Amanda. We are praying for all prodigal daughters who are unreachable at this time to let them know that they are loved by their mothers, loved by Jesus, loved by God, and they are children of God. We pray for all the daughters of God. Thank you.

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maryisis · 4 years

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A “coming out” post...

I am choosing to participate in a global “coming out” movement called “Thank you Plant Medicine”(TYPM)- (from the website: This movement was born as a response to the stigma in society about the use of psychoactive plants and therapy-assisted psychedelics.We dream of a world where these substances are free from stigma and discrimination, for personal and collective healing.We are organizing a global wave of gratitude for February 20, 2020, calling on people to “come out” with their stories of healing and transformation on that day, using the hashtag #ThankYouPlantMedicine. www.thankyouplantmedicine.com

I would first like to preface by saying that the use of psychoactive/consciousness altering plants or fungi is NOT for everyone and by sharing my perspective I mean in no way to persuade or promote it. Okay? Okay.

At the young and seemingly fearless age of fourteen I learned through reading some books and magazines about how a person could consume specific kinds of mushrooms and totally alter and explore their consciousness, and perhaps other dimensions of reality (this was before internet use was widespread). I was utterly fascinated and being the curious and hungry-for-the-meaning-of-life young teen that I was I decided to seek out these magical fungi. It didn’t take me long to find them, with the help of a more experienced person who knew how to find them in the cow pasture.....(Panaeolus cyanescens). I had only read about effects from various books and articles but I really was not prepared at all for what I was about to experience. After consuming who knows how many mushrooms (not very smart...) about 20 minutes later I began to feel my senses becoming highly elevated and intensified. The intensity only grew stronger and stronger, to the point of becoming totally overwhelming with surging feelings and emotions and then also altered perception to the point of only being able to see vibrant pulsating rainbow dripping rootlike formations filling my vision. I had no idea how to navigate this unknown realm of feeling and perception, yet I rode it out meeting the experience with utter awe. Then, I started to feel some background trepidation at how I was supposed to return home in such a state, with it being a school night and all...long story short I made it home safely with my tripper “boyfriend” at the time and he informed my parents what we had done, much to their dismay at seeing their daughter in such a state. I somehow floated up to my room where I spent the remainder of the experience laying in a bed that I felt I was continuously sinking into, watching the trees dance outside my window. I had deep insights that night into the personal truth of my being and regard the experience as a sort of “rite of passage” out of my childhood self. That was 25 years ago. Now in retrospect- had I known how the brain develops, I probably would not have done such a thing...I think there’s something to be said for the importance of having your brain fully developed before altering the brain chemistry ...yet I’m pretty sure I ended up alright and I can’t say I regret any of my use of mind altering substances (ok-except maybe a couple of times....lol). As I said before- I was a very curious soul, and it didn’t take me long to realize that the “Just Say No” propaganda campaign that I grew up with was more than just a war on drugs- it was a war on consciousness. How we got to this point of “mind control” is something to ponder.

My relationship with psychedelic plants/fungi has changed a lot over the years and I would say that the major shift happened about 19 years ago when I participated in my first plant medicine ceremony. Finally- I got a taste of what my soul has been thirsting for- Ceremony and experiencing the sacred and divine aspects of existence. Rewind-I lived most of my life in a community and area where Cannabis was freely and frequently used recreationally. I also began using cannabis in my teens- in a non-intentional way- not to say that I didn’t have meaningful experiences in that non-intentional context- However I have learned that intention, ritual and/or ceremony can greatly enhance the benefit in the communing with these “entheogens”- a term I like to use which translates literally as “becoming god within.” When I realized the extent as to which the society in I lived tries to govern our lives- to the point of having laws that make NATURE ILLEGAL- I felt very passionate about RECLAIMING MY BASIC HUMAN RIGHT- to explore my consciousness. When I saw peaceful and kind people I knew facing jail time and/or having their houses taken away because of growing cannabis, it deeply disturbed me. And so my motivation in “coming out” comes from this place within, that believes that it is morally WRONG that plants and fungi that have awesome potential healing value are illegal. Anyone who does their studies of scientific research as well as historical/cultural studies will learn how much value the plant of Cannabis, for example, has for healing. The endo-cannabinoid system of the human body is proof that humans have evolved, in close relationship with this plant. And of course HEMP, which is the non-psychoactive cannabis species has a plethora of amazing uses which would greatly help our society and environment if it were more widely embraced and cultivated.

Thankfully “the times are a changin!’” More and more studies are being allowed and funded, the laws of the land are starting to change in many places and more and more people are beginning to learn about and honor the deep inherent value of these natural plant medicines. These are exciting times and yet we still have a long way to go! And it is my perspective that we need these plant medicines now more than ever so as to help with the healing of humanity on a spiritual level- to awaken us out of the materialist mindset trance of scarcity, unworthiness, fear and disconnection from nature. The fascinating scientific studies are showing us how the chemicals in these plants and fungi work on the brain, in beneficial ways to help people heal with ailments such as depression, PTSD and anxiety. The healing potential of these plants and fungi have been known for thousands of years to various indigenous cultures, who have kept such wisdom alive throughout the millennia through their initiated healer lineages. It is very important to honor the traditions and lineages from which the traditional ceremonial use of these plant medicines originate from because it is these people that have the deeply developed relationship with these plants and understand them in intimate ways which most western psyche’s do not and I dare say cannot (unless immersed in the studies and apprenticing with these traditional plant medicine healers.) And so while these are hopeful times with potential healing that these plant medicines present our deeply troubled and sick society, we must be mindful that our own egoistic tendencies don’t get the best of us. I have been working with powerful plant medicines for over 20 years now and I am still most definitely a humble student on the path of healing...still learning the delicate process of surrender to the inexplicable healing powers of these plant teachers and the wisdom teachings and deeply meaningful insights they bestow.

Personally, most meaningful and valuable to my own life, of which I have received from my relationship with plant medicine teachers, namely Ayahuasca and Psilocybin mushrooms, has been my feeling of CONNECTION- Connection to Nature, to Spirit, to everything! In my expanded states I can see clearly how my thoughts and actions affect those around me and the whole. In working with these plants/fungi I naturally gravitated towards living a more healthier lifestyle- being careful of what I choose to consume physically or mentally. Unhealthy habits steadily and easily fell away. A significant healing aspect of these plant medicines is how they have the capacity to disrupt our conditioned thought patterning- which is a very good thing because much of our behavior and thought processes are governed by our habitual patterning- which keeps us very limited in our perception and what we are capable of experiencing. This can lead in turn to depression, addiction, frustration, and other mental and physical ailments. As we are learning with the exciting field of neuroscience, our thoughts, emotions and perceptions are closely linked and work in a cyclical way. This leads me to honor the ways that these plants have helped me to develop my visionary abilities. One of the most powerful visionary perceptions I have had to date through Grandmother medicine was the experience of perceiving the ALL, underlying state of UNITY- it was an ineffable experience- impossible to put into words- but made a very deep impression on my life and perception of reality. I felt completely liberated from all fear and filled with AWE, totally absorbed in the interconnected matrix of all creation. One more thing. Being a singer and musician- it has been a profound gift and one of my greatest joys to sing my prayers and songs while in communion with plant medicine, in ceremony. I am so deeply grateful for all the plant teachers in my life- they are so dear to my heart and my relationship with each continues to evolve in mysterious and miraculous ways. Deep bows of reverence and respect.

One of the main ways I have integrated the visions and insights that I have received from these plants/fungi is through music. I have always been a musical person, since before I could even talk I was already singing. In my life today, Music is a central aspect and purpose of my incarnation. I feel inspired to add here that the wisdom of the Yogic path has also played an equally important role in my evolution- I was introduced to the path of Yoga also at 14, which has helped me immensely on my journey with its ancient and very relevant wisdom teachings of self realization. I have also always had an interest in the healing plants and started studying herbal healing in depth in my late teens. I have many healing plant allies that I work with on a daily basis.

