You five stand in the Dark cavern, only the dim blue sparks delineating the area around as each of you process Merlin’s story in your own way. He had looked into the future and seen doom, then done his best to stop it. For at the very least three thousand years, he had succeeded.

Then he made a mistake, and became a being of pure destruction which will end the world if it ever escapes your head. Yet his efforts had saved the world for another millenia.

Now it is your turn to save the world from him, except you aren’t nearly as powerful or as knowledgeable as Merlin. But unlike Merlin, you’re not doing it alone.

“So, what do we do now?” Arty asks.

“I felt a passage opening on the other side when I was waking up,” you say. “Should let us move forward, hopefully to somewhere I can put my mind back together.”

“Elliot, I have to warn you,” Helga says inside your head. “Whatever comes next, I won’t be able to help.”

“Why not?”

“There is movement in the forest,” she says, in a low tone filled with worry. “The Beast is prowling.”

You feel a chill go through your spine.

“Very well,” you say, not quite managing to keep a hint of fear from seeping into your inner voice, the memories of your other encounters with it flashing through your mind. “Then keep watch. We’ll manage without you.”

--

You fly one by one over the Lake of Rot, first Apollo, then Arty, then Linda and finally Brighton, then move down the new tunnel, each holding on to the robes of the person in front. The cane guides your way ever downwards, and looking behind and above you, you can see the path you’ve made roughly forming a great downwards spiral, down and down towards an unknown fate.

The cavern is slippery and you take your fair share of scrapes and tumbles on your way. Why Merlin figured it was necessary to make the way to Avalon in such a way, you do not know. Perhaps it made sense in his mind. Perhaps it was simply a challenge of magical engineering, and to create the Elixir of Life such structure was needed. Perhaps there was an unknown reason which you will never discover. Still, you keep on going only to reach a circular room with flat ground. On the opposite end from the one you entered, a great set of double doors, closed.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

You approach, slowly.

“Uh, Elliot? I don’t feel so good,” Apollo says.

“What’s wrong?”

“I- I don’t know. I- I feel thin. I feel-” you can hear his ragged breath, almost gasping. You reach for him, holding on to his shoulder, and he stumbles and holds on to you. A few seconds go by as his breathing stabilizes again. “I’m- I’m sorry. It’s better now. I don’t know what that was.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m good.”

You tap your cane again to get a better look at the room and freeze.

Arty is not there.

Linda is not there.

Brighton is not there.

Only you and Apollo remain.

[Cont.]

>>5977242

“Arty? Linda? Brighton!?” You shout.

“Arty! Arty!” Apollo shouts by you, much, much louder, and far more scared. “ARTY! Expecto Patronum!” The spell fails to make even a spark against the impossible darkness.

“Apollo! Calm down! They… they can’t be far.” You are just as worried as he is, as the only way out of the room is the way you came. Arty had been holding on to your robes until the moment you stepped back to check on Apollo, you’re sure of it. She and the others had simply Vanished. But you know that if you lose your mind... Apollo isn't one to keep his head straight when his sister is in danger. “Merlin didn’t create this place as a trap. It isn’t meant to kill people.”

“But you said it was ancient, right? It could be broken, it could be-”

“It isn’t. Things like this don’t break. The inner workings of this place might just have taken them away. Separated us for some reason. They’ll be fine.” You force yourself to say the words, for his sake more than anything else, as the doubt creeps into your mind. “They’ll be fine.”

You still spend some time searching for them, going back tapping your cane, but they’re not there. They’re not anywhere.

“Right, we… We need to find a way to move forward.” There is not much confidence in your words, but you say them anyway. “A way to open the door. Let’s start there.”

You hear Apollo hyperventilating by your side, and he nods so hard you can hear it from just the ruffling of his robes.

The door seems rugged and with some texture, almost as if something was written or carved into it. The poor vision your cane gives you, however, doesn’t allow you to get a good sense of what's on it, so you resort to touching your way through it. There appears to be definitive shapes on it, but it is difficult to make out what it represents.

“Apollo, think you can figure out what is carved here? Maybe it's ancient runes.”

“I… I can try.”

You tap a couple of times to give him a better notion of where you and the door are, so you see as he reaches out to it, touches the stone and-

There is a loud rumbling noise of stone grinding against stone, and the doors open.

“What did you do?”

“Nothing, I just touched it.”

Tap. Tap. Tap.

You tap, but your sparks do not seem to make it through the archway.

“Right. That’s not worrisome at all. Well, then, cane-wielding men first.”

You step through the archway and come out… In a worn down, filthy muggle apartment. The lights are off. There is mold growing on the walls and infiltration on the ceiling. The floor looks like it hasn’t seen a wet rag in months, there is the sound of a jackhammer coming through a closed window mixed with some unrecognizable jingle, the smell of filth and car exhaust fills the air. It is very muggle, and not in a good way. Somewhere in the apartment, a child is crying their lungs out.

[Cont.]

>>5977244

“I don’t know if you can hear me, but you can come!” You shout back. “It’s looks safe… ish.”

Apollo appears a few moments later, jumping through the apartment’s closed door. He looks around, frowning. Then his eyes go wide in fear.

“No. No. Not here. You shouldn't-” And you can only watch as he fades into nothingness and disappears.

--

You spend several minutes trying to discover what happened to Apollo, to no avail. Calling his name or even the most powerful spells you know produce no results. It takes a long time for you to grit your teeth and move forward, telling yourself that they must all be fine, that Merlin has not created this place to kill people. Forwards, because backwards is not an option.

The window a few meters away gives way to a barrier of blackness and can’t be opened. The light switches don’t work, but you can see well enough in this level of darkness after what you’ve been through. You move until you exit the corridor, which gives way to an even filthier living room. An ancient tv, a sofa that was once a light tan but is now brown with scratch marks from some animal, a pile of letters in a table.

Through another doorway, you can see a kitchen, spoiled food on the table with flies flying around it.

But in the living-room, in a corner, a christmas tree, undecorated, broken and without any gifts below it. In the other corner, a small boy, not two years of age, in a fetal position, holding on to his hair as if trying to rip it out, face buried on his knees. Hanging from a rope in the middle of the room, a woman with ginger hair and rope around her neck, gently swaying from one side to the other a couple feet above the floor, a chair fallen below her.

The baby cries somewhere else in the house, her screams piercing your ears, louder than the jackhammer, unbelievably loud.

Apollo had told you about this once, though you hadn’t quite understood it. But now you know why the door had opened at his touch.

Because this is his worst memory. Because someone like Merlin would never bring someone here without peering into the secrets the person did not want him to know.

What do you do?

> Write in

>>5977246
>Comfort the child-Apollo
>Avert both our eyes from his dead mom

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>>5977244
>But in the living-room, in a corner, a christmas tree, undecorated, broken and without any gifts below it. In the other corner, a small boy, not two years of age, in a fetal position, holding on to his hair as if trying to rip it out, face buried on his knees. Hanging from a rope in the middle of the room, a woman with ginger hair and rope around her neck, gently swaying from one side to the other a couple feet above the floor, a chair fallen below her.

>The baby cries somewhere else in the house, her screams piercing your ears, louder than the jackhammer, unbelievably loud.

off to a
start

>Write-in
>Make sure the father is absent. If he is, comfort the boy and quiet the baby. If he isn’t, find some way to get the kids away from him.

Could try to comfort the kids simultaneously by bringing the boy to the girl’s room and see if that helps either of them. Maybe Baby!Apollo finds comfort in seeing Arty safe even as a kid.

drawfag reporting
glad to have you back HeadQM!
we are so back!
>dead mom hanging
>babies crying
yeah...its good to be back...yayyy....
now, on to business

>Write in
>make sure Apollo is fine, maybe comfort him a bit
>immediately look for Arty
we know she was..."abussed" or at the very least we suspect she was, those loud cries arent bringing any calming thoughts right now, better be ready for the worst and interfere.
but i have a sinking feeling we miiiight not be able to do so if this is a memory, we might not be able to change that, i really hope im wrong tho

>>5977294
+1
Some people do deserve to suffer and die, laws and morals and society be damned. This is a fact of life.

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>>5977246
Well then. I just woke up and need to think about this for a moment.

Can I offer anyone an Arty in these trying times?

The hair might be a touch too red but this is pretty close to what I consider "auburn", given I have auburn hair.

>>5977246
>“There was… a very old memory. Someone crying. A broken tree. Old. And I wanted there to be something under it. But it was empty. The house was dark. My stomach growled. And the tree was empty. And feet, turning one way, then the other. Flying. The feet were flying. And there was crying. And she was so loud.” He says, and there is a deep anguish in his voice, his chopped phrases difficult to parse his meaning. “And this time… This time the tree was new. And there was so much under it. And… and I wasn’t starving. And the tree was full. And I… I didn’t know what to do.”

Well I had assumed the feet going one way and then another was Apollo talking about when he tossed their "caretaker" out of a window. And the reason why Arty could see Thestrals was due to seeing that happen, not her mom hanging herself. By a fucking rope when she had a new born child and an infant son due to the horrid situation they were living in. I suppose their mom had gotten knocked up by someone, had twins almost a year apart from each other and couldn't keep up with things like bills? I would assume at that point, she didn't have a husband or what not nor familial connections to help her out. I suppose the caretaker was just who found them. So at least in might not have been dad who tried and maybe molested Arty.

Are we going to have to go through each of our allies worst memories now? Because only one person was supposed to come here and at this point he should have had most of his extraneous memories ripped away by Nimue?

>>5977246
>Help the small boy up. Tell him to be strong. Hold his hand Help him to the room with the crying girl. Try to help them out of here.

So... we might have to go through Arty getting kiddie diddled. Brighton going through his worst memory, probably including Frank and Alice. The thing that made Linda into Raven. Fun. I fucking hate Merlin.

>>5977464
What is Elliot's worst memory then? Last Light Redux? I wonder if Apollo and Arty and Brighton will be there with us, or if they are each in somebody else's worst memory vision? If Arty, Apollo, or Brighton - let's face it, it'll be Arty - ends up in Elliot's, will they end up seeing Salazar as Lily in Last Light? She's gone from reality, but not from memories. Memory also means Pensieve could be used later on

I spent a week binging up to this point, thanks for the fantastic quest so far HeadQM.

[SPOILER]The whole section with Avalon and the Lady of the Lake gave me some massive Tainted Grail vibes which I absolutely loved.

>>5977577
I'm still reading through thread 3 properly, but I skimmed my way to here after finishing thread 2. i don't think Elliot and Arty will be able to make it to graduating from Hogwarts without a kid on the way. That's going to be one more thing on the Arty pile to deal with. She's going to kill herself from overwork with everything she's taken on herself, and she's not even asian. She has an insanely reduced lifespan, and she's only going to reduce it further with her constant tasks

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>>5977594
Enjoy the Christmas portion of the quest anon. You will need it.

Seeing his best friend die and not being able to stop it would probably qualify as the worst thing Elliot has gone through, given he came from a pretty normal, stable home and one of our goals is to figure out how to beat death.

