Hello everyone, my name's Alina (Twenties, female), and if I'm not studying I'm likely on here (or writing, lol). I've had this account for a while now, I use it for posting my stuff as well as the lovely writings of others.
I now have an Ao3 page too! As of writing, I'm fairly new, and I'll be gradually uploading my works onto there as well :D
And here's what can be found on my blog:
- My writing (see below)
- Other people's writing
- Writeblr things I think are neat
- Eurovision posts (lol)
Just a side note for visitors (this should be common sense, but eh), please don't send me asks/messages relating to the following things.
1. Discourse of any kind (such as political and/or humanitarian issues)
2. Asking for money
3. Anything such as hate comments, advertising, scams and other foolish things.
Should one send me an ask or message in relation to any of the aforementioned above, your message will be deleted on sight. A block and/or report may also be in order, message depending.
Soft tagging @blockcat-safari, @jackdraw-spwrite, @cityofangeisislying, @audioeidolon, @venusplantt, @bardicc-inspo and @voidindite in case they would like to play along :)
(Feel free to jump in if this looks fun and I forgot to tag you!)
SAPPHIRE FINALLY HAS AN OFFICIAL DESIGNN. Everyone celebrate the like fifth charm actually worked pfft
Closeups:
I've also updated her ArtFight page :3
Then rambles (plus taglists) under the cut!
Sapphire has always been very fem vibes to me, so like spinny skirts and SOME sort of comfy top. Honestly she probably has a buncha large sweaters too (so she can hit people with the arms lmao). But I still struggle with drawing skirts but I DID IT!! And now I can use her for practice pft
Overall I wanted a fun kinda adventurous vibe for her? Also a magical girl one. SO much a magical girl one. She lovesss magical girls, it's probably her favorite kinda genre to watch. She thinks Sam is Ultra Cool because Sam basically has her own magical girl transformation with Daluyong, her sword. And one day Sapphire wants to have magic so she can be like that :3
Her hairspike turns into a bo-staff, but it's more tech-based than magic (their friend Katie made it for her). I gave her platform boots because they're stompy and that fits her to me.
Sapphire's signature color is also yellow, despite her name (which she chose to be opposite yet connected to Ruby <3) but as always I tried keeping sapphire gems and the blue in there. This was a bit difficult though because I don't mess with largely yellow color palettes—it's usually neutral colors with yellow/gold as an accent. But I had fun with the paler orange and the white!! :3
I'm just very happy with this iteration, I feel I've finally got her down <3
Art Taglist (interact with this post if you wanna be on it!)
First off, congrats on getting her design down, well done 🎉🎉🎉
Upon seeing the pictures, my first thoughts were that she's really pretty, and also, she reminds me a bit of Stella from Winx Club
Wait— the magical girl vibes were intentional? Those details are great, especially how your characters can transform with their weapons or special items 😍
A Healing for the Birds' cast but thrown into a Hunger Games simulator! Day Two
<- previously on this simulator...
Welcome to Day Two of this, where my characters get to fight for the fun of it! Expect more death and disease below (and a spoiler for Chapter Two of A Healing for the Birds) :0
Plenty of shack building today
What's got into Charimone that she's running away from her father? She should be pleased she's not being held hostage by Claudia during this time lol
Alycja and the mango merchant are begging for death 😭
Put it to Merik to trick Baakszour, it's not like he's let a High Councillor keep him while the meshaika claim the Chalice or anything, ahem 👀
Orlaith, girl, what are you planning? 👀🤣
Oh. my. gosh. Claudia, Eshani, Najsha, all dead. Dead! After Namon's death, that marks the whole dominant voting alignment of High Councillors gone! Even Karina (Eshani's right hand) is also gone!
And neither Claudia nor Desemir got to see Charimone in her final moments, she died with Najsha of all people 🤣😭😭😭
Also on today's bloodbath, Karim loses his eldest daughter (after losing his wife the day before) 😭
Aster killed Jersk by accident 😭🤦♀️🤣
And the only ones laughing are the minority trio of High Councillors, who will certainly be relieved that the crow lady and her Bloodcarver died (most especially, though Eshani and Najsha are both a pure nuisance for them too lol)
And now Alycja and Nirdan have no parents left 💀😭😭😭
The meshaika? gone. The acolytes? one left. The teens? two left. The High Councillors? three left. Hotel? Trivago.
medical supplies... might that be what I think it is, or is it coffee-and-crystal-fruit extract?
A Healing for the Birds' cast but thrown into a Hunger Games simulator!
as the title says above, I took inspiration from seeing a post featuring this simulator here, and decided to throw my characters into it!
First things first, here's all the characters I've decided to throw into the ring, ranging from the protagonists and antagonists to characters whose names aren't even mentioned!
There could be potential spoilers for A Healing for the Birds (I'll try to keep that to a minimum), and there will be mentions of murder and drowning in the pages below.
—
Eshani: the protagonist of A Healing for the Birds, and also one of the Court of Morilast's High Councillors
Karina: Eshani's Second, she maintains the house's affairs and hosts court in her absence
Claudia: the Court of Morilast's infamous crow lady!
Petrius: also known as The Bloodcarver, he's Claudia's right hand and her childhood best friend
Najsha: another High Councillor, known for her soulweaving abilities and purple fire
Namon: former ambassador of Feudrain-turned High Councillor, he's flirted with Eshani countless times (everyone and their bird in Morilaste knows that part, lmao)
Ordune, Orlaith and Affril: the remaining three High Councillors, they form a minority voting trio that's basically always blocked out by the other four (unless Namon is being suspiciously nice to them lol)
Monsieur Allurique: the mango merchant featured in Chapter One of A Healing for the Birds!
