theblondeinthewindow on Tumblr

This is not about DND or OCs, but I have been wanting to prompt you about something something, the Venn diagram of the reason everyone loves the Carpathia post and the reason paragon Shep is the only correct Shep is a circle, something something hope after grief something something sea ships and space ships.

mylordshesacactus answered:

Ships are ALIVE.

Ships are alive, they have souls, but crucially, because ships are something we created, the souls they gain are--also of our creation, do you understand? A ship becomes what you make her. You get out of a ship what you put in.

A ship who's been handled well by honest and skilled sailors who love her, that ship will fight for you. Titanic was mishandled a thousand times over and was too young, too green, no experience of her own to call on, no memories to guide her--but she kept the lights on. She kept the lights on, right up until the last possible moment, well past her own death, because of the men who sealed themselves in the engine room knowing what it would mean and chose to die in order to give others a chance.

She called out for help because her wireless operator died at his post and it wasn't enough; but Carpathia was older and wiser and greater and called back, and the miracle she achieved was the burning light of every honest heart that ever lent her a piece of them.

Ships have the souls we give them, they learn, they become like us.

That's why names will have continuity in naval lineages, that's why the SR-2 is named Normandy again, because you can't transfer a soul but you can bring the echo forward and tell her softly who she is, who her people are. What she means.

(That's why it's terrible, terrible bad luck in maritime tradition to rename a ship when she's done nothing to disgrace herself. Changing a name creates a new soul and erases the old one--strips a ship of everything she was, under her previous identity. When a ship has had a run of bad luck, or her name is degrading, or she's been mishandled or abused, sometimes it's acceptable--a fresh start, a clean slate. But you have to be very careful. It's not a light decision, to take a living thing's identity away. You have to....have her permission.)

Our spaceships are the same way. A ship is a ship. Challenger and Columbia were trying--independent of ground control, independent of their crews, running on their own automatic systems, making their own choices, running rapid-fire adjustments faster than any human could have reacted, not understanding--they were trying to save their crews, long past the point where there could be no saving anyone.

Ships are alive and they think and feel and they fight for us, when we give them the chance. They love us the way we love them, no more, no less, and they fight for us, and sometimes they fail. But they try.

As per usual Sir Terry said it best. The way ships fight for us, the way they take imprints of our souls and become what we show them how to be, the lessons they take from the way we treat them, the way we treat others aboard them--it may be a grim, thin hope, an Arthurian sword at sunset, but we do not live in vain.

theblondeinthewindow

mylordshesacactus

01010101010101010111-deactivate asked:

All right, since it's the anniversary of the Titanic sinking, do you want to tell us about how the Carpathia sank?

mylordshesacactus answered:

i very much want to do that.

I feel a little guilty, sometimes, over this. I made all these innocent people fall in love with Carpathia, and then they go to read more about her and learn she was unceremoniously sunk in WWI and it understandably upsets them.

But I don’t think it should. So today I’m going to tell you what happened on July 17th, 1918.

There’s…poetry, in the story of Carpathia’s final hours. Sometimes things happen that make you believe in fate. Parallels. Things that ring true, the echoes of harpstrings across time. History doesn’t repeat itself but sometimes it rhymes.

She was a comfortable little cruise liner, not flashy but safe and steady; perfect for getting people where they needed to go. Arthur Rostron having been promoted and given a new position following the Titanic rescue, she was under the command of a Captain William Prothero. The British navy commissioned her as a troop carrier at the beginning of WWI, transporting supplies and soldiers from Canada to the European front. On this mission, she was part of a convoy en route from Liverpool to Boston.

This is how Carpathia dies: On the morning of July 17th, 1918, she is 120 miles off the coast of southern Ireland.

So is the German submarine U-55.

She takes one torpedo on the port side; the damage is serious, yet not catastrophic. But it knocks out her wireless. Her attempts to send an SOS fail.

The second torpedo hits the engine room.

Three firemen and two trimmers are killed instantly in the explosion that dooms her. One life would be too many, five men are dead and five families are in mourning. I do not dismiss or disregard that loss. But there will be no more casualties today. Carpathia has never given people over to Death without a fight.

The order to abandon ship is given calmly and professionally, long before the situation becomes desperate. Lifeboats are lowered in time, and filled quickly. They know what they’re doing, and they do it well. By the time she begins to sink in earnest, every person onboard is safely in a lifeboat and well away from her.

She stays afloat exactly long enough to save them. There are worse ends for a good ship than this: No one dies in the sinking of Carpathia. There is no terror in the dark, no drownings, no one trapped and forgotten.