Above photo with a Chacruna plant, the pair to the Ayahuasca vine, which contains DMT- the potent visionary molecule, belonging to the “Tryptamines,” indolealkylamine molecules, which evoke release of Seratonin and Dopamine. DMT is present naturally in the human body, especially in the gut. But only when paired with a MAOI (Monoamine oxidase inhibitor), which is found in Ayahuasca vine, can this molecule actually have its effects. The MAOI that are in the vine are classified as Beta-carbolines. These very special molecules are Harmine and Harmaline. Below is a photo of Ayahuasca vine Banisteriopsis caapi. Interestingly, when the molecule of harmine was first discovered in the vine, it was called “telepathine,” because “of the reported effects of Ayahuasca among the indigenous users, including: collective contact with and/or visions of jaguars, snakes, and jeweled birds, and ancestral spirits; the ability to see future events; and as the name suggests, telepathic communication among tribal members.”(from wikipedia)

Harmine can also be found in Syrian Rue seeds (Peganum harmala) as well as in Passionflower leaf (much lower amounts.) My experiences with Syrian Rue seed (extract) have been very significant actually, while it isn’t really psychedelic all on its own, I highly value the medicine that it is for calming the mind, increasing serotonin and inducing flow states of consciousness. It also creates energetic sensitivity and increased psychic(”telepathine”) ability. It ALSO is a powerful anti-parasitic- amazingly and much to my shock it rid my body of parasites! Thankfully it is NOT ILLEGAL(except in Australia where its controlled). The studies on Harmine and Harmaline are very promising and are shown to have significant healing properties, such as anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer actions. I’m very enthusiastic for the healing potential of Syrian Rue and Ayahuasca vine!

One last thing before I close this share and it has to do with integrity and sustainability. The way I see it is that these plants are coming into prominence in our society right now because they are very much needed for our healing. We are facing various levels of existential crises, and I see these medicines acting like the white blood cells of this earth, to help us humans heal our sickness and reconnect to our sense of purpose and belonging to this world (not the world belonging to us, for our use/abuse). However, we cannot continue to take and take without giving back- that sort of behavior is how we’ve gotten ourselves into this imbalance within ourselves and the planet. It is my prayer and vision that those who are called to plant medicine path, do so with the intention of healing themselves so that they may be of service to the healing of the WHOLE. (There’s a lot more that could be said here about safety, the ceremonial container and the facilitator/shaman/medicine healer that creates the ceremonial container.I would recommend this article for this specific topic). Each person has their own unique calling and purpose in which they can serve the whole and that is for each soul to discover within. We start by healing ourselves...that is the key- because our individual healing ripples out. The healing light and love that we cultivate within shines out to inspire and awaken light and love in others. Our own inner harmony will reflect to the outer world. When we live our lives from a balanced place of “right relationship” and reciprocity, as a result we cultivate more integrity and mutual respect. We must integrate the wisdom we gain into daily practices that anchor more loving kindness and compassion because that is what is needed on this planet.

Thanks for reading!!

#thankyouplantmedicine #plantmedicine #healingplants #visionaryplants #decriminalizenature

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godsofterror · 7 years

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The Many-Faced God: Part 2

This is the second part of a Gods of Terror theory that posits that the Many-Faced God of the Faceless Men is the Cthulhu Mythos Outer God Nyarlathotep. Review Part One here for more background about how this connection was made and how he has manifested in a major character.

Part of the meta-analysis encompassed by the theory is that GRRM is showing that he can write better than most other heirs to Lovecraft. I think he took the ideas of the Cthulhu Mythos and extended them to include other myths such as the Green Man, and extended it to include his world building from the Ice Dragon and other earlier stories.

For example, he married the masks/forms of Nyarlathotep to create the Many-Faced God, worshipped by the Cult of the Faceless Men. He created the Drowned God to represent memories of Cthulhu. And there are tons of other examples that exhibit GRRM’s vast knowledge of the extensive Cthulhu Mythos stories and characters.

For me, the connections to the Cthulhu Mythos are more than just world building. Sure, it seems at first to be background filler… but the closer I look, the more I realized that the filler is in the foreground as well. If the gods of Terros are directly imported from the Mythos, are worshipped by the people of Terros for their powers as exhibited in the Mythos, and obey the ‘rules’ of the Mythos, than A Song of Ice and Fire takes place within the Mythos.

What does that mean for A Song of Ice and Fire? Importantly, it means that these “gods” are real, and that they are not “gods” in the religious sense. They are actual cosmic beings that exist in the universe of ASOIAF, that have appeared on Terros but mostly live in outer space.

