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Long Roots

"By the time Kasmeer Meade lifted the veil enshrouding Viathan Lake, The Tower of Nightmares already stretched out far into the horizon, further below the soil than any eye could see. It was here, among the haze of delirium, that the Pact Commander was confronted with a long-buried terror that challenged his very self, clawing to uncover a terrible truth: once a nightmare spreads its roots beneath one's skin, it becomes impossible to excise. And forever is far too long a time for a mortal."

[Tower of Nightmares episode additional content set during the meta event as applicable to my personal canon and Commander Maelmordha's story. 9k words. Trigger warnings for basic fantasy violence, unreality, swearing.]

#gw2 #guild wars 2 #gw2 fanfiction #gw2 fanfic #gw2 oc #gw2 commander #kasmeer meade #marjory delaqua #about the commander #quen's ocs #Maelmordha #no beta we die like Riannoc #Long Roots #gw2 fic

Do you like LWS4? Do you like Asura? Do you like sickfics? Do you like What If's that expand on the canon? Do you like trauma exploration of survivor guilt and imposter syndrome? Do you like putting the characters through it?

Well here I have a fic for you asking "What if Blish's illness was genetic and Gorrik started showing first signs of it too"

How do his close friends and the Commander deal with that? (Commander is written in second person with the personality the game attests, so you can project your favorite toon in <3)

"In the Family" on ao3

#gw2 #gw2 fanfic #gw2 fic #throwing this back into the tags #Gorrik #Taimi #Blish haunts the narrative #post Soto #During and Post Janthir Wilds #Commander PoV #sickfic #angst #hurt/comfort #found family

The Earth He Lands On - 608 Words

As he watches the Commander fly his griffon, Canach finds himself deeply musing over him.

Standing just outside Amnoon, Canach found himself captivated by the Commander flying his griffon overhead with such grace and masterful speed. Not even a week went by when he became fast pals with the corvid creature and was an excellent flyer besides. Canach had to admit that the Commander was full of surprises and kept on being so. Quite frankly, he thought he had another death wish at first, with how he continued flinging himself into danger. However, for being so reckless, it had paid off. Canach realized his recklessness wasn't out of arrogance. No, it was something else entirely. Taming his newfound animal companions was a test. A test to see if he would die again. The Commander was having a difficult time accepting it.

>> Read More at AO3 <<

#gw2 #guild wars 2 #gw2 oc #path of fire #sylvari #gw2 writing #gw2 fic #canach #oc: eorlos

Some Keres writings (NOT the smut fic because i'm a huge chicken):

The medics hadn't been happy with her.

She'd let them bandage her in silence, which they took as obedience or compliance or any one of the other words that meant sit and stay.

It wasn't that. Arguing just took effort she didn't have to give. She'd already made her choice before they'd started wrapping—had made it sometime in the grey early hours lying in the dark cataloguing what her body could and couldn't do. There was a lot it couldn't do.

None of that mattered.

She'd come back from the dead. She'd made a promise. The bandages were a concession—something to keep all of her insides where they belonged.

She waited until the last of them had gone before she got up.

The getting up part was bad. Everything from her collarbone to her toes was one continuous string of wrong, the sword wound pulling hot and insistent across her middle, down her back, the burns tight and raw where they'd been cleaned and dressed.

She moved anyway—slowly, one thing at a time. Even her tail hurt.

But she sat on the edge of the cot and didn't bother dressing. The bandages covered most of her, anyway. She sat there and breathed and thought about Aurene, alone with Balthazar.

She got up.

The world tilted and she bared her teeth and growled and kept her feet.

Caladbolg was leaning against the tent post.

She stopped in front of it. Looked at it.

Forgal had taught her how to wield the greatsword. That was not a small thing—she'd been sixteen and built like a cub still mostly made of angles, and he'd looked at her scrawny frame and said: I'll teach you.

