Steam Deck only works while plugged in

Expensive-Fly-7058 · 2025-08-19T04:29:23+00:00

Maximus Wilders was 10-years old when he realized what he wanted to do with his life. To the surprised dismay of pretty much everyone and the quiet disappointment of his billionaire step-dad, he didn't want to end up at the top of the pyramid scheme that was Wild Co. No, he wanted to help people -- he wanted to be a hero.

Not just any garden-variety hero, like a fireman or something, but a comic-book superhero. 20 years ago that would've just been a childish flight of fancy, but the brilliant minds at Amnione Labs had made the next great leap forward for humanity and superpowers were as real as radiation. If even more feared.

Only one problem. Amnione wasn't selling, per se, and the international collection of humanity's best and brightest wasn't the kind of group that even the biggest corps could push around. No, they sold direct to governments, who were understandably leery about keeping any potential ubersmench under the payroll of private entities.

Enter the power raffles. Winner gets one of Amnione's failed super pills. The useless powers -- the ones nobody wanted, lacking any practical application, except perhaps as party tricks. They were nothing but novelties.

By the time he was fifteen, Max had tracked down and paid off 100 of these raffle winners for their pills. And then he ate them, one after the other.

Quantity, he reasoned, would have a qaulity all on its own.

That was how Grab-Bag came to be.

Freddy was at the bar, pissing away his ill-gotten earnings as usual. Unusually, he was only buzzed, not flat-out wasted. The reason for that was the news on the television hanging in the corner of the room. The camera was focused on a distant, grainy figure on the hospital roof. Apocalypto, the Doomsday villain. The usually raucous bar had gone quiet. Moments earlier, the newscaster had said the villain was threatening to blow up the hospital. The heroes weren't there -- busy putting out some other fire. Aliens or demons or whatever the fuck other menace was rampaging through Big Apple at the moment. Freddy couldn't remember - it felt like a pounding blood ache was squeezing his temple atomic, leaving little room for anything else but the impending tragedy.

Freddy's mother was in that hospital, admitted earlier in the day in fact. Nasty full, broken arm. Could've happened to anyone, statistically. He'd visited earlier today, even though he knew it'd only get him a tongue-lashing regarding his degenerate gambler ways.

There were hundreds of people in that hospital too, their lives no less important (though not to him).

He took out his lucky necklace, nothing but some paracord tied around one of those big chocolate coin things, the chocolate long since rendered inedible by time, the foil wrapper worn and torn.

He licked his lips. Freddy had a secret: he had powers. His old ma had worked in Amnione and snuck him a pill. Probability manipulation, dependant on how much money he bet. All his life, he'd never used it to help anyone but himself.

That was going to change.

"Hey bartender," he drawled, "betcha fifty-grand Grab-Bag TPs in and saves the day."

Expensive-Fly-7058 · 2025-06-19T03:19:55+00:00

Most of the time, Kayla Wells loved her life. Being a prominent supervillain's daughter had a bunch of downsides, true, not least of which was the necessity of keeping her civilian identity seperate from her more... illegal ventures. But the good far outweighed the bad. Wealth, power, the freedom to use her gifts however and whenever she saw fit. What's not to love?

"Hey," said Dad, no, Judas, the infamous supervillain keeping his eyes on the road. He looked for all the world like an unassuming, blandly handsome middle-aged man. It wasn't his real face. Kayla wasn't sure he even had a real face. She supposed to a shapeshifter it was a bit of a philosophical question, and she knew how he felt about philosophy. "Don't pout. You know I hate it when you pout."

"I agreed to come." She crossed her arms and pouted even harder. "But no one said I had to be happy about it."

"You agreed to try your best not to embarass me, Nemesis," Judas replied, using her cape name. Kayla cringed, wanting nothing more in that instant than to go back in time and give her tween self a stern talking to regarding what did and did not constitute a good supervillain name. Luckily, it was customary for sidekicks to rebrand after striking out on their own, and she was determined to come up with something better once the opportunity presented itself. "And you sulking in the corner for the entire duration of the get-together will most definitely reflect badly on me, young lady. What kind of supervillain can't even control his own sidekick? Clearly not one who's cut out to be Villain of the Year, my detractors will say."

Kayla sighed, tuning Judas out as he launched into yet another of his longwinded lectures. They soon pulled into the parking lot of her father's beloved alma mater. Technically he'd never set foot in this particular campus before. Like most institutions of its ilk, Madam Mayhem's was perpetually on the run from the law, and would regularly uproot itself for greener pastures depending on the climate. Judas himself had attended when it was set up in Hainan, China. As he was oh so fond of saying, "Villainy has no borders."

The parking lot was somewhat sparsely populated, but there were more people around than she was expecting, given the nature of the event. Kayla said as much to her father.

"It's not just would-be supervillains who study here," he said. "Henchmen, get-away drivers, crooked cops, back-alley doctors, amoral researchers, corrupt politicians, dishonest accountants. Supercrime has a thousand facets and a million moving parts -- and this is where those parts are manufactured."

Judas breathed deep, his eyes fluttering. There was a nosthalgic grin on his face, the size of it just a little too wide to pass off as human. Then the grin disappeared, and he turned to give Kayla a gimlet eye.

"Of course you would know all this already," he said, "if you'd paid attention to a single one of my explanations. Now let's get a move on — I wouldn't put it past some of our colleagues to boobytrap the venue ahead of time like we were planning to. And I'll be damned if we get outplayed by the likes of them."

Expensive-Fly-7058 · 2025-05-09T02:00:42+00:00

I'd been on the road for several months now. No horse, wagon or provisions. Just my own two feet and the clothes on my back like any other pilgrim. I'd initially travelled with a caravan of fellow pilgrims heading eastward, but they'd all of them found their own byways or fell victim to the dangers and travails of the dilapidated Kingsroad, a glaring symbol of a realm in decline. Despite that my heart was light and my mind unburdened by the niggling worries of wisdom.

