BIRDS.
UT/DR - Roblox - Minecraft - Inscryption - Sky:COTL - Detroit: Become Human - ENA: Dream BBQ
Fall Out Boy - CG5 - Toby Fox - Glass Animals - Indigo Elephant
LEGO Monkie Kid - MLB - ATLA - Pokémon(XY/XYZ) - Sonic the Hedgehog - Wakfu - Arcane - TADC
The King In Yellow - Percy Jackson - Heroes of Olympus - Project hail Mary - House of Leaves
I also like to post about my OC's and updates on college/projects!
The lady across from you looked at you expectantly. You were staring at her shoes, noticing the fine details of her Converse.
“Chris?” She repeated, this time you were able to hear her through your brainless thoughts.
Your attention snapped to her face. Miss B. looked impatient with you. “Huh? Sorry, can you repeat the question again?”
“Have you experienced nightmares, night terrors, or sleep paralysis recently?” Her expression was deadpanned.
“No,” you responded. “Why would you think that?”
Miss B. pulled out her phone, opening it up to a text message conversation and handed it to you. “Your mother contacted me saying you would scream, laugh, and even cry in your sleep. Have you had any weird or bad dreams lately?”
You read the texts between her and your mom:
Did they say anything?
<< No. When I asked why they yelled earlier, they just stared at me, then went back to their room.
<< It was like they were in an entirely different world, mentally.
Interesting. Does this happen often?
<< Only a couple of times in the past month, since their fall. But that was only the times that I had woken up.
Okay. I’ll talk about it with them next week.
<< Thank you so much, Nichole.
“Your name is Nichole?” You were very good at paying attention to detail.
Miss B. ignored your question and responded with her own. “Do you remember anything from that night? Even a dream you might have had?”
It was hard to recall any night in the past three days. But you remembered your dreams just fine. Your friends, your other family, even the man who spoke to you. You can remember the smell of the old class room, the feeling you got when you were adorned with glimmering armor, the sound of his voice, and IT. You could never forget IT. That red glow, the lack of control over your own body when IT rested inside of your chest. But you haven’t had the guts to tell anyone, and you certainly weren’t going to tell someone like Miss B. She was cold and didn't like having to deal with you at all.
“Not really,” you lied. You shifted your casted leg uncomfortably. Every time you looked at it, you couldn’t help but think about how you got it.
—
The night wind. It smelled like pine and wet dirt from the rain. Self worth was never your strong suit, so trudging up the hill in the middle of the night in search of the old urban legend gave you no sense of fear at all. In fact, you were really excited to see what you would find.
A very long time ago, presumably, seven children went missing on this mountain over the course of a few decades. When you were little, your mom would tell you stories of a civilization of monstrous creatures living under the mountain after being sealed away by powerful wizards. As you got older, you realized it was just an old tale to keep you and other kids your age out of the forest and away from Mount. Ebott in general. But one day at school, you overheard someone saying they heard noises coming from the mountain on a camping trip. You didn’t think much of it, but you eavesdropped on the conversation anyways.
“Are you sure it wasn’t just the wind through the trees?” asked the kid’s friend.
He shook his head. “I swear on my soul, it sounded like screaming.”
“Maybe it was a weird dream?”
“Maybe, but it felt super real.”
A glow from the top. The conversation replayed in your head as you neared the peak of Mt. Ebott. You tried to rationalize the story, but secretly hoped that it was real. Okay, maybe it wasn’t a big secret. You didn’t want to waste hours of your life for nothing. You reached into your pocket and pulled out the only proof of him being right. A missing person’s poster that was put up a couple of days after the night the kid said he heard screaming from the mountain.
Her name was Suzanne. You didn’t recognize her, but she probably went to another school. She looked about your age, rugged hair and a scowl on her face. You weren’t intending on finding her(or even remains of her, if that was the case), but it could explain some things about the story you overheard. You just needed to climb the mountain, look around the area the scream was from, and then go back home. All of this before sunrise.
And then your foot slipped.
And you fell.
And you slid down a narrowing hole until you landed in a soft bed of yellow flowers. How did they break your fall without dying? Beats you, but the crack you heard when you landed didn’t sound very good. It wasn’t until the pain finally shot up to your brain that you noticed how misshapen your leg was.
