May We Have A Sneak Peek At The Next Chapter 👀👀

day 4: Powers

@tamlinweek

Protector of the Emerald lands

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They had come - and Tamlin had managed to rally that force I'd so gleefully destroyed-

(ACOWAR ch.70)

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Lucien panted, wiping at his bloodied lip with the back of his hand.

Even with the combined efforts of the Illyrian forces and Miryam and Drakon's army, Hybern was still outnumbering them. Pathetically so. But even as his stomach roiled and his heart jerked, Lucien tightened his grip on his sword and continued onward.

If today was to be his last, he would fight like hell. 

The hours bled into the next in a wild blur. 

Foe after foe fell under his sword, and yet still more appeared.

A shrieking cry erupted from above, and Lucien was sent sprawling across the dirt. He instinctively turned himself onto his back, bringing his vambraced arms up into a cross just in time, the sound of talons against metal setting his teeth on edge. Lucien snarled, grappling frantically for his fallen sword with his free hand. 

The harpy's wings beat at the air as it swiped madly at him. It was all he could do to keep a firm grip on its throat, pushing its gaping maw away from his face. His arms screamed under the effort. Flames would not deter the disfigured beast, no matter how intense, and soon he could feel himself weakening under the exertion of using his powers.

But then,

The groan of a war-horn. 

It reverberated through his chest. 

The beast was distracted by the sound too. 

It paused in its attack, confusion marring its features. Lucien took advantage of its distraction, slithering his arm down towards his boot as quick as lightning and drawing out a hunting knife before ramming it into its throat, killing it instantly.

He clambered to his knees, crawling towards his sword with great panting breaths. 

A second groan of the war horn. Then a third.

He twisted his head round, eyes straining.

It was- Mother and Cauldron above…

High on the cliff's edge...

It was Tamlin.

And- no, it couldn't be…

Autumn was there too, their scarlet banners whipping wildly from the steady flaps of the gryphon horde waiting in the skies above. 

The sight was enough to bring tears to Lucien's eyes.

Tamlin wore no helm, and carried no shield. He wore no armour at all. Only his favoured cuirass and vambraces, made from supple leather the colour of the forest. 

"Gods damned idiot," Lucien breathed.

Stupid though he was, Tamlin cut a formidable figure, flanked on both sides by the beasts and fae of Spring's army. 

Along the cliff's edge, the warriors beat at their painted chests with throaty cries, their weapons shining in the sunlight. Lucien thrust his own sword into the air, screaming until it felt like his lungs would give out. Hope flooded his veins for the first time that day.

As Lucien watched, Tamlin raised one arm and the air seemed to freeze, every being coiled and prepared to strike. Then, with a sharp cry, he sliced his arm through the air.

Hundreds upon hundreds of shrieking gryphons dove from the skies, their talons glinting as they sliced through Hybern's army. Centaurs galloped down the ragged cliffside, brandishing wicked swords. Nymphs and dryads rode atop the backs of wolves and bears, daggers and bows gleaming in their hands. 

And in the thick of it all, their High Lord.

For a moment he stood alone on the edge, his hair whipping like a golden silk about his face. Then he ran, leaping off of the cliff. At the last possible moment, Tamlin flicked his wrists, bending and shaping the land to his will. 

Columns of earth and stone rose to meet his nimble feet. He swept through the battlefield, the dancing movements of his fingers sending devastating shockwave after shockwave through Hybern's forces, the soldiers flung in every which way into the neat paths of the diving gryphons.

In the sky behind him, Lucien could spot Rhysand flapping midair, caught in a trance.

Tamlin's arms rested lightly by his sides, then slowly, he began to raise them.

It was a quiet rumble at first, so soft he could barely feel it. But then the earth began to shake, in great waves of energy that pulsed and reverberated up from his feet to his chest. Louder and louder, a crescendo of pure noise. It rattled his teeth and sent his stomach lurching. 

Then everything stopped. The battlefield froze, a thousand hearts barely daring to beat.

And then the earth split apart with a horrible, thundering crack. 

Lucien stumbled to his knees, his ears ringing. 

An ugly chasm tore across the battlefield like a gaping maw. Those of Hybern's men that weren't dragged into the chasm's depths were thrown violently through the air, where the gryphons awaited them. 

Disjointed screams of pain echoed up, bloodied arms clawing at the earth, struggling to pull themselves free. The nymphs rode swiftly by, yipping triumphantly as they loosed arrow after arrow into their trembling hands. dropping them into the cool depths.

For Spring.

For all that Hybern had taken from them.

A laugh tore itself free from Lucien's throat. 

Hybern would fall today. 

Once and for all.

I have been waiting all year to post this.

ao3 skins faq

Just a few answers to questions I've seen in the notes on this poll

What is a site skin? A site skin is CSS code that changes the way AO3 looks. This could be anything from changing the page colour to the font to the way tags look to hiding parts of the site - and more.

Where do I find site skins? There are a few places. The easiest one is in the site footer (that red band at the bottom of the page). There are four skins linked there under the word Customize, and you can click on them to see what they do. Another place to find skins is https://archiveofourown.org/skins?skin_type=Site Those skins were created years ago and loaded into AO3 for easy applicaiton. Just hit the Use button and they'll be applied to your account. Lastly, you can find skins created by other AO3 users. Some people post their code on AO3 itself, some use github or other code repositories. A lot of folks share their skins here on tumblr with images and then a link to the code itself.

How do I save them to my account? If you're using the ones in the footer or the ones linked on the Public Skins page, you don't need to save them. Those are built into AO3. If you want to create your own (or use one created by another user), that's when you save them to your account. Tap on your name at the top of the Ao3 page. Then select Dashboard, then select Skins. Tap the button labelled Create Site Skin and give your skin a unique name. Write or paste the CSS code into the big box, then hit the Submit button to save it. If you want to use it right away, hit the Use button on the next page.