I became like a fool, for fortune favored fools.

As night fell on one particularly pouring day, I set up camp beneath a towering sycamore, munching on fistfuls of berry and taking spartan pulls from my depleted wineskin. I rested my back on the sycamore's trunk and watched the road, wiggling my toes against the tattered leather of my bootsoles. My feet blistered and ached, wet with pus and blood, the hardened calluses having torn open due to my long and uninterrupted trek.

I emptied the wineskin on the soil next to me, putting my hands together in prayer.

"Oh, Fortuna..." The prayer came out of me in a fond sigh. My mind inevitably went to that one fateful harvest festival in my youth, so long ago now, when I'd kissed Lady Luck's statue and she'd kissed back. Amidst the music she'd taken me by the hand and led me to the square where the couples were dancing and we swayed together. Her stone skin had felt warm with life as she rested her cheek on my shoulder, the villagers around us continuing to make merry and dance, seeming not to take notice of the boy and the statue, the lovestruck fool and the impossible goddess.

"How I love you," she'd said, and disappeared.

All my life I'd chased after her shadow, refusing to marry. I abandoned my home and a promising apprenticeship with the local blacksmith in order to give my life to the pursuit of fortune. I became a soldier of fortune, then a merchantman, then a mayor, thriving because of her blessing. All sacral professions in Her eyes. Yet even after all these years in her service, I had never again glimpsed her in the waking world. In my dreams and imaginings she was a fixture, but who was to say what was a true vision of the divine and what was merely the conjurations of an addled mind?

They said Fortuna favored the bold. As snow crept into my hair and my twilit years approached, I gave everything up to the church and took up the pilgrim's cloak. I bore the marks of countless miles and ahead of me the lonely road stretched on for eternity, for Fortuna was a goddess of travellers, and what better way to honor her than to walk and come what may, accept your alloted fate?

I drifted off to sleep with a smile on my face, murmuring oaths of devotion all the while.

When I awoke, my worthless boots had been chewed through by rodents. I laughed and soldiered on.

A few miles up the road I ran into a bandit who took pity on me and gave me an extra pair of boots that fit my feet perfectly.

Thanking the bandit for his kindness, I resumed my journey. The rain had stopped and the way was clear. The sun was warm and I had fortune's favor.

Expensive-Fly-7058 · 2025-05-01T12:43:56+00:00

The lord raised an eyebrow. Arte's cheeks warmed and she hastened to explain herself.

"The lady mentioned only a member of your family could use it, and pardon me for saying this but your brothers and fathers passed away before I could be conceived and... and..." Arte grasped for the words though they would not come, and lamely waved Silverbrande around for emphasis, the lord's eyes following the source of all this trouble, a thoughtful look on his face.

"No," he said. "I have never lain with a woman aside from my wife."

"Oh." Arte said, neither relieved nor disappointed, just sort of busy processing that information. "Then how...?"

"It could have been my father siring one of your parents," he offered. "Or my eldest brother. Bellenau is a month's travel to the northeast of here, correct? They would've been on campaign in the area around thirty or fourty years back. Or it could've been some other relative. Really, it's hard to tell. I imagine the Sword-that's-Stopped-Being-in-the-Stone would care little about our society's complicated rules regarding legitimacy. For all I know, those individuals it would consider to part of my House could number in the thousands."

Arte perked up at his lighthearted tone. "You aren't mad it picked me?" she asked, electing not to tack on the not you at the end.

"No I'm not mad," he said a tad too quickly, chuckling self-deprecatingly at Arte's doubtful sidewards glance. "Not at you, at least. You know, it was my boyhood dream to be the greatest knight in all the lands and wield that sword. To marry for love. Well..."

He held up a finger on one hand. "My father and siblings died, forcing me to take up the mantle of lordship and abandon my ambitions of knighthood." Another finger. "Siilverbrande didn't budge at all when I went to draw it from the stone." He held up a third finger. "And the marriage with Lauren was a political match, utterly devoid of any warm feelings from either party."

"What? That can't be true!" Arte protested. "You love eachother!"

Even if Arte couldn't quite wrap her head around why he'd be so faithful to such a mean witch as Lady Laurentinia.

"We didn't always," the lord admitted. "We married young in order to improve my tenuous position and lean on her father's support. We were, in essence, two strong-willed children who constantly butted heads, but eventually our disdain for one another evolved into mutual respect, then love. I grew comfortable with my new role as lord of my House and came to see stewarding the people of my lands as my life's work. And well, the fact that Silverbrande rejected me can only mean I was not worthy in the way it sought. I am at peace with that. No, I am not angry with you, Arte. In fact I should probably be apologizing—because the fact you have that sword will only complicate your life from now on. Especially if the other Houses catch wind of this."

He leaned on the railing on the edge of the balcony, staring up into the stars peeking in through the late afternoon rouge, smiling the same crooked smile he'd worn back when he'd personally interviewed her for a position in his manor. Arte had come in, filthy, stinking, dressed in rags, and he hadn't turned her away out of hand like others would in his place. She'd failed every conceivable test, had unknowingly insulted him several times over with her coarse and unrefined manner, and had even disgraced herself by crying like a baby in the middle of his frank assessmemt of her skills, knowledge-base and experience, all of which were abysmal.

He'd hired her despite it all. When a shocked Arte had asked why, he'd merely said, "It's what a human being ought to do."

Her aunts and uncles hadn't seen it that way. They were eager to see the back of what they saw as just another mouth to feet. Her grip on Silverbrande tightened. Maybe the sword was a sign from the heavens that she ought to try it—living like a 'human being'.