It is important to understand that these cosmic beings mostly hate each other and have great wars that threaten the lives of humans and other lesser beings. These cosmic beings care very little about humans (except Nyarlathotep, who love to torture humans), and humans are caught in the middle of these wars.

Every time humans encounter these beings, horrible things happen, but the power demonstrated by these beings invokes terror and wonder, and the human religions of Terros spring up to worship the beings they have encountered. The Cult of the Faceless Men worship Nyarlathotep, while the Iron Islanders worship the Drowned God, who correlates closely to Cthulhu. The Storm God, the Toad God, the Lord of Light, Shub-Niggurath, He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named: all Great Old Ones, and all worshipped by different groups on Terros.

The Cthulhu Mythos also helps explain the presence of the giant black blocks of stone found throughout the world:

“Old Castro remembered bits of hideous legend that paled the speculations of theosophists and made man and the world seem recent and transient indeed. There had been aeons when other Things ruled on the earth, and They had had great cities. Remains of Them, he said the deathless Chinamen had told him, were still be found as Cyclopean stones on islands in the Pacific. They all died vast epochs of time before men came, but there were arts which could revive Them when the stars had come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity.” - HP Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”

Within the Mythos, Nyarlathotep is special, as all of the other Great Old Ones are sleeping or banished to space. Nyarlathotep can still walk among humans, and he takes many different forms on Earth as he works to spread terror through fear, torture, and pain. As I explained in Part One, Nyarlathothep has been present on Terros throughout history, and is currently inhabiting a number of avatars to work towards his dark ends.

The Long Night and the Bloodstone Emperor

As I wrote in Part One, the Long Night was started by the Bloodstone Emperor, who worshiped a black stone that fell from space. The story The Haunter of the Dark tells of the Shining Trapezohedron, the black stone used to call a god of terror known as the Haunter of the Dark, who is a manifestation of Nyarlathotep. This direct link between the horror of the Long Night, and the Church of Starry Wisdom, which was founded by the Bloodstone Emperor, spells ill omens for the future of the story.

Euron Greyjoy has been taken over by Nyarlathotep. He has either been driven mad by an interaction with Nyarlathotep, or has been taken over completely by the Faceless God.

He is working to secure the Shining Trapezohedron, which I believe is housed in the Hightower of Oldtown, where it has been watched over by the descendants of Uthor of the High Tower, who slew a dragon and established his house on Battle Island in the mythical past of Westeros. Uthor is a corruption of Ulthar, the Mythos god and son of Sothoth sent down to Earth (or Terros) to watch over the Great Old Ones as they sleep.

When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R'lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious surrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them. But at that time some force from outside must serve to liberate Their bodies. The spells that preserved them intact likewise prevented Them from making an initial move, and They could only lie awake in the dark and think whilst uncounted millions of years rolled by. They knew all that was occurring in the universe, for Their mode of speech was transmitted thought. Even now They talked in Their tombs. When, after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by moulding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshly minds of mammals. - HP Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”

In this passage, we can uncover a lot information that relates to the Great Old Ones (the group of cosmic beings to which Cthulhu has been assigned by Lovecraft), and also relates to the prophetic dreams of the Dreamers, whose actions may be influenced by these psychic waves eminating from the mind of Cthulhu as he sleeps in R'lyeh.

The most important bit of information is that someone, or something, must awaken the gods because they are sleeping using spells that prevent them from waking themselves. It has been theorized that after a great battle in the past, the Great Old Ones were put to sleep by the Elder Ones. Could this battle have been the great battle for the Dawn?

The Outer God Ghroth (the Harbinger), an entity introduced by Ramsey Campbell (a Mythos writer and friend and editor of GRRM), is described as a red sphere that passes through space, singing a siren song known as the Music of the Spheres. As he passes through space, he awakens any sleeping Great Old One on the planets that he passes. This has been the cause of mass extinctions on Earth.

Ghroth reminds me strongly of the red comet at the beginning of A Clash of Kings. Perhaps Ghroth passed by Terros, and helped to weaken the spells of the Elder Ones, and awaken the magic of dragons, but the spells require a great blood sacrifice to end them once and for all. With the help of Nyarlathotep and his avatars, the Great Old Ones will be freed from the spells that bind them.

