Tepp flung herself through the door into an empty room. Or nearly empty; in the furthest corner from the door, an elderly child-minder sat on a fat floor cushion, blithely tapping a handheld electric slate, apparently oblivious to the screams.
"Is someone injured?" Tepp asked.
"No, that's just the children," said the child-minder without looking up from his slate.
Tepp looked around. "That's children making that sound?"
"Human children," he offered helpfully. "Playing."
Tepp stretched her legs and angled for a better view out of the window and into the yard. Children of various species raced by, screeching, most of them too short to be visible above the window sill. The human children, however, were easy to spot as they loped past on long legs with spindly arms outstretched. They shrieked and bared their square denticles and grabbed at the others. Tepp could hardly conceive of this as "playing."
"It sounds like someone is being murdered out there," she muttered skeptically.
The nanny chuckled deep in his throat as if Tepp had been joking. "They often play at that, yes. Actually, while you're in here, could you disinfect the tables? We had a little bit of a regurgitation incident earlier."
"Oh," said Tepp, unsure whether she was feeling relieved or disappointed. Moments ago she had been hoping to come to someone's rescue. "Yeah, of course."
She fumbled around for the appropriate nozzle on her tool apron and slid it over her wrist. It was a much fancier setup than she had when she worked at the Rotunda, but of course the Embassy had the best of everything, even janitorial aprons. She was admiring the many dials and buttons on the wristband when she heard the child-minder clear his throat.
"You're from Woad, aren't you? I grew up in Woad," he chirped, now looking up from his slate to watch Tepp spraying the tables with disinfectant. "The green setae on your abdomen are just like that of my playmates in Woadmarsh. I'm sorry, I should have introduced myself, I'm Pyrr."
Tepp lowered her safety goggles over her eyes. "I grew up on the Isles," she said with as much pride as she could manage while cleaning up vomit.
"Oh, that's a shame," Pyrr replied with genuine sympathy.
Tepp bit her tongue and avoided the elder's gaze as she hooked up the drying nozzle, though even over the airstream she still could hear him echolocating in her direction. She was so busy focusing her attention in the opposite direction that she was startled when the crowd of children burst through the door and into the room.
She was immediately surrounded. The human children in particular, quick as they were, crowded around and loomed over her. She stretched her hind legs and reared back to put her weight on her abdomen, but was dismayed to find herself barely at eye level with the largest one. She thought they all smelled of yeast, like fermenting grain.
"What are you?" lisped one with its tiny, puckered mouth.
"Don't ask people that," snapped a larger one.
"It's a lyrid," said another.
"I know! I meant ... what's your job?"
"What's your name?"
"How old are you?"
Tepp looked beseechingly at the child-minder, who gave her a little nod that was probably supposed to be encouraging.
"Tepp. I'm a janitor," she answered, looking around for an escape path. "And I'm nineteen."
The human children began furiously babbling at one another in their native language, which to Tepp's ears sounded mostly like the barking of seals. To her surprise, several of the lyrid children began barking along with them. Even a dermapteran joined in, though how intelligible its clicking was to the others, Tepp could only guess.
"Nineteen years old since you were born, or since your parents adopted you?" asked one of the human children, switching languages again.
"My mommy says that lyrids don't have parents," said the smallest human.
"Yes we do," said a lyrid child with ginger stripes.
"Not regular parents though," said the large human child.
"Kkkkkpk," said the dermapteran.
The children grabbed at Tepp's apron as she tried to squeeze between them. Their hands felt sticky against the setae of her thorax.
"Children," said Pyrr gently, standing at the edge of the group with a basket balanced between his middle legs. "Let us sit down for lunch and allow Tepp to return to work."
Tepp thought that she had never been so eager to return to the supply closet. Working in the Embassy was not going to be as easy as she had expected it to be.
Sometimes the best fic youâve ever written isnât on ao3. Itâs in 50 frenetic discord messages sent over a fifteen minute span where you and your friend yes and each other into a perfect story that will never actually be written.
the problem with knowing things about battle tactics is that an ever-increasing subset of popular media becomes impossible to enjoy properly because you have to sit there like 'wow Captain Protagonist good to know all those dead people on your own side are a direct result of your total lack of anything resembling brains'
seriously i'm not talking about anything elaborate, just basic common sense, but common sense is so much harder to ignore once you've got systematized data to back it up, like
what do they even think a fortification is for???
what do you think a shield is for. what do you think ranged weapons are for????
make the other sonuvabitch have a hard time killing you without getting killed first! most basic goal of combat! why are movies so bad at writing characters who actually attempt this on even a very small 'army' scale?
and like i said in the first post, it's not just that it's Dumb, the thing is that once you put the character in a command role, their ability to think their way through a combat situation with some degree of optimization becomes a reflection on their character on like. a moral level.
if your tactics are dumb and reckless but you usually win and it's just you punching people that's one thing. or even if it's you and five guys who've decided they like how you roll!
but if you are put in charge of soldiers. and you throw their lives away because you don't know what you're doing. that's not okay.
it's not always avoidable! one of the basic problems with armies! but when it happens in fiction it needs to be on purpose, to make sure the military elements of the narrative remain thematically congruent.
when you have a bit where Main Character is in command and then makes avoidable bad decisions and people die who didn't have to. either the protagonist has been put in a horrific position by whatever authority figure thrust them into a role they didn't want and weren't competent to handle, without support.
or the protagonist, voluntarily assuming a management job they suck at, has committed a grievous harm against others by not recognizing their own limitations.
even if they win! i don't want to be watching a movie where the main character squanders every tactical advantage and loses 40% of their forces totally unnecessarily for Narrative Tension, but the enemy retreats or gets eaten by a dragon or loses the MacGuffin or whatever, and then there's triumphant music and a party because They Won!!!
no! they fucked it up is what they did! this is some Light Brigade gaslighting shit! shut up. our boy just massacred people who trusted him.
kind of a tangent but this is also how I feel when the good guys mow their way through dozens of faceless grunts and then suddenly the big bad in charge is the life they face a moral quandary over
the random foot soldiers and henchmen's lives matter too! tbh
I think itâs worth noting that history is littered with examples of wasteful tactics. A common element is that often times technology advances while tactics do not.