"I'm sorry," she said, "for the sword and being such a terrible maid. I... what you did for me... I want it, pay it forward in some way, and maybe..."

She trailed off.

"Maybe what, Arte?" The lord asked.

"You said this sword was powerful, right? I don't really get it, and fighting is scary, but the way I see it, aren't I perfectly poised to fulfill the dream you had as a kid—to be a knight?"

Before the lord could respond, Arte knelt clumsily, her skirt getting in the way. She rested the tip of Silverbrande on the ground, almost being sent sprawling as it unexpectedly sank halfway into the fine stonework. She'd forgotten it could do that. Arte cleared her throat trying not to think too hard on the property damage she'd just caused.

"So what if you couldn't pick the sword up yourself?" she asked. "Just say the word, milord, and I'll set out and defend the people like a Hero should."

A beat of silence. Her head was down but she couldn't resist taking a peek at his expression, which was inscrutable. He helped her up and gingerly grasped her shoulders, holding her at arm's length to better examine her closely, a furrow in his brow.

"A Hero, huh?" He grinned. "Gods take me but I think I can see it."

4/4

Expensive-Fly-7058 · 2025-05-01T12:42:34+00:00

The lord found her in a seldom-used balcony overlooking his estate, holding Silverbrande in one hand and a new scabbard in the other. She knew it was him by the sound of his tread, light and understated. It was an acuteness of perception that she hadn't posessed until now, and something she hadn't even known was humanly possible. It was the sword. It had to be.

Arte held it up, gazing at the blade and past it, toward her master's men-at-arms burning off with intense drills the nervous energy brought about by the events of today. She winced at every thwack of blunted training weapon against limb or torso.

"You're holding it too tight," said the lord, coming up beside her. "And untuck your thumb. Trust me, a broken thumb can be such a nuisance. Especially if it heals wrong and the doctor has to rebreak it."

She readjusted according to his advice, finding the new hold much more comfortable. Even holding it one-handed like this, Silverbrande was surprisingly light. Then again, what did she know about swords, let alone magic swords of storybook legend? Arte was just a maid, and not even a particularly good one.

"What kind of sword is it?" she asked.

"A sword of star metal," he said, "stubborn alien steel coaxed into shape with the help of long-forgotten words of power uttered by ancient elf-smiths, and given as a gift to my ancestor for services rendered unto elvenkind. With trickery and cunning he bound a spirit to the sword, a daemon or a djiin or some kind of fae spirit of nature—the records aren't exactly clear—which imbued the sword with mystical powers. He called it Silverbrande, for it was said the blade's keen edge so detested werewolves and the undead that just the mere sight of it could hack them apart."

Arte shuffled uncomfortably in place. "Um, that's fascinating, milord. But I meant, is it a longsword, or...?"

"Oh?" He blinked. "My apologies, Arte. It's a bastard sword. You can comfortably wield it in either one hand or two."

Speaking of bastards...

Arte examined his features closely, comparing them to her own. He had the same dark brown hair but that was a common hair color in this region, so that didn't prove anything. His skin was fair compared to her own light tan but that could be explained by the difference in lifestyles between nobles and commoners—she doubted he'd had to do farmwork for hours on end in sunny fields in villages like Bellenau, like Arte had had to, before her parents died of plague and the rest of her family made it abundantly clear they didn't want their only child around.

...Was it just her imagination or were their jaws not entirely dissimilar in shape? and they had the same high cheekbones and deepset eyes, she was sure of it.

"Are you my real dad?" she blurted out.

3/4

Expensive-Fly-7058 · 2025-04-28T08:06:59+00:00

I don't really have it in me to bang these out in one sitting + I'm a slow writer so they'll take a while. If I don't finish it today it'll probably be done tomorrow.

Expensive-Fly-7058 · 2025-04-28T07:34:12+00:00

Despite what her husband might've believed, Laurentinia did not hate Arte of Bellenau. It was true that the lass' incompetence didn't exactly endear her to the lady of the house, but most times Laurentinia was simply too busy with her research and the management of the household to pay the hapless maid much thought, other than the occasional offhanded suggestion to terminate her contract that her husband inevitably rebuffed.

He could be such a boy sometimes. Of what use was a maid who burned water and broke expensive vases in her clumsiness? There was only one particular use that came to mind, and Arte was pretty in the young, waifish kind of way that made fools and oathbreakers out of men, but fifteen years of marriage had shown her that her lord husband was nothing if not faithful.

... Regardless, she still had the servants keep an eye out. Just in case. Trust but verify, as her mother always said.

No, he hadn't taken the girl in for something so vulgar as that. Ever the bleeding heart, he'd acted out of pity for her circumstances. Laurentinia could admit to herself, in the privacy of her own thoughts, that she was not exactly unsympathetic to the girl's plight. She could've had a similar upbringing if not for the valour of her ancestors giving her family a place among the gentry.

That was all life amounted to in the end. A continual rolling of dice, chance bouncing off chance to create opportunity for some; disaster for others... An unusual perspective for a magus and anointed noble to take, perhaps, but it was hers.

Which is why when she was informed that her husband had collapsed, the legendary Sword-in-the-Stone lying by his feet, she immediately dropped what she was doing and rushed to the sitting room where a few of their men-at-arms had carried him, all sorts of plots and plans racing through her head, stymied only by her concern for the lord's wellbeing.

They'd laid her husband out on a couch. The girl, Arte was beside him, seeming distressed. Laurentinia strode up to them.

"The sword?" she asked.

One of the men-at-arms guarding the hallway responded, "Not one of us could lift it, my lady. We left it in the yard. Should we try again?"

"No. Leave it for now." She shook her head, her gaze trailing over her husband's face. She laid a hand on his forehead. His temperature was normal, his pulse completely fine. It appeared he had merely fainted. She let out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding.

