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Teor helping Wick take his shoes off after a long day on the road and rubbing his feet with huge but gentle paws.

Sir Julien letting Aranessa use him as a pillow, or a foot stool or really anything else she needs him to be.

Dame Gaya letting Occtis rest his head on her chest and listen to her heartbeat while she sleeps and he goes into a trance, calmed by the sound of his knight in rest.

A touch starved Wick slowly growing addicted to Teors touch until he’s pressed up against him as much as possible. Sitting in his lap for meals, sleeping curled in his arms, leaning against him around the fire, just generally taking any excuse to touch him like a needy lap dog.

Sir Julien just absolutely melting when ever Aranessa plays with his hair. Even coaxing his head into her lap when he’s especially wound up and she just wants to see her loyal knight relax.

Dame Gaya offering to let Occtis study her body and even run simple experiments on her. He’s familiar with dead bodies but the chance to study her living one proves to be a real boon and bonding experience.

Teor slowly walking Wick through the basics of intimacy between two men, growling praises and instructions as he shows Wick how to touch him and even how to touch himself. Teaching his lord how to appreciate and enjoy his own body.

Sir Julien on his knees, helping his Lady undress after a long day. Slipping her stockings down her calves, unlacing her corset, helping her pull a night gown over her head and putting her hair up. Then rubbing her back until she finally falls asleep. Feeling safe under her knights watchful eye.

Dame Gaya showing Occtis how to use a sword. Her warm, calloused hands over his cold but soft ones. Gently guiding his feet and cupping his chin to lift his head and make sure he keeps his eyes on his target. He can’t help but blush when he meets her slitted eyes instead.

A moment from Season 2 Episode 2 Eye for an Eye that I wanted to stick under a microscope :)

“Ah,” Jasper leans forward at this, a single charred finger raised to pause the conversation for the first time since the two coteries have unfolded from the deeply tinted SUV to the safety of the Club Maharaja’s sub basement.

He knows something of what is causing the sudden chaos in San Diego, what is causing kindred to flee a city that is no longer safe nor stable.

“So, yeah, I’m... feeling a little generous tonight.”

He knows very well what is causing the chaos in San Diego, and his generosity is a wild and dangerous thing, flaring like embers crackling in a fireplace to lick at the hearth rug until the entire house has been devoured by flame. Flashing like the long, wicked blade that just saved their lives with the very same stroke that parted the head of Sheriff Marcos from his shoulders.

Jasper leans forward on the couch, lanky limbs screaming agony as they move stiffly in awkward angles. Some of his skin flakes, black and ashy, against the fabric.

The smile pasted all across his face is wrong.

Annabelle has never seen it so wide, or so bright.

“So,” Jasper rasps with a strange eagerness. “Tara. You all remember Tara, right?”

Of course she remembers Tara.

A love letter to my fav pairings!! (sorry to those that didn't make it in 🙏)

So, Primus techonus, who were assuming is really him and not someone using disguise self or something, "Kills" Kat's wife and daughter, and disappears, leaving no bodies, some bloodstains, and a gaping hole where a motive should be, and this happened about a decade ago. Let's think about Primus's motives and state of mind 10 years ago.

The plan to make the Techonus angel would have just started, as Tanasar was in the middle of the most fucked up place on earth and underground, a decade to go there, dig it up, figure it out, deface the monolith, seems reasonable a speed for doing it quietly on a budget, but what would be known immediately is the sacrifice needed, and at this point we have not received a hard number of the number of attempts they've made to complete the ritual, we've only seen two failures.

I think it was mentioned once that Occtis is the 8th child of Primus, not to mention his brothers children, but the problem is that they are all forward facing, if one of them just disappeared one day, people would notice. Now, it's common with these families to marry off people to make alliances, a fourth daughter here, a 2nd son there, all in the name of strengthening connections, and Primus would definitely have zero problems selling his children to people, hell he killed his son and niece, there are absolutely cousins and Aunts and extended family of the Techonus bloodline everywhere.

We know very little about Kat's wife, but I do know this, there was bloodstains on the cabin when Kat flashed back, there had been a scuffle, a fight. Primus probably could have knocked them unconscious with no problems, surprise attack or long distance magic. Instead, he entered melee range, close enough to talk, close enough to make a speech, about family and responsibilities, to gesture to the cabin in the woods and ask about her lot in life. When Kat attacked Primus, he deflected the bolt and left, when the wife seemingly fought back, Primus used force, he respected the danger and escalated, like how he only respected Sorcerers and nobles.