Najshra and Karim: Alycja's parents :D
Emila and Nirdan: Alycja's older sister and younger brother respectively :D
Jersk: the head meshai of the Raikaliçian temple in Arobyre
Merik: he's second only to Jersk
Desemir: the High Minister of Helinda, and also Charimone and Sharigan's father
Charimone: Desemir's daughter (she's currently being held hostage by the crow lady as of the start of A Healing for the Birds)
Aster and Baakszour: the two acolytes of the temple in Arobyre, they were sent out to try find the Allaitri Chalice
Cerigo: Eshani's estranged amour
Cheyoria: Cerigo's daughter and Alycja's best friend
Alycja: the second protagonist of A Healing for the Birds!
Sharigan: Desemir's daughter (his favourite child no less), and she's also friends with Alycja and Cheyoria
And before I continue, assume that the characters do not have any of their magical abilities that they would have in-lore (if they did, it would end up being a fight between a certain septet, with Claudia being the ultimate winner as she actually knows how to fight).
Now, let the show begin! (with my reactions lol)
Ruuuuuuuun!
Lol Orlaith and Alycja fighting over a bag, how unconventional a pairing!
Eshani is doing the smart thing, yay
Haha, Affril got an empty bag! (but so did Nirdan 😭)
How did Charimone (an eight year old) manage that one now? 🤣🤣🤣 She spooked the Bloodcarver, omg! she must've like, blended into the shadows or something to scare him LOL
I'd put it to Ordune to drown Cerigo, but Desemir too? OOF
Sharigan, you as well? Alycja's bestie and her mother both killed, what, no 😭😭😭
—
Eshani is going to be hosting a feast at this stage 😂
And there goes one of the hot favourites (Petrius). I suppose it makes sense for Aster to stab him 🤷♀️
Charimone! She's stealing from someone who's almost her age (Nirdan's seven, a few months younger than her)
The sponsor is being nice today :D
Aw, how cute of Desemir to pick flowers
—
Monsieur mango merchant snuggled with Merik, huh?? How fitting it's June 🤣
the head meshai, the acolyte who stole the Chalice and the High Councillors whose specialties are forbidden sciences and unethical magical experiments sit around the campfire...
awww, Charimone got to see her father again 😍😭
I have two nickels, one for every hatchet! And people from Morilaste thinking about winning
Eshani, NO!!! She stabbed her lover, repeatedly 😭😭😭😭😭
The Master of Ceremonies is not dead! Just stressed and depressed. But I was thinking, and Pride month is a perfect time to have another Writeblr Hunger Games. So, once again: Have you wanted to put your characters in a life or death situation with other writeblrs' characters? Have you been hoping to write some good angst for them? Do you have a hankering for a potential rebellion against the powers that decided to make the Hunger Games in the first place? Or! Would you like to put your characters in a dating simulator since it's Pride month? Where they can fall in love with other writers' characters? Well, this is the event for you! I'll throw your characters into the Brant Steele Hunger Games Simulator!
If there's enough interest, we'll have another round! There are different options for this one! I would want all characters submitted to be LGBTQ+ in some way, and we could have a life or death vanilla WHG, or we could have a dating simulator this time, teehee. The simulator will not take into account characters' sexualities, but it could still be fun! I'll put this as a poll so hopefully, more people will see it and be interested. Please reblog to spread the word!
What kind of simulation would you want?
Death
Dating
Voting ended onJun 11
Also tagging some friends and others who have been interested:
I don’t know if I’m revealing too much of this story but every character I write has to GO THROUGH IT with their fathers. It probably says something unsavory about my mental state but I like the way this is written. Also, my hot and wonderful gf bought me a desk so I could write in bed. It’s so cute.
This is an excerpt from my debut novel. It is nowhere near finished and even this piece is a rough draft. I decided to post it because it’s my birthday (June 2nd) and I want writer friends.
the big bad of rentalcar is called the Garble, and it Is Vampirism! vampirism is a conscious entity spread across many bodies in a big ol' hivemind. all life force gathered by the vampires flows to the being at the centre of the hivemind, granting it immortality, while the vampires themselves are left with just the scraps they need to survive. but yes, the Garble itself is a sentient being that lives inside the vampires' blood - if the vampires don't collect life force from humans, the Garble takes the life force of the vampires themselves. it's a groovy system. and extremely evil
Some more pilot snippets in celebration of the fact I finally finished the second major scene of the script :)) I'll likely go over it later to tune up dialogue and such since I struggled so much, but for now, I think it's good as is, and I'm super proud of myself for it!
Call of the Void Taglist (interact with this post if you wanna be on it!)
Notes: There will be more to this story, I just got inspired to write this part of it
While it had taken far longer than either of them would have liked, Selene and Edwin had finally managed to locate the prison their old friend's erstwhile apprentice had been taken to. What didn't take nearly as long was distracting the guards on duty and making their way down to the dungeon level without getting spotted.