Arty has show to be... somewhat self destructive in her own adorable way. Knowing you are going to die by like 35? What is the point of not doing everything at 100 percent? Why NOT ride giant monsters that could eat your face off? Why not try and buy like half the people in the school a Christmas gift; its not like you are going to need the money anyway.

I think part of why Apollo didn't go Dark after all they went through, all the power he has, is that he had his sister with him. I also think that until recently, he was probably the only thing keeping her from engaging in even more self destructive tendencies. To stick with him for as long as she could, and try to help him.

>i don't think Elliot and Arty will be able to make it to graduating from Hogwarts without a kid on the way.

Well there are free anti-pregnacy potions in the nurse's office.. I expect it will be about one month after our fantastic wifelette gets her diploma until we get the good news of the first of a very large number of kids being on the way.

>>5977683
I'm still waiting on Apollo to develop some magical video games for witches and wizards with his magical autism.

>>5977683
>Christmas portion
I already did. That's why I said there is no fucking way Arty will not have a baby in her before graduating. That will take ungodly levels of restraint on both her and Elliot's part (and on the part of the QM), and with all these nonstop revelations and life-threatening perils left and right, well... I suppose being for children and teens is why Harry never got to the point he did in his books. Unless here in the quest canon, that bit is an embellishment or omitted, and Elliot is following in Harry's real footsteps in this?
>free anti-pregnacy potions in the nurse's office
No guarantees on them being used :^)
>one month after our fantastic wifelette gets her diploma
You are assuming nobody will die before the 7th year ends

>>5977691
He reduced Arty's lifespan to like 30 years. In exchange, his own lifespan is how long now? 250 years, give or take? If he learns enough about muggle tech to sate his real clinical autism, he might end up doing much more than that in the wizarding world

>>5977692
>>5977683
For the record I'd rather not get Arty pregnant while we're smack dab in the middle of all these extremely dangerous adventures.

>>5977701
Should we even be thinking about getting her pregnant at all? Pregnancy is super rough on the average person, and I'd imagine it would be even worse for someone of Arty's body size.

>>5977701
>>5977707
Which is why I'm saying we need to endure until year 7, AFTER this entire plot ends and Merlin is gone

>>5977707
Absolutely, we should knock her up as many times as she's down for... Once we've used ancient and powerful magic to bolster her body's defenses. Short chicks can have kids, but women (let alone teenagers) with congenital conditions that dramatically reduce their physical capabilities and lifespan? Maybe not. Definitely not while they're running around fighting dark wizards and time-monsters. Imagine if she miscarries? She'll be crushed.

>>5977692
I think Arty and Elliot would be, ah, safe in any intercourse they ended up having. Our other best friend has a mom who is 29. Despite her kid now being like 17.Which is pretty fucked up, if you do the math.

There are male anti-pregancy potions as well. Just double up and it should be pretty fool proof. I imagine both Arty and Elliot are responsible enough to not bring another life into the world before it is time.

There is also always anal.

If Arty dies before she graduates, I will flip the table and vote for Elliot to become Wizard Hitler 3.0

I believe most witches and wizards in this version of Harry Potter live to be around 160, per QM. So it is more like Apollo accidentally took like a 130 years off his sister's life span. The longest a Rowling approved canon wizard lived was around 400 years, if they weren't Flammel or Merlin. I wonder if he was a twin as well.

>>5977691
It would amuse me severely if he decided that, no the Department of Mysteries is not for me and founds the magical equivalent of Nintendo. Becomes a wizard Gabe Newall.

>>5977701
I mean she wants a lot of kids, at some point... just maybe not before we sort shit out with us having a gate to Nothingness stuck in our soul, have at least one powerful Ancient wizard trying to come back, may be murdered by a guy so famous they renamed Halloween after him, and while Elliot hasn't even taken the magic equivalent of his SAT yet. Ect.

>>5977707
>>5977713
I have a number of female friends who aren't much larger than an Arty and have had miscarriages just due to stuff. Miscarriage in the early stages of pregnancy is fairly common. It is when if is in the latter part that it gets to people.

Arty may not even be able to have kids, given early developmental malnutrition, her condition, and what not. What we saw in the Mirror was a bunch of kids and grand-kids, with the people we love being whole and hale. The Mirror which the two smartest of the Founders concluded was a torture instrument, something that would show you what could never be.

>>5977743
> It is when if is in the latter part that it gets to people.

I've known women who've given natural birth (not via c-section) who've developed physical and mental issues from it, such as perennial tearing making sex not enjoyable for months afterward, incontinence, PTSD, amongst others. It just seems like pregnancy and childbearing would be torture for Arty if she survives unless we were to find some way of magically strengthening her body or her lifeforce.

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>>5977752
Pregnancy would probably not be... hugely fun, in a physical sense. At least she hooked up with a dude who is like 5'3 so the kids will not be huge. I am sure after this long the magical community has some stuff to help. Potions or something. Magical healing is also pretty great if it is applied soon enough and we are also muggleborn. So prenatal vitamins, good nutrition, and just going to an ordinary hospital are on the plate.

Wizards are apparently a good deal tougher than your bog standered human, up to and including Arty, to a degree.

As for the mental part? I mean one of her big dreams is having kids. Having them and being in a safe stable situation, I suppose we can add. Given her mom apparently roped herself due to a combination of post-partum depression and the bad situation she was in.

Arty dying shortly after her first child was born, only getting to spend a few hours with them would be a kick to the teeth and be a pretty tragic end to an already tragic life. Also good motivation for Dark Lord Hallaster to take the driver's seat. Elliot conquering the magical world while wearing a baby wrap and having a bag full of bottles and diapers is pretty fucking funny to imagine.

If Arty decides she does want to give childbirth a real shot, I can imagine it would only be after we can find a way to get her lifespan back to normal, at the least. I figure that should fix up most physical issues as well. I hope. I don't think Arty would want to bring a child into the world if she could be dead before the child even entered Hogwarts.

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somebody mentioned wedding dresses in the K&Q thread, so i got inspired and did this, i´ll probably finish it this weekend

>>5978264
That is great. I almost spit some of my Whiteclaw out on the key board. I fucking love smug Linda. We honestly need more of that in our lives. Scowling Apollo is pretty amazing.

And of course, Arty fantasizing about being lowered down to her wedding by a giant man-eating spider prop with a couple of tears in her eyes... Or knowing her, just a real one she made friends with. We should 100% percent have the small Acromantula Arty gave belly rubs to as our ring bearer.

Thank you very much for the art, anon. It has made the quest even better than it already is.

Do wizards even have traditional weddings, unless they are muggle-born? I assume most of them aren't really Christian in the normal sense, given that an adult witch or wizard could replicate most of the miracles Jesus performed, aside from the last.

Also I found out trying to figure out that question, that boss-witch Mcgonagall was married at one point and that, if QM is taking any more from the really bad play, Draco's wife had a malediction, a blood curse, which is why he is their only child.

One of the ways that curse manifests is frailty.

Arty is frail, by witch standards, and has a drastically reduced life span. The heritable part of a malediction is only passed on to the same sex children. So if mom got it, you do as well if you are her daughter.

Maybe the healers and Arty are incorrect, she is misdiagnosed and that is why she was born like this?

>>5977445
That looks awesome, anon! Love it! Did you draw it, or who did you commission it from?

>>5977725
>Our other best friend has a mom who is 29. Despite her kid now being like 17
Linda was 14 when she said her mom was 28, so it was just a teenage pregnancy when her mom was 15-ish, nothing tragic.

>>5977743
>>5977752
Healers have solved most muggle afflictions, so anything that doesn't kill you outright or that doesn't have a magical nature can be countered with relative ease. Pregnancy is certainly one of those things as plenty, if not most, healers are women and would have worked on how to fix illnesses deriving from it.

So unless there was something magical in the pregnancy, for example the man being a vampire and the baby draining the mom from the inside or some other insanity, the mom is probably safe, even someone as magically debilitated as Arty. If people in countries with great healthcare live in the "first world", Wizards live in the "zeroeth world". They wouldn't let things like mere non-magical illnesses affect them. I mean, look at Harry. The books say the Dursleys literally starved him so much his stomach hurt and his ribs could be seen through his skin, and he still turned out fine (and somehow, a kind boy instead of someone deeply traumatized and scarred). Because despite what some parts of the fandom might want people to believe, the Dursleys were fucking awful people and should have both been arrested by social services, and the only reason they weren't is because Dumbledore probably interfered so Harry would remain under his mom's Blood Protection

>>5978264
Is that a spider-silk dress? Because yes, she would absolutely rock that as soon as she figured out a way of not making it stick to literally everything she touches.

--

You take a few moments to look at the body. You can’t see its face, either because Apollo doesn’t remember it or because he has blocked it off his mind. In any case, it looks like it has been hanging for at least a few days. Either way, it is clear this hasn’t happened today. But the boy isn’t old enough to know that what happened in front of him isn’t going to change.

You can feel his feelings faintly, as if hearing a conversation through a wall. And you can feel he doesn’t know why his mom isn’t speaking to him anymore. Is she mad at him? Is she angry? Did he do something he shouldn’t? And the screaming and the noise, the noise, the noise that keeps ringing in his ear. The screaming, it’s so loud.

You reach out for the boy, standing between him and the body, but your fingers go through him. Yet he shifts, as if you had affected him on some level.

“I’m sorry this happened to you. I’m sorry.” You gently pass your hand through his hair, trying to share some warmth with him, even through the veil of this memory. “But we need to move. We need to go. Mom isn’t going to wake up. You need to be strong. You need to be strong for your sister.”

[Cont.]

>>5978370

You can hear soft sobs coming from beneath the blond head of hair, so you stay with him. Your mom would know how to deal with this. She’d worked with children who had been abused, one way or the other. She had been taught when to wait, when to stay away, when to touch them, when to hug them. You hadn’t. So you simply sit by his side, the side of your leg touching his, to show him you are there.

You keep on talking in a soothing tone, slowly, calmly, gently. You tell him how brave he is, how strong he will become. You tell him how he’ll go to a brilliant, brilliant place with magic and beauty, where he’ll never be hungry, where people will cherish him. More than once, you hear his stomach growl. The jackhammer stops, eventually, but the baby keeps on screaming endlessly.

Yet the child stops sobbing. His grip on his own hair relaxes. He looks up, face covered in tears and snot.

“Do you want to stand up so we can leave this place?”

He stands up. He stumbles out of the room, to the corridor, and you follow him. He pushes open a door, and in that small bedroom you see a double bed. The right side of the bed is messy, while the left side is only stirred on a smaller patch, close to the pillow. Without space for another bed, Apollo slept with his mom. The remaining space in the room holds a crib on the floor, one of its fenced walls broken so it no longer properly does its function of not allowing the baby inside to escape. Still, she’s laying there, auburn hair and tiny, too tiny, too thin, screaming in hunger as loud as her lungs allow.

Apollo just stands there, and the confusion and sadness inside him slowly turns to fury.

“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” He shouts, his face red. “She’s mad because of you! SHUT UP!”

But little Artemis Pertinger does not understand, and keeps on screaming. Apollo climbs on the bed and picks up one of the pillows.

