#blight magic

[secret-bug-pain-blog]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Hey, remember when we said we'd post Chapter 2 of this "soon"? Yeah, us neither. We cannot possibly stress to you how important it is to read the tags we're not joking around with the murder & gore & graphic descriptions of decomposition. We will hopefully be less dead in future. Go enjoy normal bug fic.

[blight-illusions]

What’s the Goo {Amity & Edric}

Phin was out of the dorms, which was perfect considering Amity was coming over. Ed would have walked himself over to the Ambrosia’s but he didn’t really wanna play nice, or even ask permission to be around.

So he invited his sister over.

And Ed was determined to keep it sort of light hearted which included a couple bowls of chips on his desk and one on his floor as he lay across his bed half off of it. Within reach as he grabbed some more.

“So are we thinking it has to be someone or something in town? How else would they have gotten here in the first place?”

@blight-magic

[hurl-a-can]

5 OC facts

Tagged by @sunshinemage​!  Thank you! <3 <3 <3

So here’s 5 tidbits about Das’s “blight magic” - one of the benefits of being Avernus’s guinea pig...

1. Before all this, he was never the stealthy type. He was a rogue, yes - but he relied on precision, speed and strength rather than stealth. But the taint changes that. He fights as he always has, but he just...merges with shadows so much more easily. He doesn’t even know he does it until it’s pointed out to him. And he’s faster, too, while moving about more quietly. He’s still very much himself, a Tempest through and through - so once he’s in the middle of the fray you damn well know he’s there, because he’s a total twirling mayhem - but he now has a way of getting there unobserved and popping up out of nowhere and he can slip back into shadows once he strikes and leave enemies none the wiser if he wants to (something he learns to make conscious use of as he grows accustomed to his new skills).

2. Coating his weapons in tainted blood. First time this happened it totally freaked him out: Blood rushed forth into his right hand and the stump of his left forearm, then there was a pang of pain, as if he’d been burnt and blood seeped out of his hand and stump through pores and hundreds of micro-cracks in his skin, forming two clouds of crimson mist around his right hand and his left forearm. He got so startled he dropped his weapon. (Luckily, the other blade was fastened to the wrist of his prosthetic hand, so he was not left completely defenseless.) It’s awkward with the prosthetic and it tends to trigger his phantom pains, so as soon as Das learns how to control it, he usually just directs the blood into his right hand. Taint coated weapons do more damage and leave ugly wounds that turn necrotic in vast majority of cases. Makes enemies vulnerable to Harmony/Discord.

3. Spitting/spraying the tainted blood. Gross but effective. Knocks enemies back like a punch, especially if one hits their eyes and/or the mouth. Makes one feel sick, dizzy and pretty weak in the knees once the fighting is done but it usually pays off. Apart from the direct damage it causes, it also weakens the target and causes an almost immediate onset of nausea. Also makes enemies vulnerable to Harmony and Discord.

4. Now comes the really scary bit. The Harmony abilities. If the Warden’s mental faculties allow for it (i.e. - if they are cunning, smart, determined and/or persuasive enough and if they’ve got at least a trace of magic in them - as I headcanon most non-dwarves in Thedas do, elves in particular), he can tap the powers of the Song itself. a) He can temporarily control the dumber darkspawn. Weave his own strands into the Song and override the Old Gods’ call for a short period of time. b) Same goes for the enemies tainted by his blood. The stronger the taint, the better the chance of success. They’ll be either rendered passive and defenseless - or they may even fight on his side for a while. (The creepy detail? The affected enemies *hum* the Song. And each of them picks a different strand of it. Imagine a battle with dark ambient soundtrack.) The first time Dorian witnesses it, he’s horrified. He’s like... ‘Amatus, you’ve taken blood magic of all things and made it worse.’ 5. And the Discord abilities. Like... Throwing all the nearby darkspawn out of sync by sending a few strong, discordant notes down the songstream... Especially useful where emissaries and other smarter darkspawn are involved. They don’t succumb to control quite so easily, but this trick does mess with their spellcasting. If Das can’t control the enemies tainted by his blood, he can frighten or stun them by picking the worst things he’s seen in his nightmares and punching their brains with it. It’s easier and sometimes just as effective. The skills and abilities related to the Call keep evolving - and Das discovers new potential uses or manages to make them more powerful each time he uses them. But the more he uses them, the more the Song messes with him. In fact, the more he uses any of these skills, the more blighted he looks. It seems reversible, though. If he abstains from using “blight magic”, both his mental and physical state start returning back to some approximation of normal. It does take longer each time, though, and Avernus as well as his apprentices do warn him repeatedly that there *might* be a point of no return for him.