For example, in the American Civil War, the tactics used of soldiers, marching into open fueled, and exchanging musket fire was not all that different than the tactics of the American revolution a little under 100 years prior. However, the rifles that infantry men were armed with were significantly more accurate. As a result, casualties, both in terms of lives lost, and soldiers, injured were horrific.
The concept of trench warfare in World War I was not all that different from wars, fought all over the continent in the century prior, and were designed to try and curb advantages of cavalry. But again, of mortars, more accurate, rifles, and chemical warfare meant that charging trenches resulted in truly grotesque numbers of casualties.
There is certainly evidence that World War I era generals were fairly callous when it came to casualty figures. They were more interested in territory gained. And it mattered very little how many lives that cost since soldiers were replaceable.
I agree that there should be some narrative coherence when protagonist squander advantages due to bad tactics, but when you look at actual history, itâs very clear that even if there are âgood guysâ and âbad guysâ in war, thereâs also just a lot of waste. That doesnât make for a very sexy narrative, but itâs the nature of the beast. Militaries in particular are conservative institutions slow to change. you do things a certain way because that is the way they are done. That will always get people killed. But thatâs also excepted as the way things are done.
At the end of the day, Iâm just not sure there is a good way to organize two groups of people trying to kill each other.
I think the more interesting question is, should there be?
i mean maybe, but that's not what the post is about, it's about fiction that places warfare centrally, but then engages with it only on an aesthetic level.
thereby creating major ruptures in the narrative logic and characterization for anyone who knows (for example) what the point of a wall is.
this is a writing complaint, about failure to adequately situate motive within character and maintain internal consistency.
i'm not going to ask every piece of fiction that wants to have swords in it to engage in a meditation on the nature of conflict. that sounds boring, and also like it's asking too much of people. i'm aiming way lower here.
the problem is a general failure to care enough about the battle as an event within a narrative to make the pieces go together according to an internal logic. people being dumb is fine as long as they're dumb on purpose. people not doing The Most Winning Thing is fine as long as the priorities they're supposed to have are the priorities they're actually displaying.
There's nothing more frustrating as an audience than being told "this person is a Good Person who Cares about their men and is also a Genius Tactician" and being shown a clown that never thinks before getting most of their people needlessly killed.
call me terminally academia-brained but i do think a lot of the fun of character analysis is figuring out how to build a compelling argument for a particular reading using lines of evidence from canon as well as meta/intertextual support
and you could say that what iâm saying here is basically âa lot of the fun of doing character analysis is doing character analysisâ but letâs be real a lot of fandom character analysis is pretty heavily vibes-based. and i think thatâs where i really chafe up against the traditional thought-terminating fandom attitude of like, everyoneâs opinions hold equal weight and any interrogation of that is inherently hostile. because i think itâs fascinating to dig into where others are coming from in terms of their views on characters or dynamics or whatever, especially when they differ significantly from more commonly expressed views, and part of that digging is asking people okay what parts of canon are you drawing from to support your opinion? what parts of canon are you disregarding or downplaying? how does this argument hold up in the light of how race, gender, class, ability, etc. operate both in the pieceâs in-fiction and real world contexts?
It's impossible to watch MP100 without having Mob in your top 3 he is simply the protagonist ever he is The Character cocaine. ONE just arrived and said hello here is Shigeo Kageyama (shadow/hidden depths pun in his SURNAME just so you know) he is an autistic middle schooler who is a living hydrogen bomb and he has a severe complex related to his ability to hurt others. He doesn't let himself have needs or emotions really and he explodes over it. It makes him super guilty. He also has intrusive thoughts and complex feelings and lots of grief and anger and resentment but that doesnât make him less of a person. He is good not out of a "lack of negativity" but because he actively puts an effort on being better than he was yesterday. He is incredibly kind and forgives so much because he wants to think everybody can change, and so can he. He is quiet and has a soft voice. He can destroy people verbally. He doesn't get social cues but he gets others' issues pretty quick. He loves his little brother. He stares at clouds. He is bug eyed and has huge round cheeks. He has a very interesting inner world despite people's claims and is very thoughtful. He is anemic. He is a bit lame in the best way. His one dream was holding his crush's hand and walking her home and that thought alone made him blush furiously. He likes ugly clothes and cats. His character arc ends with him accepting he can be loved for his nastiest parts. And you say I'm not supposed to imprint on him or perhaps take him under my fluffy feathers like a chicken receiving some random chicks. Its just not possible
y'shtola: good but mean driver. refuses to let people merge. goes 90 on the freeway. if you spill something in her car you have to get the wet wipes from the trunk and clean it up. public radio, the classical station, or science podcasts and will not share the aux. does not make you pay for gas unless you're thancred. has a really nice sedan that smells good. don't ask about her insurance premium.
urianger: genuinely hates driving and only barely got a license at age 18 because moenbryda's parents wanted them to have some form of ID that isn't their passport. passenger seat princess bc they get carsick easily, but also isn't a very good navigator. if they have to drive they go 10 miles under the speed limit and will only take surface streets, no freeways, and will pray to the crystals they keep in their tote bag for protection against malicious forces. will play weird music that isn't great for driving if you let them have the aux.
alphinaud: very good driver, assiduous turn signal user, but drives his dad's tesla (he will eventually get his own prius). always listening to some podcast but will share the aux if you ask (and if there isn't a new episode of pod save eorzea). wants you to pay your share of the gas money.
alisaie: got herself an old used jeep and loves it to death. loves going fast on the freeway. lets you eat in her car and shares her car snacks. has been burning CDs of her playlists so she can play her music in the car. would share the aux with certain friends but nobody carries around CDs. pretty decent driver but can get distracted occasionally, but also probably the most fun to be driven by. wants you to talk with her if you're carpooling with her.
thancred: drives like a dad. will let you have the aux, which you should take because he just puts on whatever rock/alt station he can find and doesn't switch off it if imagine dragons starts playing. has a dented dusty SUV so he's always the one hauling stuff. should probably vacuum it. yells at people when they cut him off.
ryne: still learning how to drive and is extremely anxious about it, but does kind of enjoy it. she gets nervous about driving a big SUV and has been getting some of her hours in with y'shtola since her car is smaller and her corrections make her less anxious than thancred's. a good navigator/copilot. is going to put a beanie baby up on the front dash when she gets her own car.
In every way this is set up to be a joke like any other short video, it even uses the trope of main character in a wig to represent their mom, but it isn't funny at all. It's just sweet and nice
"Learn the fundamentals first" seems like really sound universal advice, and as a former classical musician, I can vouch for it. You will have a more solid foundation for increasing complexity if you put in the time to study in a structured way. If you don't, you'll have a lot of shit to fix later.
As a former music teacher, I can also say that "learn the fundamentals first" is the death knell for a vast percentage of beginners, especially adult learners.
I've run into this with drawing several times, where some well-meaning artist has lectured me on needing to study anatomy properly or not use shortcuts like CSP brushes. And oh, believe me, I know. I know exactly how to learn an artistic discipline in a structured way. I just...don't want to!
The thing is, I'm not aiming to be a professional artist. I want to draw my gay little anime guys. I would undoubtedly improve at art much faster if I approached every gay little anime guy drawing as a study exercise. But I would also have quit drawing a decade ago if I couldn't just let myself enjoy drawing imperfect fucked-up little guys with whatever shortcuts I needed to body myself across the finish line.
With my adult piano students, my approach was always "What's your goal?" If their goal was to learn exactly one Elton John songbook to play at parties, then...that's what we did. We'd put tape on the keys to label the notes, and just fuckin go for it. Learning exactly one Elton John songbook is a good and noble musical goal, full stop.
Some of my students needed and enjoyed a more structured approach to learning; if they wanted to be able to play classical music, then yes, scales were going to have to enter the equation at some point. And yet others would learn the Elton John songbook, catch their white whale, and realize they wanted to explore more of the ocean. The scales were still there for them to learn!
Often the choice isn't between "learn art well" and "learn art imperfectly" - the choice is between "learn art imperfectly" and "don't do art at all." To which I say, learn imperfectly! Or, what the hell, don't 'learn' art. Just do, and enjoy the doing of it.
You have official permission from your local pretentious classical music snob: fuck the fundamentals. You can always unfuck them later (but only if you want to).
This child who came to my house tonight is literally the funniest human being on the planet. She complimented me on having both lollipops and mini Three Musketeers available because "a lot of houses these days don't give you a fruit flavor option." She was very solemn about this.
OP, I hope you donât mind me making an addition:
When I turned 17, we ordered a cake at the grocery store for my party, as weâd done many times before. If you wanted something written on the cake youâd write it into a section of the order form. We requested, very simply, âHappy Birthday Courtneyâ. When we went to pick it up the day of the party, this is what we got.
The bakery employees had absolutely no explanation for this. The order form, attached to the box, very clearly did not contain any of those extra names. Whomever had done the writing was no longer in, so there was no one to ask how this had happened. The fact that the name âJuanâ is misspelled bewilders me to this day. (Iâve never seen âMileyâ without the E, either, but itâs believable that someone might spell it that way.) Did this cake slip in from an alternate universe where Iâm one quarter of a set of Hispanic quadruplets? Dyslexic Hispanic quadruplets, maybe?
This cake became the focal point of my party. At least two of my friends regularly called me âCourtney Mily Jaun Pabloâ for years to come. My siblings and I still reference it sometimes, eleven years later. It is probably the funniest thing ever to occur at any birthday celebration of my life, and may well remain so for the rest of my days.
one time me and some pals spotted one of those big cookie cakes in a store. it was done up with red icing and little X's for kisses and in the middle it said
No One Like You
now, it took us a while to realise it meant "(there is) no one like you". at first, we all parsed it as a botched "no one like(s) you"
for ages after when we'd wind each other up we'd declare "NO ONE LIKE YOU âčïžđ"
I love episodes of Game Changer where the only way to win is by learning & the only way to learn is by playing. With some episodes, like Don't Wake Standards & Practices, the overall flow of the game becomes pretty apparent pretty quickly, & also there's some surprises along the way. But then there's episodes like Count the Rice, Deja Vu, or Bingo, where the basic conceit of what the game even is is an ongoing mystery. I love that stuff.