“Apollo, what are you doing?”

He comes back, forcing himself through the broken fence of the crib. Then he takes the pillow in his two small hands, and places it over Arty’s face, pressing it down, muffling the sounds and blocking all air from going in. Her tiny body struggles against it, her faint screaming still heard through the pillow.

“Apollo! Apollo, stop!” You try to pull him off her, but your hands pass through him as if he was smoke. “Apollo, listen to me! You need to stop! You’ll kill her!”

But he doesn’t listen to you. Instead, he keeps pressing the pillow down, smothering Arty. You panic. You don’t know if this will do something to your Arty, but you certainly don’t want to risk it. You try taking the pillow away from him. When that fails, you try to summon the pillow to you. When that fails, you try “Expelliarmus! Stupefy!” but none of it works. You are forced to watch as Apollo holds the pillow over her face and slowly, excruciatingly slow, the screams stop.

The room fades around you, until all that is left is him, her and the pillow.

[Cont.]

>>5978371

“I didn’t know.” Says a voice behind you. You spin, wand at the ready, only to see Apollo, the grown up version. He usually doesn’t look people in the eyes when talking, but this time he seems to not know where to look, eyes wandering everywhere but at you. He looks… ashamed, almost horrified with himself. No. Terrified of himself. “I- I didn’t know. I just wanted her to stop screaming, I- I didn’t know. They came, they helped her, made her breathe again, they said she’d be ok, but I- I didn’t know it could- I didn’t- I would never-”

> Hug him
> Say it’s fine, he was just a child
> Chastise him for hurting her
> Ask him if she knows
> Other (Write in)

>>5978374
>> Ask him if she knows

>>5978374
I too have wanted babies around me, even those of my relatives, to die so that I would not have to hear them scream anymore. At the same time, I wanted to burst out sobbing alongside them and comfort them, like nobody does for me. At the same time, I wanted to brutalize whoever was letting this pain happen to the baby. Even now, "grown up" and able to stand and walk away from almost anything, and knowing better than I did at a young age, the mixture of contradictory feelings still return at times. It's only if I'm forced to remain around young children or babies, which does make some sense. Likewise, whenever I see childcare facilities or daycare buildings, I am filled with an inexplicable yet gentle sorrow I don't know why I feel yet I still do. I don't think I ever will either, outside of paying a decent shrink lots of time and money to help me figure this out.
In other words, autism is a curse and trauma is a bitch.

> Ask him if she knows
I can't even do the funny Riddler meme about this option. The moment is too despair-filled for me to do so

>>5978374
>Ask him if she knows
>Other (Write in): "it wasnt the magical pregnancy, wasnt it? it was this...she was "gone" for enough time to cause the damage"

holy shit HeadQM, i saw the update through my phone and it was so fucking good it actually made me get up, turn on my laptop and immediately post. NOTHING has made me get up of bed this fucking fast in years, you absolute genious writer

>>5978370
>Is that a spider-silk dress?
it is now, please feel free to use these ideas if you/we ever get the chance!

>>5978424
Dont fucking say that, Apollo doesn't know Arty's got her days numbered.

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>>5978374
> Ask him if she knows

>Tell him that even if Arty didn't before, she would always forgive him. That he made one mistake when he was desperate and didn't understand what he was doing and has spent a lifetime making up for it. Assure him that she would still dearly love him, no matter what. That you forgive him, despite how much you now care about his sister. He can regret what he did but doesn't have to to live in constant pain because of what happened.

Hey, wizard therapy sessions are a go! Didn't think this was how they would end up happening but...

So I suppose this part of the "Merlin Trials" are meant to show you your deepest regrets? After all the good happy memories were stripped away from Merlin's current life, he would be confronted with his greatest failure; being unable to stop Atlantis from destroying itself so completely they were functionally ripped from time. So his resolve could reforge itself as many times as needed.

>>5978383
I too have a touch of the 'tism, though it is mostly offset by being fairly smart and having been well socialized. You can make the argument I am not THAT smart because I have spent a large part of life on a Mongolian Basket weaving website.

>>5978370
That would be commission from Indonesian Gentleman who did one of Elliot a while back. Assuming nobody dies, I was thinking of getting him to do a few more so all Elliot's friends and Brighton can get some more art. He also has a buy 10 get 1 free deal so I am going to need you to create like 5 more interesting, important characters. Otherwise I may just have to commission Arty in mildly lewd poses 5 times.

I am also glad I misremembered how old Linda was when she told us how young her mom was.

>>5978444
>that spoiler
I have been here since 2014, and if all goes well I will remain here until I die

>>5978370
>she would absolutely rock that as soon as she figured out a way of not making it stick to literally everything she touches
Many spiders can produce multiple types of silk, some of which are sticky and some of which are not, to make it easier to navigate their webs

>>5978374
> Ask him if she knows
Eesh.

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>>5978448
I have no intention of leaving this place anytime soon. 4chan, despite as low as it has fallen in some regards, is one of the last bastions of the old internet. This place was here for me at bad points of my life and points that were great.

>>5978468
There is a sticking charm so there must be an anti-sticking one as well. And muggles are already experimenting with spider silk stuff for things like body armor. I am sure wizards have figured out spider silk clothing, though I suspect it would be fairly pricey. Which is fine. We are going to give our cute future wife anything she wants. Springing on a nice wedding dress is nothing.

>>5978424
What >>5978432 said. Not here, not now. Apollo needs his head in the game

>>5978481
Well said

what do you guys mean Apollo doesnt know? i was under the impression he did, anybody got any confirmation for this?

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So because I do medical stuff for a living and somethings were bugging me.

The average EMS response time in Britain is about 10 minutes, for the most severe type of issues. So lets say it was like two minutes for Apollo to stumble to a neighbor's door or for one to come in. I doubt a two year old staved autistic boy could reach a phone to call 999 or at that point even knew which buttons to press to get help.

Call it 15 minutes to get a paramedic there, accounting for having to say what was going on and to do the dispatch.

That is a lot of time for someone who is still in the crib to go with out oxygen to the brain. I have seen people including babies in a NICU come back from worse though that was in the hospital and they received ACLS. I have personally brought someone back after 45 minutes of cardiovascular function stopping during my set of compressions. I know wizards are more hardy than IRL humans but does Arty have a bit of brain damage? Like not super bad, she can obviously function like a "normal" person but is stupidly nice and has very little fear response to obviously dangerous shit like befriending huge magically resistant beasts which she has no hope of taking down or escaping from, given she can't apparate yet. Damage to the amygdala or limbic system can cause people to have inappropriate responses to things like extreme fear of things or the complete opposite.

And yeah the update was great but Arty's sad back story got even worse. Smothered in the crib by her brother, had her mom kill herself, endured years of neglect, was physically and sexually abused, saw the same brother who accidentally tried to kill her kill the guy abusing her, had to live on the street shortly, found out she will never have anywhere close to her normal magical strength or life span, again due to her brother... and still loves Apollo and tries to help him.

Still tries her best everyday. Works hard. Wants a family. Is in love with a guy who may very well be the next Dark Lord because she believes in his better angels; has told the "greatest" living wizard to fuck off and fought an insane patricidal man to protect Elliot to the point she almost died. Oh yeah, she also got told by the universe that no, she is not actually happy and that is why she can't summon up a cute silver bunny to protect her and the people she loves from voids in reality.

I mean fuck. She is either the emotionally and mentally strongest person alive or is really screwed in the head to deal with all the shit that happened.

Either way, Arty is a best.

>>5978615
https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive/2023/5831320/
>“Apollo doesn’t know. I never told him. It would be… cruel. I told you once. Magical twins are a strange thing. They can feed off each other in the womb. Take things they shouldn't. Like magic. Like time.”
READ. THE FUCKING. QUEST.
GAAAAAAAAAH!

>>5978628
>a post from november from last year
mother fucker i dont remember every single post and im not reading the entire fucking quest just to find a single line of text

>>5978640
I dunno anon, seems like a preeetty important scene to me, you know, storywise, character defining... no harm no foul but I'm not always gonna be here to spoonfeed you.

>>5978656
>>5978628

You should simmer down. Not everyone is going to remember every detail, even important ones. Realistically, whether or not she told Apollo hasn't come up since or been immediately relevant, until just now like six months later IRL and probably even longer in-universe. It's both understandable someone would forget, and even quite in-character for Elliot to blurt it out under such shocking circumstances if it came down to it. Anon asked because he wasn't sure, which is fair and fine.

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>>5978374
please stop hurting me qm

>Hug him

>>5978705
Mistakes from misinformed anons are well documented quest killers. If me being a little rude makes an anon second guess and fact check by themselves I consider it a net positive, and if they don't its not really a loss. More important now than ever when the tension ramps up and we've been invested in this for months. We are not getting another Dissapearing Hogwarts Quest, y'know?

>>5978735
nah, my guy, you need to calm down a bit more, im the drawfag, i care about this quest, i really do, i simply forgot about that line and im at work, ok? not everybody is gonna be able or have the time to re-read the entire fucking quest for stuff like that, you are WAAAY too invested on this, we all are to varying degress, but you are taking it to another level, im not gonna remember every single line of dialog, neither will other anons and im sure even HeadQM will eventually forget about something, now, if its either a very important detail or a single uninteresting comment mentioned from any of the characters, thats irrelevant, you gotta understand that everybody has different things going on every day all the time.
so chill

>>5978754
I for one am autistic enough to remember details like these in games and shit, but even then we are fallible. It is up to others to archive dive and ctrl+f their way to look back at missed details. He could have been a bit nicer about it, yeah, but I think in this case he's right about >>5978628. You don't need to read the entire fucking quest as you said in >>5978640, when this quest is 5 full threads in and easy enough to search through. The line from Arty about Apollo not knowing because she didn't tell him is also character-integral enough that remembering it is a lot easier than remembering other passing information, I believe.

In short, I think you are being a faggot here. This time, the fault lies with you.

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>>5978754
>>5978640
With the way you're posting about this, maybe you just had a bad day. I think maybe I was too harsh in >>5978775 too. Fuck, man...

>>5978735
Being unnecessarily mean to people also kills quests, now more than ever due to the reduced player base. Some people who read this stuff do not even speak english as a first language yet still engage and put time into these things.

If a mistake is getting a load of support, correcting it vehemently is one thing. Otherwise, just say no man you are wrong, here is why.

Or don't I am not your supervisor.

I mean I have reread this thing more than once and I get shit wrong too. QM admittedly misrecalled and said that Hannah Longbottem, nee Abbott owns the Three Broomsticks vs. The Leakey Cauldron and now that is an important fact in universe.

>>5978718
The pain will continue until moral improves.

>>5978791
>>5978775
>>5978735
>>5978754
Let's all just agree that it's a good thing that some anons are very observant and invested, and have a keen memory, to help guide us towards the optimal solution and avoid an embarrassing and/or disastrous faux pas? This is a great quest with a very civil playerbase, and I think we should endeavor to keep it that way.

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>>5978819
Sure

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>>5978819
i can agree to that without problems

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>>5978819
>>5978826

I agree.

Besides, Arty would be sad if we fought too much.