Two years of it. Two years of him yelling at her stance and her grip and her footwork, two years of building her body into something capable of bearing the weight of the blade, of him refusing to let her give up on a kata until her arms shook and then making her do it again. She had hated him for it sometimes, in the way you hated people who were making you better. She had loved him for it always.

Caladbolg had come to her in the Domain of the Lost with Forgal's hands around it.

She reached out and picked it up.

The vines curled over her wrist immediately, patient and warm, and she felt the green quiet of the sword settle through her—old and rooted and present in the way Caladbolg was always present.

Allow it to be your strength when you need, Trahearne had said, in the vision. As if I am fighting at your side.

She had been less certain it was real before the Domain of the Lost. She was certain now. She had spoken to Forgal in that grey place. She had always known what the dead were capable of.

I know, she told the sword, or told both of them, the two of them layered in the hilt and the vines and the warm weight of it in her hands. I know. Let's go.

She found a clear space away from camp and stood in it breathing through her nose.

The basic forms first. The most fundamental katas—mostly stance and footing, bearing the weight before asking anything more.

Forgal's drills.

The ones she'd done so many thousands of times they lived in her hands without requiring her brain. That was good. Her brain was otherwise occupied.

She braced her core and pulled the greatsword up into the ready position.

The pain ripped through the sword wound in her middle like something tearing fresh and the world went white.

She didn't go down.

She stood and breathed, short and vicious, and waited for it to resolve back into something she could see through. It took longer than she would have liked. Her arms were shaking before she'd done anything at all, the greatsword's weight—which she knew, which her body had been built to carry—feeling enormous in a way it hadn't since she was sixteen and Forgal was standing behind her telling her to hold it until she couldn't and then hold it more.

The white resolved. She was still standing.

"I will not let you take this from me," she snarled, to the cold grey morning, to the god who wasn't there. She slid one foot back. Her arms shook and she pinned her ears flat and held the position and breathed. "Not this."

One more breath.

She brought the greatsword down.

The cry tore out of her, ugly and raw, and her knees buckled—she caught herself, barely, one leg dropping and then driving back up before she could hit the ground, her vision going dark with the effort of it. The vines tightened around her wrist. She clutched the hilt and panted, hunched over the blade, waiting for the wave to crest and break.

It crested. She straightened. Reset her feet.

"Again," she ordered herself.

She brought it down again.

This time she stayed upright, barely, and the sound was quieter but no less involuntary—more breath than voice, torn out of her on the exhale. Her hands were shaking badly enough that the blade shivered on the follow-through. She could feel the wound seeping through the bandages, the familiar warmth of it, and chose not to acknowledge it.

She reset her feet. She breathed.

Again.

The forms were the simplest she knew and they were destroying her. That was the honest truth of it—each repetition cost more than the last, her body paying in a currency that was running low, the shaking spreading from her hands up through her arms and into her shoulders. Sweat soaked her fur.

She kept going.

It was not elegance. It was not even competence, not really—the forms were broken, slower than they should have been, her footwork deteriorating as her body redirected everything it had to the task of keeping the sword moving. She had drilled these katas until they were unconscious. Now they were conscious again, dragged out one repetition at a time by the same stubborn thing that had gotten her out of the cot, that had gotten her back from the Domain of the Lost, that had refused and refused and refused every time something tried to make her stop.

You gotta know when to rest, Forgal had told her, once, during those years of being made into something capable. Pushing through is a skill. So is knowing the difference between pushing through and breaking yourself.

She was probably breaking herself a little. She kept moving.

Her vision went grey on a downswing and she staggered, caught herself on the blade, stood there with her whole weight on the sword and her head down and her chest heaving. The wound was a bright constant scream. She could feel her heartbeat in it. Her arms would not stop shaking. She looked at the ground beneath her and thought about Aurene's face the last time she'd seen her, thought about Balthazar's hands on her horns, thought about dying in the desert and deciding she wasn't finished.

She thought about Forgal saying: again.

She lifted the greatsword.

She was on the downswing—slower now, ugly, barely controlled—when a paw stopped the blade.

"Enough," Rytlock said.

His voice was soft. That was the thing about Rytlock that people who hadn't known him long enough always got wrong—they expected hard edges all the way through, and he did have those, but she had known him so long now, and she knew the particular quiet of his voice when he was being careful with her. It was the voice he used when things were serious. When he was worried.

She looked at him over the blade. She was breathing very hard.

"You'll only damage yourself further," he said.

"I have to be able to—"

"And you will," he said, and gently tugged the sword free of her grip.

The vines released her for him, unwinding without hesitation, and she turned her head and bared her teeth at them for the betrayal before turning the expression on Rytlock instead, who ignored this with the ease of long practice and looked at her bandages and looked at her face and said nothing.

Her legs abruptly decided they were finished.

She locked her knees and swayed and Rytlock stepped in close and caught her gently. She let her head drop forward onto his shoulder because there was nothing left to hold it up with.

His fur was soft. She had forgotten that. She had forgotten a lot of things about being alive.

"There's no time," she said, into his shoulder. "Aurene—"

"Doesn't need you dying again, does she?" His paw settled on the back of her neck, careful, well away from the burns. The weight of it was steadying. "We'll get you back to fighting shape. But you gotta pace yourself. You know that."

She groaned. "I hate this."

"I know." He didn't move. Just held steady the way he always had. "You came back from the dead in three days and immediately argued with a medic. Give yourself one morning."

"That's not—"

"One morning," he said. "Then we figure out what you can do. Together. You're not doing this alone anymore. That's done."

She was quiet for a moment, her face in his fur, her body failing. The pain in her middle had subsided to a deep insistent throb. Her bandages needed changing. She had, by any measure, done too much.

She didn't regret it.

She lifted her head and looked at Caladbolg in his hands—the vines still, the glow of it low and warm in the grey morning. She thought of Forgal's hands around it in the Domain of the Lost. She thought of Trahearne's voice. As if I am fighting at your side.

Both of them, she thought. She had both of them, in the hilt and the vines and the weight of it.

She was not as alone as she felt.

"Alright," she said. "One morning."

Rytlock handed the sword back. The vines found her wrist again immediately and she looked down at them and thought: I know. We'll get there.

"Come on," Rytlock said, his hand between her shoulder blades, careful of the burns, of top of the sword's exit wound, steering her back toward camp. "I'll tell the medics you slipped."

"You will not."

"I absolutely will. They're going to lose their minds when they see those bandages."

Despite everything, she almost smiled. "Tell them the vines did it."

"Blame the magic sword. Sure, why not." He sounded almost cheerful about it. She had missed him, she realized. In the endless grey of death, she had missed Rytlock's particular brand of steady irreverence more than she'd known.

For now she let him steer her back to the tent, Caladbolg warm in her grip, and thought: I'm still here. I'm still standing.

One morning.

Then she would figure out what she could do.

-------------------------------------------------------------

And this one, which I liked:

She had been careful, was the thing.

The burns she couldn't hide—they were on her head, her neck, the backs of her hands—but she'd let people assume what they wanted, which was usually that she'd gotten too close to Balthazar during the final battle.

That was even true, technically. It just wasn't the whole truth, but the whole truth was something she hadn't quite figured out how to say yet. Rytlock and Kas and Canach knew because they'd been there. They'd seen the aftermath of the burning and the dying and the coming back. But Braham had been in the Shiverpeaks, and things had been bad between them for so long, and then they'd repaired them, and somehow in all of that there had just never been a good time to say actually, about that time I died in the desert.

So she'd kept her hood on.

The camp had gone quiet an hour ago, and she was in her tent, too tired to sleep, working on the buckles of her boots because her left side still wasn't cooperating the way she needed it to and the buckles required two functioning hands. She almost had it when the tent flap opened and Braham ducked inside with all the assumed permission of someone who knew he was welcome.

"You disappeared," he said, by way of explanation.

"I was tired."

"Mm." He settled cross-legged on the ground near her bedroll. He watched her wrestle with the buckles for a moment. "You want help?"

