The post-resurrection high Duke had apparently been riding since they'd gotten back from Haven had faded, though he still felt physically better than he had in a long time. Possibly ever.

He was doing his best to maintain that physical wellbeing, even if his emotional wellbeing was slightly rockier again, and as such, very nearly ended up late to his planned date night with Lucifer, having spent longer swimming easy laps in the pool than he'd intended.

He was pretty sure Lucifer wasn't going to knock him too much for still being damp from a post-swim shower as he set the table and carefully plated the Egyptian-style fish sandwiches he'd put together for them for dinner.

The fact that he was wearing one of his favorite worn-soft old flannel shirts open over his bare chest might help, too. ;D

[for him!]

It had been a really nice weekend having Tabby and Teddy visit and getting to spend time with them and it had been hard saying goodbye to them. After they had left he and Connor had to finish getting things ready for their move back to London for the summer since no sooner had they got back to the apartment after saying goodbye, the emails and phone calls had started so they already had a lot of work for them when they got back to London.

Everything that they needed was packed up and ready to go, Rex was chirping away in his carrier. Cutter looked around the apartment, “I can’t believe how quickly the time has gone by,” he said softly as he thought back to everything that had happened last summer.

[for Connor and this will be their last post in Fandom until the fall!]

There had been no children for Nell and Gladio this weekend.

Which was good.

Of course it was.

Right?

Nell had never had children come on any of these weekends, she wasn't even sure children were ever in the cards for her, so she wasn't expecting any. And yet...

And yet.


Dinner was catch as catch can tonight. Nell would be soaking in the hot tub for a while, thinking.

The drive to Gotham had been long, but uneventful - at least up until the end. The end had been the sight of a man, or a thing, covered in lamia, slowly walking down alongside the highway.

It took Janet but a few moments to recognize him: he'd been an employee at the chemical plant where they'd met each other for the first time. The one Pam had filled with lamia spores, where she had taken pity on only one, small little human among dozens.

She put him out of his misery.

She was disconcerted, though.

Half an hour later, she met Harley on the edge of Slaughter Swamp. Harls had brought a welcome home sign, and a bouquet of flowers stolen from a funeral home. "Hi there, gorgeous," she said. "Took you long enough."

There was a lot to tell her. Fandom. Janet. The wild lamia. But Pam put it all aside. She was home at last. The world could wait. With Harley in her arms, all she wanted to do was lock it all out, and cover herself in love.

---

And it worked, for a week. Pam woke up every morning to a dream: Harley's apartment, Harley warm in her arms, the sunlight filtering in through the windows. Birds singing outside. Heaven.

Unfortunately, she couldn't stay there. And so on Monday morning she got up, made her way down from Harley's apartment, and stepped back into the filth of Gotham City. A place she'd hoped never to set foot in again. A place where not seeing things was as important a survival skill as not being seen.

( So. You're back. )

[[ nfb due to distance! taken from Poison Ivy #13 by G. Willow Wilson. this has definitely taken five times longer than I wanted but we're almost there. ]]

Ravnica was a much better plane to do one's recovering on. For one thing, it was still intact (or, well, as intact as any plane could be that housed the Izzet, the Rakdos, the Gruul, and the Simic), which meant that they were no longer lacking in the creature comforts that a disaster-struck plane simply couldn't provide. Liliana had left Gared with a truly obscene amount of money and told him to start overseeing the repairs to the structure of Vess Manor as soon as he could find enough surviving competent craftspeople to handle them.

They had gotten some news in the intervening time; Olivia Voldaren lived and had proclaimed herself Lord of Innistrad. No one knew what had happened to Sorin, but he hadn't shown up and beheaded her with his claws for the audacity, so it was possible that the previous Lord of Innistrad hadn't survived the battle. Liliana privately assumed he'd Planeswalked elsewhere when the fighting had gotten to be too much, but Olivia certainly wasn't telling--not that Liliana had gone to confer with her 'friend' in person. Runo had also survived, or so the gossip said, though much of the Stromkirk line had been twisted by Emrakul's corruption. Piotr had been one so corrupted, and 'put down' by Thalia and her cathars in the new 'Order of Saint Traft,' whatever that was. Kristoff was said to have survived, though the same could not be said of most of his grandchildren, all of whom had been human and thus, easy prey. The Falkanraths had been similarly twisted, and rumors said there were barely a third of them remaining. The Markovs had, of course, been mostly slaughtered in their home (though Liliana now had an idea of what happened there), and while Olivia had declared herself the victor of the battle with Nahiri the Lithomancer and her army of Eldrazi spawn, a large percentage of her line had died on the battlefield as well.