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Also fuckers, a losers bracket is now going to be hosted with the King and Queen tournament. So I expect all of you to vote for our girl so she can at least be the Princess of /qst/.

>they asking for colors for the characters for the loser bracket
i think >>5977445 should do? is the color of her hair the right one tho?, thats like, the only thing im not sure

>>5978921
I'd say that if it was in a person, this would be about right as the light and texture would bring out the red more, but at least for me, in a drawing the red maybe should be more pronounced. But I'm also fucking terrible with colors and can't draw for shit, so there is that.

Also, I got distracted reading the old threads of the quest and didn't get the update done yet. Probably a good thing that my own writing entertains me, but y'all are going to have to wait some more

>>5978928
I for one don't mind at all. I just finished reading thread 3 (this guy >>5978826 on mobile)

>>5978928
This entire Christmas mini-arc in thread 4 is great from start to finish. Meanwhile I've been wishing painful death on my own family for approximately 20+ years, but I'm so cursed that the powers that be are doing all they can to keep them alive and intact, preserving them of any comeuppance or consequence for all they've done to me. They are made to continue living specifically to ruin my current life as long as humanly possible. Total boomer death worldwide cannot come soon enough.

>>5977239
what would have happened if we had failed in the rot late

>>5979379
Probably death. Or a reset.

>>5979379
>>5979416

I imagine just a lot of brain damage. Maluses or what not Helga was already trying to find Elliot. Him screaming as his core memory was being ripped away would have maybe ended up as the same as when he glassed Nimue and hit a bitch with a guitar. QM is probably not going to end the quest over one failed roll.

If Elliot does shit his rolls up bad enough or we make very bad choices but have the Beast out of our soul, it would be interesting to play as Arty or Linda/Raven who are now trying to find a way to bring Elliot back and save the world.

>>5979379

Depends on how bed the fuck up was, and would take a significant amount of bad rolls and decision, but worst case scenario would be a catatonic Elliot devoid of any memories with the rest of the group trying to put him together somehow, and even if they did, it would come with severe trauma. With him "empty", it is possible Helga would have been able to take over, though I hadn’t decided on how exactly it would go. But your roll advantage was pretty good, so I was confident it wouldn’t come to something that bad.

Now for a slightly stranger update. Please just go with it.

--

“Does she know?” You ask. You don’t use an accusatory tone, just questioning.

“No. A neighbor had called the police because of the screaming, they- they arrived- if they hadn’t-” He’s shivering, and for a moment you still see the small boy, crying because his mom wouldn’t answer him. His next words are almost begging. “Please don’t tell her. Please, I- I wouldn’t- If I knew-”

And so Apollo finally makes sense. He had hurt Arty once and been saved by luck, by a neighbor who had happened to call the police at the right time, by someone who had also been annoyed by Arty’s screams to the point they had called someone to intervene. If things had gone a little different, if things had gone slightly worse, you wouldn’t have a girlfriend today, and Apollo… Apollo would have gone into a path you could only fear. But things had happened to work out, and now that he had grown up, now that he knew what he had done, he couldn’t bear the thought of ever letting that happen again.

If he accused himself with the same strength he had accused you when Arty had disappeared after her patronus attempt… That certainly explained him. Explained the trauma. Explained why he was so overprotective. Why he was so broken. Not everything needed an explanation, but that certainly explained it.

Had Arty been right in not telling him of her condition, about how much she’d live because of what he had taken from her in the womb? He had too much on his mind already, but maybe he thought her frailty was his fault. That him suffocating her had crippled her. You couldn’t discover if he did or not without telling him the truth about her, and it was not your secret to tell, nor was it the time to tell it.

“Apollo, it’s fine.” Your voice is gentle, a feather’s touch. “You didn’t know. You were hungry, scared, angry and sad. You were just a kid without his mom. I forgive you, and I have no doubt Arty would forgive you too if she knew. She would still love you.”

“She- she wouldn’t-”

“She would. Because your sister is the kindest soul I’ve ever met. You made a mistake once. You don’t need to spend the rest of your life punishing yourself for it. And she would tell you you were being silly for thinking that.”

[Cont.]

>>5979586

“She would hate me.”

You put your hands on his shoulders, so he doesn’t have any options except looking at you.

“She would love you just as much as she does now,” you say. “And I know that your brain is telling you that that’s wrong and creating all these awful scenarios where she hates you. I know. But it is wrong, because sometimes that’s just the way brains are. Because if she was here right now, she would flick your forehead and tell you you’re being weird, and that you should listen to the people who care about you. Because that's what I'm doing, and she is a far, far better person than me.”

And Apollo cries on your shoulder like a child.

== == ==

You fly one by one over the Lake of Rot, first Apollo, then Arty, then Linda and finally Brighton, then move down the new tunnel, each holding on to the robes of the person in front. The cane guides your way ever downwards, and looking behind and above you, you can see the path you’ve made roughly forming a great downwards spiral, down and down towards an unknown fate.

The cavern is slippery and you take your fair share of scrapes and tumbles on your way. Why Merlin figured it was necessary to make the way to Avalon in such a way, you do not know. Perhaps it made sense in his mind. Perhaps it was simply a challenge of magical engineering, and to create the Elixir of Life such structure was needed. Perhaps there was an unknown reason which you will never discover. Still, you keep on going only to reach a circular room with flat ground. On the opposite end from the one you entered, a great set of double doors, closed.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

You approach, slowly.

“Uh, Elliot? I don’t feel so good,” Apollo says.

“What’s wrong?”

“I- I don’t know. I- I feel thin. I feel-”

His voice suddenly cuts off, and when you reach for where his outline is, your hand goes through his sparks.

“Apollo?” You tap the cane again. He’s gone. “Apollo!”

“Apollo!” Arty shouts, and so do Brighton and Linda. There is no answer.

“Oh, oh no.” Linda says. “I’m not feeling well either.”

You jump to grab her outstretched hand and hold it tight. “You are not going anywhere!”

You tap the cane feverishly against the floor, as if not losing sight of her could stop her from disappearing. And it does. You hold her tight, and she leans against you, breath ragged for several long seconds before she finally steadies herself.

“Ok, I… I think I’m alright now.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, thanks… Oh no.”

And you turn around to see Arty and Brighton are nowhere to be seen.

--

“What did you do?” You ask a few minutes later after failing to find the others, when the great doors of the room open.

“Nothing, just touched it to see if I could figure out what is engraved on it!”

Tap. Tap. Tap.

You tap, but your sparks do not seem to make it through the archway.

“Right. This’s not worrisome at all. Well, then, cane-wielding men first.”

[Cont.]

You step through the archway and come out… In a familiar room. The remains of two great sets of armors are scattered through the floor. On one end of the room, a door is blocked by a great metal block. On the other, a great set of ornate double doors, closed.

Linda steps into this reality a few moments later and immediately freezes.

“This is…”

“Last Light,” you nod, mouth suddenly dry.

“H- how?”

“I don’t know. But we haven’t been sent there. That block of steel blocking the exit was the one Lily conjured.”

“Is… Is this real? Can it be real?” She asks, with an almost begging tone.

“I don’t see how. Time rules say you can’t go back in time more than a few hours. I don’t think even Ancient Magic can go around that.”

Linda takes a fiercer look.

“Let’s find out, then.” She rushes to the closed set of doors and pushes them open. Inside you see a moment, frozen in time. In the background, the great repository of magic, locked in its dark-silver cage. Raven standing over the body of Lily Potter, wand still smoking from the Avada Kedavra, utter fury and sorrow on her face. You are fallen by their side, arm torn clean off, looking feverish and delirious. And close to the entrance, at your feet, the body of Taylor Cycad, eyes open but unseeing.

“Oh look at that,” Linda says, voice filled with spite. There is an almost outraged look on her face. “How nice of this place to bring me here.”

“Linda-”

“No. Not Linda. Not right now.” There is ice in her voice, like you’ve never heard before. She crouches down by Taylor and gently closes his eyes. She presses her forehead against his, then stands up and marches towards the frozen copy of herself.

“Move,” she tells herself. “I have some business to attend to with this one.”

She flicks her wand and her copy disappears. She jumps over Lily’s body, cold fury in her eyes.

“I didn’t get to enjoy this last time. Wasn’t in the right state of mind, really. Well, I am now.” She raises a closed fist and brings it down on Lily’s face. It lands with a wet crack as it breaks the redhead’s nose. “Oh good, she didn’t just disappear. I can take my time, then.”

“Linda! Raven! Stop!”

She brings her fist down again and again, each time with a crunching noise. This is not like last time, however. Last time, the real one, she had been in grief, out of control, frantic strikes without aim. This time… This time every blow is cold and controlled, but not lacking in strength. They are the actions of someone who wants to see the other one hurt. They are the actions of someone who could cast the Killing Curse again and again, the look of someone who, if given the chance, would cast Crucio until the person went insane.

[Cont.]

>>5979589

You hold her bloodied fist the next time she raises it.

“Raven, stop!”

“Why!?” She turns to you, eyes wild, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Why? Why shouldn’t I just beat this bitch’s face into a pulp, huh? This is clearly just a memory, my memory, so guess what? I’m going to do whatever I want with it! So get out if you don’t want to see it! Or stay and pass me that rock! I want to see what this whore’s brains look like!”

> Hold her and stop her
> Leave the room, let her to her devices
> Hand her the rock
> Stay by her side, wait until she is done
> Other (Write in)

>>5979591
>> Hold her and stop her
Come on, she had enough already

>>5979591
ooh, so we are living everyones worst moments at the exact same time, huh? aight, thats cool, shit is gonna fucking SSSSSSSUCK when we get to Arty...

now, bussines as usual:

we helped Apollo calm down by letting him talk about it, he told us what happened and finally got it out of his chest, him telling us helped us helping him.
following that logic, i wanna say:
>Stay by her side, wait until she is done
then
>let her cry in our shoulder
because she will, she says that the tears are long gone, but this is gonna open up the floodgates again, let her get it out of her chest and then we pick her up just like we did with Apollo and tell her that she wasnt aiming at Lily, she was aiming at Salazar and she knows it, she just hasnt been able to move pass Lily´s body
hope this makes sense

>>5979591
>Remind her who she really hates
"It wasn't her, Raven. She was just a victim, her body being puppeteered by the monster who tricked her, manipulated her, abused her, and broke her. Lily Potter was a good person, just like Taylor. She was my friend, and I already lost her once. Please... I don't want to lose more friends, Linda."

>>5979603
I get the sentiment, but taking out rage in violent ways doesn't actually help most people to calm down and become more measured, controlled, and less violent. It reinforces a specific, unhealthy anger response. At least, that's what a lot of psychology seems to show.

The more comfortable she is casting Avada Kedavra and Crucio, the more comfortable she is with breaking open the face and skull of a teenage girl for the joy of it, the less healthy, sane, and able to come back from it she will be.

In HP terms, letting Linda/Raven work out that hatred muscle increases the odds she goes Dark.