Blood Ritual

As we see in the Aeron sample chapter, Euron is preparing for a blood sacrifice in the sea off Oldtown. He has strapped holy men of many different religons onto the bows of ships, including his own brother, Aeron Greyjoy. What is his endgoal with this sacrifice?

Euron’s treatment of Aeron, and of the 4 warlocks of Qarth, are perfect examples of his ability to torture men to madness. He kills one of the warlocks, to show that he meant business, and then chained them up and made them eat the dead warlock (and probaly themselves). In “The Forsaken”, we see what’s left of Pyat Pree: a man without legs, who has clearly been driven mad:

Last were two warlocks of the east, with flesh as white as mushrooms, and lips the purplish?-blue of a bad bruise, all so gaunt and starved that only skin and bones remained. One had lost his legs. The mutes hung him from a rafter. ?Pree,? he cried as he swung back and forth. ?Pree, Pree!?

His speech to Aeron displays his desire to kill men and replace the gods recalls the role of Nyarlathotep as a trickster gods of terror. Lovecraft’s epic poem Fungi from Yuggoth gives clues about how Euron’s blood sacrifice will begin the descruction of the world, as the “idiot Chaos”, or Nyarlathotep, births death from the sea.

Soon from the sea a noxious birth began; Forgotten lands with weedy spires of gold; The ground was cleft, and mad auroras rolled Down on the quaking citadels of man. Then, crushing what he chanced to mould in play, The idiot Chaos blew Earth’s dust away.

I think that this passage portens both the terrible doom that is about to befall Terros, and the nature of the gods involved in the coming Long Night. The second line (“Forgotten lands with weedy spires of gold”) invokes the Westerlands and the gold of the Casterly Rock, and the fourth line (“Down on the quaking cidadels of man”) I associate with Oldtown, home of the Citadel.

Towers By The Sea

It’s no coincidence that Euron is preparing for the invasion of Oldtown. In fact, it has been hinted about by many major characters.

Melisandre has visions of a tower by the sea overwhelmed by a dark tide that rises from the depths:

Then the towers by the sea, crumbling as the dark tide came sweeping over them, rising from the depths. (ADWD, Melisandre)

I saw towers by the sea, submerged beneath a black and bloody tide. (ADWD, Melisandre I)

Moroqqo, who I have also associated with Nyarlathotep after his transformation in the sea (check out the difference in how he is described between the Tyrion chapters and the Victarion chapters), mentions a similar vision in this exchange with Tyrion:

“Have you seen these others in your fires?” he asked, warily. “Only their shadows,” Moqorro said. “One most of all. A tall and twisted thing with one black eye and ten long arms, sailing on a sea of blood.” (ADWD, Tyrion VIII)

Euron’s ultimate goal is not just to drive men mad and to spread chaos and fear. He is the harbinger of doom, Death, the Lion of Night, here to remake the world again. And he will do this by calling back from the dead the terrible Great Old Ones.

He will have some help with his terrible mission, from a mysterious and dark House of Westeros.

Oldtown and the Hightowers

The plot of The Winds of Winter promises to focus on the taking of Oldtown by the Ironborn. This ancient city, long the domain of the even more ancient Hightower family, has two notable features: the eponymous Hightower, a stone tower built on top of an mysterious black stone fort on Battle Isle, and the Citadel, the major center of learning in Westeros, where all maesters are trained and where Samwell Tarly has been sent at the end of A Dance with Dragons.

I have long suspected that the Hightowers of Oldtown, that ancient family that traces back to Uthar Hightower and Maris the Maid, were involved in worship of the Outer Gods. Not only are they ancient - much too ancient, really, for any of the timelines of the arrival of the First Men to make sense - but they are also known to dabble in sorcery.

Anytime that a wizard or sorceror is using magic in the Cthulhu Mythos, they are attempting to communicate or call one of the Great Old Ones or the Outer Gods. Usually, it takes blood sacrifice to get the attention of the gods. I suspect that the rumours of sorcery by the Hightowers (in particular Leyton Hightower and his daughter, the Mad Maid), are related to the desire to awaken the Great Old Ones.