She did, but she said, "I've got it."

He waited exactly long enough for her to sigh through her nose, then shuffled forward on his knees, carefully pulling her foot close, batting her hands aside. She let him. His hands were steady and sure, undoing in seconds what she'd been fighting for minutes.

She watched his face while he worked—that particular furrowed look he got when he was turning something over, fitting pieces together. Her right top ear flicked back and she narrowed her eyes. She knew that expression—it was a warning sign.

He tugged the first boot off gently and set it aside, reaching for the second. "You're still favoring your left."

"It's healing."

"From the battle?"

A half-second pause she shouldn't have allowed. "Yes."

He undid the buckles of the second boot and set it down. His eyes moved up to her face, and she watched them catch on the burns at her jaw, her neck, and then track upward. She still had the hood on. His brow creased.

She didn't stop him when he reached for it. She could have—he telegraphed the movement, gave her time to catch his wrist, redirect him, but her hands stayed in her lap and she let him pull the hood gently from her head.

The silence afterward was incredibly loud.

She watched him look at the burned stumps. Watched him take in the scarring at their base, the burned, patchy hair, the way the damage spread into the fur around her ears and told a clear, legible story to anyone who knew what they were reading. It was clear on his face, that he understood what it meant, what kind of force it took. That it hadn't happened in the final battle at all.

"Keres." His voice was very quiet.

She breathed out. It shook, but her voice was level. "Balthazar pulled them off. In the desert. Before." She paused. "The damage is permanent."

She'd said those words before, to Kas, to herself, in the mirror. They had not gotten easier to say.

Braham's face cycled through something she couldn't fully track, and she was grateful, absurdly, for the fact that he was Braham and not someone else because someone else might have offered some kind of useless platitude and she couldn't have taken it.

"Permanent," he repeated.

"Yes."

He was quiet—holding something back. She could see the way his jaw worked, the way he breathed, and she braced herself. She'd been bracing herself for months now, for the looks she was going to get, the way people would clock the stumps and then look at her face to see how she was taking it. The way they judged her or pitied her or didn't understand.

But she should have known. This was Braham. He reached out instead, so carefully she barely felt it, resting his fingers just below where the horns had been. Not on the scars, but just below them. Like he was figuring out how to grieve them with her.

Her throat closed.

"I know they were—" she started. Stopped. Tried again. "I know it looks—"

"Stop," he said. Not unkindly.

"I'm—" She stopped again. Less, she wanted to say, and couldn't, because she didn't want to give the word any more weight than it already had. Less charr. Less me. Less whatever you were looking at before.

"Ker." He waited until she met his eyes. "It's still you."

She swallowed hard and looked away. Outside the tent, the camp breathed. She was not going to cry about her horns in front of Braham.

"I know," she lied.

He let her have it, dropping his hand. He settled on the bedroll beside her, close enough that they were pressed together. She leaned into the warmth of him and said nothing.

They sat like that for a while. It was easier than talking. It had always been easier than talking, which had been half the problem for years—easier to be close than to say what the closeness meant, easier to let things be what they were than to name them and risk the shape changing.

Her attention was still halfway on not crying about her horns and halfway on thoughts of a clean sleep shirt when she yawned and went to pull her undershirt over her head.

Braham went absolutely still.

She followed his gaze and froze. She'd been so careful. She sighed and let her undershirt fall into her lap.

The sword wound ran from her throat to her navel, livid against her darker underfur, still red at the edges despite the months of healing. It was not a subtle scar and never would be. Even now it twinged painfully when she moved wrong.

"That," Braham said, very carefully, "is not from the final battle either."

"No."

"Keres—"

"Braham—"

"Keres." And there it was—the thing he'd been holding back since the hood came down, cracking through. "He killed you. That's—that's a killing blow, I've seen enough of those to know, that's—you were dead."

She grabbed a clean sleeping shirt and pulled it over her head, giving her hands something to do while she figured out what to say. "I came back."