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>>5979591
>You are just defacing the body. Lily had been dead for a long time before then. Taylor, he wouldn't want this. He wanted... well he was weird. Just like you and me. It's probably why we became friends. But he wouldn't want this. Taylor Cycad was so kind, and he wouldn't want this. For the girl he loved to hate this much. To grieve this much. We are going to bring him back and if not that? We are going to make him proud. I am so, so sorry Raven. I can't promise it will be okay; the only thing I can promise is that we will stop this from happening again. I, Dark Lord Hallaster will ensure it. But, if you must do this? I will hold the rock with you while we make sure the Potter family can't have an open casket funeral. You offered to use another Stone with me before, right? I am so sorry. I... should have been stronger. Strong enough to have never brought you and Taylor in to this.

>>5979603
I wonder what Arty's will actually be? Her being molested, living on the street? Finding out her life-span and magic had been stolen by Apollo? This thing showing her that aside from that he had almost killed her, and now that is her worst experience? So many fun options!

I can probably guess what Brighton's is, considering I have had to interact with Grandparents who had Alzheimer's so bad they couldn't even remember who their own daughter was.

>>5979607
+1

>>5979637
>>5979603
I wonder if the other 4 are also going through each other's worst memories individually, including Elliot's? This certainly makes for an intense bonding session

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struggled the most with the shoes of all things...but i think this should be a pretty decent wizarding wedding dress, right? inspired mostly by old victorian dresses and Helga herself, lemme know what you guys think, im going to bed now

>>5979607
>>5979591
Supporting.
Also, if this vote wins, we should probably actually go in detail with what exactly Lily went through. IIRC only Elliot was given the vision of what she went through before she died.

>>5979720
+1 this too
Linda doesn't know what Elliot saw from Salazar. All she hates Salazar for is killing Taylor, and doesn't know a thing about the girl that was there before. It's only natural that Linda equates Salazar to Lily's exterior, with what she has to work with. Elliot never thought once to tell her or anybody else this entire time since Last Light happened, which is still unbelieveable to me somehow. I don't really dislike it or see this situation born from that lapse in information as drama bait, as it's such a personally transmitted vision that of course he would not consider it. He told everything else to Linda and the others, just not this. Now because of that, we're getting this scene and Linda still not having got over Last Light to the extent Elliot has. This is the exact sort of thing I would want to punch Elliot for, for forgetting to tell the Lily backstory vision. So what if he never had a pensieve around? I don't think the QM is at fault for pulling a gotcha on us plotwise either. I bet he deliberately had this left out in-story so he could make it come up here for some spicy suffering. Could we the players have remembered it and put it in as a write-in? Yeah. Is this exactly like how we forgot all about the calendar change detail? Kinda. Does it ruin the quest? Not really.

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>>5979709
I think the shoes look fine. The slight heels on them are cute and the dress looks good. I have no clue what wizard fashion is like in regards to weddings unless they just dress up like muggles. I do need Arty in impractical high heels at some point. Could she even walk in them, given she has never owned a pair? Who knows?

>>5979720
>>5979726

I feel like we probably told Linda/Raven what Lily went through at some point, in the background.

Maybe glossed over some parts because Elliot would probably be uncomfortable with exactly describing the things Cocksucker/Salazar/maybe Merlin made her do to herself as a child or young adult.

We did explain to the twins what happened in the train with Linda filling in the parts we couldn't deal with and everyone but her crying some.

I think this is more Linda confronting her rage and hatred for someone who couldn't control her actions at that point. The irrational hatred of them after the monster in Lily's body killed her lover and took the arm off of her other best friend and the only thing she could take her anger out on was the body. The fact that she probably hates herself for being able to cast the Killing Curse and then defacing the corpse of Lily despite not knowing time was going to be rewritten. That she would have to look Potter in the eyes, knowing that she had done that. Knowing that the person in the body who killed Taylor is gone but still feeling like she wanted to do the same thing once more. Drive a knife into their heart again and again. Strangle someone for all eternity.

>>5979591
> Hold her and stop her

>>5979708
I suspect only the guy with the cane gets to see the worst parts of the person or people they came down with. I don't think Merlin would want someone he dragged down here finding out his darkest secrets.

>>5979768
Then will Elliot basically spill it all once he's through all four of them, plus himself? It also occured to me we have no idea how time is passing outside this Avalon trial path. The moment the party appears outside, they might all get insta-Stupified by at least 2 dozen aurors stationed as guards in the time since the message at the gate was discovered.

Completely unrelated but I read this going through thread 4
>“Wait, can actual ghosts have children?”
>“No,” Linda says immediately.
There must have been at least one madlad student throughout Hogwarts' recent history who decided to fuck Moaning Myrtle by any means possible. I bet this unknown guy spent many many months of his years here constantly sneaking to the girls bathroom she hangs out in, from the moment he awakened to his ghost girl fetish all the way to his graduation. Imagine.

Hey writefag, that pdf in thread 4 is lost to me. All the posted pdfs do not open with the suptg pages. I haven't tried opening them from another archive site yet though, just so you know. The file.io link in thread 4 is dead, and the google docs link is killed from breaking terms or service or whatever

>>5979771
I think when we make it through the memories of our friends, it will be up to the players if we want to spill the tea. I would suggest not doing so, letting everyone choose on their own if they want their worst parts revealed to one another. We already know Apollo desperately wants Arty to not know he almost killed her, that mom killed herself. She was googling who her parents were because she doesn't know mom roped herself. She wanted a chance of their mom being around. Maybe someone to reconnect with. Who would be there at her wedding. We don't know who dad was but I now don't think it was the same person as their caretaker.

We also know that Arty doesn't want her brother to know that he stole her magic potential and lifespan in the womb. When we told the twins and Brighton about what happened at Last Light, I am pretty sure we left out the part where Raven used the Killing Curse and then tried to destroy Lily's body and I am sure that is something she doesn't really want spread.

After this is over... a group therapy session might be in order, lead by an entire bottle of Firewhisky.

>>5979774
So wanting Myrtle to really "moan"? I mean she was weirdly endearing in the 4th movie... but she was also kind of a creepy stalker. I guess some are into that. I am sure in a 1000 years, yeah at least one person has tried to fuck a ghost. Hell one of the two romance options QM bet on is less than a ghost, just a spirit living in our head. And she did want to fuck us when drunk and horny, the one time. Could we have gotten the spirit of Helga Hufflepuff knocked up?

>>5979858
>group therapy session might be in order, lead by an entire bottle of Firewhisky
Gather in the Room of Requirement, and Elliot opens with his own worst memory as the leader and to make it easier for the others to open up with theirs?
>letting everyone choose on their own if they want their worst parts revealed to one another
But for that, Elliot will need to talk about what even happened in this sequence, which will let all 4 of them know that Elliot knows. Catch-22
>really "moan"?
EXACTLY. I don't think ghosts can take their clothes off or interact in any way with anything physical in the castle? I forgot how ghosts work in HP. Far as I assume, knowing nothing, that the most this mystery guy could have ever done with her is jerk off inside her form and that's that.
>creepy stalker
Probably mellows out with a living bf for 7 years. Thing is is that Mrytle has been a ghost since Chamber of Secrets events. This quest takes place in 2024-25. Checking the wiki, Mrytle died 1943. That's 81-82 years of time in which at least one guy must have went all in on her for years. Wiki also says she did leave Hogwarts to go harass her bully on her brother's wedding day, and they got the Ministry to kick her out back to the school. It seems she can leave and go wherever anytime, but she decides to stay at Hogwarts on her own volition. She isn't even limited to the bathroom where she died either. There's potentially nothing stopping her from constantly trailing after a guy she likes every waking hour all the way to and from their dormitory. She's plenty thirsty enough as both the books and the movies point out. All it takes is one degenerate teenage wizard boy to return the feelings and take things many, many steps further... Why is there no good material of this?
>that spoiler
Didn't Helga get married while she was alive? Or not? I think even if we get her a new body somehow, as hot as it is and as appealing as it is to me, that route will never happen

>talk about group therapy
i support this idea, could be a great team building exercise, specially now that we have Brightorn in our side with Godric inside him, so maybe its best if we manage to integrate him by making him open up to us

>talk about moaning Myrtle and preggin Helga
i mean...im sure it would be an interesting...experiment...
when Helga was Faith she was pretty into us for a bit, i do wonder if there is some of that remaining inside Helga, i would be down to giving it a go if Arty is ok with it, mostly for testing pourposes, who knows...Arty has been pretty forward with us, maybe she is a bit of a freak inside and is willing to give it a go too, at least once.

>>5978287
reminder that Jesus may have also been "Merlin"

>>5979911
I am categorically against trying to swing a threesome with Helga Hufflepuff.

>>5979911
what the fuck

>>5979981
Likewise. No haremshit allowed.

>>5979967
If he is, what can we do about it?

>>5979967
And maybe Moses or King Solomon, given some one "like" him is referenced in ancient Hebrew scrolls. Merlin had been for like 3000 years before he fucked the pooch with the Inderdict.

>>5979899
I can't find any thing about Helga being married. She was close with Rowena, possibly VERY close, but who knows?

Hepzibah Smith, the woman who had her Cup when Riddle found it, claimed to a descendant of Helga's but that might have been a lie to make her seem more important.

>>5979911
Linda/Raven has speculated that Arty is probably pretty kinky. I doubt she is down with true polygamy but might be okay with sharing a few times? As long as she is there. And when we got jerked off in the forbidden forest, our connection to Helga was probably so strong she got to have a first hand view of it and maybe shared our senses to a small degree. She also stared at Arty's fap bait Christmas gift, so who knows. We probably need to have a discussion with her and Arty before we really have sex, unless we can get her a body of her own before that due to Hufflepuff being able to share our senses and look through our eyes. I have implied that Arty might be a touch bicurious in a couple of my shitty fanfics, if she trusts the other girl and they too love Elliot, so even if it doesn't happen in quest, I can make it happen in a fanfic of a fanfic!

>>5979848
I was starting to edit it and a couple of the others with the intent of placing them all in a stable place soon, so I will focus on that one first and post the version 2 in a little while. There are only small edits for clarity, grammar, intent, ect so it should be basically the same as the OG.

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Also, the loser's bracket of the King and Queen of /qst/ it taking new IPs, if anyone hasn't already posted over there for votes, if anyone here missed the initial registration period. Go and make sure Arty gets a cute, tiny princess crown!

>>5980074
>spoiler
we take those, do it!

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>>5980089
After I finish the worst thing I have put to paper, one trying to figure out what would make Elliot able to cast the Killing Curse when seeing his best friend murdered didn't do the job, I might just cleanse my pallet with something involving Arty getting railed from behind by Elliot while eating Raven out. Quite possibly involving Helga jerking off in our head and commenting a tad.

Before that, I need to finish something that made me slightly sick to write, add a couple of things since QM upped the game and the update with Arty being smothered in the crib after her mom hung herself was very disturbing.

I need to dream bigger.

I remembered I do like creative writing after almost a decade of being to busy to try it again so y'all are going to have to deal with my shitty lewd and altfics till the quest ends.