The U-boat surfaces. There’s a third torpedo.

Carpathia buckles quietly and starts to vanish, and that harpstring…shivers.

There was another group of lifeboats, once. Alone and facing death, too small, too scattered, tossed like toys and struggling to stay together. Helpless on the open ocean.

This is not the sinking of the Titanic. Carpathia has done everything right, and her people are still alive. They can still be saved. But this is not the sinking of the Titanic, and the threat is not cold and time but German torpedoes.

And this time, Carpathia cannot come for them.

There is a cosmic cruelty in this moment. It’s wrong, an injustice the universe can hardly bear. It’s not fair, for Carpathia’s story to end like this. It’s not right. 706 lives were saved because of a moment of kindness and a friendly wireless transmission; she should not go down cut off and silent, unable even to cry out. This ship who gave so much, who tried so hard, who broke and transcended herself in a thousand tiny moments of bright glory, burning hope as fuel against the dark–for her to die alone, and have no one even try to help.

U-55 comes about. Its machine guns train on the lifeboats.

HMS Snowdrop appears on the horizon.

She’s a little thing, relatively speaking; not a battleship, not a destroyer. A minesweeper sloop on patrol–important but not terribly prestigious. But another member of the convoy, seeing the steam liner taking on water and understanding the radio silence, has sent Carpathia’s SOS for her. And Snowdrop may not be the strong arm of the British navy, but she is no refit passenger liner.

U-55 has done what it came to do; its crew came here to eliminate ship tonnage, not risk themselves and their vessel over a few lifeboats. There is a brief exchange of gunfire with Snowdrop, but U-55 quickly peels off to run.

Carpathia disappears quietly. It breaks my heart that we lose her–but far better, always, to lose a precious ship than to lose her crew. She will sink and drift more than 500 feet below the surface before she settles, almost upright, on the ocean floor. She will rest there until 1999, when an expedition that could not bear to forget her, that could not bear not to try, will finally locate and identify her wreckage.

But that’s in her future. Right now, on a clear morning off the coast of Ireland, the minesweeper HMS Snowdrop takes on 215 people–save for the five lost in the engine room explosion, the entire ship’s company.

The date is July 17th, 1918, and RMS Carpathia has pulled off her last miracle.

theblondeinthewindow

mylordshesacactus

01010101010101010111-deactivate asked:

Please make a post about the story of the RMS Carpathia, because it's something that's almost beyond belief and more people should know about it.

mylordshesacactus answered:

Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.

(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)

Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.

All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.

I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.

Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.

And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.

Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.

I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.

Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.

No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a responsibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.

They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.

This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.

In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.

At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.

I think the least we can do is remember them for it.

mylordshesacactus

I can’t begin to describe how happy and flattered and a little teary I am that this just broke 100k.

I may be the actual only human being on Tumblr with a post this popular that I not only don’t regret making, but am actually HAPPY whenever I notice a surge in its circulation.

I never intended this to gain any traction at all (you’ll notice there’s no sources or anything–this was a personal ramble, prompted in good humor by a friend after I jokingly said that I wished someone would give me an excuse to cry about Carpathia on Tumblr so I could get it out of my system.) I literally expected to get, like, maybe 20 likes and a reblog, from friends, indulging me in my nonsense.

It just….means a lot to me that it’s touched so many people. I see a lot of tags to the effect of “HOW DARE YOU HURT ME LIKE THIS AND MAKE ME CRY ABOUT A BOAT” that are often really funny, but overwhelmingly the tags on this post are from people saving it for a rainy day, or remarking in a sort of quiet awe that they never even really thought about her role in the story–and God knows I never did, I learned it by complete accident much as most of the people who’ve found this post.

And so many of you guys are taking strength and reassurance from the reminder not only that people are capable of amazing things together, but simply that kindness matters and that a simple, tiny act of compassion is never wasted. I’m just really glad to have been able to do that for some folks.

If I can just add one personal note. I need to emphasize something I only touched on in the original post.

I need to emphasize that Carpathia failed.

A lot of the tags and comments have a tinge of…despair, or guilt, or wistfulness about things like this happening so rarely. Or inadequacy, or just being overwhelmed or unhappy about not being in a position to step up in a comparable way. And I want to gently bring up the fact that this is still the sinking of the Titanic.

They did not get there in time. They did not save the ship. It can be argued that they may not even have saved a single life; we have no way of knowing. This was still a horrific maritime disaster mired in arrogance and incompetence and a lack of care.

If the response to this story shows anything, it shows this: It matters that they tried.

Even though they got there too late, even though the ship still sank. It matters that they tried. The difference between making the best reasonable speed after confirming the seriousness of the situation, and the miracle they pulled off–it matters. It makes all the difference. Even if it made no difference at all. Not one of you read this and concluded that I was stupid for caring so much when the Titanic still sank and all those people still died.

You don’t have to fix the world. You’ll likely be cold and sick and miserable and testy and scared, and unprepared, and in over your head, and entirely too small to be of any real use. It feels stupid, passing out blankets and coffee in the middle of an ice field knowing what just happened. It’s hard to feel anything but useless when all you can do is tap a wireless transmitter and promise help that you know will come too late.

It matters that they fought for those people. It matters that they cared, and it matters that they tried. It matters that they didn’t stop. If it didn’t matter, you wouldn’t have read this far.

theblondeinthewindow

mylordshesacactus

Like when I talk about the level of negligence here, please understand.

These are a group of the most obnoxiously privileged people in the universe, who paid obscene amounts of money for the sole purpose of gawking at a mass fucking grave and acting like this made them Awesome Explorers Who Did Totally Real Science while gushing about how it’s just like a movie with zero respect or reverence for the reality of what they were seeing. Just for the cool factor.

So when I say that the level of arrogant disregard for their safety on the part of the company that knowingly, willingly sent them down there in unsafe and unrated death cannisters while lying to them about it is so egregious that the entitled billionaire pricks who fucked around and found out have my complete and total sympathy as victims?

It’s that bad. It’s very, very fucking bad.

mylordshesacactus

Like I am 100% in favor of celebrating when bad people die but this isn’t that.

Yes, the concept of “isn’t this so fucking cool” tourism visits to the wreck of the Titanic is ghoulish; yes, it’s skeevy as hell that anyone signed up for them; yes, they paid obscene amounts of money for the privilege of desecrating a mass grave; yes, the fact that the submersibles being used were not certified or rated by any safety board is publicly-accessible knowledge and there were records of dangerous issues in the past.

(How many of YOU knew about them before yesterday? Do you think OceanGate made that information accessible to its potential clients? Be honest.)

What part of that changes the company’s ethical obligations? What part of any of that waved a magic wand and made a baseline duty of care disappear in a cloud of glitter?

These people are tactless, obnoxious, stupid tourists, and they didn’t deserve to die like this because of it.

OceanGate had a responsibility to be truthful about the purpose of their tourist rides and they weren’t–even now they’re still maintaining the fiction of these being “research expeditions”. They had a responsibility to have meaningful emergency procedures in place that they blatantly fucking don’t. They had a responsibility to give anyone onboard the opportunity for informed consent–REAL informed consent, involving being EXTREMELY FORTHRIGHT about the lack of safety testing, proactively informing them of previous near-disasters and the steps that have (not) been taken since to correct the problem.

They had, at bare minimum, the responsibility to ensure that they didn’t put UNTRAINED MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC in a death tube that HAD NOT BEEN SAFETY-RATED IN THE SLIGHTEST and had NO EMERGENCY BEACONS OR INDEPENDENT NAVIGATION CAPACITY, period, at all, no matter how charmingly they could fast-talk the suckers or how many forms they got them to sign.

These appear to be a group of people with more money than sense–who got scammed by a sleazy, corner-cutting corporation. They were charmed and painted a picture and assured that it was tooootally safe, with just enough risk to sound exciting. We’ve all seen the way these “innovators” talk. These people–except the CEO on board, in fairness–don’t deserve to die for their poor judgement any more than the idiots who fall for the hype and buy Teslas that burst into flames and lock the doors. Regardless of their character or morality, the victims had every right and every reason to assume that this so-called “expedition” carried risks comparable to real scientific missions on real, safety-tested submersibles.

It didn’t.

Have enough compassion to hope they’re dead already. At least that way it was quick.

theblondeinthewindow

mylordshesacactus

dumbfilmschoolkid

While every force available in the world is searching for the 5 people in the oceangate submersible, a boat filled with mostly Syrian and Pakistani refugees sank under still “unknown” circumstances off the coast of Peloponnisos, Greece (with the coast guard present). More than 600 people drowned but guess which of the two is making headlines

YOU CAN ONLY REBLOG THIS ONCE A YEAR

go OFF queen

Judgmental Sandhill Crane Saturday

theblondeinthewindow

fangirltothefullest

lord-momonga

*September 1st on Tumblr*

lord-momonga

You can only reblog this once a year

maudiemoods

WAIT ITS SEPTEMBER ALREADY??

theblondeinthewindow

abd-illustrates

perennial-lee

Anti-revenge narrative this, anti-revenge narrative that, I personally think that Inigo Montoya had the right idea when he stabbed Count Rugen in the gut and said “I want my father back, you son of a bitch”

galwednesday

A lot of revenge arcs end with the hero saying “there’s nothing you can do to bring my loved one back, so me seeking revenge is pointless.” The Princess Bride’s revenge arc ends with Inigo Montoya saying “there’s nothing you can do to bring my loved one back, so there’s nothing that can save you.”

theblondeinthewindow

fuckyeahasexual

badolmen

Saw a post making fun of Asexuals in the year of our Good Vibes 2022 so a reminder:

The A stands for the Asexual community and spectrum (it also represents the Aromantic, and Agender communities but I’m Asexual so I’ll be talking about that specifically in this post)
Celibacy is a choice to abstain from sex. Asexuality is a sexuality defined by a lack of sexual attraction to anyone, not by the choice to abstain from sex.
Every asexual person has different feelings on sex (an activity, not an attraction) - some are sex repulsed, some are sex neutral, and some are sex positive. A physically pleasurable experience is not equal to an attraction to parties involved.
The Asexual community has been around since the dawn of the Queer liberation movement, and Asexual individuals have always existed.
Aphobia is real and has done tangible harm to Asexual people. Listen to and learn from their experiences.
If you make fun of Asexuals and their community jokes (dragons/cakes/cards) you are Aphobic. If you’re Asexual and you make fun of these aspects of your own community or consider them ‘cringe’ you have internalized Aphobia.
Sometimes teenagers and young people will identify as Asexual and change their label later in life. This does not mean that all young people who identify as Asexual will change their minds, nor does it mean that all people who identify as Asexual are young.
Seriously what do you people have against the dragons and cake jokes those are classic and hilarious please deconstruct why you have so much rage for harmless jokes that’s not a healthy response to silliness.

Anyways reblog this post if you’re Asexual, support Asexuals, or really want a dragon.

theblondeinthewindow

getinthefuckingjaeger

hjarta

just learned that magnolias are so old that they’re pollinated by beetles because they existed before bees

scienceoftheidiot

They existed *before beetles*

somethingaboutsomethingelse

spacedandelions

Why is this sad? Why am I sad?

ignescent

https://xkcd.com/1259/

Bee Orchid

xkcd

sepdet

This is how I feel about Joshua Trees. They and avocado trees produce fruit meant to be eaten and dispersed by giant ground sloths. Without them, the Joshua Trees' range has shrunk by 90%.

(my own photos)

Not only they, but the entire Mojave ecosystem is still struggling to adapt since the loss of ground sloth dung. their chief fertilizer.

Many, many trees and plants in the Americas have widely-spaced, extremely long thorns that do nothing to discourage deer eating their leaves, but would've penetrated the fur of ground sloths and mammoths. Likewise, if you've observed a tree that drops baseball or softball-sized fruit which lies on the ground and rots, like Osage Oranges, which were great for playing catch at my school, chances are they were ground sloth or mammoth chow.

You can read about various orphaned plants and trees missing their megafauna in this poignant post:

The Trees That Miss The Mammoths - American Forests

Trees that once depended on animals like the wooly mammoth for survival have managed to adapt and survive in the modern world.

American Forests

theblondeinthewindow

getinthefuckingjaeger

beardedmrbean

Random Animal Generator - Perchance

theblondeinthewindow

indigowallbreaker

celestialwho-o

Reblog to give your followers each their own sword.

shadow-wizard-moneygang

theblondeinthewindow

parkkate

deebeezkneez

ze0nitis

this holds WEIGHT…

brightlotusmoon

This is power. Being able to maintain boundaries is a power shift.

theblondeinthewindow

queenofhearts7378

moringmark

runcibility

I liked this post, scrolled for like another minute before I went “SHIT FUCK SHIT” and scrolled back to reblog it

quadriviummuse

I always reblog this one when I see it on my dash. When someone posts their own art, writing, or music here they are really hoping you will share it.

theblondeinthewindow

queenofhearts7378

dyscomancer

This is a good time to remind everyone to swap from Apple to Android the next time they have the means and need to get a new phone

Android phones are almost universally...

Cheaper
More durable
More customizable
Faster & more reliable
Less likely to remove perfectly workable features just because they are "old"
Better for pirating media

Y'all have got to stop enabling Apple's insistence on being a fashion brand rather than providing electronics that respect your autonomy and decision making powers.

Next time you have a choice in the matter, go Android. One minute of being able to actually browse your file architecture without jumping through proprietary bullshit and you'll be hooked, I promise.

irisbaggins

JUST A HEADS UP TO Y'ALL CONTEMPLATING SWITCHING: DO YOUR RESEARCH ON WHAT ANDROID PHONE YOU WANT.