It was truly a fascinating time in vampire politics right now, and if it didn't involve being on a plane where privation was a fact of life for even the most rich and powerful, Liliana would be gleefully watching as they all fought and scrabbled for power, probably with popcorn.

But since Innistrad was in such a pathetic state, they had decamped to Ravnica for a bit, where they could enjoy peace, plenty, and the pleasures of civilization. Liliana had merely had to mention the quality of healthcare she might receive at the Clinic to immediately convince Ignis that Ravnica was a much congenial locale for her recovery. And so it had been; in fact, they were even taking a stroll along the Transguild Promenade from the South Plaza towards the Gateway Plaza, where the Hall of the Guildpact - and, according to her spirit spies, the 'Headquarters of the Gatewatch' - were located.

What a crazy random happenstance.

[NFB for distance and for the paramour, please]

Octavia had been putting all of this off.

She didn't know why, exactly. Maybe to stave off disappointment, in case they were somehow wrong, in case the trouble she'd caught was still there, lurking right in her skin, just waiting for her to make a false move.

And it wasn't like she hadn't already tested it. First, with something from her tiny garden on the deck of the Rouge, only just barely in the process of waking up for spring. And then, with one of the plants down by the pool at their house in town. And nothing bad had happened either time, but she still didn't trust it, couldn't trust it. It didn't feel real.

And she knew what would.

Which was probably part of the putting it off of it all.

( But the weekend had rolled in. )

[ooc: Establishy.]

So, Thursday had obviously sucked, and so had the entire lead-up as a squirrel and the revelation that had sent all of that into motion in the first place, and Summer was still feeling pretty shitty about it all. But she had two things going for her that was making her feel like things might be on the upswing again now that all the gross stuff was over.

One, as far as she could tell, she actually didn't have any kids showing up this weekend, thank god.

And two, today was the Holiest of Holy Days.

No, not Easter, you weirdos, or even the end of Passover, but, obviously, it was 4/20, and Summer wasn't going to let that pass her by no matter how much of a funk recent events had put her into.

She did feel kind of lame, just spending it at home with her cat, but at least she wasn't still a squirrel for it this year. Also, she considered hitting up some of her friends back home to hang for it, but that meant going back home, and she didn't really want to deal with people right now if she could help it, so at home with her cat it was. Which was fine. Pancakes was going to be significantly less annoying company than, say, Tricia. Not to mention, if her dad found out she was home during Easter and didn't even stop by? She's never hear the end of it.

Once she started considering how the real person to party with on this Holiest of Holy Day was Rick, well, yeah, that solidified it, this year really was best celebrated very chill, very low-key, very much not engaging with the most toxic member of your family post-break---

"Ohmygod," Summer realized, almost at the exact moment she had first toked up that afternoon, and immediately pulled up the GoTron Summers discord. "Why am I not getting high with myself right now??"

God, that could be a disaster, too, but at the same time, the fact that the discord started lighting up with several different dimensional version of her having the exact same thought at that exact moment at least made her feel a little less alone.

[[ open! albeit with a 'yes it's a holiday so of course i'm going to be suffering at work' slowness caveat ]]

Their first album had been considered uneven, but people had liked it well enough. Something felt different about this go-around, though Jack couldn’t put his finger on it. It was just in the air, that first day. An energy. Something alive, jumping up and down in the corner.

( They rolled into the studio on a Monday with all their gear. Recording time. )

[[ establishy, nfb due to distance as always ]]

Cal was getting better at asking Arden to spend the night when he thought he might not get a good amount of rest on his own, and it seemed like even less of an annoyance to ask after the dance. In return, Arden was getting her fair share of cuddling this morning, but Cal would be happy to relinquish some of his hold once he woke up more, or the covers didn't feel quite so nice and comfortable.

