This post has the following content warnings:
Maybe the real unethical experimentation on nonconsenting subjects was the friends we made along the way
« Previous Post
+ Show First Post
Total: 185
Posts Per Page:
Permalink

She has never been so terrified in her entire life, and now that the adrenaline of it has subsided and she's no longer distracted by the conversation it's hitting her that she's a prisoner, she's trapped here for however long, having to please that monster if she is to survive. The fact that she meant every word she said doesn't matter; she hasn't felt so fragile and vulnerable since she was small and living on the streets. Actually not even then, because then she felt like she'd be able to leave, if she tried.

Would adventuring be this bad? Risking life and limb for something seems less scary than this, even though she knew she was risking something like this. Hell, this is better than becoming one of the twisted monstrosities she's seen out there courtesy of Rekenber, unsure if they're even conscious or able to feel pain or notice what's happening around them, but that's a very low bar. The uncertainty makes it worse, the feeling like she's always being tested. She needs to figure out a way to kill herself if that looks to be the best way out for her, something the Necromancer can't stop or bring her back from. She won't wake up in Kafra, but she will at least still be herself to the very end.

Permalink

Thinking of Gonie does help, but not as much as it did the first time. She's not in the lab anymore, she doesn't know if they even know where she'd be, they have no reason to look for her here. She wants to believe in him, wants to believe that he'd succeed at rescuing her, but she's not, she's not sure. And she doesn't know when it would happen, or how, or what to do. She'll try to occupy herself and not think this way, but right now?

Right now she's just afraid.

Permalink

 

 

 

 

But eventually she manages to get herself under control, washes her face, psychs herself up, and floats out of the bathroom once more.

Permalink

Ari appears to have been replaced by his sibling with the wings and the lips! Which flaps up and sits on her shoulders, piggyback style.

Permalink

Oh um okay? She's kind of still a bit emotionally frazzled but it is very cute. 

"...I'm not sure what to do next though."

Permalink

She receives a little kiss on the top of the head.

The manikin then points towards her bedroom and makes a noise like pages turning, then an inquisitive "mm?"

Permalink

"...you can make book noises—right. Yeah, okay?" Bedroomwards?

Permalink

Tinkling glass noise!

The bedroom is as she left it; the breakfast tray is in a keep-fresh circle, in case she wants any more. The books are still where they were.

Permalink

Alright well sure, maybe she should read the well-worn heroic sagas that are probably about the person Thoma Glider dreams about. Or rather her brother, lord of Heorot, wherever that is? Anyway, she's sure it'll be useful.

Permalink

The tale of Beowulf isn't bookmarked, but the spine is slightly cracked; it'll open there if she just sets it down.

Some versions of the story end up bowdlerized to be less horrible and confusing, perhaps even have a moral. This one has not suffered that fate. Beowulf sails to Heorot, seeking the mother who was stolen from his crib-side. He meets instead the lovely but cold Yrsa, whose mother died in birth and whose father has just been slain by the beast Grendel; she promises her hand to the hero if he will take revenge. He goes, and there's the usual welter of heroic slaughter, after which he returns with Grendel's head. The two are wed and ascend the throne, building the feasthall into a grand citadel, producing half a dozen heirs.

Harassed by neighboring kingdoms, they bring them to heel and expand their own turf. When a dragon tries to claim tribute, the pair find its lair and slay it, returning with gold and jewels. But one day a war-party of monsters, none the equal of Grendel but all great and terrible in their own right, pour from the mountains and lay siege to the castle. Beowulf and Yrsa emerge, barely victorious, to seek the source.

They find it. A cave hidden in the Black Mountain, and within, a laughing crone. She has been waiting for them; she introduces herself as the ides aglæcwif, the mother of Grendel; then as Olof, mother of Yrsa; and then as Hygd, mother of Beowulf. She was raped and kidnapped by Beowulf's father, and by Yrsa's in turn, and so she grew to hate mankind. Using a potion she posed as a corpse, then dug out of her grave and ran from all civilization. She lay with the beasts of the forests, creating Grendel. Grendel took his vengeance for her plight, but he was slain for it. And so she fled further, and made a thousand more like him. Indeed, even now they waited for the signal to fall upon the kingdom – a signal the witch lights as brother-king and sister-queen stand dumbly before her.

Beowulf runs to mobilize his berserkers. Yrsa stays, battling the witch to their mutual death. Beowulf is slain atop a mountain of his monstrous half-siblings. The witch's remaining children are dispatched, with a terrible price in blood, by their cousins the heirs to the throne. Only one is left standing: Rolf, the last of the line, with his kingdom in ruins. He spends the next five years building barrows in the rubble; once each body is interred and every barrow full but one, he lies down in the tomb and drives his sword through his heart into the black earth.

Permalink

...is this story... true...

What kingdom even is this, this must've been hundreds, maybe thousands of years ago? She's not totally familiar with the entire history of Midgard but she's sure the one Kingdom people talk about is Rune-Midgard.

Actually, scratch that, it's gotta be at least a thousand years ago, right? Before the elves left? Surely it must.

"Do you know where this story happened?" she asks before even checking whether there's anyone around who could reply, she was so distracted by reading she did not see the time pass nor pay any attention to such petty details like "whether there's anyone else in the room with her".

Permalink

"Quite near here," Thoma calls from the hallway. "For certain values of happen."

Permalink

"...I have no idea where we are so that answer is next to useless to me. Not anywhere near Einbroch I guess."

Permalink

He comes in just enough to lean against the doorframe like an asshole. "Aldebaran. You should be just able to see Mt Mjolnir from here, if you get a hundred feet up."

Permalink

"Oh wow. Uh." Somehow she did not consider the possibility that they'd have left Schwarzwald. "And, wait, what do you mean 'certain values of happen', I guess this is probably mostly legend then, do your dreams not align with it or...?"

Permalink

"The general thrust is there, but legends exaggerate. Yrsa didn't offer her hand in exchange for Beowulf avenging her father; killing Grendel and marrying the man to do it was just the easiest way to shore up her claim to the throne without some cousin stepping in. The Mother of Monsters probably didn't lie with beasts, or if she did it was only recreational. And no, we – sorry. Beowulf and Yrsa didn't just stand there while the bitch recited a monologue. She did it while fending them off. Much more mythical, in my opinion, but nobody asked."

Permalink

"Oh, that kinda stuff. Sure, but the important parts happened."

Permalink

"I'm an incorrigible pedant. Yes, all of the important things happened – I have my doubts that Rolf actually killed himself, but it's not like Yrsa was there for me to see it."

Permalink

"And Beowulf was your, uh, the person with the rules? Or hers, I guess? Who she cared about."

Permalink

"Yeah. He always had an awful time whenever the rules in his heart didn't agree with the rules in his head, but at least he had both."

Permalink

"Like—his moral intuitions not agreeing with what he thought on reflection was right? That's relatable."

Permalink

"Mm. When someone had a really convincing argument that something was good, but he didn't really trust them, didn't like them, couldn't tell whether he only didn't trust them because he didn't like them..."

Permalink

"Oh. Yeah. That makes sense.

"...do you ever wonder if he's—also alive, out there?"

Permalink

"...yeah.

"I can't find one person in the entire world. Especially if he could be as different as I am from her."

Permalink

"Are you really different from her? You said that—I mean, if she didn't have his rules?"

Total: 185
Posts Per Page: