#raptortier

[saessenach]

hello! for thedasweekend, "a kiss that leaves lipstick stains" for neve/lucanis? 👀

Hiiii

Here they are! Neve and Lucanis for @thedasweekend - from this lovely list!

Thank you for the prompt 🫶

[lelianazine]

☀️ Preview

Surprise! We ordered early samples of some our merchandise and we wanted to share with you all! We'll be using sample previews as a countdown to a giveaway for free full bundle so be sure to follow! 👀 First up is our four sticker set with art by @chocomar-art (raven), @raptortier (nug), @jjlabelle (Andraste's Grace), and @sunnysidemage (heart).

SHOP

[griffongrey]

hihi, happy thedasweekend! maybe something wtih mahalla and cillian becoming friends again?

(A short little @thedasweekend thing to hopefully get back in the swing of things.) Sooooo... this isn't really what the prompt asked for, but it's the first time they see each other again after they have sex; I'm picturing it's about a year later. Featuring another foray into abstract softcore not-quite-smut, because apparently Mahalla's spirit-like way of thinking lends itself to that.

Now, there’s Cillian by the eluvian with Neria. Mahalla hasn’t spoken to Neria since they were still their clans’ Firsts. She hasn’t spoken to Cillian since…

(A fullness she’s never felt before or since, a surge within her like mana cresting before the release of a spell, a scrape of soft moss on her back and blunt nails on her hips as the spell breaks free…)

Since after the Arlathvhen.

Her toes curl against the crumbling stone floor at the memory. When he looks up across the ruins at her, her mouth runs dry. She doesn’t know how to speak to him now that she knows what his name sounds like on her breath. (Trembling, reverential, emotion laid as bare as her skin.)

He gives her a nod of acknowledgement, as quiet and inscrutable as ever. It’s always been a challenge to read him, like Solas, but it’s a challenge Mahalla welcomed before…

(Crying like a newborn babe, “Ir abelas, ir abelas, I can’t…”)

Before they went to bed together.

Now, she isn’t sure if she’s welcome, to him.

[lottiesnotebook]

hello there! for thedasweekend, "Notch, Bird, Cracking" from the three word prompts list for Luna/Morrigan?

Happy first Thedas Weekend! This is such a good prompt for these two, and i love every time I get to write these two, so... Behold! Another fairytale(ish) AU for these two!

Morrigan/Luna Tabris, first meeting, animal injury, Swan Lake AU

@thedasweekend | @raptortier

bird on a briar

The worn wood of her mother's bow fits perfectly in Luna's hand now she's almost a woman - her fingers slip easily into the notches where Adaia's once sat. She wonders if that's a blessing, or an omen - she's shot it before, under her mother's wary gaze, but never at a moving target. Never at anything living.

The great black bird in the branches above her looks very much alive, glossy feathers and piercing golden eyes, but unlike the other birds she's sighted, it is not quite quick enough - even as it beats its wings to take the air, her arrow is in flight. It tumbles gracelessly from sky to earth, its strength and beauty reduced in a moment to a clump of falling feathers. I'm sorry, she thinks, as she picks her way through the bracken to find it, my family need to eat.

A bramble-bush lies at the foot of the tree, and she can hear the sound of branches cracking, and shudders. Not dead, then. It's one thing to loose an arrow from a bow. It's another to take the bird's neck in her hands and snap it, though she knows she must. Her mother would be ashamed of anything less than a clean kill, and even now, she will not shame her.

But the thing scrabbling against the tangle of the branches is not a wounded bird ready for the pot. A shemlen girl of her own age glares up at her with bright golden eyes, and, impossibly, an arrow juts from her shoulder. Luna's arrow, messily fletched with the last goose-feathers she can find.

"You shot me!" she accuses, and Luna can only blink at her, baffled.

"I shot a bird," she replies, because she knows what she aimed for - she saw the bird take the air, and tumble, and-

"Are you stupid?" the girl in the brambles demands, and Luna suspects she might be right - she's either stupid or mad, because she cannot make sense of the events as she recalls them - the bow, the bird, the girl.

"Are you- you're hurt," she says, realising that the question is stupid given the blood she can see seeping from her shoulder, the scratches on her cheeks and bare arms from the briars that surround her. She draws her knife, and the girl flinches back, twisting her wrist in a strange beckoning motion-

"I'm not going to hurt you!" she says, quickly. "I'm going to get you out of the briars, if you let me."

"Oh." The girl wrinkles her nose, considering. It's an oddly human gesture, from a creature so unearthly, and it makes Luna a little less afraid of her. "I suppose you may," she says, grandly, as if she were some great lady permitting Luna to do her a favour.

Luna rolls her eyes, but cuts away at the brambles until they are no longer twining around the strange girl, until there is a space in the heart of the thorns just big enough to shelter the two of them.

"I think," she says, examining the wound, "you'll be alright if I pull the arrow out. Mostly."

"'Tis the least you can do," the girl agrees, crossly, which is in fairness deserved, because Luna shot-

No. Luna shot a bird. She remembers the plaintive, fading caw, the dark feathers fluttering in the breeze.

She wads up her kerchief for the girl to bite down on, and straddles her at the hips.

"The arrow has to come out at the same angle it went in at," she explains, though she can feel the colour creeping into the girl's cheeks reflected in her own. "Lie still. I'll be as gentle as I can."

This is a lie, but it will be less painful if the girl relaxes even a little. She pulls the arrow free with a swift single motion. The girl screams, a loud, pure cry like a foxes' scream, and then her head falls back onto the dirt, and she is still. Luna wonders if she has fainted - it would be no wonder.