>>5980074
>placing them all in a stable place soon
Yes please, do this. Do not lose your precious work

>>5980132
As long as you don't become a pest or egotistic nuisance and ruin this quest, your OC is all good in my book

>>5980189
I have backed up these things locally pretty well, I just don't want to pay for the kind of file sharing that used to be free. Pastebin can apparently detect "offensive" content now and I got an auto ban from google drive when I tried there with a burner account.

I don't think I am egotistical or harass people but who knows? I would never try to tell the QM my interpretation of something is more correct than the guy giving us free entertainment. Anything I put into a poorly written fan fic is completely non canon unless bossman says otherwise and I wouldn't want it to be different. I write this stuff because it amuses me. If 2 or 3 other people get some enjoyment from it? That is just a bonus. QM said he did liked the idea of Elliot giving Arty a plushie Nundu after I put up the Valentine fic, and might incorporate it, which made my day.

>>5979981
So am I. There is a reason why kissing Arty was a "Lock in" option, so no cheating or sharing, not even with your mind-demon. If Arty dies, however, feel free to have Elliot share his grief with whoever he wants.

Also, good god this was difficult to write and it was just half of an update. I should kick the part of my brain who thought writing the equivalent of several therapy sessions back to back would be a good idea. Well, here it is. I'll post the rest of it once I'm finished.

--

You keep on holding her hand, but your tone grows softer.

“It’s not Lily you hate, Raven. It’s Salazar. He lived in her body, but he was never her. He tortured and killed her long before Last Light. And before he killed her, she was my friend. She was yours. She was Taylor’s. And he wouldn’t want to see her like that. And he wouldn’t want to see the girl he loved like this.”

“Then he shouldn’t have died!” She shouts, and there is rage and tears in her voice. “He shouldn’t have stood in the way of that spell! He shouldn’t- He shouldn’t have left me!”

You kneel by her side.

“Then be angry at me. Then hurt me. Because I was the one who brought you into this. I was the one who should have seen December First coming. I was the one who should have been better prepared, who should have been strong enough to keep both of you away from danger.” You take her closed fist and press it against your own cheek, closing your eyes. “Hurt me, if you need. But not Lily. She was just another victim. Like Taylor. Like you.”

You release her hand and wait. It takes a long while for her to say anything.

“Why does it still hurt?” She asks, voice shaking. “I cried. I grieved. So why does it still hurt so much?”

“Because you loved him. Because he loved you. Because you each made each other better, and now that that part is gone. And where he was, there is a void that hurts. And I wish I could say I knew a way of making it better. Or that it’s going to get better. I wish I could. But that’s just not how grief works.”

“Most days are fine. Most days I don’t remember him. But sometimes… Sometimes when we’re at the Three Broomsticks and you’re not looking,” she says, sounding ashamed. “I look at you and Arty and, and I just get so angry. Because I could have had that. I could have been that happy. I could… I could have had him for so much longer, looking at me the way you look at her. And I didn’t. And it makes me feel angry at you, at her, makes me want to tear both of you apart. And then his voice tells me to stop thinking like that. And I do. But sometimes I remember what Potter said in that Defense class, that it takes a broken soul to cast the Killing Curse, and I feel like I’m broken, that I’m dirty that- that it would be so easy to just go with that feeling, to make other people hurt because that would make this thing inside me hurt less…”

[Cont.]

>>5980554

“Raven was meant to be a dark witch,” she says. “But I didn’t know what that really meant when I came up with her. Now… Now I see just how easy it would be for Linda to become one.”

You pull her close and hug her tight.

“I’m sorry,” you say. “I’ve been so busy with all this and with Arty that I ended up forgetting about you.”

“You shouldn’t have to remember me. I’m not your girlfriend.”

“But you are my friend, and I still love you all the same. And I don’t want to see you go down that path. I want to see you do great things, things that will make Taylor proud once we get him back.”

“I wish I could believe in that the way you do,” she says, face buried in your shoulder. “I wish I could really believe we’ll get him back.”

“The alternative is to let the pain live on. I don’t believe that there is anything after death, so I need to believe we’ll see him before that. I need to believe there’s a way to undo it. Otherwise… Otherwise it hurts too much, too. And if I keep telling myself that, if I keep chasing it, maybe one day it will be true.”

There is a long silence between you.

“You can almost make me believe.” There is humor in her words, but no mirth. “You should be a priest.”

“I’d be a hack.”

“All priests are hacks.”

“Then I’d fit right in.”

Another long moment of silence.

“I’m sorry. You’re right, Lily didn’t do anything wrong. But it’s her face that haunts my nightmares.”

“You have nightmares?”

“You don’t?”

You shake your head, still holding on to the hug. “Not anymore. Arty and Helga… They help me. Maybe someday Rowena will be able to help you too.”

“I’d like that. But while that doesn’t happen…” She pulls away from the hug and presses her forehead against yours. “I can’t believe in what you believe, but I can believe in you. So don’t you dare die, Elliot Hallaster. You have to live long enough to prove me wrong.”

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>>5980554
>If Arty dies
>IF
>Implying there is a possibility of this happening
do you FUCKING DARE to take her away from us, i´ll actually hunt you down if you do

>>5980211
OneDrive works well and has some sharing options.

>>5980641
Cringe.

>>5980641
Haha, sorry, anon, let me fix that:
*when

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>>5980691
>when

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>>5980641
I mean... if we had the twins come down to Last Light and shit had shaken out like it did before there would have been a d4 rolled instead of a d2 for who died. Everyone is up for grabs.

>>5980671
I might give that a shot.

>>5980556
>“I can’t believe in what you believe, but I can believe in you. So don’t you dare die, Elliot Hallaster. You have to live long enough to prove me wrong.”

That hit pretty differently.

I suggested that maybe Arty should become a wizard therapist when she graduated at one point. It turns our we were the real one all along.

The Arty one of these is going to be amazing.

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>>5980691
>when

>>5980691
Not if we can help it, faggot. As long as you do not railroad us into the max suffering trauma just for the hell of it or to spite us, we'll be fine

>>5980924
Nah, that's no fun. Tragedy for the sake of tragedy gets boring. Tragedy when the players make poor decisions which lead to a horrible fate, however, is fair game.

== == ==

“Uh, Elliot? I don’t feel so good,” Apollo says.

“What’s wrong?”

“I- I don’t know. I- I feel thin. I feel-”

His voice suddenly cuts off, and when you reach for where his outline is, your hand goes through his sparks.

“Apollo?” You tap the cane again. He’s gone. “Apollo!”

“Apollo!” Arty shouts, and so do Brighton and Linda. There is no answer.

“Oh, oh no.” Linda says. “I’m not feeling well either.”

You jump to grab her outstretched hand, but find just air.

“What’s going on here, Hallaster!?” Brighton asks as you tap your cane, frantically looking around.

“I don’t know, Brighton! Just stay close!”

The three of you gather back to back to back, you tapping the cane with one hand while the other is intertwined with Arty’s.

“Elliot?” Arty asks, and you can feel the fear in her voice. “I’m… I’m feeling sick, too.”

“No, no, no, you’re not going anywhere!” You pull her hand open and force the cane into her palm, closing her fingers around it. If there is any chance this is happening to the others because the wielder of the cane iss seen by the cave as Merlin… Then you are not letting her be dragged by whatever it is that is taking the others. You hold your hand around hers and wait long long seconds, and they do not disappear.

“I… I think I’m good. The nausea stopped.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Brighton, you alive?” You tap the cane, but he’s nowhere to be found. “Ah, crap.”

--

“Well, then, cane-wielding men first!”

You step through the dark archway and come out… in a downtrodden muggle home. It has clearly seen better days, and it is poor, but not dirt-poor. The wooden floor is marked and scratched, but clean. In front of you, there is a living room with the tv left on, but there are only blurred images and sounds coming through it, no one watching.

Arty appears by your side a few moments later.

“Elliot? What… What are you seeing in front of you, right now?” She says, wand pointing forwards, swiping the room, ever so slightly shaky. Her face is steel, an expression you’ve rarely seen on her before.

“A muggle living room, I think. But I don’t recognize it.”

“I do. This is where I lived. This is where I lived before the ministry found me.”

“This can’t be real, can it?”

“No. This house burned down.”

“Right. Let’s keep our wands ready, then.”

You step through the living room slowly, wands always covering all entrances, moving steadily. You pass by the entrance to the kitchen, plenty of empty glass bottles by the trash can, but otherwise empty. You keep on moving down a corridor, past a bedroom with a double bed, then finally a smaller bedroom.

In it, a small auburn-haired girl is taking care of a blond boy. In her hand, a bundle of dishcloth filled with ice, which she was carefully pressing over a big purple spot on his back.

[Cont.]

>>5981241

“You can’t make him mad, Pollo!” Says a voice that is just ever so slightly different than the one you know. She looks so small, even smaller than you expected.

“I don’t know why he got mad. I just told him-”

“He doesn’t like it when you talk back to him.”

“He doesn’t like it when I exist.”

“That too. Is it better now?”

“I think so.”

She puts the bag of ice down, then dives under her bed. She comes back up with an old-looking coin purse. It doesn’t look too full, but there is enough there to jingle.

“I think I can go to the pharmacy and buy something for the pain. I don’t know how much it costs but I think I have enough.”

“Don’t bother.”

“You’re silly. I’ll be right back.” She stands up from the bed and heads out the bedroom past you, when you hear the sound of a door slamming open.

“Apollo! Artemis!”

The boy stands up, pulling his shirt down and rushing out.

“Was this-“ you start asking, but she cuts you off.

“The day he died, yes,” Arty says, somber. “Apollo always took the worst of his beatings, always got in the way when he was angry. It got worse as time passed.”

“Did- did he ever-”

“No. Not like that. He was a horrible man but… He wasn’t a monster.”

“He beat Apollo purple.”

“And he’s going to pay for it. Come.”

She leads you to the kitchen, where a burly man, clearly intoxicated, is holding the younger version of her by the cheek with one hand and the coin purse with the other.

“I forgot to hide it,” the Arty by your side explains.

“Now what is this, huh? Money? Have you been stealing from me?”

“No, it’s-”

“Don’t you lie to me, girl!” He shouts, shaking her by the painful and already reddening pinch. He pushes the coin pouch against her face. “I house you! I feed you! And you steal from me, you little whore!”

He throws her to the floor, and the massive size difference between his adult form and her childish shape is clear. And it is also clear he’s not pulling any punches. If she had been a muggle, something would have broken. He pulls out his belt, folds it in half and slams down on her leg. She’s wearing shorts and the leather hits skin, leaving a deep red mark on it. Artemis screams.

“Get away from her!” Apollo shouts, jumping to grab his arm. The man lifts him and tosses him away, the boy falls to the ground with a painful thwack. The man raises his arm again and brings it down.

There is a boiling fury inside you, feral. Even if that was not your girlfriend, seeing this done to a child makes you want to jump at that man’s throat and destroy him. Arty puts her hand in front of you, stopping you.

“Watch,” she says.

“I’ll! Teach! You!” Each word is a blow of the belt. “Not! To! Steal! From! Me!”

The belt comes up red with blood.

[Cont.]