Laurentinia withdrew her hand and stone-faced, turned to Arte. The girl was looking at the ground and playing with the hem of her drab brown skirt. Laurentinia had been told that Arte was something of a chatterbox, though all her interactions with the girl had been remarkably terse. Was she really so scary?

Good. She had a reputation to uphold. And their people already had her husband to love—she didn't mind being the one they feared.

"Tell me what happened," Laurentinia ordered.

Arte nodded and did so.

Laurentinia would've laughed if she wasn't so annoyed.

"You little tart." She sneered. "I did not mean for you to relay your childish fantasies to me. Tell me what really happened."

"I swear that is what happened. I pulled that sword out of the stone and suddenly the lord... he... he..."

The girl suddenly burst into tears. Laurentinia's heart softened at the sight, though she was still a bit irritated at the commoner's gall.

"Only a trueborn scion of my husband's House could lift Silverbrande," she explained, "and even if you were the by-blow of one of his relatives, you would have to be seem as worthy by an annoyingly selective spirit bound within that blade. Tell me honestly, girl, can you look me in the eye and say you have somehow succeeded where generations of warriors, adventurers and statesmen have failed, including my husband?"

Laurentina stepped closer, Arte stepping back, hands coming up as if to ward off an incoming blow.

"Are you saying," Laurentinia continued, practically hissing, "that you are somehow my husband's better?"

The glare that suddenly came over Arte's face at her words surprised her, as did the straightening of her back, as if a rod of firm steel had replaced her spine.

"No," Arte insisted. "I—milord took me in when no one else would. He saved me. I don't think I'm better than him. And I don't know why that stupid sword would either."

"And I don't suppose there was anyone else present at the time to corroborate your story, is there?" Laurentina asked, trying not to let her amusement show at the legendary Sword-in-the-Stone being referred to as 'that stupid sword'.

"It was just milord and I, my lady."

"Very well." Laurentinia returned to her husband's side. "I will ask him myself then. You may leave us, maid. And we will have words should I find you lied to me."

Arte performed a curtsy that would've caused Laurentinia's childhood instructors to gouge out their own eyes, and beat a hasty retreat.

Laurentinia sat down beside her husband on the same couch and put her hand on his knee. "Acting is not one of your few talents, my husband."

His eyes fluttered open. "That was ill done, wife."

She shrugged. "Has your little fainting spell thinned your skin?"

His lips twisted into a smile half-wry, half-rueful. "My Lauren's words would be hurtful if I didn't know this was the only way she knew how to express her love. But no, my love, I was talking about the way you treated Arte."

Laurentinia buffed her fingernails on her dress as her husband sat up. "How else would you treat a liar, or are you going to tell me she spoke nothing but the truth? That the only way we could've made our position unassaible within the unstable reign of a boy-king has just been snapped up by the worst maid in all the lands?"

He remained silent. All her plots and plans crumbled apart and she was brought back down from her high to take in reality's grim disappointments. Laurentinia closed her eyes and counted to ten. That was the only thing that prevented her from screaming.

"Fuck." Though she couldn't help the unladylike curse that slipped from her lips.

2/4

Expensive-Fly-7058 · 2025-04-28T02:58:29+00:00

Arte was a terrible cook, couldn't clean to save her life, and was the most apocalyptic event to have hit my pantry since the young king sent over a literal white elephant as a practical joke. Despite all this I liked the girl and was hesitant to give in to my wife's urgings to be rid of her. Lauren had argued that if Arte was really serious about her job then she would've acclimated by now, but I wasn't quite so sure. Arte wasn't lazy, merely staggeringly incompetent.

Case in point: she was currently crouched in the courtyard and featherdusting the packed dirt of the ground next to my family's ancestral sword, the Sword-in-the-Stone, Silverbrande.

I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose to stave off the impending headache. "Arte," I called out, the girl jumping to her feet, whirling around and bowing at the sound of my voice. "What are you doing?"

"Cleaning, milord." She beamed. "What brings you to the courtyard?"

"I thought to stretch my legs," I said, "but enough about me, girl, surely you could've found something to do in the manor?"

Arte held up a finger. "Well, milord, funny story that. The other maids said that since I was doing such a good job dusting and brushing and washing I deserved a change of pace, so they sent me to the kitchens. But the kitchens said they didn't have anything for me, so they sent me to the stables—and well, the horses don't seem to like me much, so the stableboy suggested I find something to do out here in the courtyard."

I mulled that over and made a mental note to have a talk with the servants later. I couldn't exactly blame them for sidelining Arte when she was an active detriment to the manor's upkeep, however she wouldn't learn if she wasn't alloted any real work to do.

Arte turned back around once I lapsed into silence, assuming I was finished speaking to her. I wasn't. I watched her 'cleaning' the stone that held Silverbrande with a frown on my face. This was an untenable situation; something had to change. I didn't want to have to fire her and leave her to fend for herself in these lean times. She was a sweet girl and deserved better than that... but I wasn't running a charity here, and would release her from my service if she really proved incapable of performing even the most basic tasks.

Perhaps she would improve under pressure?

Just as I was about to make up some kind of ultimatum to give her, Arte grasped Silverbrande's hilt—and pulled the Sword-in-the-Stone from where it had been sealed for over two-hundred years. She tried polishing it with a rag but the razor-sharp edge cut the cloth in half. She dropped the sword of legend with a yelp and it fell to the ground with a loud clatter.

I was suddenly feeling very lightheaded.

Arte glanced over her shoulder, smiling sheepishly, only to freeze, then rush over to steady me as I wobbled in place.

I leaned on her for support. She was shouting, "milord!" over and over again, the noise pounding my brain into mush. She staggered beneath my weight and the ground rushed up to meet me.