[For the girlfriend and their visitors!]

Steven and Llewellyn tended to have busy Saturdays regardless, let alone at this time of year. So, even though it was the weekend, they were up and dressed early in order to head out.

Or at least they were in the process of getting ready to head out. There was the matter of how, as Steven debated yet again if the shirt he was warning was too warm or not warm enough (perils of travel, that), he heard something.

He frowned and listened.

"Is that... giggling?"

[for the beau and the tiny ones]

You'd think that by now, Vi and Steph may have started connecting some dots about the school dance and started preparing accordingly. But judging from the clothing flung haphazardly around the apartment, no, they definitely had not.

Still half asleep and looking forward to spending a long, lazy weekend in bed, Vi pulled the blankets in tighter around her, curling in closer to Steph to make up for the brazen theft.

Cutter and Connor had decided to skip the dance yesterday in favour of spending a quiet night in where for once they didn’t have any deadlines to finish their work with the ARC and Prospero.

They had decided to take it easy that morning too, spending a bit longer in bed and just being able to enjoy each other’s company when they weren’t busy with work.

“This is nice,” Cutter murmured as he leaned in close to Connor, his eyes still closed.

[for the fiance and eventual kidlets!]

Lydia had been given an idea by her conversation with Miss Skywalker about her lightsaber a few weeks ago (and had a rather mistaken idea of what a lightsaber was), but it had taken a few weeks to set up. All the usual members of the Supper Club should have received a message from her early in the week letting them know the particulars of this week's destination: a cat cafe in Washington, DC.

Did the food and drink on offer particularly count as 'supper?' Who cared! There were adorable cats to befriend! Welcome to Supper Club, everyone!

So, yesterday had been....honestly a lot, but Summer had been thinking it could have been much worse. Sure, things at the bar were awkward, but she felt she sort of skirted around the issue she was trying to avoid pretty effectively. Squirrel brain was only going to get her so far, though, and she'd completely failed to take into account the fact that her apartment was right below Stark's, and in a vacuum, she could probably convince herself that her shaking him off after he walked her home had been super effective, she could actually hear him pacing upstairs pretty much all night, probably wringing his hands and trying to figure out where it was he'd gone wrong, which definitely made it clear to her that she needed to just get this over with and have this conversation.

Knowing as she did that he hadn't probably slept much, though, she made sure to swing by the Perk and pick up coffee and donuts for them both, because even though this was going to suck, at least they'd have caffeine and sugar to make it a little better.

So after a brief moment of thinking about just not, Summer reprimanded herself, took a deep breath, and knocked on the door.


[[for the very permissibly modded alien in the apartment, please and thank you~ ]]

For a good, long time, even when they were back on Eos, Ignis had never been afflicted with that particular Fandom phenomena of random animal (or, in some cases, plant) transformations, as if the powers behind such whimsy knew that he'd need to still be quite himself for the sake of the others. But as soon as that was not necessary, as soon as he, too, seemed to have someone to take care of him, he had his first bout, a little bat comfortably nestled against Liliana, dreadfully on the nose with its thematic accuracy, and that was, then, what he suspected he would continue to be in those moments. After all, Prompto was always a puppy, Gladio always the flower of his namesake.

But that was, clearly, not the case. He'd taken a different form this time, at a horribly inopportune time....or was it? The 'foxicorn,' as he had been so charmingly dubbed by Chandra, was in actuality, a carbuncle, a legendary Eosian creature. A Messenger, in fact, a creature that might inspire comparisons to angels in other realms, though you certainly wouldn't catch Ignis making that connection. Of the twenty-four messengers that served the Astrals, all of them answered to the Oracle...except for one, who answered specifically to the Lucian royal house. Carbuncle, of course. Noctis' father had given him a Carbuncle totem in his youth, around the same time as his mother's death, around the same time that he'd also brought Ignis to him to be his companion and steward. Carbuncle, too, was a helper and a healer. A guide, a guardian, a protector.