I believe that Kat's wife was a runaway Techonus, that she escaped that life to live alone in the woods and have a peaceful life, until the head of her house realized he needed every drop of Techonus blood he could get his hands on, and dragged her back kicking and screaming.

in the same way that i simply cannot believe that primus tachonis has spent half a decade working on the deva vindicta without knowing that yanessa has an angel in her basement and a deva for a son, it's almost comically too coincidental for a tachonis to come back from the dead in a way not seen before in a post-shapers aramán the same week that yanessa halovar separately planned (with his own sisters!) to do a fake resurrection, spurned by nothing other than a long standing desire to overthrow the council.

we know petra and ryah were in on the plan to kill gus. yanessa's own aspirants saw occtis in riesengurtle and otto was absolutely communicating to the other heads of house about the letter he found. she had a lot of avenues to learn about what happened to occtis in time to make a minor alteration to the plan, pivoting from "caught in the crossfire and nearly killed" to "died and came back."

the creed has been a big enough force in aramán to afford fancy cathedrals and villas for about 40 years. in all of that time, why would yanessa not stage a miracle like that sooner if it was just a gambit to secure followers? her plan seems to be "gus dies, i live, the government looks weak and we take over, and i entice new followers as a bonus." it's a lot of extra work for what seems like a fairly secondary benefit.

It wasn't that Thaisha didn't notice the signs. It was just that Occtis was so different, so new, that she didn't realize what they meant until it was staring her in the face.

It's just little things. For the past week, there have been moments--small, unimportant in the terror their lives have become, but Thaisha is a Lloy druid of the Ancients. She knows to trust her instincts, and something is off. She has to repeat questions when Occtis meets her with only an empty stare. Julien startles him with a hand on his shoulder, and Occtis whirls around, snarling in a way that's more undead than human. They get into a skirmish with beasts of the Eternal Night, and Thaisha watches as Occtis plunges a skeletal hand into one creature's ribcage to pull its heart, still beating, from the howling thing's chest. He stares at it with a fascination that borders on reverence; for a fleeting moment, Thaisha thinks he's about to bring it to his mouth to taste.

c4e28, 11:56

So, obviously Occtis needs to be here. He knows that. Dol'Makjar is where every plot they've been investigating converges, it's where Thaisha is, it's where Thimble is. He can't just--fuck off to Timmony because he's tired.

So it's stupid that when Professor Mag'Nesson starts hinting at a student to King Augustus, Occtis--very briefly--hopes.

She's not talking about him. Of course she isn't, of course; Professor Mag'Nesson doesn't even like him. Occtis is very, very different from Demodus Blix. Stupid, so stupid, to forget that. He knows Blix, in the vague way that overachievers in a small school are aware of each other. Their paths never really crossed--necromancy and illusion are about as far away from each other as you can get, mechanically speaking--but they'd had some introductory classes together. Blix is boisterous, friendly, some-would-say-over-enthusiastic. Everything that someone like Murray Mag'Nesson would value in a student. For better or worse, he makes himself seen.

Occtis, on the other hand. Well, for all the good hiding did him, in the end, he sure spent a lot of time perfecting the skill. And, look, he knows how he came off. Son of a noble house--the infamous Tachonis, no less--quiet, top of his classes? They mistook Occtis' awkwardness for aloofness, and he never bothered to correct them. Solitude was easier, especially after he figured out Pin. So Occtis let rumours spread, and endured the disdainful stares of teachers and students alike. It was nothing compared to home, anyway.

But now, as Mag'Nesson recommends Blix with a tightness in her voice that speaks to real care, Occtis can't help but wish he'd tried a little harder to be seen. It's just that it sounds so peaceful, what the King proposes: a position in the green hills of Timmony, far from the knife's edge of Dol'Makjar politics and the blood on Palazzo floors. It's just that Occtis misses only being a wizard, sometimes. It's just that he never got to graduate, either. It's just that Occtis Tachonis is fucking tired, and he wants someone to rescue him, too, and it doesn't matter.

Me: Disgusting, awful, I hate you

Occtis: *joyfully does something fucked up with necromancy*

Me: ✨😱✨

Where I take screenshots of the characters in some of their most miserable, isolated moments of the first few seconds during the cold open

The raw scale of what has just happened is just … It’s incredible. They found an afterlife. They freed the dead. They reached out, through the power of courage and hope and stories and freedom, and they took back the lost afterlife of Azgra, and they freed their dead. The scale of …

We killed our gods. We freed ourselves in life, in this world. And now we’ve gone back, and we’ve freed the dead as well. They can’t have them. The gods. They can’t keep any of us captive anymore.