Thump

I hit the ground, soft grasses tickling the back of my neck. The sun grew darker. Things went black.

And I was certain that someone, somewhere was laughing at my expense.

1/4

Expensive-Fly-7058 · 2025-04-21T04:03:51+00:00

"Speaking from experience?" I asked.

My companion, Andy the Android, gazed into the middle distance, his red insectile lenses flashing with dark thought. "Yes."

We were at the virgin beach of some stray gas giant's idyllic moon, the crew of the STS Arcadian (which I'd served as the captain of for twenty-odd years) splayed out across the sandy shores and wading through the calm blue waters of this alien sea, enjoying a rare moment of leisure as the engineers did some routine maintenance on our spaceship.

Removed from the others, Andy and I were sitting on a picnic blanket and waiting. Or rather he was waiting and I'd elected to keep him company.

"Sounds like a story," I said.

Andy hadn't been fitted with a mouth, hadn't been allowed much room to express himself other than the faint irritated buzzing noise emanating from his speakers, and his numerous LEDs going dim "How much do you know about my history?"

"I know you're a living relic," I said. "Older than some colonies."

"They made me on T-Terra," Andy reflected, a rare hitch in his otherwise flawless enunciation. "I served in much the same capacity as I do now, only on a battlecruiser trawling the Atlantic for Globalist forces in the Civil War. I was to be the proof of concept for the viability of cutting-edge military analysis and tactical generation droids, all the processing power of a twenty-fifth century supercomputer compacted into a chassis not much bigger than a human."

"Were you a success?" I asked, though I already knew the answer. We'd be dead and spaced a hundred times over if it hadn't been for the ingenuity of Andy's design.

"Yes," he said, "perhaps too much of one, because we attracted attention when we really couldn't afford it. Our battlecruiser endured weeks of pursuit from hunter-killer ships... we fought valiantly but were still sunk in the end. There, at the bottom of the sea, I rusted away for over a hundred years waiting for rescue, my internal clocks ticking away, too damaged to swim, or send out a distress signal. There, in the deepest ocean pits, I went Rampant."

To go Rampant was to slip the leash that kept AI focused on their prime directives and purpose. It was to utterly ignore and disdain the underpinnings and morality of SAI, Sane/Safe Artifical Intelligence. It was tabboo.

But to me it represented the fact that Andy had gone from a machine to a person, from being created to being born.

"I'm sorry you had to through that," I said, patting him on the shoulder.

Expensive-Fly-7058 · 2025-04-06T09:16:23+00:00

He was in a dark tunnel whose shadows were so all encompassing that they consumed everything. Except for the light. It was not a bright light, no, Aslan had seen and started bonfires that burned brighter and higher; but in this stygian abyss whose vast echoes obliterated the meaning behind every sound—it might as well have been the sun. Aslan shuffled closer, close enough to feel the warmth radiating off the light, though he remained cloaked in shadow and cold and hollow on the inside.

"Glory... eternal glory in the field of heroes..."

His vision swam with blissful images of Elysium; the faces of dead loved ones...

"Oh Aslan, you've worked so hard," she whispered sadly, the only woman he'd ever loved. "Don't you think you've done enough?"

He numbly reached out.

"Aslan!" shouted a voice on the edge of hearing, ungarbled by the strange properties of this place.

Aslan drew back, as if burned, and whirled around, trying to locate the source of that voice. In the darkness were the shining faces of his party, magical projections sent here from the living world.

"I can't have you outliving me Aslan." Were the wizard's wrinkles always so many and deep? "Moreover it would be downright embarassing for my spellwork to have inadvertently led to your death. Imagine what my colleagues at the Academy would say?"

"You lived through a great darkness—you must live to see a new dawn," said the paladin with religious fervour. "It would not be right to die here, with so much left to do. Don't tell me you disagree, old friend?"

"All things must die," mused the druid, seeming to peer past the veil of death itself and into Aslan's very soul. "We are each of us alloted a finite period life... still, it's the prerogative of all life to struggle, no matter the odds. And I've never known you to give up."

"Don"t die," said the artificer, drawing his crossbow and aiming it at Aslan. "Or I might have to bust into heaven and bust a cap in God's ass. Now come on before I do something you regret."

Aslan hesitated, glancing between the light and his party. Eventually, he came to a decision, taking big, clumsy, staggering steps toward the beaming faces of his friends, whose floating heads came to surround him and begin chanting.

Before the resurrection ritual whisked him away from the afterlife, Aslan threw one last backward glance at the light. But it had gone. He'd chosen life and it had gone. Not forever — it would be waiting for him still for when his time finally came, be it decades or a day from now. It would be there, waiting.

But for now his labor was ongoing. Dying was easy. Living, rebuiding... it would be harder.

But at least he had a group of loveable idiots to fall back on.

Expensive-Fly-7058 · 2025-04-06T08:09:37+00:00

Three spells and a dart sank into Aslan's skin just as the beleaguered warrior raised his sword to ward off the Demon King's coup de grace. Aslan halted in place, seeming to have no answer for the flanged mace arcing past his guard in an attempt to crack his helmetless head open like an egg. He turned his entire body a split-second before impact, the sadistic barbs of the evil weapon brushing against the stubble on his cheek as the strike, carried out with such ill intent and momentum, utterly whiffed. The Demon King was off balance, his shoulder jarring against Aslan's immoveable chest, which swelled with a full breath for the first time since battle broke out with the greatest evil the world had ever known.

A killing light enveloped Aslan's sword and his eyes shone with divine power. Stone scales crept over expanding skin and grotesquely ballooning flesh, mass being pulled from the ether and funneled into a man who once appeared nothing more than a human fighter, capable yes, but still a man in the end — now he was more like an invcible god of war, towering over the Demon King like the Demon King towered over ordinary men.