"You were a bird," she murmurs, gently brushing her dark hair away from the wound. "What are you? A mage? Some kind of bird-spirit? A girl under some kind of curse?"

The girl's golden eyes bat open to glare up at her, haughty and lovely and fearful.

"I am Morrigan," she says. It's an old name, a goddess or a witch from some story she only half-remembers, "and- I am under a curse, of sorts. Who are you?"

"I'm Luna," she replies, and that is the moment she tumbles from the real world of cities and famines and hungry mouths to feed, and lands in a story that has barely begun.

[lelianazine]

☀️ Merch Preview: Sticker & 5th Blight Tarot

Our fifth merch preview by @raptortier! We have the cutest nug from one of our many stickers and our 5th Blight Tarot: The Page of Cups!

You can preorder this and more when our shop opens September 1st!

[lelianazine]

☀️ Contributor Spotlight: Raptor

Our next spotlight is merch artist @raptortier, who will be creating a sticker and our 5th Blight Era tarot card! Bsky

[griffongrey]

hi there! for thedasweekend, maybe mahalla/solas fo "What will be left after all this is done?" from the "it's a war" dialogue list?

I know I'm posting this way late for @thedasweekend, so uhhhhh woops! In my defense, I was having fun writing it lol

This turned into Mahalla's response to the Solavellan letter in Veilguard.

“I’m not really sure why I'm writing this. I know you’ll never see it, trapped as you are—at least for now, until you chew through your bonds and escape, like in Dalish legend—in your own Fade prison. But Tuelartha gave me the letter you left behind, and honestly, I think I just want to pretend for a little while that I can talk to you again, even if it’s one-sided.

There’s something to be said for a one-sided conversation. At least this way, I know I’ll always have the last word, right?

Hmm. In writing, that sounds less like teasing, and more… sad. Ha! See? I’m laughing.

No, I’m not. Of course I’m not. I’m sitting in center of your old rotunda as I write this, staring at the chipped plaster walls, because they’re all that’s left of your frescoes after a Regret demon made its home here, and I’m wondering if that’s all that will be left of Thedas, too, when we’re through with it? Just the scarred surface of a world consumed by regret.

No one ever comes in here anymore, did you know? There are refugees cramming themselves into every square inch of space, and still, nobody can stand to come near the rotunda. If they need to get to the ramparts or that tower I’ll always think of as Cullen’s, they take the long way ‘round—no more convenient shortcuts through your workspace to distract you—and even directly upstairs and in the rookery, they avoid looking over the railing.

I feel like a ghost here.

At least when I’m out in the world, fighting the blight, it’s easier, in some twisted way. Most of the people I meet out there don’t even realize who I am until I summon my spirit arm to fight, and even then, they don’t always figure it out. There’s none of the pressure to always be the Almighty Inquisitor, beloved of a “god” who would sooner see me shackled and subjugated. Out there, I’m only Mahalla.

But here, every time I have to come back to Skyhold, everyone wants me to save them. They think I can save them, because even without the Anchor, they still see me as the Inquisitor. Only the Inquisitor. It’s all-consuming.

Was it always this hard to bear, or did I just get used to being only myself again?

Is this what it’s like for you?

I’ve been thinking a lot, ever since that night in Crestwood, about how tyrannical despots like the Evanuris could be mythologized as the beneficent Creators of the very people they enslaved. How someone as monstrous as Ghilan’nain could be remembered only as the Mother of Halla. And I think I understand.

It’s funny… I always hated the idea of being remembered as the Inquisitor, because I knew from the very start that the Chantry would twist my image into something I’m not. Even Varric—

I can’t talk about Varric with you. I won’t. Not when all I’d really be doing is screaming at chipped plaster.

My point is, when it was you, telling the story of the Inquisitor through your frescoes? I didn’t mind it, anymore. Maybe because you put so much of yourself in those paintings, too, and that felt more true to myself than anything the Chantry could put in a myth. Or maybe, when you told my story, it felt less like mythologizing and more like… love.

I don’t know what will be left after all this is done. I don’t know if you’ll manage to trick Tuelartha, and the Dread Wolf will prevail once more. I don’t even know if that wouldn't be better, in the long run. Right now, it’s hard to imagine anything worse than watching two simultaneous Blights wipe out every living thing in their path. I wonder what myths they would tell of me, then.

I do know… I want nothing more than to simply stay with you as Mahalla, Solas.

Ara lath ma, bellanaris.”

— an unsigned note, left in the Skyhold rotunda on top of another well-worn letter:

Elven translation: "I will always love you." / "I will love you for eternity."

Fun fact — I was originally planning to bookend the letter with a scene many many years post-Veilguard where their daughter finds both notes in the Lighthouse, using her narration to show how her parents' fears for the future were unfounded, and what's "left after all this is done" is actually something wonderful. But I ran out of time, and I still like the letter as it is!

[theguildawards]

Congratulations @raptortier​​!! Your artwork “January Redraw” has been nominated by one of your fans for The Guild Awards, Second Term of 2022!

The Guild Awards was created by five Fairy Tail enthusiasts who want to spread the love of fandom creators all across the net, and we are very excited to give you this message!

Your work has been nominated into the following category:

Best Redraw

Voting will take place after the nomination period closes, and the link to do so will be found on theguildawards tumblr page.

If you would like to pull your work from consideration for an award, please let us know via tumblr or reach out to one of the moderators.

Once again, congratulations for your beautiful contribution to this wonderful fandom, and thank you for all that you do!

Nominations are open until the end of the day July 4th, PST! Submit your Fanfiction/Artwork nominations through our page!

For more info, see our Fired Up! post