Selene peered into the largest cages in the prison, finding no trace of any humanoid creature within,
"Godsdamnit," she hissed, "did they move him already?" She heard Edwin hum uncertainly from the other side of the room,
"I don't believe so, the shift change isn't for another two or three hours yet." he said, "Maybe —?" he was cut off by a soft cackle from Chrackle, who was perched on a shelf above a series of smaller cages,
"Over here." he called, trying to keep his croak as quiet as he possibly could, "Little weasel in bottom right cage."
Selene frowned as she looked over in her familiar's direction. While she knew he could speak and understand Sylvan, Fai had never learned it so why would his apprentice know it even they were polymorphed?
"You sure?" she asked. Chrackle clacked his beak in exasperation,
"Sure." came the terse reply, "Said he forced into animal form and locked in anti-magic cage so no change back." The magpie cocked his head, "Said it natural ability, not Polymorp."
Edwin frowned momentarily before snapping his fingers,
"He's a Hengeyokai!" he exclaimed, "Poor fellow was probably forced into his animal form at some point and got stuck in it when he was put into the cage. Probably so he'd be easier to handle."
"Easier to handle? Have you tried catching a weasel when it's trying to escape? I think I still have some scars from the time I tried to get a hold of Mika when he went rummaging in my pack for food at one point." Selene grumbled. Edwin shrugged,
"It's easier than dealing with a humanoid that can cast a bunch of spells." he pointed out, "Especially if you're wearing sufficiently armoured gloves." He glanced to the doorway leading back out of the dungeon, "In any case, it looks like we're going to have to hire some help to get that cage unlocked." he sighed, "Anti-magic means neither of us can open it here."
Selene snorted and crossed her arms,
"No chance, the only rogue I've ever trusted, and will ever trust, was Alexis. I'm not bribing some random stranger to help us only to get double-crossed and stabbed in the back, thanks." She looked over to Chrackle and grinned, "Besides, who said we needed to hire help anyway?"
Edwin frowned in consternation as Selene rummaged in her pockets, only to produce two extremely shiny silver coins. She held them up into a beam of light that was filtering through a crack in the wall behind her,
"Chrackle, you want to get your beak on a couple of coins from Royal Lendle?" Chrackle's head spun to look at the coins, his head cocking,
"Listening." he croaked. Selene's grin widened as she pulled out her spellbook,
"How about you take a look at that lock and find the key for us? I'll even throw in access to all all my utility spells for the day." she added, waving the book. Chrackle narrowed his eyes,
"Deal only if access to whole book."
"One use of Fireball in case of an emergency."
"Two uses, or Chain Lightning."
"Chain Lightning drops the coins."
There was a moment of silence before Chrackle finally clacked his beak, "Coins, all utility and two fireball then."
The little weasel, who had come to the front of his cage, gave Selene a long look. The wizard shrugged,
"You end up with a magpie as a familiar, then we can talk about you judging me." She returned her attention to Chrackle, "Well, get cracking, or you're not getting anything." Chrackle gave her an annoyed cackle, but quickly fluttered down and clung onto the front of the cage, peering at the lock. Edwin walked slowly over to Selene,
"You sure Chrackle can help with this?" he asked incredulously. Selene nodded,
"Absolutely, he figured out how to tell roughly what kind of key fit a lock when we were younger. It got him completely banned from visiting Wolftown after he snatched the keys to several jewellry stores in town at one point. Alexis then spent some time helping him refine his… uhh… talent, when she found out it was something he could do."
Edwin stayed quiet, ruminating over this new revelation as he watched Chrackle finish inspecting the lock. The magpie cackled and immediately dashed out the door, casting Invisibility on himself. Just two minutes later, there was a shout, a yelp and a cry of 'Ghosts!' a moment before a ring of keys flew into the room and hovered in front of Selene. Selene sighed and took a hold of the ring,
"The whole lot, really?"
"Hard get right one off. Sleep spell no work." Chrackle's voice croaked from her shoulder. There was another pause before one of the keys lifted up and away from the others. Selene huffed out a sigh, then looked over to Edwin as she took a hold of the key to the cage,
"Edwin, be a dear and either make us a new exit or block the guards from getting in so I can make one instead. Looks like we're doing this the hard way after all." she quipped. The weasel squeaked frantically,
"Jin say he use mini-teleport spell once free." Chrackle's voice translated "Big enough to get all outside." Selene beamed at the weasel,
"Excellent. Still, might be a good idea to block off that doorway, Edwin."
Edwin grumbled as he pulled out his Holy Symbol,
"You are having entirely too much fun, given everything is going wrong right now." he muttered. He heaved a sigh, muttered out a prayer and cast Wall of Thorns over the doorway, "There, that should buy us a minute or two."
"Not that we'll need it." Selene replied as the cage door swung open, "Thank you Chrackle, excellent work as always. I'll give you your reward once we're somewhere the guards can't confiscate it." There was a croak of acknowledgement from the ether as the weasel jumped out of the cage, scurried a few feet away, then glowed as it stood upright and grew to about 4 feet tall. The humanoid weasel sighed as it stretched out its back and arms,
"That's better. Animal form is fine for sneaking around and exploration, a pain in the buttocks for doing much of anything else." His ears twtiched as the sound o heavily armoured boots echoed down the hall, "Anyway, introductions and explanations can wait. Let's get out of here before the guards get a big enough fire going to burn through those thorns." He gestured for Edwin and Selene to stand beside him and looked around curiously, "Our little feathered friend with us? Good. Hold on!"