Ulthar

If you have been following the Gods of Terror theory to this point, it should come as no surprise to learn that there is a Cthulhu Mythos diety named Ulthar (or Uldar or even Ultharathotep), who is a son of Yog-Sothoth and is considered and “Elder God”. Ulthar, according to the (fictional) Sussex Manuscript was sent to Earth to keep a vigil over the sleeping or banished Great Old Ones/Outer Gods.

The words of House Hightower: “We Light The Way”. What way are they lighting? For whom are they lighting the way? It’s worth noting here the definitions of “vigil”:

wakefulness maintained for any reason during the normal hours for sleeping.

a watch or a period of watchful attention maintained at night or at other times:

a period of wakefulness from inability to sleep.

Could the words of House Hightower relate to a vigil for the sleeping Great Old Ones?

Killer of Dragons

Uthar Hightower, according to legends, killed a dragon roosting on Battle Isle and then worked with Bran the Builder to build the Hightower on top of the ancient black stone fort. He then claimed (or stole) Maris the Maid from a giant (who swore revenge on Uthar) and founded the line of Hightowers that continues into the contemporary story.

The Church of Starry Wisdom

Euron and the Hightowers are not the only players in the mission to call back the Great Old Ones and remake the world.

As seen in The Haunter of the Dark, the Church of Starry Wisdom has the Shining Trapezohedron stored in the high tower of the creepy church. And the cultists of the Church perform blood sacrifices to The Haunter of the Dark, the terrible avatar of Nyarlathotep with a three-lobed burning eye with wings.

The Church of Starry Wisdom is present throughout Terros in the modern era, worshiped at port cities by sailors and others. It has been mentioned in A Dance With Dragons and is also hinted at in A Feast for Crows, as it is suspected that Marwin the Mage visits their temple in the port of Oldtown.

I suspect something else. The Shining Trapezohedron, the black stone that fell from Earth and was worshiped by the Bloodstone Emperor, which he used to call the Lion of Night, could be in the Hightower. It would explain Euron’s desire to capture the Hightower: his plan to awaken the sleeping Great Old Ones. With the help of the Hightowers and blood sacrifice, Euron will invoke Nyarlathotep, the Lion of Night.

…and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom.

The Citadel

The Citadel was founded by decree of the second Hightower, who declared that its mission was to learn the arts of man. It is known to be anti-dragon, and is also suspected to be complicit in the downfall of the Targaryens.

I don’t know the degree of control over the Citadel that the Hightowers hold, but there is a deep association. They were founded by them, and have collected information about the lords and the laymen of Westeros from that beginning. In fact, in reading the Princess and the Queen and The Rogue Prince, there is a lot of innuendo about their role in starting the Dance of the Dragons.

Why do they hate the Dragons so? Is it just because of their institutional aversion to magic? Or does it go much deeper?

Faceless Men and Braavos

Are they an international cult of assasins who are working to hasten the return of the Great Old Ones? I do have my suspicions. The Faceless Men have been trying to get the book on killing dragons, and they probably helped to cause the Doom of Valyria, so they do seem to have it out for the dragon people who might oppose them, whatever their ultimate goals might be.

War Between The Gods

After deep study of the world book, it seems clear that the founders of Norvos and Qohor, while Valyrian, were not dragon-riding Valyrians. In Norvos, they stuck with Hastur, The Great Shepherd. In Qohor they switched to The Black Goat. In Volantis, they worship the Lord of Light.

The followers of the Lord of Light hate the followers of the Norvoshi religion and the Qohorik religion, and the feeling is mutual. While I think that the Norvoshi worship Hastur, the Magnum Innonominandum or He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-named, the Black Goat is Shub-Niggurath, The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young. (It’s worth noting that in “The Mound” by Lovecraft, Shub-Niggurath is described as the wife of the Not-To-Be-Named One, who is Hastur.)

Importantly, the enmity between the followers of R'hllor and these other religions represent the greater war between the Gods of Terros. I don’t say this lightly; I’ve devoted a ton of time over the last few years trying to understand what is really going on in Westeros and Essos and Sothoryos and Leng and beyond; this Tumblr is the result. But this was all building to this point: that these gods are not make-believe, but are instead powerful beings beyond the understanding of humans, that are at war with each other.

