#shadow bastard

Stroud doesn't want to give away that he's the extraordinarily lovely (not Khaba briefly possessing my autocorrect) lively shadow we've seen skulking around the place. And so, in the blue-green darkness of Khaba's little murdery mad scientist workshop, he's portrayed as this formless, whispering voice. He's a something. A creature of darkness. A voice more than entity. His body isn't described, whether he has a face or mouth or fingers - we can only PRESUME that he's doing that gay little neck stroking with humanlike appendages.

[Also, friendly reminder about how absolutely and utterly gay this chapter is. No matter how many times I reread RoS, the fact that Stroud really Did That right there on the page in canon never fails to bring a massive gross sicko freak grin to my face.]

Listen, sometimes prompt week is just an excuse to exorcise an idea you've had knocking around in your head for months. This was loosely inspired by that one dress I saw making the rounds online a while back, plus another one for dangly shinies inspo.

Also, bonus: tfw your boyfriend wears your silhouette SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER than you do.

Randomly remembered this bit of RoS and I know I made at least one post about this in the past already, but I just. Cannot fucking deal with Ammet right now.

Behold a millennia-old, shapeshifting, terrifyingly powerful marid who has killed and tortured countless men and spirits alike, who in fact has decapitated a guy maybe several hours ago, who looks like a distorted shadowy sleep paralysis demon with no face unless he opens his big ol' toothy mouth to bite YOUR face off...

...and here he is looking like a pathetic wet little guy of a spirit because he suddenly met someone more powerful than him. This is soon after he was dumb enough to walk into the most obvious trap on the gods' green earth, which got him impaled on a sharpened tree trunk. Twice. In about 5 minutes from this paragraph he'll turn tail and flee like a fucking coward which however won't save him from getting absolutely fucking demolished by a horde of spirits summoned by the Ring. Twice.* and then getting sent to gay baby jail in a wine amphora at the bottom of the sea so that he can pickle in the results of his bad decisions for the next several thousand years or so.

*imagine being unexpectedly summoned by the Ring and your one and only command is "I want that twunk Obliterated."

This is the truth about it, you'll learn to never doubt it.

This whole affair is shrouded in living mystery.

So what goes on in your tree when all you know is

your evil shadow has a cup of tea?