Selene quickly held her breath while Edwin grimaced as space folded around the little group as the Dimension Door spell completed. The keyring jangled as the cage door swung in the sudden breeze created by the small, temporary vacuum as the guards burned through the thorns barring their path.
A tall, ashen coloured dwarf with black lacquered armour stepped into the dungeon. His nose wrinkled at the stink of arcane magic in the air. He turned to glower at the nervous gnome hovering in the doorway behind him,
"You tell me there are ghosts haunting this place. I sense nothing more than simple parlour tricks designed to get you to leave your post." he growled. The gnome squeaked and shuffled back a few steps,
"I — I'm sorry my Lord Inquisitor. B— but there was no indication o— of…" he gulped, trailing off at the stern stare levelled at him. The Duregar snorted, glanced at the cage that had been opened, then turned his attention to his kin gathered behind the gnome guardsman,
"Inform Lord Vaul that there appears to be a breach in the arcane defenses of the town. No doubt the escape of this particular prisoner will be of great interest to him." One of the other Duregar saluted and promptly marched outside. The Inquisitor turned his gaze back to the guardsman, who shrank even further into himself, "As for you," he stated flatly, "As you have been so utterly derelict in your duty, I rather think some time in the mines will be enough to remind you of what it means to work."
"My— My Lord. No, please — I —I beg you, not there."
"I'm afraid execution is reserved only for those who cannot work. You will not escape the punishment you deserve through death. Take him."
The gome screamed as two more Duregar grabbed his arms and dragged him out of the stairway. The Inquisitor kneeled and ran a finger over the area where the Dimension Door had been cast,
"You can attempt to scurry all you want, little rodent, but Drakemar and Laduguer will have their due eventually."
Alright, so I hadn't talked about this that much on my own blog, but I figure if I'm going to be an aspiring author on Tumblr I might as well start marketing myself.
I am writing a book. It is in progress, currently. It's possible (though unlikely) you've seen this story floating around Tumblr through my very niche side-blog but I've been revising it in the past couple of years to work more as a stand-alone introduction to a longer series.
It's a fantasy-mystery story set in the modern day of "our" world, with a focus on character work and emotional themes (you can check out the blurb here). My current draft of Chapter 1 is being posted as a preview/advertisement/jumping off point--if anyone wants to know more about the lore or story, I adore talking about it. Seriously. Comment, ask, reblog, whatever.
Word count: 4.7k
The Dark Arts and Crafts: Book 1
Of course it all started at midnight. If he knew one thing about necromancy, it always started at midnight.
Lorcan Verdigris used to plan his days around midnight. He’d been a teen at the time, so a fucked-up sleep schedule wasn’t as disastrous as it could have been. And midnight hit a sweet spot—a liminal moment when the veil between worlds was thin and certain magics got easier, dark enough to satisfy the fledgling adolescent rebellion.
He couldn’t miss out on that.
Twelve years later, he still felt some nostalgia for the so-called ‘witching hour’. But things had changed since Lorcan decided to get his life together. Now he was an adult with a fucked-up sleep schedule.
It was good Lorcan was his own employer, and his kids didn’t care about mortal, human needs like sleep. That was the thing about being a self-employed freelance stay-at-home dad-slash-wizard: the days were predictable right until they weren’t.
Lorcan was really starting to miss ‘predictable’.
Chapter 1: Witching Hour
- 11:12 PM ON A TUESDAY -
- FORTY-EIGHT MINUTES BEFORE MIDNIGHT -
“Dad? …Dad. Dad.”
A tug on Lorcan’s pants pulled him from troubled thoughts. “Yeah, Terry?”
“Can I eat a spider?”
He glanced down at Terry, who faced him innocently. It was a pretty normal question to hear from a child. But Lorcan’s kids were far from normal. “Terry, you’re a rug,” he said. “My permission doesn’t change the fact that you don’t have a mouth. Why do you want to eat a spider, anyways?”
“To assert dominance.”
“Sorry I asked.”
The object in his hand wasn’t going to tell him any more about itself just by staring at it—well, it probably wouldn’t, anyway. But if the thing was alive, it was good at staring contests. Lorcan set it down gently on the ugly faux-driftwood coffee table in front of his couch. An orange lava lamp was sitting there already, next to the TV remote.
(It wasn’t his coffee table, he should specify. The driftwood aesthetic was making a comeback. For a self-employed working artist, that meant both commissions from rich minimalists and endless email tag to get them to actually pick up their orders.)
“Vulk, check that for curses,” he instructed, before heading to the kitchen.
Terry followed, undulating low against the ground. “You don’t understand, Dad. They’re making fun of me. Said my weaving sucked.”
Terry’s weaving did suck.
But in Terry’s defense, Terry was a small throw rug using a hand loom to weave other, smaller rugs. Which was impressive no matter how you sliced it.
This was supposed to be a lazy evening, Lorcan thought wistfully. He’d made the executive decision to drag the TV out of its basement storage just for the occasion. It meant an awkward elevator ride while he tried to remember which of his neighbors it was giving him a silent death glare on the way up, and whether they had good reason to hate him.
(They probably did.
Didn’t mean he wouldn’t glare back.)
He hadn’t even had the chance to make lunch. Which he was doing in the middle of the night. (Sleep cycle, fucked up, et cetera.) But food was easy enough to deal with—Lorcan had a system. The fridge was full of takeout leftovers, with dates of purchase scrawled on the lid. Not super healthy. Better than watching fresh groceries spoil every week.
Lorcan grabbed the oldest box, mentally checked his math on the noodles’ freshness, and dumped them on a plate to microwave.
As the timer counted down, he nudged Terry away from a spot of sauce on the floor. Someone had to watch for stains. He announced to the rest of the apartment, “I want to note the events of tonight have vindicated my policy of never checking the mail.”
That got groans.
A voice from the living room, that sounded like it was going through a tunnel, protested, “It would still be cursed if you hadn’t opened it!”
Operator was a vintage-style rotary candlestick phone who liked to think of themself as Lorcan’s secretary. Op had been the one pushing him the hardest to clean out his mailbox while he grabbed the TV, so it made sense they were taking this personally.
“Receipt of a curse doesn’t count until it’s opened, actually,” he told them. You needed some dark postal magic to mail a curse that triggered on simple delivery, and Lorcan hadn’t seen any pentacles on the stamp. “My laziness is deliberate and well-cultivated.”
“What if you get jury duty, though?”
A decent question. Lorcan took the parental privilege of not answering.
“Just dump it in a salt bath,” Op suggested next. “That breaks curses.”
Lorcan opened the microwave before it could beep (see, Pam, he could be a considerate neighbor sometimes). It was a good thing that particular appliance had never gained sentience, seeing as it was bolted into the cupboard.
“Dice might be immune,” he noted aloud.
Magic was a complicated art, emphasis on art. It was how Lorcan had known in an instant the twenty-sided die mailed to him in a small manila envelope had been made by someone wizardy. Like a lot of dice, it was made of resin—properly cured and free of air bubbles. It had been colored a dark, shimmering blue, with bronze mica suspended in soft ripples. Rounded corners, numbers painted in perfectly.
The thing was handmade, and it was quality. The work of an expert at their craft.
In magic, function followed form. Enchanted dice (or cursed ones) worked…well, like dice. Nothing about the resin, specifically, would keep a good salt soak from breaking a low-level curse. But Lorcan was pretty sure dice were traditionally tested for fairness by floating them in saltwater. That could insulate a curse hidden inside, keep that old mainstay from working.
But Lorcan had other options. “Vulk?” he asked. “Status on that curse hunt?”
The thing didn’t answer.
Lorcan rolled his eyes. He walked back to the coffee table, set his noodles down, and shut off the TV.
That got his attention.
“Bogus!” The lava lamp on the table made his anger clear by lighting up and… bubbling, slightly, within his waxy center. Vulcan may have been named for a god of volcanoes, but Krakatoa, he was not. “I was watching that!”
“Look alive, Vulk. The die—cursed?”
“Yes,” the lamp said. “Wait. No. Wait. Can I change my answer?”
“Seriously?”
Vulk—somehow a master of the puppy dog pout despite not having a face—waved his plug at Lorcan accusingly. “You said I wouldn’t have to think today, hep cat. And you are harshing my mellow with your bad vibes. So not copacetic.”
Lorcan had promised that. But: “You could try taking on a little responsibility every now and again.”
“And let my hair go gray like yours?” Vulk didn’t have hair. He was a lava lamp. “Pass.”
“That’s not fair,” Loretta said out loud. And it wasn’t, but Lorcan didn’t need her to come to his rescue. She was a small desk lamp, situated in the living room. “You know he’s sensitive about that.”
Lorcan ran a hand through—uh, his hair. The hair was a point of bruised vanity, and all the kids knew it. Lorcan’s appearance…well, he did his best with it. He’d given up on wearing contacts years ago, but a touch of eyeliner went a long way. His stud earrings proved he had a little bit of pride. The hair was the problem. He cut it short and it grew out mostly black, shot through with streaks of silver that got bigger by the day.
He was twenty-seven.
Someone pointed out, “Dad can always get it dyed if he’s so upset.”
“Lorcan would have to actually leave the apartment for that,” Operator countered.
“He can order box dye online.”
“But he can’t use it.”
“I see it’s Talk About Lorcan in the Third Person Day,” Lorcan said loudly. Who was he kidding. That was every day. Because everyone had an opinion about how he should live his life. “I’m in the room. I have ears.”
“At least when he’s not sleeping,” Terry third-personned.
Lorcan sighed. (The younger kids often did not fully understand the concept of sleep.) “So the spiders are talking to us now?” he asked, to change the subject. “Or did Terry, like, channel the spirit of Arachne with a twenty dollar loom I bought from Target?”
Not actually a rhetorical question; magic was weird like that.
He had an instinct in his head, like someone was raising a hand. Oh, now she cared about taking turns. Lorcan bit his lip, and instead asked, “Vulk?” He ignored the flicker of irritation in his brain that wasn’t his.
Yes, Loretta probably knew exactly what was going on with the spiders. She was ambitious like that. But it wasn’t good to let a child shoulder the burden of managing a whole household’s problems. It was unhealthy, and fostered self-esteem issues that could carry into adulthood.
Dad, a thought crept into his mind, flatly annoyed.
Loretta, he thought back. He’d read a parenting book once. He knew what he was talking about.
If anyone should try to be responsible, it was Vulk, who was both the oldest and also Lorcan’s magical familiar. “Uh.” Vulk froze, then asked “Wasn’t Frank supposed to be watching the spiders?”
The big floor lamp let out an angry creak, and his bulb flashed, <Not my job>.
Frank could speak, but he did not like to. Blinks in Morse did the trick well enough. Since he was set up in the spider-heavy back corner, Frank had provided a few early warnings for enemy action. But as he said, it was not in fact his job.