Fuck, you knew you should’ve just let your muscles relax. Actually, a better idea would’ve been not to make this journey at all. You let out a groan, lightly feeling the protruding bone under your pant leg. It was wet from blood and definitely felt like a bone. Hurt like hell, too. You looked around the hole you fell into. Thankfully your bag was still on your person, even after the fall, and you took it off to reach in for a flashlight. It was a cheap flashlight, it barely lit up as much of the area as you needed it to. But from what you could gather, you could see pillars and a pathway.
That was strange.
Thankfully, again, you managed to bring down a long enough stick with you to use as a temporary crutch. You stabbed it into the flowerbed, pulling your weight up with it and tried to balance yourself on one leg until you could get your bag back on. Then, slowly, you limped your way to the pathway.
—
Your mom helped you into the car after she picked you up, then she helped you out when you got home. You refused to look at your house and only stared at the grass of the lawn or concrete path to the front door. You haven’t seen it the same way since last week.
“Can you please just–” your mother set her keys on the kitchen counter. “Tell me what’s going on, Chris.”
You looked at her face. Her expression made you sad, and seeing you sad made her even more so.
“I understand that you’re going through something, but I want to help you.” She reached into a drawer below her, pulling out a knife. Then she walked to the other side of the kitchen and unwrapped the top of the pie she made that morning. “Is it because of your father and I?”
“No!” You’ve never defended yourself so quickly. “No, it’s not because of… the divorce. I saw it coming years ago.”
That didn’t make her feel any better.
“I’m sorry if I worry you, Mom.”
She walked into the living room with you, a plate of pie in hand. She sat you down, gave you the slice and a fork, then went to turn the TV on.
“Wait–” you stopped her. She turned to look at you, confused. “Come… Come sit with me. I’ll tell you everything.”
The goblin looked at the orc. The orc looked at the goblin. They both looked down at the crumpled shape of the Overlord, His Unholy Majesty, in his obsidian armor.
His final spasms had been mesmerizingly acrobatic. The fall down the steps leading up to his iron throne had pretzelled his body quite impressively, both arms folded behind his back and one leg bent at a jaunty angle.
The goblin looked at the orc. The orc looked at the goblin.
"Shit," said the goblin.
"Shit," said the orc.
"We're likely to get blamed for this," the goblin said. She walked over to the head of the glittering mangled heap and started pulling the helmet off.
"It's not our fault," the orc said. "It's hard to help someone choking when they wear two-hundred pounds of spiked armor at all times."
"Yeah, well," the goblin grunted. The helmet came free, and the bald head of the Overlord bounced on the stone with a hollow, coconut noise. "You know how it is in this bloody country - thieves get their heads cut off so they can't think about thieving, and all that." She fished in the Overlord's mouth with a finger and pulled out the obstructing olive on the end of her claw.
She popped it into her mouth and chewed. "What do you reckon they do for a regicide?" she said.
"We should run," the orc said. She had started bouncing her leg. "I hear that there's some places in the Alliance where they just kill you and let you stay dead. That's got to be nicer than what'll happen if we stay here."
The goblin started to nod - and then her gaze fell on the helmet.
It looked like a pineapple designed by a deranged blacksmith. It was all thorns and spikes and hard edges, as though the maker had been very determined to not let pigeons roost on it. The only bits that weren't solid iron were eyeholes. Nobody had ever seen the Overlord's face.
She held up the helmet and squinted from it to the orc. One of the thorns had been bent badly in the fall.
Nobody had ever seen the Overlord's face...
"Right," she muttered. "Right. Could work - or."
The orc had a sudden vision of the immediate future. "No," she said.
"I mean you're about his height-"
"No."
"It would just be for a-"
"Absolutely not."
"Just hear me out," the goblin said. "Outside of this room are two-thousand men and orcs and goblins who are absolutely gonzo about this man, and there's a whole country of them outside of the castle, and at any moment someone's going to walk in that door and see one dead tit in black armor and two unbelievably dead idiots next to him.
