had some fun with these! zygarde was done a while ago i just never got around to doing the others til now
yveltal is still up there as one of my favourites. awesome bird
The giant was in an iron cage that had once held an elephant in the menagerie.
Here in the dungeons, it was still too small for it to sit up in. It was lying on its side, knees drawn up to its chest, facing the opposite wall.
Gretta had been forbidden to see it. Well, no, that wasn’t right – nobody had even told Gretta that it was here. Her sisters and the staff of the castle had apparently been expressly forbidden to tell her, but Margit had a soft heart and told her the night before that they had finally caught the giant.
It stung that even her little sister had been told and that she hadn’t.
She didn’t sleep after that, and she spent the long morning looking for an opportunity to slip away. Now in the gloom of the dungeon, she stood in the entranceway and watched the slow rise and fall of the giant’s breathing.
She could feel the heart in her chest beating, a quick thud-dump, thud-dump, thud-dump that shook her whole body. Once upon a time the giant was a menace that had pillaged and ransacked the whole western coast of the kingdom. It was a story her mother had told her and her sisters and had made Margit burst into tears in the middle of the night–
“I know that heartbeat.”
Gretta froze. The words had been slow, and low, and had made pebbles on the stone floor shiver.
Chains started to jingle together. “That is a heart I’ve not heard beat in three long years,” the giant said as it started to turn in its cage. “I’d know it anywhere.”
The giant settled on its other side. In the low glow of the dungeon’s torches, its grin gleamed like rubies.
“Hello again,” the giant rumbled. “Do you remember me?”
Gretta swallowed. She remembered–
She remembered being lulled to sleep as the carriage rocked on the highland road. She remembered the door being pulled off its hinges with a shower of splinters. She remembered the grey hand as wide as a wagon wheel reaching out to her–
She remembered waking up with a long, delicate stitch along her sternum.
Her hand reached unthinking to feel the long scar under her shirt.
“Yes,” she said. “You’re the giant who put its heart in my chest.”
“I missed the sound of it. It’s beating fast, so very fast.” The ruby grin flashed again. “Are you frightened of me?”
Gretta stared. Then she set her shoulders and turned her chin up to a haughty angle. “I’m not frightened of an animal in a cage,” she said.
The grin vanished. “Fine,” it said. The chains rattled again as it turned to stare up at the ceiling.
“I want to know why you did it.”
There was a very long, thoughtful pause. For a moment she was worried it wasn’t going to speak.
“I’m sure you guessed,” it finally rumbled. “The queen did – she only caught me to confirm what she already knew. A giant cannot be killed while its heart is outside of its body.” Another sound of metal as it shrugged. “Other giants bury their hearts or hide them in an egg in a duck in a well in a church on an island. I wanted something more… certain.”
“And that’s why you chose me?”
The giant was silent. The heart in her chest continued to beat, thud-dump, thud-dump, thud-dump…
The giant sighed. “It was never meant to be you,” it said. “I meant to grab the seventh daughter.”
Gretta blinked. “Margit?”
“Oh yes. Sweet, simpering, insipid Margit, who still sings with the birds and cries over baby animals. The kingdom would’ve had a conniption over having to kill her to kill me – if they did, it would be such a heinous death that they would remember it for generations in song and story. And I would’ve gotten my immortality either way.
“Instead I got you.” The giant looked back at Gretta and gave her a look of such contempt she nearly reeled. “You,” the giant said again, and she had never heard the word said with more disgust. “Who cares about you.”
“Excuse me!”
“Sixth of seven daughters,” the giant said. “Not the eldest, not the youngest, not even a proper middle child. An extra. A spare. Worthless, except for maybe an interesting marriage.”
“You have no right to–”
“They’ll just kill you.”
The dungeon was suddenly deathly still.
“They won’t be happy about it,” the giant continued, turning to stare at the ceiling again. “They’ll be very somber and austere and I have no doubt that Margit will cry over you, as she does over all little animals about to die. But they’ll say that you’re more valuable dead than I am alive, and so for the sake of the kingdom you will be given the noble task of dying. And that will be the end of us both.”
Gretta opened her mouth. She closed her mouth. She opened her mouth again. “Is that it?! If you’re so sure, why don’t you – why don’t you break out of your chains? Ransack the castle? Run back to your mountain, do something?”
“What an odd thing to say,” the giant said. “You know that if I live, I can escape to murder and pillage and ransack again. Surely, any good princess would want only the best for their people.”
Gretta said nothing. The heart in her chest went thud-dump, thud-dump, thud-dump…
She could feel the giant’s grin. “The queen had me captured so she could confirm what she already knew,” it said. “It seems to me that you’re here to do something very similar.”
Halfway up the stairs from the dungeon, Gretta ran into her mother.
Gretta stared. Her mother blinked. Gretta considered her options.
She set her head at a haughty angle. “I know you caught it,” she said.
There was a very long, thoughtful pause.
“What did it tell you?” her mother asked.
Gretta looked at her mother. She looked at her mother’s hand on the hilt of her sword.
She felt the beat of her heart go thud-dump, thud-dump, thud-dump.
There is a species of butterfly that lives in the mountains.
When it hatches as a caterpillar, it lowers itself to the ground on a strand of silk, and then produces a chemical that smells like the larvae of ants. An ant eventually discovers it, lured by the scent, and brings it back to the anthill, where it is cared for by the colony until it pupates. After a few weeks, the adult butterfly crawls back up through the anthill, through the dirt and the winding tunnels, and out into the sunlight before it can finally open its wings.
Some say that the caterpillar “tricks” the ants into doing this. I don’t know if I agree – I think it’s too small a thing to accuse of guile, don’t you?
With this in mind: Once upon a time, there were seven dwarves.
They lived and worked in the mountains, mining for gold and jewels and precious things. And one night, after a long day’s labour, they heard a knocking at the great stone doors of their mountain.
Outside, shivering and small, they found a human child.
I’m sure you can guess most of what she told them. Stepmothers were involved – it’s not important. What’s important was that each of the dwarves felt a dire and pressing need to care for the child, and they took her into their home, fed her, clothed her, and gave her a warm bed to sleep in. And many seasons passed around that mountain, with the dwarves raising the child as one of their own, until one autumn’s day.
The girl laid, slender and still, in a coffin of spun glass. And some weeks later, one of the dwarves had the idea to call for a prince. This was of course the sensible thing to do, and the prince of a nearby kingdom who listened to the story thought an ensorcelled girl would be a grand thing to rescue.
Poor devils. It feels cruel to judge them. But there were so many questions they could’ve asked – what was this stepmother’s name? Was she real? Did she exist? Who had made the glass coffin? Surely one of them must’ve thought of the question. And why did it grow more opaque with every passing day?
Were they wrong to trust?
I guess it doesn’t matter now.
The moment the prince stepped into the subterranean chamber with the glass coffin, it shivered with a twinkling, plinking noise. Threads of glass exploded into glittering, razor-edged confetti.
A claw split the great glass cocoon.
The thing that spilled out of it, hulking and huge, knew in the fog of its mind, in a base animal sense that screamed, that it was in a room too small for it to fit. It wanted up. It wanted out.
In front of it was some twiggy little thing holding a sword.
It took its first breath.
The flames were the colour of cornflowers.
The dwarves fled. The thing followed close behind, up, up, up through the stone and the winding tunnels, not to chase, not to hunt, but to get up, to get out, out, out–
It struck the great stone doors at a run. They crumbled like gingerbread. And then there was sunlight, and the open sky…
And it could finally open its wings.
Convergent evolution is a hell of a thing.
The dragon, of course, lived happily ever after with its loot of gold and jewels from a hastily abandoned dwarf mine. Being much bigger than a caterpillar, we could accuse it of tricking the dwarves who were kind to it, had taken it in, had fed and clothed and warmed it.
not the person who sent the ask that received these tags but... i too am a lover of egotistical asshole self sabotaging suicidal codependent protags. tell more about bartimaeus?
THE BARTIMAEUS TRILOGY by jonathan stroud is the greatest fantasy series for children ever written. it takes place in an alternate history london where magicians make up the ruling class. as was once true in real life, england is a massive colonial power with a baseless aristocracy that brutally oppresses the working class. the "commoners" believe that magicians have inherent power, but secretly all magicians are just educated in the art of summoning and controlling spirits (hatefully referred to by humans as "demons"). all western magicians of this period punish and abuse spirits into doing what they want, no exception, as has been the case in many places and in many time periods over the years. the spirits are just invisible, giving the magicians the illusion of power.
the series is about 3 people: nathaniel, a traumatized adolescent boy who rapidly starts sacrificing his morals for power and prestige in the cutthroat world of the magic elite; bartimaeus, an ancient all-powerful djinni that nathaniel relies on to do his dirty work; and kitty jones, a commoner whose friend is brutalized by a magician who is never brought to justice. it's actually also about a fourth person who died thousands of years ago, but that's a surprise tool that will help us later.
the story is about how these 3 lives intersect in a decade of political turmoil, as the commoners' oppression becomes untenable and foreign governments sick of the british empire's power seek to exploit its growing weaknesses. it's about how the power-hungry oligarchy cannibalizes itself, and how external political, cultural, and social forces shape the characters and their relationships.
it's about trauma and power and justice. it's about oppression and freedom and classism and colonialism and the many purposeful lies inherent in the system you believe you can't change (*cough* capitalism *cough*). it's about how connection to another person can change you. it's about recognizing who the real enemy is.
it's also, if you would believe it, riotously, insanely funny, mostly because bartimaeus—who narrates about 50% of it—is a sarcastic, irreverent drama queen who can never shut the hell up. he's been alive for 5000 years and he's made it this far by being avoidant and self-serving and bitchy and lucky. he thinks he's hot shit and he kind of is, but he's mostly just driven by a need to survive. he and nathaniel are friends but also not really. nathaniel is both scared of him and scared to lose him, and the series ultimately centers on their relationship, the wariness and abuse and dependence, and the way it changes as nathaniel changes. nathaniel also does go through severe depression, for that anon who was asking about lockwood.
the bartimaeus trilogy is tightly, deftly written, and one of the only kids' series that i think 100% holds up without caveats. there's a great balance of action, emotion, humor, character development, and plot, and the worldbuilding is insane—it's very smart and never overexplains anything. i can't recommend it enough. every character is written with such care and realism by a writer who Knows How to Write. it's so, so good. every fantasy fan should read it imo.
"a shapeshiting character who shapeshifts so often they start forgetting what their true face looks like" is wonderful but "the shapeshiting character who never had a true face and their image is fully formed from collection of faces they loved" is worth ten poetic books. This post is about Bartimaeus of Uruk.
Did some stuff of the og horsemen (love the new guys, but the originals hold a special place in my heart) + I redesigned the eye logo (the actual logo doesn’t really sit right with me)
areudirty
germansingergirl
snowghoul
gummygunk
yousharknotpass