Lorcan sighed. “Loretta.”
“They’re using the magnets you set up.” She glowed (literally) under the silent, begrudging gratitude he sent her way.
“Took them long enough,” he muttered.
He’d be the first to admit he let the spider situation get out of hand. Probably should have just taken a broom to it before they evolved far enough for their extermination to get ethically dubious. But his apartment was crap, and keeping it clean was a Sisyphean task. There were pipes to rust-proof, cracks to plaster, dust to dust. Maintenance had long since stopped answering his calls. At some point, he figured a few cobwebs could only help the aesthetic. His kids were immune to venom, so in the worst case only Lorcan had to start building a tolerance.
What he’d overlooked was the effect his…apartment would have on the spiders. The way evolution might sharpen an otherwise-animal hunting instinct. Their last strike team may have hilariously overestimated the tensile strength of web, but the tripwire snare trap outside Lorcan’s bedroom door was a cut above the usual predation tactics of the common house spider.
As the saying went: once bitten, twice shy. Or—he scratched the still-tender skin on his wrist—twenty to…thirty-seven…times bitten. That tolerance couldn’t come soon enough.
He respected the hustle, if nothing else.
But if a singularity of super-intelligent spiders was evolving on his lease, that was really going to piss off the landlord. Lorcan wished he could say having to house-train a semi-murderous spider colony was the weirdest thing to ever happen to him. But he had over two dozen children who were furniture, and also alive. The bar was high.
So, he’d scattered refrigerator magnets near their nest to try and Charlotte’s Web some inter-species communication. (He was not inviting his animal-talking sister over to negotiate on his behalf.)
“Are they gonna be new siblings?” Vulk asked. “Because I don’t want to be a big brother again unless it’s for a Roomba.”
“No. They were alive before m—” He sighed. “Before the magic messed with them. It’s different from you guys.”
His kids were weird, even for magic. Usually when an object ‘came to life’ it was because a self-perpetuating moonbeam thought a mirror was pretty enough to inhabit for a decade or two, you know? And the spiders were spiders. Lorcan’s kids…they were permanently linked to their objects, the same as a newborn human soul to a body. It happened sometimes. Especially around him. “And I said no on the Roomba.”
“Aw.”
“And can you check for a curse already? We don’t know anything about who sent this, or why.” Lorcan hated flying blind when magic was involved. “We need as much information out of the die as we can get—”
“Did you read the envelope it came with?”
Lorcan looked at his oldest. His oldest wiggled his power cord.
“I’m just saying, it might have some of that information,” Vulk went on.
Look. In Lorcan’s defense. No one ever wanted to talk to him anyway.
He’d tossed the envelope into the trash pile without reading it. It was now buried underneath credit cards ads (sorry, Lorcan was too millennial for debt), political brochures reminding him what a piece of shit their mayor was (he knew), and the local arthouse makerspace co-op indie newsletter his mother had pushed him to sign up for.
(Somebody really had to tell them they couldn’t advertise magical services on the front page where every normal person and their Satanic-panicked aunt could see. Like, this stuff was semi-secret for a reason.)
Lorcan paused a moment on the letter from his landlord, written in a predictably-angry red. Doris the umbrella looked at it and flapped her canopy sadly.
“We have a stalemate,” he told his daughter, firm. “He knows the terms.”
Here it was. The envelope had been padded, and the die nearly rolled out once Lorcan opened it. He was just glad he’d been able to catch it. Looking at it now…
“It’s addressed to ‘Current Resident’,” he said, confused. Sure, the return address was a P.O. box, but, “Who curses a current resident?” Lorcan had some petty enemies, he’d admit. But this was a new level.
“It’s not cursed,” Vulk spoke up. “I don’t feel any magic on it at all.”
And. Alright. Vulk was lazy, but he’d never lied (convincingly) about something Lorcan had asked him to look at. Even so, “That can’t be right.”
He walked back to the coffee table and picked up the die. Lorcan glared at it, like that might somehow reveal more than Vulk’s empowered sense for magic. Function followed form, he thought; maybe it needed to be rolled for the effects to be noticeable.
Now that Vulk had done his one job, the lamp turned the TV back on. “Hey, are these noodles for me?” he asked. “I’ve been jonesing for some grub.”
“For the last time, Vulk,” Lorcan replied, all focus on the die, “you do not eat.”
“There’s something else in this.”
Lorcan turned—he hadn’t even noticed Doug moving towards the mail pile. In a feat of dexterity Lorcan doubted he could replicate, his younger son had the envelope pinched open and a piece of card stock shimmied out before he could even blink. Doug was a coat rack.
“It’s an invitation to dinner at T&C,” Doug announced. “Tomorrow.”
“You got an invite to dinner?” Doris asked, turning to Lorcan.
“The current resident got an invite to dinner,” he corrected her. Which—that was weirder than the idea of being cursed at random. Who invited a total stranger to a dinner date? Plus, Tea & Charmalade…as the name implied, it was popular with the magic crowd. But it didn’t do reservations. You showed up, and they found you a spot.
Who invited a magical stranger to a dinner date?
“That doesn’t matter,” Doug said. “It has a dress code.” He’d always been the most fashion-forward of Lorcan’s children: he breathed the words out with awed reverence.
It was easy to read the card from behind Doug’s pole. “‘Casual elegant’,” Lorcan said. “What even is that?”
“It’s class, is what it is!” His weight dropped onto Lorcan’s shoulder. Lorcan bit back a wince. The hooks. “You have to go. You haven’t gone out in ages, and this has a dress code!”
“Doug. Doug. Shoulder.”
The coat rack pulled back upright, and Lorcan rubbed the small bruise.
“Tomorrow’s kind of short notice,” he said.
“It’s postmarked two weeks ago,” Op informed him. “You’re just lucky you opened it in time to go.”
Yeah. Lucky. “Do I get a say in this?”
“Dress code, Lorcan!” Another push from Doug, and the die was fumbling from his fingers. It clattered and bounced—one might even say ‘rolled’—across his dusty apartment floor.
“Doug!” Lorcan snapped.
His son wilted back, looking crestfallen (and don’t ask how Lorcan could tell that—he had a lot of practice reading expressions without faces).
Lorcan could have a temper, he knew. He never liked when that anger burst out at his kids. But rolling mysterious magical dice was exactly how you got yourself Jumanji’d, and Lorcan couldn’t be exactly sure what his children would survive.
Neither of them got transported to a terrifying game realm—at least, not within the next twelve seconds—and Lorcan didn’t feel the hiccup in time that would tell even his meager senses a major work of magic was at play. So he crouched down to get a better look at the thing.
“Hey, Vulk,” Lorcan called back toward the table. “You know geek stuff, right?”
“Um, Star Trek is actually super mainstream now—”
“Those dice they use for tabletop games,” Lorcan cut him off. “Low numbers are usually bad, right?”
Vulk was silent for half a minute. “You rolled a one, didn’t you?”
He might have.
“Yeah, that’s super bad.” A pause. “No curse feel, though.”
“Great,” Lorcan said. After a moment of consideration, he put the die in his pocket. If this was a trap, he’d already tripped it.
Terry nudged at his leg, in the silence after. “Dad. Spiders.”
Lorcan rubbed his face. It was always something. “Fine, Terry. I will talk to the spiders.”
The spiders’ aesthetic sensibilities had gotten picky—pretentious, even (which is how Lorcan knew he was dealing with human-level intelligence). Their current style hewed Neoplastic; the Platonic solids especially seemed to tickle their fancy. Not that they were great at replicating them yet, which might explain the bloodlust. Wouldn’t be the first time art block led to murder attempts.
Still, they’d probably be learning magic any day now just from proximity. Lorcan needed to make peace before they started casting battle spells about it.
The message they’d left was behind the couch, in bright plastic letters. Lorcan hoisted himself over to see, in the middle of one large cobweb:
DIE HU MAN
Lorcan hopped back over the couch and planted himself in front of the TV with Vulk. Two crises was enough for one night. He’d deal with that later.
Ooh, Cake Wars.
-
Five cakes and a Batter-Up later, at the moment his ever-ticking internal clock told him was -MIDNIGHT EXACTLY- Lorcan felt time slow.
When a significant magical working took effect, those with a talent for the craft could feel it in some way. He needed Vulk’s help to spot the subtler ones, but big spells carried weight. For Lorcan, it was like a moment outside of time. The air stilled. Sound fell silent. And the chaos at the center of his beating heart found equilibrium.
Like all moments, it couldn’t last.
Time came back with an out-of-season chill—then a furious, soul-wrenching wail. Lorcan startled in his seat, heart racing. That was weird, he thought. The pipes normally only howled with the lamentations of the restless dead on Fridays.
He shut off the TV, ignoring Vulk’s panicked “But Lorcan, the Cake-Off!”
“Anyone hurt?” he asked the things, putting on his glasses.
Terry reported, “I stuck my corner in the loom again.”
“Okay. That’s—I meant with the screaming, Terry.”
“That’s not what you asked.”
“Was anyone hurt when the scream happened?”
No’s all around, and he relaxed a bit. It wasn’t impossible that the gnashing sounds of anguish had been part of an offensive spell. But if it were Lorcan planning an attack he’d have done it. You know. Stealthily.
Whatever it was, he’d need to settle things quick. His neighbors put up with enough as it was—if Lorcan had to add un-scheduled lamentations to the list, Pam might finally get the support to force the landlord out of their stalemate.
Frank flickered his light, just as another shriek began: <Web glows.>
Not on Lorcan’s fucking watch it didn’t.
“I’ve been nice,” he announced, stomping over to the spiders’ nest, “but if you’re casting dangerous magic in the apartment where my kids live, I will get the Raid—”
He stopped.
Magic could be weird. But so could science. There was an electrical phenomenon Lorcan knew of that happened in thundering sea storms: an ionized, flame-like glow would appear on the metal fixings of ships. St. Elmo’s Fire, old scholars called it. The same kind of light as auroras in the sky. It was easy to understand how, before the science of electrons had been all figured out, sailors on a capsizing ship might mistake the phenomenon for something otherworldly.
The spiders had to be thinking the same now, as gouts of ionic fire lit their web. They clung, desperate, while its threads bucked and shook in tempo with the wails around. Like a cello forced to dance by an unforgiving bow.
This wasn’t simple science, and it wasn’t the spiders.
No, Lorcan recognized that light.
“Necromanteion, emergency drawer,” he instructed his kids.
The wailing made it difficult to hear the faint, scraping creak of plywood against plywood. The crash against the kitchen linoleum six seconds later was much louder.