One time I convinced a tech bro that he would also get Basilisk'd if he backed the wrong AI, and there was no way to know which one would be the dominant one. Dude spiraled out pretty hard about how even the devout will not be spared robot hell (though he wouldn't have thought of it in those terms).
Can't even remember at this point what's been shared and what hasn't, but -- whatever. Some photos of Dark Souls 2 on a CRT TV. Most of these are probably from 2018. As expressed before, I feel these form a far better aesthetic argument for a "demake" of the game than all of the fan modding projects focusing on lighting effects or texture packs.
Summary: You are a Healer. There are few with your Destiny and even fewer with your track record of coming back from the dead.
Part of the Destiny universe which includes Being Villagers
------.
You are a Healer.
The battlefield roars around you. Mud-stained armor, soot-cloaked faces, blood-soaked flashes of metal. The colors of war are a kaleidoscope that you desperately try to track, pushing your gold-rimmed glasses up your nose with the back of your wrist as you drop to your knees by the next patient. Over the waves of violence there is the canopy of a white tent slowly being eaten by flames.
Well. Looks like you wonât be taking this wounded soldier to the infirmary. Not that you could lift them anyway. Your arms are truly spent from carrying patient after patient out of the melee.
Your heart is spent when you see the soldier youâre working on now is the same from a quarter of an hour ago.
âI told you not to run back out,â you say. Your voice is level. Calm. Tears push behind your eyes and stubbornly stick there, a hot pressure that is starting to make your nose run. You sniffle and stubbornly grit your teeth against your wobbling chin. âHealing takes an hour to set.â
This soldier is already living dead. The wound you healed â a puncture to the upper right chest â is mottled purple and red. Infection. Your power speeds healing which is why itâs imperative that your patients donât go rolling around in ooze for at least thirty minutes. The infection isnât why heâs dying though.
The laceration that cuts jagged through his fleshy stomach and into his wet bowels is what makes him living dead.
âNo,â the soldier says. His brown eyes are amber in the dying light. Such a waste of a beautiful clear day. He reaches up to grab your forearm, fingers spasming. He coughs. âNo, IâIâm not supposed to be here. Iâm not. Iâm a Baker.â
You know. He told you this less than an hour ago when you first dragged him from the hungry maw of death. His name is Jer and his mother wanted him to take over the restaurant. She didnât see the difference between a Cook and a Baker. He did and his need for capital is what led him to sign up for the Lord Neidâs army. One hundred gold pieces for just one year of service. Too good to be true.
Not enough is what you would have told him if heâd asked. One hundred gold for a life? It wasnât nearly enough.
A shield comes flying, wheeling through the air like a blade. You fling up your arm a moment before it would have hit your face and have the pleasure of feeling your forearm break instead of your cheekbone. You grab at the break with an anguished hiss. The pain blinds you.
By the time you remember your patient, heâs dead.
You stagger up. A steady green glow emanates from under your palm, chasing the pain from your broken bone. Healing yourself has always been easier, months of trial and error on your own body creating a muscle memory youâve never developed for others. Your gaze darts. The backline is quickly dissolving into the frontline. The enemy â whoever the fuck it is, the one wearing red capes instead of blue â is hacking at your side like lumberjacks at trees. Your white healing robes are nearly black with mud. Itâs not a stretch to imagine one of the desperate combatants from either side striking you down without ever noticing the concentric circles on either side of your lapels marking you as a Healer.
At last, at last, you feel the spell around your throat loosen. A sharp ding! trills in your head. A new compulsion settles into your bones.
Retreat. Find the Lord. Now.
The relief of being free to flee is short-lived. The Lord will be furious at the results of todayâs battle. Never mind that his advisors all cautioned him against directly attacking another Lord on their land. Never mind that his Knights told him that an untrained force â no matter the size â wouldnât win against a Dukeâs forces. Never mind the hundreds of reasons that Lord Neid lost. It will be your fault. For not being fast enough or cunning enough or strong enoughâ
The fear of the Lord is costly. This whole time youâve managed to not falter in your duty, to plunge into chaos and rescue patient after patient, to march forward even as your legs began to shake. But now you stumble as you turn to obey your commands. Fall to one knee.
Thereâs a whistling, deeper and meaner than the whistling of an arrow. Something collides with the back of your head and the sound is so loud that the compulsion is shaken right out of your bones.
You fall forward into the cold mud. Your vision is bleary though from the blow or the mud, you donât know. You donât know a lot, actually.
Blackness consumes you.
----.The start.---
You become a Healer a quarter mile underground, deep in the mines where only the adults are allowed to go. Itâs been a long time since the collapse, and the air is thick and borderline unbreathable. You would consider it fully unbreathable if you werenât still conscious. You sit with your back against the wall, head tilted so you can gaze sightlessly at the stone above. Salvation is a quarter mile above you at most. Or, in the best case scenario, a few meters in the next tunnel over. Your lip curls. It hardly mattered. A mile of rock and a few feet of it are all the same when you donât have the tools to dig it.
Sisi coughs again, her chest seizing so hard that her head nearly lifts from your lap. You press your cold hand against her burning forehead, shushing her as best you can through dry, cracking lips.
âSome b-birthday,â she whispers.
You canât see her face, but your mind has gotten quite good at conjuring in the darkness. You take a moment to paint her red hair sweeping back in big, loose curls, her constellation of freckles darting across her high-bridged nose, the sweet twinkle of firelight in her grey eyes. Of course there probably isnât really a twinkle in her eyes now or the healthy flush that you remember from last weekâs horseback riding adventure. You clear your throat. âNot yet.â
Sisi swallows, the sound loud. The tunnel collapse has only left you with a cage about seven feet in any direction. When both of you are silent, you can hear your blood moving through your veins. Sisi gathers her strength and asks, âHow longâŠ?â
You donât know how long the two of you have been trapped. Neither do you know how long until youâre rescued or how long until your birthday. The blood at your hairline is dry and flaky, no longer tacky. âTwo days, probably.â
âThen soon,â Sisi says. Thereâs a light pressure on your left arm. Sisi has wasted the strength to touch the spot your Destiny is supposed to appear. âIâll be the f-first to know.â
Thereâs no humor in her voice. She doesnât have the energy for it. Still, a bubble of mirth fizzles up your throat. Sheâd begged you to let her be the first to read your Destiny, even before your parents. She said that, as your best friend, it was her right. You hadnât promised her, even when she pointed out that youâd been the first to know sheâd gotten Villager. âYou always have to have your way.â
Her hand falls away from your arm and hits the ground with a dull thud. You panic until you realize you can still hear her thready breath. Sheâs fallen asleep. Please let it only be sleep.
You stroke her hair. Sisi is hurt worse than you. When the support gave, she grabbed your hand and forced you to run long before your brain realized what was happening. And when the rock above you groaned, she slung you forward, throwing herself on top of you as the world collapsed. Now the only thing you can do for her is cushion her head and answer when she speaks and listen for the sound of her breath in the endless quiet of the underground.
It might not be a bad idea for you to sleep too.
---Now---
Waking is boring. You have the sick taste of healing at the back of your mouth. Your head is clear. If another Healer had tended you, youâd still be foggy. Mildly concussed. The clarity tells you that once again your muscle memory has saved you. Even knocked out, your self-healing is top tier.
Your glasses are gone, but you can guess where you are. You smell underground and thereâs torchlight flickering through your eyelids. Youâre not wearing your glasses so you donât bother opening your eyes yet. You wonât be able to see anything without them.
Not that you need to.
Youâre in a cell. Thatâs also boring. The inside of Lord Neidâs cells are like a second home to you. Itâs where he stores his pet Healer when his pet Witch spends too long on missions and the spells wear off. You reach out to the nail wedged between the stones above the head of your cot. With any luck, whoever retrieved you from the battlefield also retrieved your glasses. If they did, theyâll have hung them up in the usual spotâ
There is no nail. There is no stone. Wood meets the pads of your fingers. The smell of underground â you havenât mistaken that. However there is no accompanying smell of damp or mildew. Instead, thereâs the scent of a wood-burning stove, laundry soap andâŠperfume?
You jolt upright. Your robes are gone. Youâre wearing a nightgown thatâs nearly as soft as the blanket that crumples into your lap. You blink quickly, squinting through the torchlight. There are bars surrounding you, but thatâs where the similarity ends. Wherever you are is paneled in oak, the bed youâre lying on a four-poster rather than a cot, and there is a fire crackling in a hearth across the room from your cell. You can just make out someone sitting next to it, on a stool next to a small table.
The person shifts. There comes the sound of paper rustling and then the rounded puff of air that comes from a heavy book being closed. âYouâre awake.â The woman doesnât sound upset. In fact, she sounds pleased and a little surprised. âMy doctors assured me it would be another day yet.â
Sheâs little more than a dark figure even when she stands and walks closer to your cell. Her clothes could be a black cape or a black dress and her head is either topped with a truly impressive amount of thick, black hair or a wide hood. There is a glimmer of silver at her throat and on her hands when she gestures to the bars. âI am sorry for the cell, Healer. Itâs only until the spells wear off.â
Healer. Your hand flies to your upper arm, covering the letters instinctively. You can feel the spells at your throat circling like a snake. You donât need to ask what will happen when Lord Neidâs spells wear off. New ones will assuredly be put on. âWhere am I?â
âBehind enemy lines,â the woman says dryly. âI told Neid not to test me.â
Your head throbs. Whatever luck you might have had has run out. Â âYouâre the Lord.â
âLady,â the woman corrects. She moves back to the table. Thereâs scraping as she drags her stool to the front of your cell. âDuchess, actually. Duchess Genevieve Axelon, though you can call me Lady Gen.â
Lord Neid attacked the Duchess? You press the heel of your hand to your eye. âAm I being charged with treason then, Duchess?â Any act against the Duchess, the Kingâs cousin, would surely be seen as an attack on the royal family.
âYou were going to be,â Lady Gen agrees. âUntil my Knight recognized those spell markings. Now we have options.â She settles on her stool and considers you. âThere have been many tales about you, Healer. Your existence has given Lord Neidâs household a reputation. They say you can heal any wound, even those afflicted by demon beasts. They say you can bring people back from the dead.â
âNobody can be brought back from the dead,â you say. âNot in their entirety.â A body is a simple thing to order around. The compulsion around your throat squeezes as if just realizing youâve woken. You hiss, eyes falling shut and your hand moves from your arm to your throat. Come back. Find Lord Neid. NOW. The words pulse through your bones louder and louder until your teeth chatter.