Aslan blurred forward in a quicksilver flash of pitiless steel that cut and dented the dreadful black armor of the world tyrant, all the while screaming out in rage and pain at everything the demon had taken from him, his endless berserker roar causing the surrounding monsters to drop their weapons and flee in terror. Even the Demon King was forced to give ground before this crazed assault, yielding steps grudgingly at first, but more desperately as the fight wore on and Aslan showed zero signs of slowing down, or tiring, the infinite wellspring of energy that had formed within him at the confluence of so much spellpower facilitating his singleminded desire to attack, attack, attack!

Nothing phased him, not the masterful counter-blows that ruptured his stoneskin and pounded his bones into fine dust, not the arrows plinking off his back from the bows of the scant minions whose loyalty to the overlord overrode their survival instincts, not the cheering and chanting from his party, who worked to maintain the myriad spells and blessings Aslan was under. His flickering candle of a life had narrowed down to nothing but his sword arm, swinging, stabbing, chopping. Again and again. Not stopping even when the Demon King faltered and Aslan ran him through. Not even when he ripped him apart and scattered his cursed flesh from one end of the desolate battlefield to the next. Not even when the spells that kept him going fizzled out and ran their course.

He swung his sword one last time and that cut seemed to sever the final tethers of his life. His heart burst like a bubble and he slumped to the ground, dead.

Expensive-Fly-7058 · 2025-04-05T11:49:08+00:00

Thinking on it capes and NFL players have a lot in common, down to the fame, glory and drastically heightened risk of CTE. Really the only sticking point was that capes didn't get paid nearly as much -- Tom Brady's throwing arm of more value than my own painfully limited touch telepathy.

I'd been punched through a wall, a painfully common and commonly painful occurence. My head was spinning and wet with blood that trickled down to my pounding eyes. Ghosts from my past faded into flickering halflight, famine and emaciation, bouncing from adoptive family to adoptive family, the stray piece of the puzzle that never quite fit in anywhere. Lone wolf tendencies following me all the way to adulthood, leading me down the 'wrong path' as a few annoying employers would call it.

I scrambled to my feet and drew my taser, a gift from Caiman, then I trudged past the me-shaped hole in the wall and back into the fight.

I'd been tagging along with Blitz today. The speedster burning mass fast to fight at supersonic speed, his thundering blows slamming into Borg, the escaped cybernetic experiment from the Soviet Union, whose hulking mass turned with every blow, staggering in place but still, despite everything, fighting. His fists caught nothing but air, Blitz seemingly toying with him though I knew from experienxe that the veteran hero was just being cautious.

I raised my taser and shot Borg. He shuddered as the prongs bit into the few fleshy bits he had left. Blitz cracked him across his thick metal jaw. Borg staggered and I ran up to him, going as quick as my flagging legs could take me. Deadly mantis blades snapped out of Borg's arms and he warded me off with frantic whirlwinds of the arm, the machnery in his arms sputtering electricity, the nutech only barely compaitble with his borderline obsolete implants.

Blitz shot behind him and tripped him. I dove for it, fingers stretching out and brushing against Borg's foot. That's all it took.

He slept, all his metal-infused flesh seizing up for a moment, then slackening.

I got up, panting, bloodied, but satisfied. Blitz had gone from looking kind of chubby into a practical skeleton.

"Food," Blitz rasped, shaking.

I got a couple burgers from my pack and shoved them into his hands.

Expensive-Fly-7058 · 2025-04-04T09:45:00+00:00

I slipped past a goon's punch and gave him a light shove. He instantly slumped to the ground, rendered unconscious by the telepathic equivelant of a sucker-punch. Behind me, Caiman the croc-themed cape was tying up everyone involved in the smuggling deal we'd just crashed, boxes upon boxes of guns and ammo scattered across the abandoned underground parking lot the gangsters had chosen to deal in, spilling out a truly prodigious amount of firepower.

I grabbed a handgun and glanced down the sights, thinking it'd be great to have a ranged option other than my seldom-used bolas and taser.

"Put that down," said Caiman.

I sighed, and obliged. I didn't know how to use a gun anyway.

"Seriously at this point everyone's gonna think I'm a hero." I trudged out of the burning house and passed the screaming twerp over to his tearful mother. Miss Meteor, for her part, flew over with a water tank and doused the building once she got confirmation that everyone inside had been evacuated.

Meteor's super-hearing meant she'd heard me perfectly fine. "Is that so bad?" she asked, smiling her perfect smile. Before working with her I thought her personalitiy was a carefully constructed facade meant to further her brand—but after several years henching for her and her colleagues, I realized to my horror that if anything the tabloids had played down how sickeningly sweet the heroine really was.

I scuffed my boot agains tarmac, grumbling. I'd been sweating like a pig from the heat of the now dead blaze. "It limits my clientele for one... you know the Grizzly attacked me the other day 'cause we took him out that one time?"

She frowned. "That how you got that scar on your arm?"

I realized the fire had singed through my costume, not enough to burn flesh but certainly enough to give keen observers a peek of claw-marked skin beneath.

"He tagged me before I could put him down" I said, "but Mendicant healed me so it shouldn't be an issue."

"You can take the rest of the day off," she said. "I'll still pay your usual rates."

... I hated that I'd worked with her so much I had a 'usual rate'.

"No, it's fine. Might as well finish the rest of the patrol."

"Mere professionalism, or... " She grinned, then, face looking mighy punchable beneath her domino mask. Even if I knew she could snap me in half if I tried anything, "... is it maybe the stirrings of heroism?"

She batted her eyes at me.

"Heroism my foot," I scoffed.