This is because there is a massive variety on Android phones, as Android is open-source - yes you heard me! Open source which means you can have a lot of power if the open-source-ness of the OS was kept - and it means there can be really shitty phones out there. A lot of "cheap" Androids are bottom-of-the-barrel stuff you really should keep away from, and some are so terrible it's a scam.

A massive tip from me, is to go look up reviews from reputable phone tech Youtubers. Misterwhosetheboss, Marques Brownlee, and similar have some fantastic reviews on phones, and I recommend Misterwhosetheboss highly. Both of them are incredibly informative, and with Arun's backlog, you can find everything from a low-tier, mid-tier, high-tier, or Extra-High-tier to fit you. Find a phone you think fits you, don't just switch blindly, and don't always take the most popular Android. 'Cos I can tell you, sometimes, a mid-tier phone can really challenge Samsung and whatever bs they have going on.

Basically, this is all to supplement OP's post, and apologies OP if I'm slightly obnoxious here. This is just kind of important to me, especially as I have contemplated making the jump myself. An Android can be wonderful, but choosing which fits you is such an important step. This is something your regular Apple user never thinks about; all most of us think about is if the phone is good, and if you want a fancier one, or if you care about the cameras. If we just suddenly jumped ship, we'd fall on our faces, or worse, shill out money to Samsung without thinking (ok jk but also serious because the bs with their flip phone pisses me off). Just, do your research and figure out what YOU want with your phone. Because Android unlocks a lot of doors to find YOUR special phone.

And maybe look up guides and how-tos when you make the switch, because some things may be the same, but others? Ho boy I've wanted to yeet a Lenovo pad into the wall from its absolute idiocy.

Anyway! Have fun! Screw Apple! Find the phone for you!

dyscomancer

I sincerely hope that this post reached and convinced people to stop playing into Apple's game. If I convinced even 10% of the people in the notes (about 25,000 at the time of this reblog) to not get an iphone next upgrade, and if the avg. price of an iPhone is roughly $750, then I have personally cost Apple nearly 2 million dollars and this is one of my proudest achievements

theblondeinthewindow

dycefic

writing-prompt-s

You’re strapped to a table. Surrounded by cultists. They’ve summoned their demonic deity and are preparing to sacrifice you. You’ve decided to go all-in on the only way out you have left. Make the demon an offer the cultists can’t match.

dycefic

I LIVE

With thanks to everyone who’s made donations and sent encouraging messages to help me get through Covid and Charlie’s illness.

—

(This document is a fair and correct copy of the ancient text held in the First Temple Of Transformation, being the first and most precious of its holy writings.)

An Account Of Andry And His Demon

So there I was, about to be sacrificed to a demon.

I’d already made two escape attempts. Neither worked. A virgin with unused magical potential and the right bloodlines isn’t easy to find, apparently. They’d gone all out with the security.

The ritual was well under way. It was too late to escape from inside the circle. I theoretically had no way out. I’d never learned magic. I’d always been small and skinny, nowhere near strong enough to pull off some last minute bond-breaking. If anyone was going to come to my rescue, they would have by then.

Theoretically, I was out of options.

But I’m a small, skinny guy who’s not strong enough to win a fight, who didn’t know magic was an option, so I’d had to learn other skills.

I’d never learned magic, but everyone’s heard the stories. Everyone knows what a binding circle is. Everyone knows that it matters what side of the circle the runes are written on, and if I turned my head until my neck almost broke I could see the runes they’d written. They were on the outside of the circle. And it was a triple circle, too, and the stories say that’s the strongest kind.

The cultists might have said that this demon was their god, and maybe the drones chanting down there below the showy sacrificial stage actually believed it. They couldn’t see the circle from there. But this demon wasn’t showing up voluntarily, I was almost sure. The cult leaders were compelling it to appear. I’d heard stories like this, too. They usually ended with a lot of dead cultists and one - or a few - leaders with far too much demonic power.

I listened to the speech the leader gave before they started. Shorn of ranting, it basically boiled down to ‘after this night, our bond with our demon god will be cemented in blood, praise him, our path to immortality will begin, and so on’. So… the demon wasn’t bound to them already. This was an important sacrifice. Possibly their first human sacrifice, or the strongest, or the one that sealed the deal.

When the demon appeared inside the circle with me, I forced down the panic with the weight of more panic. If I froze up, or screamed, or fainted, I was a dead man. The next few seconds were all-important.

Keep reading