>>5981242

“I said, GET AWAY FROM HER!” Apollo screams, and the air itself seems to shift with magical power. The table, the fridge, everything that isn’t bolted down in the kitchen, with the exception of Arty, is launched across the room. The man is lifted up and thrown against the oven and halfway through the glass window above it. The blow forces the air out of his lungs in a scream of pain.

Both children simply watch as he howls, impaled into the twisted pieces of the oven and on shards of glass from the window. Apollo helps her up, and the man is still gasping for air as he bleeds. They watch, faces of steel, hand in hand as their “caretaker” suffers.

Then Apollo raises his hand at him and opens his mouth. But for a moment, he doesn’t seem to know what to say.

It’s small Arty who suggests the word.

“Crucio.”

“Crucio!” Apollo shouts, and the spell takes. The man screams even louder, and louder and louder.

The vision fades, leaving only the two children in darkness, faces filled with anger, and the broken man in front of them.

“H-how?” You ask, the confusion briefly rising over the anger.

“Some spells take years of research to discover. Some only need the right frame of mind. The Killing Curse has been invented over a hundred times, with the same incantation, the same wand movements, in many different places across the world. The other Unforgivables have smaller numbers, but the story is the same. Apollo had the intent, I had the will, and together… Magic happened.” Her words sound halfway between sorrowful and detached. But she does not cry. “I showed him the path, he walked it for us. I wish something else had happened. I wish that vile man had died then and there, that we hadn’t had the chance to make him suffer even more. But I don’t regret making him suffer. Even though I know it’s wrong. Even though I know he had a drinking problem, even though I know people shouldn’t just suffer, even though I wouldn’t have done it today… I don’t regret it. And I don’t feel like a bad person.”

“No one would ever tell you that, Arty,” you say. “Not a single person would ever tell you you were a bad person.”

“I know,” she nods, still looking at the man. “But seeing him scream… I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it then, and there was a tiny bit of me who enjoyed it now. When I discovered that I would… that I wouldn’t live very long, I decided I wouldn’t hold grudges. I didn’t have the time for them. I got over a lot of stuff. I wish I could get over this, too. I wish I didn’t have to carry this. I wish I didn’t have to know that I could want someone to hurt so much. I wish I could forgive him. Not because of him. Because of me.”

> One day, you’ll let it go. I’ll make sure you have all the time in the world to do so
> Some wounds never fully heal. There is no shame in living with the scars
> He deserved it. Remembering how you got rid of him shouldn’t be a weight on your shoulders
> Other (Write in)

>>5981243
alright, wasnt as bad as i was expecting it to be, still fucked up but not the worse i had in mind, so im glad

>He deserved it. Remembering how you got rid of him shouldn’t be a weight on your shoulders

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ok, basic lineart is done
i´ll do the inking tomorrow along with some coloring, this should be ready to post in the K&Q thread by saturday

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>>5981243
You told me you loved every part of me, Arty. I love every part of you. Every single one. You were shown by this person that causing other people to suffer was okay, acceptable. You guided Apollo so he could take out revenge on this man. Asked him to do it in your name, with out knowing what it would truly mean... And you feel terrible about it. You would never have another person do this for you, right? You would not use your magic to just cause another to suffer now would you? You and Apollo were suffering so bad it makes me sick. But the thing that made this whole thing happen was you wanting to help your brother. Get him some relief from his pain. You had found what you could as a 7 year old girl and stashed it away and wanted to use it, not for yourself but for a person you loved. However much you wanted this person to hurt, you wanted Apollo to not hurt more. And I love you Arty. So much it stings, in a good way. So please forgive yourself some.

>>5981305
+1

>>5981283
Post link to your art

>>5981305
this would be good in any other context but honestly I would think after seeing someone viciously beat a small child before being impaled and brutally tortured by two children (one of whom is your girlfriend) they wouldn’t have this many words or this much unequivocal praise to give
I hope QM saves this to use for some other time but for now i’m gonna have to go with

>>5981243
>He deserved it. Remembering how you got rid of him shouldn’t be a weight on your shoulders

>>5981243
> Some wounds never fully heal. There is no shame in living with the scars
Take it from the guy with the demon inside him and a scarred arm.
oh god, we're chuuni, aren't we?
Glad to see Arty never got molested, though! Whew. This is still awful, though. Fuck that guy.

>>5981243
>He deserved it. Remembering how you got rid of him shouldn’t be a weight on your shoulders

>>5981389
It took you THIS LONG to notice our chuuni main character? He's not really chuuni though, despite his circumstances making him out to be one by force

>>5981243
>> Some wounds never fully heal. There is no shame in living with the scars

>>5919642
>one of the things Potter said was kinda suspicious is that we have scars from a childhood injury
I felt the need to ask this. How do you guys think he'll react if we tell him that he was right about suspecting the childhood injury scars were important?

>>5981512
Probably smugly. I suppose we will need to not get immediately shot by him when we see him next, for figuring out a clever was to fuck with the Hogwart's security system, stealing 2 of the most powerful artifacts in the world, desecrating his mentor's grave, learning one of Wizard Hitler's calling cards under his nose, finding not one but 2 places of power...

Depending on how this shakes out, we may end up getting another student killed as well. Just the cherry on top.

I also have a crazy conspiracy theory which implies Arty may be insane and evil which I need to retype, since I accidentally deleted it.

>>5981421
Picrel

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>>5981548
And forgot the picture.

>>5981548
I think finally relenting and giving Potter some info at all is wise, even though he will autistically run with it. Otherwise he will eventually say fuck it and cast gun on Elliot. This entire quest we have been keeping him one-sided after all the good he did do. Question is what do we tell him?
>The Beast/Merlin rabbit hole
>The Founder shades
>Lily/Salazar and Taylor time corrected
What else?
>Arty may be insane and evil
I think this is too crazy to be real. If it is real and she was playing 5D wizard chess for more than 6 months without dropping a single facade, we're doomed. Also the Occlumens tutoring bits didn't seem to hint at anything bad with her

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>>5981557
If we tell him about having a creature in our soul which we believe will destroy everything in the world if we die and give any kind of proof, he probably would decide to go with the cut off Elliot's arms and legs, rip out his tongue, keep him on wizard life support till he can figure out a way to fix things option. At least try and buy the world more time. I think deep down he likes Elliot due to seeing a bit of himself in him due to both of them being tossed into situations they had no control of and trying to make the best of them. Trying to fix them. Trying to save the world but...

Harry is also kind of egotistical however. I don't doubt if he became sure that if he was correct, that Elliot could end the world, would do so... he would do the ethical calculus and do something to try and stop it.

We don't have a concrete way to prove the Founders are real, yet. Telling him about their being others "like us" would not likely end well. Get Linda and Brighton hurt alongside Elliot.

We can not tell him about Lily, unless it is a last resort. According to what he said about what he saw in the mirror, his greatest desire is to have his family healthy and happy and whole. He would rip apart the world if he learned what had happened to Lily. Apollo was very much correct about that. Potter is an asshole but he is also kind and good. If he knew that a child of his suffered like that, had hurt so before being killed, he would end up undoing the world by trying to fix what had happened.

Perhaps the best option is to gaslight him, make us think we are comically evil. Emphasis on the comical part.

I really feel like our disk four boss boss fight will be against Harry.

Hopefully when we get to disk four and not before then.

Now to get back to writing why Arty has been manipulating us the whole time. Elliot and the players themselves. How she manipulated her brother from childhood. How everything is part of her plan. That due to how she was born and the things which happened, she had to learn to to play multi-dimensional 5-D chess in order to make the world pay.

>>5979848

https://rentry.org/gk3km2h3

Here you go. Like I said, I will put the pdfs somewhere better after I run through them again to fix stuff, I did end up changing a few small parts, just due to knowing a bit more about Arty now or reading certain bits and realizing that was not what I wanted to convey.

>>5981243
> Some wounds never fully heal. There is no shame in living with the scars
First option is bittersweet considering how she won't live for long (could be interpreted as a promise on our part), the third option doesn't sound psychologically healthy although I can't really explain why.
Middle option sounds fine, but what really sold me on it was the chuuni part that one anon mentioned. I like the write in though, it's good and I hope we can use it but I agree that now might not be the right time.

>>5981243
> One day, you’ll let it go. I’ll make sure you have all the time in the world to do so
Y'know, there's already a source of immortality in the HP world available for anyone willing to put up with the downsides, i'm dissapointed no one has suggested it as a last resort

>>5981673
Unicorn blood?

There have been canonically shown to be quite a few means to preserve yourself to greater or lesser extents... at costs.

The only true way to fight death is to pass on part of you to those you love, those who walk the same path as you, follow your footsteps or else walk beside you. Your ideals or genetics. Voldemort... he put part of himself into creatures, objects because he had no one he loved and trusted, because he could not love. Because... well a lot of reasons, I suppose.


>>5981651
I think the last option feels bad because we would be pushing her towards a dark path. One we don't want her to walk. The middle option feels like the safe one. The first feels kind of hollow right now...

>>5981701
>Unicorn blood?
Think a more permanent solution. Also one that's not exclusive to HP.

testing

>>5981243
voting
> Some wounds never fully heal. There is no shame in living with the scars

>>5981722
I got nothing man. I was thinking converting to Christianity and saying your prayers ever night might be an answer given that according to most currently popular version of that cosmology, you get to "live" forever alongside god even after mortal death.

Also reminds me I was planning on writing a very short fic involving Elliot getting Arty to come with him to a small Hogwart's Easter service; not because he really believed in it but because he had good memories of going to church like twice a year with his parents as a kid. Wanted to try and share that experience with her, even if both of them still remain functional atheists which is what I imagine most wizards are. Just to give Arty an experience she might not have gotten to have as a kid.

And then write a couple of pages of her getting fucked stupid in her Sunday best while deciding to scream out "Oh God" vs. "Oh Merlin." Maybe ending with Elliot giving her a chocolate bunny and Easter basket.

>>5981755
Have you not read My Immortal, you fraud? The answer is Vampirism. -D, see me after class.
Seriously, that should be the first thing anyone thinks about if they wanna live forever. Granted, Wizards probably hunt them like rats so most people would get filtered but we aren't most people.

>>5981610
>Now to get back to writing why Arty has been manipulating us the whole time. Elliot and the players themselves. How she manipulated her brother from childhood. How everything is part of her plan. That due to how she was born and the things which happened, she had to learn to to play multi-dimensional 5-D chess in order to make the world pay.
I hope this isn't a common running thread in all your fics about this quest, because that would be very boring and stupid to me

>>5981765
No, I haven't. The last fanfic I recall reading some of was either Harry Potter and the Nat 20 or Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.

Vampires are apparently illegal to just straight up kill, like werewolves, unless they do something wrong. Can vampires who were wizards even still use magic? And the oldest vampire I could find out about on the wiki only lived like 200 years. Might be because at some point you end up just cracking and start assaulting people for their blood and get destroyed or that they just have an expiration date.

If things got desperate enough... Arty becoming infected might extend her life span I suppose.

And her relying on Elliot for blood, him cutting open his hand and feeding her is pretty fucking hot. Him loving her even after she became like that, doing what he had to to ensure her survival is pretty hot. But we are playing a Harry Potter quest not a Twilight one.