Tagging: @hoehoehoelt, @ocean-in-my-rebel-soul​, @dovahkiinrobert​, @seboostianillustrations​, @raymurata​, @troubleshooting-space-diva​, @lindsmorr​, @how-many-dragons, @madame-skellington, @dragon-age-elf-trash (I imagine most of you have been tagged a dozen times already, but there’s never enough of these - so, no pressure and no obligation of course, especially if you’ve written a lot of these recently - but if you feel so inclined, feel free to post more and tag me back...!)

[secret-bug-pain-blog]

@febuwhump Day 29 - Not Allowed To Die

And now, this finishes. Fun fact, this was finished... second out of all of these prompts. Behold, the return of our Cool Fic That We Need To Actually Write On Its Main Front. It's been a lovely Febuwhump! Just... don't worry about what we're doing over here.

It knows that it's probably waited too long already.

The flattened shapes in its claws waver under the force of its magic, the charmcraft weave tangled above them warping and weaving apart. They can sense the torn edges even without the clarity of touch in their claws, Blight magic highlighting the gaping wounds as they decay at the enchantment. It can still sense the mind trapped within them, dulled as it is.

It has been so long since it has lost a member of its colony. It will not allow its record to be broken now.

Snap.

The weave around one of her parts breaks, Kjdrira's rot finally overcoming any strength it might have bad. It traps the fresh-bleeding segment of limb beneath its claws as it begins to work on the next one. Were it any other curse, it knows, the death of its sufferer would have disrupted the spell-weave, but even the damage to her charm-ridden body is not enough to undo it on its own, what should be mortal injury simply shrugged off.

The code they wrote to track her body's disparate parts comes to good use, at least, even if the tiny pieces are awkward to wrangle into place beneath its claws. It takes more effort than it cares to admit to fish the bits of her out of the sack without damaging them further, its claws made for gripping stone and roach-shell rather than handling fragile paper.

She was an eroding disk from the moment that it made contact with her. It should not feel so broken-up that its efforts were made to one likely to die. Perhaps it has been too long since it's had to deal with a Sibling it knew would fail. It should know better than to get so torn up over bugs who never would have survived.

There is so very little holding her mind together, compared to its own programs. It is all that it can do to keep her partially conscious as it works.

The pain-fuzzed thoughts float around the edges of its mind are subtly different to those of the Siblings it is familiar with. Not designed to operate with the same network, even if they are compatible - ZB-162's frustration at their null-target conversations seems to make just a sliver more sense, now that the bug is close enough to register the differences between its own driver and the spell that governs the eroding drive.

Snap.

The programming around connections aids it far more than anything else might. It cannot read the inscriptions on the tiny pieces of sealing-paper, but it can feel out the unshielded thoughts in the disk's mind just enough to orient itself, its claws echoing sensations into the matrix that is its new colonymate's mind. It isn't quite sure if she can sense it anymore - she would have hated feeling them poke about her thoughts, were she more lucid - but it tries not to dwell on it.

There is only so much time for it to work before the body will grow cold, and it is a mage, not a charmsmith. It knows enough by now to be well aware of how unprocessed dead flesh impacts the living.

Snap. Snap. Snap.

Fingers connect to hand connect to arm connect to shoulder. It's hasty work, but it doesn't matter how obvious the join is as long as it works. Guts shiver back into place, joined in ropes of tangled scar tissue, parts of abdomen partially fused together as it forgoes mobility for speed. It can fix it later, it knows, but the base work must be in place first.

Kjdrira rebuilds as it goes, preventing its magic from killing the bug outright. It must destroy to rebuild, rot away the frayed edges before it can merge them back together, and it is well aware of just how much harm it can do undirected. Its magic is caustic, and it eats away at all the organic matter it encounters, breaking it down to biomass and magic fuel. It takes careful work to avoid making things unusable.