The sheer implication of this ritual. The raw scale of what they’ve done. Of what they’ve made possible.

And it can be done again. Thjazi was already working on at least two other collections of components. The ones involving the box and Termina didn’t work, they weren’t anchored. That ritual will have to be redone, freeing the halflings. And then the Stone of Nightsong. Freeing the elves. That one’s in progress. All we need are the right objects, and people … people willing to fight this fight. People willing to reach out and reclaim their dead, their afterlives, their hopes, their freedom. To cast off the last claims of the Shapers, and know true freedom, in all its glory and its terror.

Is this what we’re doing? Are we freeing …? Is this what we’re doing?

But. On the subject of those components already collected. On those potential rituals.

It looks like three components are needed per afterlife. The weapon that killed the god. A place of power of that god. And something that bridges life and death, this world and the afterlife of that god, usually a body part associated with a psychopomp of some kind.

And once they are gathered, those components need to be reshaped, to make them into anchors. Swords to ploughshares. They need to break free of their intended use, what the dead Shapers intended for them, and forged into something new and different, present in this world, for the benefit of people, not those who shaped them. And all the components of the ritual need to be transformed this way. Weapons becoming props, blood becoming murals, places of appeasement becoming the rallying grounds of freedom. Each component needs to be reshaped.

The Stone …

I think the Stone has already been transformed. It reacted to the ritual of Kother’ai. And it … I mean, of course it’s been transformed. After what happened with Occtis? How could it be anything but.

With all that we now know about Sylandri. How she viewed her ‘children’. What she wanted from them, demanded of them. To live only according to her design. To be only what she wanted them to be, and go only where she intended them to go, and nowhere else, and nothing else.

Occtis, in the afterlife, just before he grabbed the stone inside his own chest, and was torn apart between two paths, and was only rescued by an act, a miracle, of mortal magic. Just before that.

Occtis: “No, I’m not supposed to go there. Father. I don’t belong to you.”

Father. Mother. I don’t belong to you.

Yeah. I think the Stone has been transformed. No more a tool to guide wayward children to where they’re supposed to go. Now, in the first true miracle of this story, it’s become a tool to give someone a choice. Even beyond death. I think … I think it’s been transformed.

And for the other collection. The halfling artefacts.

Swords to ploughshares. Weapons that aren’t weapons anymore. Weapons that have chosen not to be weapons anymore. Weapons that have become people.

I think Bolaire is a component. I think he is. Or he’s at least a potential component.

It should be Termina. She was the one who dealt the fatal blow, the one who wore Rauwyn as she died. And it … it still could be Termina. It could. But she’s not there yet. Her latest conversation hammered that point home. Termina is still a weapon. All she wants is to be able to do it again, her greatest act, her greatest purpose. She is a weapon. She wants nothing more.

But Bolaire …

He’s still a weapon. He’s still a killer. He still clings to his identity as an object, a thing. He’s so hesitant to think of himself as a person. He’s not there yet. Not him either. He’s not there.

But he’s closer. He’s closer. And he has people, friends, reasons, that Termina doesn’t.

If there was another ritual. A different play, echoing that first and most terrible. What role would Bolaire, do we think, want to play?

But at the same time … Which is more powerful? To claim your personhood for yourself, and in doing so help to free others? Or to teach your family what personhood is. Could be. It might be him. But it could be Termina. Maybe he could save not just himself, but his family.

(It’s so gutwrenching that he didn’t get to witness it. Kother’ai. What a thing. What a thing. If only he could have seen).

This … What this did. This play, this ritual. What it’s done. It’s not hopeless. It’s not predetermined. We can change it, we can fix it. We can find what was stolen. We can bring our dead, our people, our families, back. Not to life, but … To freedom. To choice. To the world, to the Path, to the choice to be something more that what these tyrant gods demanded.

The gods don’t get to keep them. Us. We don’t belong to them. In life or in death. We belong to us.

I just. The raw scale of the thing. The implication. The meaning.

It’s not hopeless. Even in death, it’s not hopeless. Choice exists. Freedom exists. And with just a little help, no matter who you are, no matter where you are, no matter who has laid claim to you, it can be found.