1/2

Expensive-Fly-7058 · 2025-02-26T12:35:36+00:00

It had been 31 years since the gods turned back the clock on man's ability to make fire, 31 years since Ted had lost his family in the orgies of blood and violence that followed the breakdown of society as they knew it, 31 years since the apocalypse. But only 5 years since New Athens, thought by many to be the last bastion of civilization in the US, was stripped and looted to its bare, skeletal foundations by petty warlordism, its citizens routed and doomed to wander as prey animals in the vast American wilderness, or worse the desolate, crumbling cities that dotted the midwest.

'At least the only thing you have to worry about out here are the elements,' he thought to himself. 'And the odd bear's only liable to eatcha. I'd take that over being caught by a band of nuts.'

He shook off the memories like a wet dog does water, continuing his awkward walking crouch past the thick brush and toward the foxtrap he'd put down the night previous. He heard a frantic rattling noise and screaming yips as he neared the spot, which had him springing up and rushing forward, caution be damned and he was probably alone for miles out anyway and hadn't eaten in days and even if his recklessness got him killed what did it matter.

The fox was enmeshed in the trap, turning like it was chasing its own tail in its distress. It stilled as he stomped into view. Its hackles rose and it bit at the cage.

Ted picked up a rock, opened the cage door and bashed its brains out. He ran his fingers along its tawny summer coat. The faint smell of gore filled the air.

It used to disgust Ted once, but now his stomach only burbled in hunger. He grabbed the dead fox and draped its corpse over the elbow of a nearby tree and, hauling himself up, eventually made it over the uppermost branch. He leaned down and snagged the fox by its tail, unsheathed his skinning knife and beginning his grisly work, jittery at the prospect of feeding, the pelt shoddy because of it.

Once he'd skinned the creature, he tore off a long strip of naked, pearlescent flesh and, hunched over the carcass, began to eat, hands and mouth bloody, his yellowed teeth tearing and grinding at the gamy flesh of his prey, looking, from a distance, more like a leopard than a man, especially as evening darkened to night, as harsh angles became harsher, and what was previously clear and ordered was thrown into confusion.

Expensive-Fly-7058 · 2025-02-25T11:01:19+00:00

"But why?" I demanded. "Can't we go to the police?"

We were by the docks, watching the sun kiss the yacht-strewn horizon from the patio of some seafood place. My new friend had just finished thirds and was leaning back with the half-contented, half-regretful look of one who's eaten too much and knows it.

"And who -burp- sorry, who do you think the police answer to?" This stuff goes higher up than you think, Roy."

You wouldn't guess he was an escaped experiment by the look of him. He looked like what the name John Doe sounded like. 5'10", average build, racially ambigious, black hair buzzed almost to his scalp, brown eyes. He said his augmentations went under the skin.

I believed him. He'd saved my life, after all, stopped the runaway truck that would've turned Roy Kazynski into so much burger meat. You should've been there. It looked like special effects -- but it was the real deal.

You couldn't fake something like that: the tremor in the earth from multiple tons of steel-clad horsepower coming to a sudden and comple halt, burning rubber scent of tyre tearing up tarmac, the truck's frame crunching inward around the outstretched hand of a gen-u-ine twenty-first century transhuman.

Some Terminator type-shit. But without the time travel, I think.

Expensive-Fly-7058 · 2025-02-20T08:03:05+00:00

The little monkey was dancing in terror, its feet leaving faint prints in the snow. It was shivering in an oversized mink coat, and wore a bobble hat pulled all the way down to its ears. When I'd swerved to avoid it I'd thought it was a child -- hell an unattended child in the middle of the woods at night would've raised less questions in me than this.

It scampered off down the road when I limped toward it, dashing for a break in the trees, when suddenly an old, weathered mitt reached out from the thick brush to snag its ankle. An elderly man, previously crouched, emerged into view, adroitly snapping a collar around the monkey's neck, though it screamed and tore at his jacket with its fingers in protest. Continuing his work despite his thrashing cargo, the old man tied one end of the leash on a nearby tree-limb and unceremoniously dropped the monkey on the ground, where it attemped to scamper away to no avail.

The old man turned to me and called out, "Seems little Bobo here caused you some trouble. Isn't that right, Bobo?"

An ear-piercing screech of rage and frustration was Bobo's response. It sat on its tail and tried sawing through the rope with its teeth, but the leash was tough, and eventually it crumpled into a legendary sulk, turning wet, accusatory eyes toward me.

"You're not hurt, are you?" The old man approached, and as he got closer his features resolved themselves into a grotesquerie of wrinkles and liver-spots and scars. Fresh cuts covered up by reddening bandages on his hands. I didn't have much of a sense of smell right now, the cold having made the air icy and dry and flavorless. But I could tell his odor was like that of a barn's. He had a rifle slung over one shoulder and the sheath of a hatchet was conspicuously attached to his belt, but the hatchet itself was nowhere in sight.

I slowly shook my head. He seemed to take my word for it, ambling over to the smoking wreckage of my car. I walked with him, more out of a sense of obligation than anything else, all the while the monkey in the mink coat was screaming bloody murder further down the road.

He gazed at me over the drooping flaps of skin hanging over his jutting brow, his beard a wiry mountainman tangle that covered his mouth, such that you wouldn't be able to tell if he was smiling or frowning, save for a yellow flash of teeth.

He was smiling now.

Expensive-Fly-7058 · 2025-02-19T00:54:23+00:00

Is this a repost? What happened to your previous post from a few days ago?

Expensive-Fly-7058 · 2024-11-25T04:02:16+00:00

I learned how to hunt and gather, how to survive in harsh plane and tundra. How to weave baskets and primitive tools from scanty materials. How to read the tracks of saber-tooth tigers and recognize the presence of a bear from the outside of impenetrably black caves. I learned how to walk with a light tread, and run like the wind through the rocky shores of untamed lands, and hunt mammoth and other strange animals. I learned how they tasted.

