Tag: death mention

courtugger:

“No, no, no, no,” Selga chanted, patting at her cousin’s faces in desperation.

The demon was vanquished, they should be celebrating. Instead she was crawling on her knees to put herself between the two of them. “Silas? Bard?” she reached down and shook Silas’ shoulder, frantically pushing the blonde hair that was sticky and caked with gunk out of her way-

Oh god.

She turned and heaved onto the ground, her gut clenching tightly as the realization of what she had touched.

Silas, impossibly tall, strong, and irritating Silas, had a hole in the side of her head. Her eldest cousin wasn’t moving, wasn’t breathing. She was just lying there…motionless, her heart had already stopped.

“Bard? Bard please!”

If Silas had been the arrogant, restless, always smiling one, Bard had been her opposite.

But even those grim lines on his face were smoothed out. He wasn’t glaring at Silas or rolling his eyes at her; he wasn’t moving.

Selga shook him by the shoulders to no avail, “Goddammit Bard, breathe!” he didn’t show any signs of answering her.

Smack!

Her hand stung from the force of slapping him, but still there was no response. She hung her head, her tears mingling with the blood that was oozing from the cut on her head. Her body ached, burned in several place and she knew some of her hair was singed from the vanquish.

But none of that mattered, nothing mattered anymore.

Her cousins were dead; they were dead like their parents before them.

Selga shook, from her hands to her chest, she was shaking and sobbing and distantly knew she needed to control herself. She needed to breathe, to bloody think and not feel.

But her body wouldn’t obey her commands.

And there was no one to help her. Silas would never again smack her on the back of the head and tell her to deal with it and Bard would never be the one to sit her down and sing her father’s lullaby to stop the panicking.

Breathe, slowly, head between your knees, he would have said.

Moments, or hours later-she couldn’t be sure, she finally stood. Selga ignored the painful throbbing in her skull and took the knife from her belt, slicing her palm in a swift, mindless motion. The slow trickle of blood was accompanied by a stinging pain, but she ignored it.

Meticulously, she drew the summoning circle on the dirty warehouse floor.

Somewhere in the back of her mind she could hear Silas bitching at her about infection and how utterly stupid this plan was, but ignored it.

The spell was a quick one, words in Latin that no demon could refuse.

Her tattoos glowed with power, the lace patterns that began at her shoulder and covered her left arm, had all taken on a golden glow. No doubt her eyes had too.

The ground shook, the building rumbled at its foundations as a black hole opened where the circle was drawn. And with a painful wailing sound, the demon appeared. It looked vaguely like it could have been human once. Maybe hundreds of years ago. All of its limbs had been stretched and nearly all of them looked like they had been pulled from their sockets and left that way. Its eyes were swollen, popping from the sockets, and belly distended as if it had swallowed a few body parts.

Selga swallowed and willed her body to stop trembling.

The more disfigured the Demon, the longer it’s been in hell, Bard’s voice reminded her distantly.

“You summoned me, wretch.”

It wasn’t a question and she forced herself not to tremble at the warped, gravelly tone of the demon.

The blonde scratched at her dirty hair, “Yes.”

The bloated, yellow eyes glanced at the two bodies, and then its mouth spilt into a sick, sadistic grin.

“My soul. Bring them back and you can have it,” luckily her voice didn’t waver. She dared not look at her cousins mangled, broken bodies.

“A-a-ah,” it waved a gnarled, twisted finger. “A life for a soul, witch, that’s the trade.”

“No. Both of them.”

“I don’t make the rules. One life for your soul or you’ll have to vanquish me.”

Selga clenched her jaw so hard she saw stars, bowing her head. “I won’t choose between them,” her voice was barely a whisper, but even she heard the brokenness in her tone.

“Choose, girl.”
Her hand twitched, barely a movement, and certainly not a decision.

It cackled maniacally as she screamed in disagreement.

She hadn’t chosen! She would never choose between her family-

“So be it.”

And it was gone, in a burst of flames and brimstone.

Bard sat up; he was gasping and clawing at where the holes in his chest had been.

Silas never woke.

@determamfidd

THIS IS YOUR DOING, YOU FED THE BUNNY, HAVE SOME ANGST ON HOW SELGA SOLD HER SOUL AND WHY SHE ENDED UP IN HELL.

Is there a scene where Merilin and Selga first met? Yup.

But I’m not writing in order it would seem. Hopefully Selga is in character, I tried to keep her as true as possible. Silas is completely mine, I needed another cousin to create a ‘Power of Three’ dynamic.

holy SHIT TUGGER

nnnnyaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggghhhhhh, oh my god, oh my crud, AUGH SELGA

this bunny is a HELLBUNNY *feeds it some more* THERE’S A GOOD HELLBUNNY

Hi! I just wanted to ask, since you’ve done a lot on dwarven aging, what do you think about hobbit aging?

Hey there! Lovely to hear from you!

Luckily, there’s HEAPS of info here. Tolkien loved his fussy little Hobbitses, and gave them plenty of attention (unlike Dwarves, I am not bitter I am bitter). So all this here? Is canon.

Hobbits age slowly, in comparison to Men. They come of age at 33 years old.

The period of their twenties is a wild and heady, irresponsible sort of time, known as the ‘tweens.’ 

For reference, during LOTR? Pippin is 29. (Yes, he’s not even an adult!!!) Frodo was meant to be a particularly rambunctious tween, who loved to steal Farmer Maggot’s mushrooms. 

50 is literally their middle-age, as the average Hobbit’s lifespan is around 100 years old. 

Bilbo is a VERY exceptional hobbit. He says at one point that his aim is to live longer than the Old Took, his grandfather Gerontius, who made it to 130 – and thanks to the Ring (and probably his own innate stubbornness) he made it to 131, before leaving for Aman where he would have eventually passed away. 

how do you think dwarven aging works? like–are they babies for the same amount of time as men and then age slower like elves do? do they reach physical maturity before they come of age? I’m trying to wrap my head around age equivalents and it’s not exactly working. especially when I try to think of Dain at Azanulbizar.

Hey Nonnie!

Hoo boy, I have written a LOT on this in the past: here’s some of my ramblings, here’s some more, and some more, and some more, and some more. There’s nothing really definitive in canon, and what there is is a little contradictory.

Basically, it boils down to this:

– We know that around 40-45, a Dwarf would be physically grown – or close. (Dain was 32 at Azanulbizar, and Frerin was 48…)

– However, Gimli is too young to join the Quest for Erebor, and he was 62.

– This suggests that they are bodily mature far earlier than they come of age?

– Emotional maturation generally continues for a longer period of time than physical maturation, at least in humans.

– Kili is 77 at the time of the Quest, and he is the youngest.

– With all this taken into account, I headcanon that Dwarves ‘come of age’ at 70 years old. They’d grow quite quickly – Wee Thorin is 37, from memory, and he is nearly as tall as Gimli… though he is the equivalent of 12 years old emotionally and intellectually.

(believe me, I teach 12 year olds WAY taller than me.)

Then they’d enjoy a long adulthood, very resistant to change and age and disease (Mahal made ‘em hardy, after all!)… before they crumbled comparatively swiftly at the end of their lifespan.