Ayda Aguefort 🐦‍🔥

My next analysis has to be about The Ravening War and its allegories to chess.

The dichotomy between dice and its superstitions and randomness with chess and strategy and wit has to be studied under a microscope.

Especially in a story like the Ravening War where the characters each have such a distinct style of movement to clutch power and gain momentum in the story. Not to mention that they make references to the game itself many times!!

Very very interesting.

The Ravening War 1.05

Something about Adaine saying "Is this justice?" to Ankarna and Crystal saying "What about them? Where's their justice?" to Lilith. Rage as a teenage girl. I don't need your sword. I don't have to believe in a god. You have seven believers right here. You get it.

Emily Axford <3

And the little flower in Brennan’s hair!!

(I started A Court of Frey and Flowers)

Every dropout subscriber loves comedy, and beneath that we love psychological horror. And beneath that? Comedy again, but weirder and gay.

A right hand man. A trusty sword. A friend.

Deli finds comfort in his new acquaintance. Colin Provolone is a sturdy and simple man— quick and skilled in battle, a loyal and reliable in service, and also a good friend. Deli, with boyhood now smudged against the edges of his face, grows into his position of The Meat Lands.

Colin keeps the promise he made years ago to a disgruntled mother in the corner of an expansive hall in Comida. He listens and enacts the advises and discussions made for the benefit of this land far from home. He keeps guard and wrestles the yawns that strangle his throat and eyes as politics are discussed. All standing, never leaving, the right hand of Deli.

Colin watches Deli through the days, this leader guided with a willpower of steel, the love and dedication to the unification of his home watering his quick growth and maturation. Two years and Deli had become a fearsome, confident and ambitious young man.

Then Deli lies a gift upon his shoulders— Skald Colin Provolone, meaning poet (sing the songs of heroes, be my witness, carve my name into history, approve of my works).

And when Deli uses this title, Colin doesn’t question. He only grips his sword tighter, stands straighter, observes steadier. Deli’s sword and shield. His skald, his poet.

And at night he meets a softer, kinder Deli. They sit on the edge of Deli’s bed, talking and laughing about smaller matters. Sweeter things, like childhood and gossip that whisper down the hallways. He watched Deli’s expressions pour out, an innocence that splays across his face. He finds delight in those times, a remedy for a past he tries to forget. Light laughter, “simple is always how we’ve kept things”, and drunkenness fills the air between the two.

Two quiet years. Then comes blood.

And blood and blood pours from a carriage and drips, viscous, hot and real from hands and blades.

A quiet shatter in friendship. A trusty sword clanks at the feet of Deli and the familiar, light scent of cheese drifts far away from the house.

For the first time in two years, Deli is alone. A void renders behind him where his skald, his poet, would be standing.

And then five years pass and Colin sees Deli again. Scars rip at his face and he explains in whispers the ambush which landed him with it. Colin examines Deli’s face and finds little. A hardened and rough man. Colin thinks Deli resembles his mother.

Colin thinks about how he might’ve been able to prevent it, how he would’ve kept his promise, how he would have been able to protect him or die trying. Deli’s sword and shield, his skald, his poet.

There, Colin watches Karna die and the light leave Deli’s eyes. He watches the replaced Skald (and he thinks about the way Deli reached out to her with this title that fit her so effortlessly) shredded into a million pieces and he hears something in Deli die along with it.

This time Colin saves him. He nurses his old friend to stability and yet the “yeah, we’ll talk later” never comes as he watches Deli walk off into the sunset, now a man that would never be the boy, the friend Colin knew five years ago. A man with a cold and lifeless portrait, his soft edges ragged and a heart half rotten.

A sword. A shield. A skald, a poet. Colin keeps a promise to a mother and son made seven years ago. A protector, dedicated and loyal. He swings his sword quietly, precisely, dangerously against the ones who killed all his friends, dead or alive. Colin Provolone, sole survivor of the Saprophus, the poet of dead heroes.

The Rook’s exchange.

Amongst a group of a queen, a powerful bishop, a skilled spy and a to be chief, only Colin Provolone, a Dairy Island runaway, really escaped Saprophus.

He whose secret forced him to escape his homeland, stay undercover, speak nothing, want nothing. He whose morality throws his sword at the feet of his good friend, a devotion severed by the burden of death, and to think that war was all he was good for.

And yet, he makes it out of the rot-filled cave. He saves Deli, half-dead, his body lying still at the mouth of the cave, and still half-dead as he walks over the horizon, never seen again. He protected Amangeaux, one who is forever indebted, her regret buried a thousand miles down a cave non-existent, a life owed to a memory of those lost and now lies dead beneath their feet.

Colin Provolone begins this journey a sword and shield. He protects and devotes and craves belonging. His allies are bloodied and shattered and their purpose lies dead, forgotten to war and revenge, names erased to the world they so desperately etched their nails into.

Yet Colin Provolone survives with a purpose so driven. He is a quiet survivor, a noble protector. He remembers his allies, their hubris, their desperation. He swings his sword so that this world may know peace a little longer, that the war may have served a greater good, that the blood spilled may have been worth it.

In nobility, in morality, in wit and in war, Provolone survives the manipulation, the secrets and the ravening war with greater purpose than he started with and more gained than lost.

Knight takes King.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAA

the horrors persist but so does brennan lee mulligan and guess what he's got even more horrors for you

Is there any greater blasphemy than that of an angel who fell in love with a demon?

He came to the earth at the dawn of its creation, his directive to enact God's will. The Archangels stressed upon him that, in so doing, it was imperative that he oppose The Enemy. They told him what he would face: one of the Fallen, a demon.

He thought he understood the nature of this creature of darkness.

But he was wrong.

Where there ought to have been ugliness, he found only beauty.

Where he expected cruelty, he found kindness.

Heaven had prepared him to thwart the wiles of a heart of evil, yet he found one that harbored goodness, gentleness.

A demon who protected the weak, the innocent.

A demon who mourned, who grieved.

How could Heaven have been so utterly mistaken? For he was assured that the demon had the devil in him.

But in this creature's soul, he can see God.

Beautiful. Kind. Gentle. Good.

To say nothing of his cleverness, his wit, his charm, his appeal.

The demon intrigues him. He subverts his every expectation. He is a fascination.

More than all that.

The demon makes him laugh.

Makes him feel.

Listens to him. Challenges him.

Saves him.

And as the centuries pass, he finds that in the demon's presence, an emptiness he didn't know he had is filled; as though the broken edges of their spirits fit together; as though they were made for one another.

He knows the Host of Heaven whisper.

They call it blasphemy. Abomination.

They wonder in horror:

How could an angel fall in love with a demon?

The truth is...

How could he have done anything else.