âThe next few days will be painful,â Lady Gen observes. You hear her from a long way off. Is she pitying you? âIâm sorry. I have no Witch to offer a counterspell. I also cannot allow you to return to Lord Neid.â
You gasp through the next wave of pain. Like the tides, it laps at you hungrily, building its momentum. âI do not want to go back.â
âNot now,â Lady Gen says. She rises in a rustling of skirts. âIâm told that that compulsion wonât kill you, but it will feel like itâs trying to. You must remember to eat and drink when you can. If you can bear with it, through it, we can talk of freedom, Healer.â
The word lands like a blow more surely aimed than the thorns beginning to poke down your spine. âF-freedom?â Suspicion worms through you. âWhose?â
âYours,â Lady Gen says.
---The startâ
Sisi doesnât answer when you call anymore. Your legs are numb under her head, and youâd be worried about paralysis if you werenât still able to wiggle your toes. You wonât move her. Her breathing went funny when you tried to shift her last time, like water got stuck in the back of her throat, and you donât ever want to hear that sound again.
When the two of you first set out to explore the tunnels, thereâd only been four days left before your birthday. Youâve wracked your memory repeatedly to be sure. It feels as if youâve been buried for weeks, but that canât be. Everyone says getting your Destiny burns and your arm is as cold as the rest of you. That means it hasnât even been four days.
Nobody is coming. Thereâs the possibility that more than this tunnel was affected in the collapse. They could be digging in the wrong place or not able to reach this section of the mine. There was a reason this section was marked for the adults only. Maybe they stopped looking days ago and thought well they should have known better.
No. No, you know that last thought isnât true. Sisiâs parents are miners. They know that miracles can happen down in the shafts and they wonât give up until theyâre sure their daughter isnât one of them. And your parents may be older and frailer, but theyâre also former adventurers. Youâre sure that theyâll fight until the end to find you.
Itâs this thought that finally spurs you into action. Youâve always been told by the village Chief â a Miner â to never dig if youâre in a collapse. Any movement could cause more instability and cause another cave in; one you wouldnât survive. But itâs been at least three days and there hasnât been even a whisper of rescue. Sisi is just getting worse and worse and you have to do something. If youâre going to die down here, you want it to be in a way your parents can be proud of.
You want to fight until the very end.
You ease Sisi off your lap, carefully arrange a pile of debris under her head so her neck stays at the same angle. It canât be comfortable, but Sisi doesnât wake.
âIâm going to get us out of here,â you whisper to her. Your legs shake as you stand. You feel the top of the tunnel. The spot where you and Sisi were sitting is under a support that feels mostly intact. With any luck, Sisi will be protected if your digging triggers another collapse.
You shove your fingers under the first stone and yank. With a quick chatter of disapproval, it jumps. You yank again. It falls. A river of dirt and gravel drops from the ceiling to fill the space like sand in an hourglass. You scoop it behind you. Find the next rock. Yank. Gravel and dust falls. You choke on the dust. Scoop it away. Push and pull and yank.
The rhythm of digging becomes your heartbeat. Your fingers bend backwards and your nails wear down to nothing. Your arms burn. Each time the rock scrapes and the pebbles clatter, thatâs victory. Every time your muscles scream and rocks bark their protest, thatâs fighting. If your parents find your body with you hands worn to nubs, at least theyâll know you tried.
When a gentle green glow begins to light your way, you barely notice through the treacherous tears.
You dig.
-----. Now---
Witchcraft is a mean practice. The Witchâs compulsion hooks under your skin and spears into your bones when you least expect it. Move. Go. Find Lord Neid. When youâre able to resist, you lie in bed, scarred fingers fisted in the bed sheets and eyes fixed sightlessly on the wood paneling above you. The magic hates when youâre inactive and does its best to motivate you. The soles of your feet burn and your lungs ache for air as the spell twines around your throat. The only thing that relieves the pressure is to stand and take a faltering step in the direction you know Lord Neid to be. But thatâs all you have room for. A single step.
Then the burning starts again.
When you arenât able to resist, you find yourself scratching at the bars of your cell as if your nails are strong enough to chip metal. Your fingers break and bleed, but your healing needs only a moment to fix it. Your cell glows green as you break and repair, break and repair, break and repair under the weight of your compulsions. You know you beg in these moments. Thereâs always a guard posted by the fireplace and you promise them any number of healings to free you, promise them years of your servitude, promise them every bit of gold that you donât have. If the guards answer you, you donât know. The compulsion screams in your mind and drowns out even the sound of your own breaking bones.
Then there are the moments your leash rests. The spell retreats like a hungry tiger, circling and looking for a new angle of attack. When this happens, you try to sleep. Then, eventually, these moments occur more often. The teeth of the spell are wiggling, bleeding at the gums, starting to fall out.
In one of these peaceful times, Lady Gen comes to visit again.
âIâve had my Rogue look into you,â Lady Gen says. She drops the Destiny as if itâs the most normal thing in the world and not one of the ten outlawed. Well, former outlawed. This King doesn't hold the same biases as his predecessor. She continues. âIâd like to confirm a few things.â
You expect her to ask questions about Lord Neid or the master you had before him. Itâs not hard to find information on your past. As a Healer, youâre coveted. When the underground put you up for sale, people from all over rushed to put in a bid before the Crown had a chance to shut it down. You stand, feeling wrong to sit in front of a Lady now that youâre feeling better, and croak, âAlright.â
Lady Gen flips through some paper. âYouâve been in Lord Neidâs hands for two years?â
âThree. It took him half a year to find a Witch.â Youâd refused to perform any sort of healing for the first year he had you. You fought the entire way through the ritual and, even with the Witchâs spell tattooed across your throat, you still dared to heal Lord Neid wrong the first time he asked. Your lip curls. The scar cutting across his cheek and dragging at the corner of his eye is the best gift youâve ever given. You rock on your heels. âIt took another six months to get the compulsions right.â
âYouâre twenty-two years old?â
âProbably.â Youâre not sure how long the Underground kept you before the auction.