What's the difference between a Work Skin and a Site Skin? A work skin changes the appearance of an individual AO3 work, and it changes it for everyone who looks at that work. This lets you turn your fic into something that looks like an email or a text chain or a newspaper, etc etc without having to use images. Work skins can also be turned off by other users, so if they just want to read the plain text of your work they still can. A site skin changes how the entire site looks - but only for you.

How do you have 100+ site skins?? I start a lot of skins that I abandon partway through. I also create skins for certain specific purposes - for example, changing the look of all of the buttons on the site - and then I can just grab that chunk of code and add it to any "full" site skins I create for the purposes of sharing. I have a lot of experiments that fail, but I keep the code around because maybe I'll learn how to fix it someday.

Can I create my own site skin if I don't know how to code? You can! AO3 has a site skin Wizard that will help you change the colours, fonts, and font sizes on the site. Go to your Dashboard > Skins > Create Site Skin and then tap on Use Wizard. Give your skin a unique title. Click on the ? bubbles to get examples of how to enter information into each box. If there's anything you don't want to change, you can just leave that box empty. When you add in colours, they must be hex colour codes, and they must include the # at the start. Any font you add need to exist on your device (so it might work on your computer but not on your phone because your phone doesn't have that font installed). You can add parent skins to Wizard skins, too. See below!

I wish I could have [X functionality] in [Y aesthetic skin] You can! If you create one site skin in order to block certain works or tags, you can add that skin on top of an aesthetic skin. To do so, edit your aesthetic skin, scroll down and tap on the Advanced button (lower left of the CSS box), tap on Parent Skin, type in the name of your blocking skin and Add Parent Skin. Then save your aesthetic skin, and the two are combined! You can also do this with those skins that are native to AO3. So for example, you want a Reversi (dark mode) skin that Shortens Long Tags and also hides the "you have muted some users" banner. Create a site skin with the muted users code:

p.muted.notice { display: none; } And add Reversi and Shortening Long Tag Fields to it as parents. (you can also copy/paste all of the code into a single site skin, if you'd prefer)

For more FAQs, you can check out the Skins & Archive Interface section on AO3's FAQ page. Or you can drop questions in the notes, too.

Emerie of Illyria

What if after that you spent decades trying to bring my decying, lifeless body home, while with every year, my last wish doesn't just become a promise to your brother- it becomes an obsession. Your eyes slowly become darker and stop reflecting what you see; they only see one goal anymore, Earth. What if every roadblock becomes a mortal enemy to you as you try to bring the pile of bones, the ones that used to contain my soul, back- they're stripped of their flesh because you had nothing to eat on one of those long, Europa days when you were stranded from the rest of your brothers in arms. In fact, what if those brothers slowly began looking at you differently, and you know they're talking through their suits about something, but they're not including you. You can tell they're afraid of you, afraid after that night where they dug you out of the snow to see you gnawing on my skeleton, the remains of my moldy flesh scattered on the floor around you and spattered on your face. You didn't mind. Everything was for me, after all. So what if the others minded? You only had to finish the war to get back; you only had to defeat everyone else. You had to hurt the people who had taken me away. And as your good memories of me faded, they became the scraps of life you clung to, because you no longer had anything else. Your brothers never understood why if was so important to you to get me back to Earth, never understood that it wasn't because of my last wish anymore, it was because everything else around you had faded into static and your only peace would be found from burying me in my native land. You weren't even sure what you would do after, but you didn't think about that, all you had to do was keep on putting one foot in front of the other; keep killing one person after another. And what if, as the faces blurred together, you accidently killed your family? Your pack, that had traveled along with you, now lay silent among the pink-stained ice and snow? Well, you were fighting a war. Casualties were bound to happen. It wasn't even really your fault, was it- they were holding you back, trying to make you see that you were slowly dying from some disease you contracted after eating my flesh. But you knew, of course, that that wasn't true. They were only trying to keep you from returning with your brother to Earth, to stay there forevermore. If they were right? You didn't care. You trudged on, through snow and ice and sleet and bullets and guns and fighting and death, even though you were getting slower with every step, you kept walking. And what if, in the end, you looked around and saw that not even my bones were there anymore; your soul was now lost somewhere in the rubble. What if you looked up and thought you saw a glimpse of blue and green, somewhere out there, and felt your heart stop, there amongst the snow.

What if, later, your body was found and brought back to Earth, and I was finally able to rest happily?

What if that's when it ends?

What if it goes on forever?

what if we were brothers in arms in the war torn landscape of europa and i held your bleeding wound as the blood stained the endless, blinding white tundra, your bated breath asking me to bury you back home and our last memory together was looking up to the swirling rings of color on jupiter. what then.

The other day I was dying laughing at the thought of Zoro (first time feeling attraction) talking to Luffy (never felt attraction in his life) about his feelings for Sanji and them coming up with a wildly incorrect assumption about what's happening

I originally created a site skin based on this aesthetic about 2.5 years ago, but it was frankly pretty broken in a lot of ways. As I was looking through my list of site skins, I remembered this one and decided to revive it and make it a little more usable.

If you like it or want to try it out, you can find the CSS code over here on github, along with instructions for how to copy/paste it into a skin for your own AO3 profile.

(as always when I attempt a site skin, if you find stuff that's broken, you can let me know and I'll try to un-break it)

Here we are, y'all. This is the first gif I have made in 10 years! Wow, it feels good to flex that muscle after a loooong rest. Maybe it's a bit choppy, but eh it's fine with me as long as I get to watch my meow meow Thanatos tonguing his Zagreus, heh

So people just... post stuff on here? Nice :)) Here's some Law of Talos fanart I did recently ! ^^