"You were dead," he said again, like she hadn't spoken, like he was still catching up with himself. "While I was—" He stopped. The muscle in his jaw worked. "We were fighting. When you were fighting him, we were—and when we made up, we said—and you were already—you had already died when we—"

"You didn't know," she said, and it was the same argument she'd made to Rytlock and Kas and Taimi when they'd tried to tell her to call Braham in those hardest weeks after she'd come back and her body had been so broken she could barely lift her sword. "You couldn't have known. I didn't—I wasn't going to tell you over a letter."

"You weren't going to tell me at all."

She didn't answer, which was answer enough.

"Keres."

"What would you have done?" she asked. Not unkindly. "If you'd known? You were in the Shiverpeaks. Things were still—we were still figuring things out. What would you have done with knowing?"

He opened his mouth. Closed it. "I don't know," he admitted finally. "But I would have wanted to know."

"I know," she said. "I'm sorry."

He exhaled long and slow. Then he reached over and found her hand in the dark between them and held on, and she felt him shake. She turned her hand over and held him back.

"We're family," he said, low. "Pack. Warband. The person I'd want to be with at the end of the world."

"I know."

"Then you don't get to die and not tell me about it. That's—" His voice frayed at the edge. "That's a family rule. Effective immediately."

Despite everything, something loosened in her chest. "Noted."

"I'm serious."

"I know you are."

He put his head down against her shoulder and she let herself lean into him, let herself take up the space he was offering.

"For what it's worth," he said, after a long while, "you're still—" He paused. She felt him searching for the word. "You. You're still you. The horns or no horns or—any of it. You're still the most—" He stopped again, laughed slightly, rueful. "I'm bad at this."

"You're not," she said, which was true.

"You know what I mean."

"I do," she said quietly.

Outside, something in the camp shifted and settled. Her left side ached. She was tired in a way that went all the way down. But Braham was warm against her and his hand was solid around hers and she thought, not for the first time, that there were worse things to be than still standing.

"Braham," she said.

"Mm."

"I'm glad I came back too."

His grip tightened slightly on her hand.

"Good," he said. "Don't do it again."

#gw2 #gw2 fic #keres mistcleaver #braham eirsson #i just love them okay

"I brought some friends!"

Logan and Aurene had finally returned, and with them came the hope that they might actually pull off this impossible quest. And was that...? The commander decided to ignore what looked like the infinarium floating in the sky, and refocused on the fight at the Harvest Temple.

#gw2 #gw2 fic #gw2 wintersday

Fic: A Childish Whim

The Wayfinder wants just one proper dance with Isgarren.

Isgarren/Female Sylvari Commander, 2,065 words, G rating

Allusions to the new update so possibly spoilerish for those postponing waiting on femsylvari VO lines.

Ao3!

#gw2 #guild wars 2 #gw2 fic #commgarren #isgarren #HERE I AM MAKING COMMGARREN FIC AT LAST 'YALL #i got possessed into making this suddenly it wouldnt leavem y brain ALONE

A little Fic Writing

I'm sure I posted it before, but I'll post it again.

This is a snippet of my unfinished work for Welcome to Tyria, which I've been working on for ages. Please be nice to me, I'm a baby writer ;_;

The snippet is from the beginning of the story. Ladrenae is my Soundless Firstborn, Sylvari Mesmer.

#text #mypost #gw2 #guild wars 2 #sylvari #gw2 fic #lk fics #welcome to tyria

Ficlet idea

She felt like a creep for what she was about to do. Admittedly it wasn't the worst thing in the world: it wasn't a crime to look at someone. Sneaking around about it like she was back in her foster home and trying to avoid being caught out after bedtime, though, that was something different. Odetta shook her head a little, mentally pushing the thought of that house in Divinity's Reach away as she did, before gently combing her fingers through her fine blond hair. She was going to talk to that handsome young man, Zio, today even if it killed her from embarrassment.

#fic snippet #gw2 fic #odetta swanheart #other people's characters #nunzio fortino