So was it really much of a surprise, then, that it had been the form that Ignis had taken, in that moment? It wouldn't have been the first time, either, that Carbuncle made its presence known to him, at some moment of imminent danger.

But while he was in this new carbuncle form, it was all warmth and comfort and light. It was all a bit fuzzy, too, and it was with a feeling of clarity and the return of darkness that Ignis realized he was back to himself again. He was curled up against Liliana, and there were cool, chill fingers in his hair, right behind his ear, where her nails had gently scratched. There was the slightest moment of a hesitation before he uttered his first human sound in several days, just a deep, grateful rumble of appreciation, his head tilting and leaning into the touch. And were it not for the fact that he had arms again to hold her and lips again to kiss her, he might have stayed exactly there to revel in it. But he did have both those things, and so much more, and memories and awareness starting to flood back in, as well, so while he may have lingered a bit longer than he might have ever allowed years ago, he shifted, unraveling himself only to turn and wrap himself anew around Liliana and seek out her lips with his own, and murmuring into this as he regained his voice.

"Hello, my love," he said. "Miss me?"

He had no idea how many days had even passed, but it hardly seemed to matter.

[[ obviously for the shamelessly modded necromancer in the bed with him, and NFB for ~distance~ ]]

She still lived.

She felt exultant. She had known delight many times before. The day she had regained her youth. When she killed the demon lords Kothophed and Griselbrand, hearing their death screams. Each of those moments had felt like cheating; the best kind of cheating, where you get away with it and still win at the end.

( But this moment was even sweeter )

A noise from her bed drew her attention away from the window. There was Ignis, not a bat, but something Chandra had called a 'foxicorn.' Which was accurate enough she supposed. He was standing on her bed, making cranky noises at her. Liliana wasn't sure if he was upset about how long she'd been standing, or if he had sensed the direction of her thoughts and didn't approve.

Well, one of those was easily remedied, and putting in terms of 'calming Ignis' tendency to fuss' was much more palatable than acknowledging that she was still too weak to stand unaided for long. She crossed her chamber and climbed back into bed; Ignis immediately scampered to her and laid down, cuddling by her side with his head resting on her chest. She began scritching behind his floppy ears. "Perhaps it's time I did some rethinking on Jace's offer, hmm?" she asked. "Perhaps my eyes have been opened to the power of friendship after all."

[NFB. Mostly establishy but open for calls or texts, much of the text taken from "The Promised End" by Ken Troop]

Well, Tony was trying to figure out some logistics for things back home while also trying to figure out the logistics of another party here at some point next month. Which honestly just lead to things being mixed up and some supplies meant for the Avengers being delivered here.

Honestly, he brought it on himself for not letting JARVIS handle that.

"No, no, I need it to be picked back up," he said, phone cradled between his ear and shoulder as he typed out something. "Pepper, I know they just dropped it off, but this is the wrong location for it."

And now Pepper was getting in on the judgement of his multitasking skills.

[for the husband on slow play!]

Most days, Duke was fine. Better than fine, even; he'd been essentially rebooted, after all. Turned off and back on again and all his caches had cleared and -- yeah, he honestly didn't know anywhere near enough about computers to make this metaphor work. He'd been in a dry dock of sorts. All patched up and back in shipshape.

Most days.

He couldn't remember most of the dream when he woke, his heart triphammering in his chest. Just the sense of utter helplessness that had accompanied it, and the sense that the gremlin man -- Croatoan -- was lurking at the edges, smirking in delight. He sat up in bed, trying to force his breathing back under control, and hoped he hadn't woken Lucifer or Octavia.

He really liked being fine. He wanted that feeling back, dammit.

HE slid out of bed, trying not to disturb anyone, and went to go hunt down a coffee.

[for the partners]

The purple shadowed tower through rainy glass. Streaks fire heavy with top dark falling. Emrakul cackles thought with cold loop metal...

A voice cut through the chaotic ramble, a familiar voice he was hearing for the first time. This is not going well. I will not succumb to this. I am better than this. Jace breathed evenly and slowly. Thought cohered. He tried to recall the gibberish dominating his mind just seconds ago, but it had already vanished, evanescent dew melting with the dawn. He was at the top of a long, grand spiraling staircase, white marble steps lined with ornate blue trim. The staircase was brightly lit though there was no obvious light source, and it extended down far beyond his sight.