Indeed, we see the war between Cthulhu and Hastur in the hatred of the Ironborn for the Storm God; and the battles at Storm’s End between Durran Godsgrief and the Storm God. We see the death cult of the Many-Faced God arise in Valyria as Nyarlathotep battles Cthugha (the Lord of Light), which may have resulted in the Doom of Valyria.

Perhaps some of these beings have aided humans in the past, to score a victory against their rivals? I suspect that may be a possibility, as it is a large part of the Cthulhu Mythos. For example, in the introduction of Cthugha in “The Dweller in Darkness”, August Derleth (a Lovecraft disciple) pitted him directly against Nyarlathotep.

The relationship between the dragonriders of Valyria and the Lord of Light deserves its own essay, but for our purposes here, I’ll just mention three interesting tidbits. Cthugha is a giant ball of fire and is served by the Flame Creatures of Cthugha. Most importantly, his only protegy is Aphoom-Zhah (a Lin Carter diety; Lin is another of GRRM’s friends and editors), who is also known as the Cold Flame, a “vast, cold, grey flame that freezes whatever it touches”.

In a story of Ice and Fire, deep within the Cthulhu Mythos, these two gods are going to be significant.

Conclusions

Why does all of this matter to the story? Isn’t this a story of humans, dragons, ice demons, and telepathic paraplegics?

I suspect something else. The story will have a twist so massive that it’s taken years to get it right.

As Leo Tyrell says in the beginning of A Feast For Crows, the story has changed, and an age of wonder and terror has begun:

Dragons and darker things. The grey sheep have closed their eyes, but the mastiff sees the truth. Old powers awaken. Shadows stir. An age of wonder and terror will soon be upon us, an age for gods and heroes.

As the Others have been lurking over the story for five books, it is both perfectly normal for them to be seen as the old power that have returned. But I suspect that it is a feint, a ruse even, by George, as cruel as that may be to his readers.

In fact, I believe that the Others will not be the ultimate evil faced in the story, and Old Nan will be proven wrong once again. Instead, the evil will come from the “gods” themselves as they seek to return to Terros.

I believe that the great war that will end A Song of Ice and Fire will not happen in the North, against the Others, but will instead be centered around Oldtown and the Riverlands.

Tinfoil Time

Here is my predictions for how all of this will be set up in The Winds of Winter (I’ll save my A Dream of Spring predictions for next time):

Euron’s blood sacrifice will be used to awaken an ancient evil: the Deep Ones. He will call an army of these terrible hybrid beings to help him invade Westeros. The blood sacrifice will not be strong enough to break the spells keeping the Great Old Ones sleeping, but the Deep Ones, the half-human/half-fish descendants of the gods, will come above water en masse for the first time since the Battle for the Dawn. These beings are known as the squishers in the east, silkies in the far north.

He and his hybrid minions will strike at Oldtown, where they will overwhelm the defenders of the city. Euron will capture the Hightower, where he finds a willing partner in the Mad Maid, Malora Hightower.

Euron and Malora will join forces to perform a blood sacrifice using the Shining Trapezohedron. But they need a person with incredibly powerful blood to sacrifice: Daenerys, the Mother of Dragons.

Euron has already set his plan in motion to capture Dany, by sending Victarion to Slaver’s Bay. Using the dragon horn, Victarion will bind the will of a dragon, but he will not capture it himself. Instead, Euron has enchanted the horn to make the dragon respond only to him. Victarion thinking himself strong enough and desiring Dany, will blow the horn and die, and the dragon will fly off to find his new master: Euron.

Dany, mother of dragons, will suspend her war in Essos and her planned invasion of Westeros to find her dragon. She will follow the dragon to Oldtown and will be captured by Euron and the Mad Maid. Her fleet and army will follow, but may be too late, for the blood of kings flows through her veins, and only that magic can break the spell and awaken the Great Old Ones……

End Scene

Post Script

This theory borrows and extends PoorQuentyn’s Eldritch Apolocalypse theory, so I must give him credit. But I’m taking it further, into the Land of Lovecraft, because that’s where I see the ultimate twist occuring: the form of the ultimate evil, and the role of the “gods”, who I believe are the cosmic beings of the Cthulhu Mythos.

More to come!

#nyarlathotep #godsofterror #cthulhu #lovecraft #godnames

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