It sucked sometimes, being the only member of the household with hands.
“Good try, kitchen gang,” Lorcan said. The contents of his emergency drawer had scattered, and in some cases broken, across the floor of his kitchenette. He sorted through the pile. “Terry couldn’t have caught any of this?”
“I’m stuck! In the loom!”
Right, right.
But the flashlight and mirror were what he needed right now, and they were both undamaged. A necromanteion was a dark mirror, almost pitch black. Function and form: necromanteions revealed things which sought to remain unseen. But only to eyes that could see it. To see through a necromanteion, a person had to have looked another human being in the eyes and watched as life left them.
Lorcan had made his from a rectangular compact. Easy to carry and use, especially when he needed to aim a flashlight at it. Light, and a mirror of death. By bouncing one off the other, Lorcan could wield the properties of the necromanteion on a much larger scale. (That was just basic magic optics.)
Where the light fell on the spiders’ shaking web, Lorcan saw ghosts.
They were small ghosts, thankfully. Flies and ants and the occasional larger beetle the spiders had ganged up on and eaten. All summoned back at once to the material plane. It was their screams making that wail, sheer numbers turning animal anguish to something more human. The glow from his flashlight cast them in a rainbow shimmer.
(It tickled Lorcan’s memory, but he didn’t have time to place it.)
There were ghosts in his apartment. And where there were ghosts, there was—
“That looks like necromancy,” Loretta said carefully, from across the room. She couldn’t see the ghosts, the sweet summer child. But she was savvy enough to know why Lorcan was rattled.
He tried to keep his own voice level as he replied, “Yep.”
He took the die from his pocket and, crouching down, slid (not rolled) it towards the nest. It didn’t react—no special glow, no counting down ominously with its faces. And he didn’t know any necromancers who used dice in their craft.
“Still nothing, Vulk?” he asked.
“I mean obviously there’s dead stuff here. But the dee-twenty still isn’t magic.”
Well. Lorcan was maybe going to have to trust his son that these were actually unrelated.
“Bug-ghosts are weak in the grand scheme of things,” he announced, to reassure Loretta. “If this person wanted to kill us with that, they’d be putting more ‘oomph’ into it. It’s probably not an attack, more an attempt at—”
The wails hit an unholy crescendo, then dropped to a low background hum. The webs shook hard enough to knock the magnets to the floor.
“—communication,” he finished. Because no necromancer had ever used a goddamn cellphone when an invisible choir would do. The aurora thinned. Rays of light whipped out to grab fallen letters, re-weaving them into a new message:
VERDIGRIS
WE DEMAND YOUR PRES NC M T US IMM DIAT LY
Lorcan leaned against the back of the couch. Whoever this was, they knew his name. “Running out of letters?” he asked, half to test if this new ghostly communicator could hear him, and half because. Well. “I’m not surprised, I only bought like two packs.”
SHUT UP
“Those were the last S’s and U’s,” he noted. “Just an observation.”
The words shook in place, as if to convey how serious their message was without wasting precious fridge decorations.
He imagined the effect would be more impressive if he’d found an apartment off of Graveslist like a self-respecting necromancer. Speaking through the dead had more panache when there was an appropriately ghoulish murder victim nearby to hijack. Unfortunately for this asshole, Lorcan lived in a dull neighborhood.
“You could start over, if it helps. There were four of each, I think?”
The web was still for a while. Lorcan wondered if they were about to try with the letters they had left out of spite. He hoped so; that would be hilarious. Just as he thought that, the letters fell to the floor to start over.
There was a final message, two lines long:
MEET SOON
THE CROWN OSIRIS
Oh, Lorcan thought, grin dropping from his face. That was a lot less funny. The ghost web vanished. And in the sudden, deathly quiet, Loretta spoke up, “Isn’t Osiris–”
“Yep.”
“Are you going?” Terry asked.
“Don’t think I have much choice.”
The Crown Osiris knew Lorcan’s name. The Crown Osiris wanted to meet him specifically. It never fucking rained, he supposed—two mysterious, magical invitations in one night was Lorcan’s definition of pouring. And he couldn’t ignore Osiris’s, much as he wanted to. This had been the opening salvo. He didn’t want to see what would follow a refusal.
The spiders that were still on the web climbed off it slowly. Lorcan wasn’t sure if their sluggishness was from the cold or the scare.
“You alright there?” he asked, in a low tone. “Osiris can be a lot, I hear.”
One spindled over to the icosahedral die on the floor. It faced him, then the die, and reared back.
“You want it?” Lorcan raised an eyebrow. “Look, I know you’re trying things with shapes, but that might still be cursed—”
The spider gave a tiny hiss, and gestured again at the…oh.
Well, their grasp of the English language was progressing.
“Gotcha. ‘Die, human’ or whatever. Sorry I said anything.” Lorcan rolled his eyes, but nudged the die forward with his foot. Two curses didn’t always make a right, but it wasn’t like the spiders were going to be rolling the damned thing. “It might help with the art block.”
He bit his lip, thinking. Running through options.
“If you do die,” Vulk asked, “can I keep the TV?”
Vote of high confidence, there.
“I’m not gonna die,” Lorcan assured his beloved children, and also Vulk. He went to start extricating Terry from the loom. “I know exactly how to handle this.”
The Crown Osiris, de facto leader of all evil magic-users in the city, wanted to talk to Lorcan, in person. There was only one thing he could do to make it through this in one piece.