Snap.

The heart, set back in place, threatens to stop for a few heart-wrenching minutes. Kjdrira forces itself into the cracks, twisting as much of a claw around it as it can. Manual stimulation forces the heart to beat, even in absence of the ganglia that might have carried the command.

The damage to her body is obvious, great weeping rents torn in fragile shell. The wounds attempt to proliferate every time that it undoes the enchantment on a damaged segment, only force of will and its own experience with repairing its colonymates holding it through.

With the most damaged, it is forced to begin stitching pieces back together before the enchantment even finishes releasing. The modularity of it makes it feel strange against their claws when they put her back together. One segment of her abdomen, overtaken with rending claws, connects to two segments nearly undamaged. The twisting in her flesh where it sewed her back together meets with unmarked flesh, an abrupt line between scar tissue and healthy flesh. It can only hope that it doesn't have too bad of an impact later.

There are still pieces missing. It tries not to dwell on them. A stinger isn't vital, even if the lack of indication to its location chafes at it. The lack of eyes is something that it did on her request, anyways. It is survivable. It is something that it can help.

The final torn card awaits.

Her body still lays empty. This card is marked as something vital, same as her heart was, same as most of her inner organs were. It's something that, from what little it can glean from her programming, is related to her central nervous system, a piece that would have catastrophic consequences on her thought capacity if left out.

It lays a claw on her empty body's forehead.

it takes less than a second for its magic to map out her vacant body. Even without its occupant, it seems, it still lives. A host without anything to drive it, a beating heart with no intelligence behind it.

The half-conscious tatters of an eroding disk tangle around its mind.

It proceeds.

The strands of the enchantment begin to snap, one by one.

This repair will have to be quick. Their fast work is bulky and clunky, they know, more scar tissue than anything usable, but they can improve on them afterwards. As much as they know now, they cannot fix death - cannot call the soul back to a vacent body, cannot call back data lost to the beyond.

It has one chance, and nothing more. The sequence that holds its colonymate's eroding mind is not physical, not like it once suspected - there are no crystals to back her mind up on, no hardware to catch her when she falls. If it fails here, she will die, thought-matrix sputtering into irretrievable nothing.

It won't let that happen.

Her body's head pops open, needing greater effort than expected, veins quickly sealed shut before they can bleed on the floor. The torn card in its claw is dripping hemolymph and brain-fluid, the enchantment unweaving in knots and binds. It keeps a firm claw on what it can retain of its sibling's mind, holding the knot of her thoughts closed even as the rest of the enchantment disintegrates.

Nerves knit into ganglia. Flesh joins with flesh. It can feel the ungraceful knots of scar tissue form, as quickly as it can make them, and it only barely manages to shift things around enough to avoid putting too much pressure on the brain. It only has minutes before the cut-off blood flow has major consequence, less time before the ambient cold threatens to damage its new sibling's body - flesh is so much more delicate than crystal, living bodies so much more fragile, and it can feel her heart threatening to give out even as it works.

It does not stop.

It will proceed. It will fix this. There is no possible other option. It is Kjdrira, it is the protector of its Siblings, it is the defender of this lab. It will succeed, because there is no other choice but to succeed.

It holds the tatters together with bare claws. It keeps the surgery going with little more than raw will.

It is loyal to its siblings. It is strong, it is capable, it knows what it is doing now far more than when it was a newly-sprouted experiment grasping at straws to save its siblings.

It is better than it was then.

Again, the shreds of consciousness try to flicker out. Again, it draws them back.

The procedure will be risky. But the eroded disk will not die.

It will not allow it.

[blight-illusions]

Simon Says {Amity & Edric}

Swynlake was boring, Edric was bored. This wasn’t anything like the boiling isles where every turn had something to focus on and look to learn. Not that Ed wanted to learn a lot of things but at least it was more fun than a roommate that couldn’t handle a joke, his sister being too far away and some boys on twitter who thought they were so cool.

Ed needed something more or he was going to combust.

Queue, Amity.