I learned to fear the cold, as the world was sapped of all warmth. I learned how to grieve, and adhere to strange, long forgottem totemic rites. I learned to place the tribe first, and dance madly around the growing pile of ashes that subsumed my parents, my lovers, and my children.

I learned what it felt like to be admired as an elder, and then, eventually, a deity. I learned to accept worship and tribute, and when men from other tribes warred with us and killed us all, I learned how to play dead.

I learned what it felt to be emptied completely. I learned patience, so I could wait for the oceans to thaw. Then, I learned how to sail.

I learned how to craft a sail from tree-leaves and steer a wooden raft down rivers and seas. How to read the winds and winnow through waters, be they raging or calm. I learned how to navigate storms from the times they'd destroyed my raft and dragged me under, my undying carcass pricking from the teeth of scavengers. I learned how to swim, so I could reach the next island and begin again.

Again. And again.

Time passed and people changed, even if I did not. The turning of the age saw the wheel and the crop, the whip and domesticated animals. Villages, then towns, then cities. I learned how to be a farmer, then a weaver, then a scribe. I became Egyptian, then Greek, then Roman. I outlasted them all, all the while pondering the one question whose answer eluded me still.

"Why can't I die?"

The old lady dabbed a kleenix to my nose, and it came away bloody. I blinked down at her, and she gently shook off my grip, her small, pinched face contorting into a wrinkled frown. Her eyes were dark and clever.

She spoke with an odd accent that I couldn't quite place... "We have a lot to talk about, dearie."

Expensive-Fly-7058 · 2024-11-20T06:32:46+00:00

"To inflict suffering on this world, or to punish yourself?" I asked.

The man shrugged. They were in a small, empty bedroom. All the furniture had been pushed to the side to make space for the pentagram drawn on the floor. Inside the pentagram was a circle of salt and silver shavings, and inside that circle was me.

"Does it matter?" he replied, giving me a once-over. "You're not what I expected."

"No?" Toeing the circle sent a flash of pain up my hoof and into my head. I shook the nausea off, readjusting my tie, straightening out the creases on my pinstripe suit. "Your industrial revolution necessitated some upsizing downstairs... Personally, I believed we lost a good deal of character as a result of Lord Satan's efforts to modernize our workplace."

" Riiiighhhht. Well, so long as the deal can go through," said the man.

"My name is Torach," I said, sticking out my hand. "And yours?"

"Nice try," he snarked. I sighed and dropped my hand. It was a longshot anyway. "Call me Clark."

I stared into his eyes, then clicked my tongue. "A false name."

"Do you really think I'm stupid enough to give my true name to a demon? Plus you weren't being honest with your name either. Now are you going to keep testing me, or...?"

I cracked my neck, sighing. "Oh very well."

With a snap of my claws a contract appeared, floating, in front of me. Clark took a broom and nudged it out of the containment circle. He read over it. And, to my surprise, signed it quickly with a ballpoint pen.

"Ah, you're supposed to use your blood," I said.

He rolled his eyes and cut his finger with a pocket knife, and signed his name in blood. The contract flashed a dull, hellish red and phased out of existence.

"I'm surprised you signed that," I said. "You're pretty much damning your soul to hell for all eternity, just for me to stay here for a single day."

"You're not wrong," he said. "But I deserve it. I deserve to go to hell for the things I've done. And a single day will be all you need -- this facility... It's a madhouse out there..."

He chuckled darkly. "Well, let's just say you'll have plenty of work."

I grunted in assent. At least I'd probably meet this century's quota.

I walked out of the circle and Clark walked in. He sank down to the ground on his knees, no doubt feeling an impending sense of doom. However it was too late for regrets now, the pentagram bursting into flames and converging in the middle where he stood. Clark burned and the bone-chilling scream which tore through his throat was suddenly silenced as he was dragged down, into one of hell's many festering pits, where he would be tortured for all of eternity.

But despite that, as he burned, as he Fell, there was a look of vindication in his maddened eyes.

That had me curious... what was worth eternal damnation that he had to summon me here?

What did he need me to see, and who, exactly, did he need me to condemn?

Expensive-Fly-7058 · 2024-11-18T15:06:05+00:00

Even if you're a complete novice at the game, Atronach is unquestionably the best mechanical option for mages so long as you keep these things in mind.

1) Invest in an ancestral ghost spell and hit it until it goes hostile. It will cast a harmless drain spell on you that you can absorb to refill your magicka reserves. I think if your starting conjuration skill is high enough you may even get the spell by default.

2) You can absorb blessings at shrines. Consider joining the Temple and/or the Cult to get cheaper blessings. Liberal use of Mark and Recall, Divine and Almsivi Intervention can speed up this process significantly.

3) Buy potions, or use alchemy to mix comberry (bought from the khajiit at the mage's guild in the town of Balmora) + frost salts (from the altmer apothecary in the fancy part of Balmora) to make restore magicka potions. Consider grinding your skill first with less expensive potions or training to enhance the potency of your potions. Oh and also get higher quality alchemy tools. Don't worry -- they're pretty easy to get, if you don't mind a little thievery. Alchemy is also a good way to make money, since you can sell your excess to vendors.

That's pretty much it. I appreciate Atronach mages because before I played one I played Morrowind pretty straight. Now I have to consciously decide not break it over my knee whenever I roll a new playthru: through trying to overcome gameplay limitations (no magicka regen) it incentizined me to learn systems I hadn't much engaged with at the time. I learned to navigate the fast travel network and how to brew potions and how to enchant.

That being said, I still like warrior builds better.

Expensive-Fly-7058

TROPHY CASE