Above was a tall and airy stone tower. Closer to ground, it looked like his sanctum back on Ravnica. Large stone table with piles of books, maps, and several...contraptions that whirred and buzzed. Bookcases stuffed with books everywhere the eye could see, and he gazed at them longingly. It didn't just look like his Ravnica apartments...it was them, except back on Ravnica there was no palatial staircase spiraling down in the middle.

And back on Ravnica there was certainly no monstrous force destroying his sanctum from above.

Hundreds of feet in the air above, Jace saw large stone blocks of the tower crumbling away, or grabbed and flung. The entire roof of the tower was already gone, revealing a darkened sky flooded with an ominous purple overcast. As Jace watched the destruction, he realized the purple overcast was not a cloud. It was a thing. A creature. The creature resolved into a gigantic purple cloud extending hundreds of wiggling tendrils. The tendrils lashed and writhed toward the tower, accompanied by flashes of lightning and deafening booms outside. The creature had a name...

Emrakul. The name sounded strange even as he said it, a word he should not know, a word he could not know. Or perhaps that was the word underneath the word... Jace paused, chagrined at how effortless losing his train of thought was. Focus. Emrakul. A...thing. An Eldrazi. The Eldrazi. Jace's mind struggled to encompass the nature of the entity. His head hurt, a dull, pounding ache that grew with each contemplation of the Eldrazi titan outside. So don't think about it. Where am I? What is this place?

More memories returned. He hadn't been in a tower. He had been in Thraben, besieged by countless hordes of Emrakul's minions. They all were. Ignis. Gideon. Tamiyo. Nissa. Chandra. Liliana. She had made a surprise appearance, leading a host of zombies to save them from the Eldrazi spawn and creatures driven mad by Emrakul. Liliana came back. She...

A low, pain-filled groan interrupted his thoughts; a noise he'd become almost distressingly familiar with over these past few days. "Ignis??"

( And so it goes. And so it ends. )

[Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand we're done! *flops* At least with all the scripted and preplayed stuff. Speaking of, this was adapted, turned upside down and inside out, and taped back together from "The Promised End," by Ken Troop, and preplayed by the truly magnificent (and so wonderfully patient), chef_chocobro Warning for body horror, warning for length, NFI, NFB, OOC is a lovely gift. Follows this.]

After leaving the cathedral, Jace had Planeswalked away, babbling about the Gatewatch, the group he'd formed with three other Planeswalkers while defeating two Eldrazi Titans on a plane named Zendikar. He promised to return by morning and with the six of them together, they stood a chance of defeating Emrakul. It would have been better with seven, but Sorin had vanished. The vampire had made clear he had other priorities and they would receive no help from that quarter. Sigarda also departed; she had promised her assistance to Thalia, protecting the innocent from the madness overtaking all of Innistrad.

But nowhere was it worse than right here in Thraben. The misshapen werewolves and other creatures that had been rampaging through the countryside had been caused by the barest touch of Emrakul's influence on the plane, what little had been able to permeate past the barrier that had been Avacyn. Now that the great Titan was here, her full corrupting effect had been unleashed onto the populace and the High City had transformed into a nightmare. Tamiyo and Ignis had caught a few hours sleep in the cellar of the cathedral, exhausted by the battle against the maddened angel and her twisted abomination of a sister. But as they made their way to the outskirts of the city to the planned meeting point, they learned the extent of the horrific changes the Titan of Corruption had wrought as she'd made her way from Nephalia to Gavony, slow but relentless.

( Initial Plans )

***
"Look at it, Gared. Pretty, in a way. Your world is ending." Liliana watched as Thraben burned and tentacles reached down from the storms to rake the earth below. The sky swarmed with angels, and the ground beneath the titan just swarmed. From this distance, she could make out only the movement, an unending, writhing mass of creatures, pressing as close to the source of the world's end as they could.

"Yes, mistress. S'what it does around here, mostly." The geistmage's apprentice, with his bulging eye, looked forlornly down at the chaos.