âThereâs a report you once regrew another captured personâs arm.â
You shake your head. âReattached.â
You can feel her eyes on you. âThereâs no record of any other Healer being able to perform the same feat.â
âI havenât met any other Healer,â you say. âIâm sure they could if given the right incentive.â
Lady Gen is curious. âWhat was the right incentive for you?â
âI wanted the kid to have an arm,â you say. You pause and admit, âHer dad also helped convince me.â
Another flip of a page. âHero Bern.â
A name you havenât heard in a long time. For a moment the scent of underground is joined by clove and spice. The face that swims to the front of your memory is mostly patched salt-and-pepper bear and kind brown eyes. You remember the wide, calloused hand that never let go of the thin, frail one by his side.
âWe called him the Big B,â you say. âDidnât know he was a Hero until the jailbreak.â
âYou were assumed dead during said jailbreak.â
You shrug. âThey jumped to conclusions.â
âThe castle came down on your head. And the two levels of dungeons above you.â When you donât answer, Lady Gen sighs. âYou must have felt so abandoned. Hero Bern did try to save you. He was devastated to hear you were still alive.â
You raise an eyebrow. The spell is rousing itself, sliding its scales against your jugular.
âAlive and recaptured,â Lady Gen corrects. âHe failed to uphold his end of the deal.â Her voice softens. âHe and his daughter paid their respects in your hometown. They begged your parents for forgiveness.â
âMy hometown?â Your heart jumps. Even to Big B, you never gave your name. Never told them where you came from. You were captured on the road to the Capital after being foolish enough to display your power to the wrong, demon-wounded merchant. Your tongue feels thick and heavy. You shake your head. âNo. No, Iââ Donât have a hometown. The denial is stuck in your throat.
âMy Rogue was impressed by how many times youâve been assumed dead,â Lady Gen says. Her voice softens. âEven when they assumed you dead, your parents never stopped looking for you, Elodie.â
The sound of your name is a lightning bolt. Your heart pounds. âIâTheyââ Your knees shake. She knows your name. Thatâs your name. You fall back onto your bed. Instinctively, green light fills your palm, and you clasp it over your chest. Thereâs nothing to heal. Your heart pounds against your ribs. âIâmââ
Lady Gen sets her notes down. âElodie?â
Grey tugs at the corners of your vision. Hope and terror and pain claw at each other. You suck in breath after breath. A ghost whispers in your ear.
âElodie?â
---the start---
âElodie?â
Sisiâs thin voice shocks you. Your hands buzz as they still for the first time in hours. The aftershock of your digging feels like bees in your bones. Youâre more shocked as you turn and see her for the first time in days, cast in a simmering green glow that emphasizes the sick hollows of her cheek and the blackness of the blood caked in her red hair. âSisi!â
You fall to her side. The power that courses through you â youâre an idiot. The same power thatâs healed your nailbeds into durable scars should have been used on her first. You grasp her hand and wrestle with the energy inside of you. The green shine is reluctant to leave you, but you brute force it from your chest, down your arms and under her skin. Itâs not easy and the hiss that slips from both of you tells you itâs not pleasant either.
But it works.
Sisiâs breath evens and eases. Her long lashes cast deep shadows across her face. âElodieâŠare youâŠ?â
Your Destiny burns on your arm. âHealer.â Youâre dehydrated and tired and hurt and scared, but you canât help but grin. âYouâre the first to know.â
âAs I should be,â Sisi says. She tries to sit up and gasps. âOw.â
âStay still.â You make yourself go back to the hole youâve been working on. You donât think itâs your imagination that the air is easier to breathe or that there is a faint flow coming through the cracks in the stones. You donât want to get her hopes up. âIâll work on this.â
Sisi cocks her head as you grasp the first rock. âWait. Do you hear that?â
From a very long way off, metal strikes stones.
---Now---
It is another day before the spell breaks. Itâs a strange feeling when it does. You wake at dawn to the feeling of open spaces, as if you went to bed in a cave only to find yourself in the center of a glade the next morning, dew misting your face and the sweet sound of a creek singing in your ear.
You suck in a breath deeper than any before. Your ribs flare and your eyes open at the force of your exhalation. Free. Youâre free.
Well. The walls of your cell press closer as you rub sleep from the corners of your eyes and sit up. You massage the bridge of your nose, wishing for your glasses. You are freer than before.
Now, with your mind clear and your body light, itâs time to find out what the Lady will do with your name and past in her hands.
From the day you were first captured on the road to see Sisiâs graduation, youâve never told anyone your name. Youâve never wanted your family to be used against you. When your parents pulled you from the mine and learned your Destiny, they did your best to prepare you for what the world would want from you. They had told you to rely on them, to trust them to protect you, but youâd never wanted to put them in that position. Your elderly parents, beaten by years as adventurers, were not as strong as they pretended. The threats they hinted at during your lessons were too big. Too bloodthirsty. Youâd been determined to bear your Destiny alone.
The door to the dungeon creaks open. You know the sound well by now, used to your rotation of guards and doctors. You get out of bed, smoothing the bed sheets the best you can. The stairs are winding and tedious. You have a moment to prepare yourself for whatever new leash is put around your neck.