"Or." She tossed the helmet up like a basketball to the orc, who fumbled and tried to find somewhere to hold it that wasn't a knife's edge. "We chuck him out the window now, walk out the door in the armor, and ditch the armor as soon as nobody sees us."
The orc had started bouncing her leg again. "They'll know something's up the second I walk out of the room."
"No worries," said the goblin. "Leave that to me."
---
It had been a very strange year for the Empire.
Change had rolled across the land as slow and inevitable as a glacier. Roads and bridges carved the gray, blasted wildlands, and a number of social reforms had made the country a place where you could be miserable, yes, but miserable in comfort and safety, and that was an improvement.
Barely anyone got boiled alive in molten metal, and even if the disgusted sun never rose to light the Empire, at least you had a roof over your head to protect yourself from the acid rain.
"Your empire flourishes, Your Unholy Majesty," the magician said over her wine glass. She looked down from the tower's balcony over the gleaming stone battlements. Some work had been done to line the castle and surrounding city with sizzling, crackling alchemical lights at night. The whole thing glowed like something dangerously radioactive.
The suit of armor waved a languid, glittering gauntlet over to the goblin, who bowed.
"His Abominable Gloriousness Thanks You," the goblin recited. "The Prosperity Of His Empire Can Only Be Achieved Through The Prosperity Of His People."
"If I may be so bold, I am quite pleased that you had chosen to take my counsel under consideration," said the magician. "We have accomplished many things together."
Another wave. Another bow. "The Overlord, May His Presence Swallow The Sun And Stars, Thanks You As Well."
"It was quite gratifying to see you change your mind, after so many centuries of denial." The wine was swirled. "Tell me, what was it that finally gave you cause to listen to me?"
There was the slightest hesitation. The goblin's eyes flicked to the armor, then to the magician. She puffed out her chest. "Do you question the wisdom of His Austere Lugubriousness?" she asked.
The magician looked at the goblin. She looked at the armor. She tipped her head back and drank the wine too quickly.
She looked back at the armor. "I know you're the orc, you moron," she said.
The room went deathly still. An alchemical light fizzled.
The orc pulled off the helmet, sending long, untied hair down tangling, and said: "How could you possibly-"
"Because you're both idiots!" the magician said. The goblin jumped. The orc jumped with a noise like a dropped stove. "What kind of a plan was this?! If it wasn't for me, you would have been turned into fertilizer months ago."
She closed her eyes. She took a long, dramatic breath. She set the wine glass down on the balcony rail.
"How did the Overlord die?" she asked when she seemed like she had gotten a hold over herself.
"Choked on an olive," said the goblin.
"Threw his body out the window," said the orc.
"You don't have to mention the window," said the goblin.
"Right," said the orc. "Sorry."
The magician looked out over the city, hand curled thoughtfully under her nose. "Who knows about this?"
"Just us. And, uh. You. Apparently."
"And why did you accept my counsel?"
The orc blinked. "Sorry?"
"Why did you accept my counsel?" the magician repeated.
"Well," the orc said. "Well - you seemed like you had good ideas-"
"Great ideas!" the goblin said with an edge of desperation. "Don't know why the old bastard didn't listen to you!"
"Right - right," said the orc. "And when we figured we were stuck doing this - well, it just made sense, really."
The magician seemed to absorb this. She nodded. "All right," she said, striding between the two and grabbing the crystal decanter.
"Um," said the orc. "Sorry. What happens now?"
"What happens is that you two will continue to serve as Overlord," said the magician. "You will continue to take my counsel. We will continue to reform this bloody country, and gods willing, we will turn it into the crown jewel of the world by next Midwinter."
The orc looked at the goblin. The goblin looked at the orc.
"Really?" the goblin asked.
"Oh yes," said the magician. "I've worked hard to be counsel to the Overlord, and I have no reason to stop now. And besides-"
She looked the orc up and down with a deliberate slowness, poring over every microscopic detail, eyes tracing over every jagged line, and grinned like a panther.
"You look much better in the armor than he ever did," she said. Dark robes swirled like a becleavaged thundercloud, and she strode out through the high iron doors, decanter in hand.
The goblin looked at the orc. The orc looked at the goblin.