His little sister wasn’t exactly discreet an now that Em and him were here you would think that she might want to do that. Armed with a large black coffee Edric jogged over to the entrance Amity walked in.

“Mittenssssss.“ Ed called out not caring if she ignored him, he’d just repeat until he got a reaction.

@blight-magic​

[blight-illusions]

Can A Blight Be Happy? {Blights}

Edric decides due to the Belos Decree he needs to go home, now to break the news to Amity:

When: Mid/Late December

@blight-magic

Read Here

[ashlee-bonfamille-lyons]

Best Sellers {Amity & Ashlee}

Ashlee didn’t hate work as much as she thought she would. She always thought she would hate customer’s and their stupidity. But if anything it made her realize all the more people were at least a little smarter than she gave them credit for.

So she didn’t hate it. The simple tasks, the time to read when it was slower, or to look up more music when she couldn’t get a dance out of her head.

Some new books had come in when Amity came in for her shift.

“Have you ever heard of Azura? I swear I keep hearing it more recently but it wasn’t on my radar before working here.”

Be friendly and maybe you would make some friends. Just be open and try again. It didn’t all have to turn out horribly.

@blight-magic

[crypterion-moon]

Thoughts on the Blight, the taint and blight magic

According to the chantry, the first blight and darkspawn came when the magisters Sidereal forced their way into the Golden City, turning it black.

According to Corypheus, the city was already black.

The lore states that it exist in the fade, and that spirits, even demons avoid the place. 

Incidentally blight magic is unlike any type of magic usually seen in Thedas, it can be used by non-mages which applies to all grey wardens and is truly destructive.

Blight magic is surprisingly effective against demons according to Avernus

The taint can be controlled, as well as passed, and those who have the taint can be in danger of being dominated by the will of a more powerful darkspawn.

Based on what little knowledge gathered, the blight is something created from the city itself or something that passed into the city. Whether or not Corypheus’ comment on it is true we can be sure that it’s an anomaly even to residents of the fade and the taint was not born from the fade or demons unlike blood magic. Hence why spirits and demons stay away from the city and why blight magic can hurt them. To them it’s unnatural. Blight magic consumes and destroys, though it’s argued on which is worse, Solas considers blood magic to be just another form of magic much like elemental, fade, it’s inherently looked down upon by the chantry because the history of slaughter that surrounds it and the madness it causes when abused. But Solas confirms that no one should ever try to use blight magic, because of it’s nature. But I haven’t found many accounts of those using it apart from Avernus and for good reason. I think even most Wardens aren’t aware of the possibility but those who do stay away from it.

I’ve heard theories of it, that the taint was caused with the fall of Arathan and the black city created when the ancient elven city was pulled into the fade and abandoned. I partially believe that may be true, it could explain the structure and the empty thrones, but also that maybe the taint was already there when the elven ‘gods’ were already going mad and the story of Andruil going into the Void to hunt creatures there, coming back with increasing periods of insanity. Perhaps that was the taint or a form of it before the darkspawn. Hence, it could be theorized that the taint originated from the Void and possibly the Forgotten ones. That could explain why Solas sees it as nothing but a corrupting influence.

But consider how the taint works, sometimes it kills other times it turns a person insane and into a ghoul. But there have been undocumented cases of the taint being slowed or even manipulated just so that the subject can live an unnaturally long life and not submit to the darkspawn, yes, Avernus may be the only known case, I can’t find information from anywhere else. However, one could say that the taint could be mastered and used to augment one’s abilities maybe at the cost of their health or loss of healthy appearance (I’m only assuming because it seems all sufferers of the taint eventually look like walking zombies), mages can be terrifyingly powerful, rogues faster and deadlier, warriors become rampaging killing machines and so on. They might even have the ability to command darkspawn. The warden can get a taste of these abilities if he/she accepts Avernus’ offer. Corypheus and the Architect and command legions of Darkspawn without being manipulated by the Old Gods.

The biggest fear is how the blight corrupts and kills, it’s seen as a mindless evil but could it be possible to somehow gain control of the taint, keep one’s conscience and sanity by cutting off the Old God’s and have the darkspawn and blight magic at his/her disposal?

Probably a bad idea, but people have been wrong before, it’s always people who can take a concept and turn it into something evil and destructive.