You reach out for the water glass on the small meal table. You drink greedily and pause when you go to set the glass back. Thereâs a glimmer of gold on the table. Your glasses. Your scarred fingers would know the feel of them in complete darkness. A bubble of relief pops in your throat. At last youâll be able to see clearly. Lady Genâs voice may sound kind, but her face will reveal the truth.
You put them on and turn to face the rapidly approaching footsteps. You raise an eyebrow and fold your arms, tracking them through the stone wall as they approach the door to your dungeon room. Lady Gen isnât alone today. Perhaps sheâs bringing an advisor or Knight with her. Maybe sheâs found her own Witch to tie you to her servitude. You arenât opposed to serving the woman who saved you from Lord Neid. You prepare your stipulations. You definitely need to get paid this time, for one, and she shouldnât touch your familyâ
The door flies open and pale, freckled face with a riot of red curls flies in. Grey eyes like the ocean glimmer. The young woman stops and covers her mouth with both hands. âOh! Oh, Elodie.â
âSisi,â you gasp. You stumble to the bars of your cell and somehow she is right there and her fingers are entwined with yours, palm to palm. The heat of her skin tells you this is real. You blink very quickly. It takes you several tries to speak without sobbing. âI missed your graduation.â
âYeah,â she agrees. Sisi isnât so reserved. Tears slip down her cheeks and her laugh is choked by tears. âYou kind of owe me one.â
Behind her an older woman and a man come in. Their hair is grey (what they have left of it) and the woman has your wide nose and thin mouth. The man has your blindness, hidden behind thick glasses.
You look over Sisiâs shoulder at them, unable to let her go, feeling the barrier of your cell all the more keenly as a natural compulsion settles into your bones, begging you to run to them. Your breathing stutters. âYou looked for me.â
Your dadâs chin trembles. âEvery day.â
âWe knew you wouldnât give up,â your mother says. She pushes up next to Sisi, drags your father with her so that all three are pressed against the bars of your cell. âSo neither did we.â
And youâre fifteen again, the gaps in the stone growing wider and wider to reveal your village on the other side, covered in dust and sweat. Hands grab at your arms, your shoulders, your back, pulling you into an embrace that feels like home. Your mother is telling you how proud she is, your father is shaking with the force of his tears, and Sisi is pressing kisses to your cheeks and to your forehead and thanking you for being alive.
An aggrieved sigh comes from behind your family. âIf youâd waited, I could have unlocked the cell first.â Lady Gen slips efficiently past your mother to twist the key in the lock. âYou make me feel like Neid, hugging through the bars like that.â
Arms and hands release you, step back, throw the door open. And then your family is all around you, burying you between their bodies in a way that should feel suffocating but instead feels even better than waking up without a compulsion around your neck.
You gawk at Lady Gen. Look to the open cell doors. Then back to Lady Gen, standing alone and unprotected in the dungeon. âYouâreâŠreleasing me?â
âThe spell is gone,â Lady Gen says. She moves to her usual spot by the fireplace, settling onto the stool. She tilts her head and her thick, black hair falls like a waterfall over her shoulder. Sheâs more stunning that you could have guessed and, now that you can see her clearly, youâre mesmerized. Sheâs like a painting come to life. âYouâre free. Like I said, now is the time to discuss your options.â
Sisi whispers in your ear. âWhen the pretty Lady offers you a job, take it, okay?â
âI offer quite the compensation package,â Lady Gen agrees. She gestures to the four of you. âFamily relocation, for example.â
You are starting to like the sound of options.
------.
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Summary: Heroes are unique employees. When great power doesn't come with great responsibility, they don't send another hero. They send you.
One thing I've been thinking about recently with regards to the pseudo-medieval stasis of most DnD settings is that it actually makes a lot of sense when you consider that it is in the best interest of the Gods and other divine beings to have large scale mortal societies, but it's not in their interest to let those societies get too advanced.
Think about it. Gods are fueled in part by mortal belief and prayer so Gods need to cultivate widespread mortal civilizations to maximize their following and thus their power. But the longer a mortal civilization goes on and the more advanced it gets the greater the possibility that one or more mortals will catch a case of the Old Hubris Shudders and take a swing at usurping the Gods, dethroning the Gods, banishing the Gods and cutting off their access to the Prime Material, or otherwise table flipping the divine balance of power.
If you're a divine being that's bad, so what do you do? You employ the good old Tower of Babble strat. Frequently.
Mortal societies getting the magic-tech version industrialized and starting to question the infallibility of their agricultural pastroalist deities? Wide spread famine will fix that right up. Elves building a continent spanning empire and the Emperor starting to crave immortality and worship like a god? Smiting the Emperor is a Standard Action and toppling his Empire with a rain of jaguars is a Bonus Action. A particularly rowdy group of wizards start planning to raise their city into the heavens where they might potentially be a threat? Turning all the wizards into undead and punting the tower into the Underdark for good measure nips that problem right in the bud AND creates a fun dungeon location for some mid level adventurers in a few centuries.
The way most DnD settings structure their cosmology the Gods are incentivized to wreck civilization on the regular for their own safety, but too always make sure it comes back. The layers upon layers of lost ancient civilizations are just what piles up as a side effect of that process, as is the fact that DnD constantly seems to peak out around roughly the medieval era in terms of tech and society. From a divine perspective medieval realms are probably nice and manageable to keep track of, but anything past that gets unwieldy and dangerous. It's like tending an ant farm that you don't want to become to big both because it gets harder to take care of, and because there is a small but never zero chance one of the ants might find a magic sword that will let them murder you.