"Ah, there they are. See the fire and the flashes of light? Jace must have gone to fetch his little friends. Looks like they're headed straight toward the center of it all." Because of course they were. And she had no doubt Ignis was right there with them.

Gared tilted his head, an interesting effect atop his already asymmetrical body. "Yes, mistress. I couldn't help but notice, you've raised this lovely little army to help, but we're staying up here, and the others are down there."

There was nothing little about her army. Undead spread out behind her nearly to the horizon. "Hmm. I suppose that's true. Well then, shall we go make an entrance?"

***
( Rarely Survive Contact With The Enemy )

[Mulched, composted, and grown from "Battle of Thraben" by Nik Davidson. Finally, Liliana gets to march an army of zombies on Thraben. Enrichment for necromancers. Played with the peerless chef_chocobo. NFI, NFB, follows this.]

Pam had been working around the clock since she'd woken up.

It took time, and she felt weak - unsteady on her feet. Annoying as Adrian's constant mothering could be, the constant mugs of soup and bowls of stew shoved in her direction were helpful, even if she didn't want to encourage him by admitting it.

But she kept working. Studying. Pushing. Synthesizing...

She didn't sleep much, either. This time around, sheer exhaustion had gripped her-- it had been night, with no one hovering over her for once. And then. Suddenly. There was nothing to do but wait.

She slid out of her chair and curled up under the table. Could she even sleep? She could. Nightmares came, Woodrue snapping at her work, her tables, screaming at her that she was useless. There is no one left saving!

She slept.

[[ for he who is here, details taken from Poison Ivy #12 ]]

Liliana had thought the storm would be the worst thing they would run into in their flight from her invaded home, but she had been wrong. The storm had eventually subsided, but the countryside of Stensia had become a twisted zoo. Liliana noted that every passerby had something reshaped about them. The bodies of roving vampires had the wrong silhouettes, always with too few of something, or too many. Anatomically improbable travelers raved prophecies of stone and sea at them as they staggered in diagonals.

Their trek had been long, lasting deep into the night - the werewolves had torn through her horses and zombies both, leaving them to walk. But now, finally, Liliana, Gared, and (haltingly) Dierk, had arrived at the monumental door.

Lurenbraum Fortress soared above them, a stark cliff with a citadel that protruded directly from the rock face. Higher up, the utilitarian architecture softened and elongated into tiers of ornate leaded windows, each one with its own floating chandelier of twinkling candles. In many of the windows, vampires peered down at them, wearing gleaming ancestral armor.

Liliana gestured for Gared to knock.

Gared gawked at the door's height. "You really know the lady of the house?" he asked.

Dierk, for his part, made a gurgling noise. The man's neck was broken, so his head rested at a weird angle and his throat looked lumpy. But at least his legs had gotten him here, and at least his arms had been capable of carrying the spent witchbane orb. Gared's long coat was strapped tight around Dierk's midsection, doing its best to hold the remainder of the dead man's insides in. Liliana raised her hand slightly, and Dierk squared his shoulders, but his head still dangled to one side. The desiccated tongue wouldn't stay completely inside his mouth, contributing to the gurgle. Liliana shrugged.

"I make it my business to know those who wield power," Liliana said. "As does she."

( Gared banged on the door and stood back. )

[Taken and only minimally adapted from "Innistrad's Last Hope" by Doug Beyer. Follows this. NFB, NFI, OOC is wonderful!]

The three fiends cowered before the angel like a stain on the cathedral floor. They averted their eyes, unworthy of her sight.

She knew they were not of this world, but, more importantly, she knew they bled. She could feel their heartbeats under their throats, at the tip of her spear. One more gentle thrust and she would unmask these demonic creatures, send them into the oblivion they deserve, and cleanse the world of them.

( She was Avacyn. She was made to protect. )

[Cut up, turned into paper dolls, and then laboriously stitched back together from "I Am Avacyn," by Doug Beyer. Masterfully played with the wonderful chef_chocobro, who deserves all love and praise. NFI, NFB, OOC is wonderful. Warning for body horror and obviously for length, but y'all knew that already. Directly follows this, next post is here.]