Is the fic you referenced any good? I have free time for the next few days.

>>5981812
Figures JK would make vampires shitty like everything else, I'm just going to ignore that. Nat 20 is actually where I got the idea, Milo is the one who thinks voldie was a vampire cuz he does't know he's a complete moron.
Its a shitty joke fic making fun of emo girl and draco simps, but its funny enough that it got pretty famous, arguably the most well known HP fic. Fucking Linda is a reference to it.

>princess voting has started
>the sayan girl is easily the most popular
god dammit, we have to vote for her opponents so we can get her out, sayans are OP as fuck

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>>5981778
It isn't.

This was just a crazy conspiracy theory I thought up coming back from the store after reading the last update. I am 99% sure it isn't correct in any way so probably wont even post it, but who is the last person Elliot would see coming? It just was interesting to speculate on a very dark timeline.

I typically just made the lewd version of her just very horny and broken to a degree. Since I was working from the assumption she had been sexually abused and not just all the other kinds. Had occasions of having issues with intimacy, with being with a man but pushed through it for Elliot. Became more comfortable with it but could still be weird to a degree. Was very Hufflepuff in a lot of regards. So if you want to read my crappy fanfic of a quest, you don't have to worry about that, at least.

This one doesn't even feature her and is not lewd at all unless a kiss counts. It is probably my personal favorite since it gives Apollo some spotlight.

https://rentry.org/iey5nf8c

>>5981862
I don't really like vote rigging but I am not into muscle girls and while I need to catch up with the other quest, the previous one was very good.

You stand in front of her, blocking her view of the man, and wrap your arms around her.

“Some wounds never fully heal,” you say, planting a kiss on top of her head. You pull out the glove on your left hand and gently caress her cheek with your scarred hand. “There is no shame living with the scars. They just show you were strong enough to survive.”

She leans against your touch, closing her eyes.

“If you could get rid of your scars, wouldn’t you? If you could not have them-”

“Then I wouldn’t. But I can’t. And maybe there is a way to make them go away, maybe there is a way to fix them, but while I don’t find that way, I can either wince when I look at them, or accept that it is just the way things are.”

You take her hands in yours and place your glove on them.

“But if you say you will try, not saying that it was right, not saying that it was wrong, but simply accepting it was a thing in your past, just like any other day… I’m willing to do it with you.”

She finally looks up at you.

“You’ll be the one who has to walk with it exposed,” she says.

“And you’ll be the one who has to talk about it. I’m not sure if mine is worse.”

“Talking is pretty difficult…” She says, biting her lower lip. “But maybe not in front of Potter.”

“Merlin, no. He doesn’t need any more reason to think we’re all evil. But with me, with us… You don’t need to hide it.”

She stands at the tip of her toes and looks again at the man. Then back at you.

“Alright. If it’s with you… I can try.”

And she smiles. It’s not a big smile. It is shy and meek. But it is better than the steel that was there moments before.

== == ==

You feel yourself gasp as three different sets of memories clash within your mind, all happening in parallel. You fall to the floor, once more into the darkness.

“Hallaster! Is that you?” Brighton’s voice asks, sounding both surprised and relieved.

“Yep,” you say, gritting your teeth through the thankfully brief headache. “I’m here. Is everyone here?”

“I am.”

“Still here, yeah.”

“I’m with you.”

“Lovely.” You push yourself up, tapping the cane to make sure everybody looks alright, or as much as you can do so in this darkness.

“What happened?” Brighton asks. “Three of you just started feeling sick, then disappeared. And Hallaster disappeared too.”

“As best as I can guess, Merlin. A way to show… a person’s deepest secret, or maybe their worst day, as far as I understand.”

“Doesn’t sound pleasant.”

“It wasn’t, but we got through it. What I don’t understand is why you weren't pulled in too.”

“I don’t have secrets, Hallaster. Or trauma.”

[Cont]

>>5981943

“You don’t have trauma?”

“Not on a day, no. My grandparents? Yeah, it hurts. Hurts like hell. But I grew up with it. My worst day was the day my hopes of them getting better were crushed, and you were there for that. Hells, you caused it.” He sighs. “Not everyone has a tragic backstory filled with tragedy, Hallaster, even if you seem to have surrounded yourself with people who do. Really, most of Hogwarts is just fine. I don’t know where you found these.”

You give a tired laugh, a mean voice echoing back at you.

“You like broken things, Little Elliot,” Salazar had told you, and he might have been right.

“So, what do we do now?” Brighton asks.

You turn to look at the door which you have crossed three times now, and tap it with the cane. You hear the sound of stone grinding against stone, and it opens, letting in bright, blinding white light.

“If I’m right,” you say, putting your hand over your eyes to stop some of the light from hurting your eyes. “Albedo. The purification, where all the foulness of nigredo is washed away.”

“So, that should be good, right?” Arty asks, hopeful. “It should be nice?”

“Somehow, I doubt it.”

And you step through the archway once more.

-- Interlude --

Things were happening in a flash, a whirlwind of information with Nienna right in the middle of it.

A while ago, about the time the prisoners had gone wild, the Dark Mark had been seen above Hogwarts, five students had been reported as missing and, if she had overheard the conversation between Potter and the Minister correctly - completely by accident, of course - the Elder Wand had been taken, along with something else.

Potter, the Minister and her husband had descended upon the prison like a thunderstorm, barking orders that no one dared refuse. All prisoners had been chained and put in iron gloves, in addition to being in their cells. Then, Potter had descended to the deepest cell, the one with the man with no name and crazy eyes, and shouted at him for a while. When he left, carrying something wrapped in a thick piece of fabric and with the Minister right after him, Weasley had stayed behind interrogating the other prisoners.

And while he was doing that… Nienna might as well do some investigating of her own. If she didn’t find anything, no harm done. If she did, she could give it to the Ministry, use it to finally move her career forward.

Or, alternatively, she could sell the information to the highest bidder and buy herself a nice house somewhere without dark wizards. She still hadn’t decided which way she’d go.

“Potter seemed awfully angry with you,” she says through the thin slot on the door.

“Curious little birdie, aren’t you?”

“Always. I was in Ravenclaw, after all. So, what did you do?”

“Nothing. Didn’t you hear? I’m innocent.”

[Cont.]

>>5981945

“Of course you are. Everyone here is. But if you were to have done something… well, that would be interesting, wouldn’t it? So why don’t we make a deal? I can’t get you out of here. No one can. But-”

“Potter can.”

“No, he can’t. Not even him. There are enough security enchantments here that an army wouldn’t be able to break these walls down.”

“If you say so, little birdie,” he scoffs.

“So I can’t get you out," she says. "But I could get information out. Or in. If you were to give me something useful to know in return, I mean.”

“Nienna!” Comes a voice from above. “What are you doing there?”

“Just checking if Potter didn’t rough him up too much! Wouldn’t want us to deal with a rotting body in addition to whatever it is that is going on out there!” She shouts back. Then, in a lower voice. “Think about what I said.”

And she skips back up the tower.

-- Interlude Over --

Sorry for the slow update rhythm, but life started happening on the day after I started the thread, coupled with these being difficult updates to write.

I have a birthday tomorrow, so I'm not sure I'll be able to post, but things should return to one post a day soon.

WHO is DOWN THERE?! my paranoia is gonna kill me now with this "thread of information leaking"

>>5981952
It's our wonderful tutor

What's more concerning is what came out in cloth.

>>5981955
+1 to this sense of dread.

>>5981949
Thanks for the heads up, HQM.

>>5981952
It is Crouch. He used his "little birdie" term with this ladder hopping and previously stated corrupt cop. Guess we won't be getting any more lessons if we make it back from Avalon since this silly bitch is probably going to enable Barty to escape. She was in Ravenclaw but wasn't smart enough to not be caught for shit and demoted, was she?

Nienna is a Tolkien reference but not sure if that means anything.

I am glad the shit storm we caused is spreading. These interludes are pretty fun.

Now the big questions are what was Potter carrying after a visit to Crouch and what the REAL reason Brighton didn't have his darkest secret, most horrible memory revealed.

I will think on it and maybe come up with some insane ideas regarding those answers.

>>5981945
Happy birthday QM. Mine is pretty soon as well.

>>5981982
Just to elaborate,

>“No, he can’t. Not even him. There are enough security enchantments here that an army wouldn’t be able to break these walls down.”

Grindlewald got out of US Wizard max security. Crouch and Black managed to escape Azkaban, something people thought was impossible. Voldemort was able to blow a hole in the same place and spring his best followers from it. Voldemort was also able to invade Hogwarts, despite it being protected by it's Ancient magic and a large number of skilled adult wizards plus a fuck ton of teen ones. She had just heard that an object of Power had disappeared from what is likely one of the most secure places in Britain. Harry managed to break into Gringrotts when he was still a student, something also though impossible.

Never say something is impossible lady. Especially when similar things have happened in living memory.

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>>5981812
>my immortal
>good

>>5982138
Never read it before. I recalled a couple of anons asking in the 1st thread if Raven's name was a reference but that is it.

I took a look for like 5 minutes last night and... yeah. Not my cup of tea.

So went and thought it over, my crazy conspiracy about Arty.

How the fuck did she know an appropriate incantation for the Torture Curse, being able to guide Apollo to use it? Yeah, people can independently derive spells but these are grown wizards. People who know magic exists. She was an 8 year old girl in a terrible situation who had, supposedly, no idea magic was real till Apollo tossed an entire kitchen at a guy. And even though he wanted their caretaker to suffer too... she knew how to guide the guy to use a massively powerful and evil curse. To use it with out a wand. Accidental magic can be strong, very strong, but casting a real spell with no wand like Apollo did?

Wandless magic takes incredible skill. Even Dumbledore for all his power and experience couldn't toss real spells out; he could light candles or maybe summon small objects to him, ect.

But he pulled off a real spell after his initial use of magic, a powerful one, taught to him by his 8 year old sister by telling him the right word to use and intentionally getting caught and taking a beating because she tried to "help" Apollo; put him in the right frame of mind....

I don't think an abusive caretaker who beat them bloody is paying for shitty Latin lessons.

Where on Earth would a small girl learn that? Why could her and Apollo just stand there holding hands while torturing a man as he was already dying?

>They watch, faces of steel, hand in hand as their “caretaker” suffers.

I will remind ya'll that per Arty the house burned down after this.

Or was burned down. I wonder if there was a small auburn haired girl there who would have thought of that, to hide the evidence. To help give her a tragic enough back story that no one would ever suspect her. One who could have slowly emotionally manipulating her far more powerful twin for years, being nice to him, trying to "help him", had figured out that he tried to kill her and maybe succeed to a degree then used that subtly against him to turn him into her attack dog.

When they had been enrolled in Hogwarts, perhaps this young girl got a job at a very popular tavern, endeared herself to the owner who just so happens to be the wife a professor, then used that job to scout for a mark. Happens to be one showed up who "saved" her from a person he already didn't like, based on Elliot's memories, then told the entire inn he was going to find a way to live forever. Specifically mentions a certain place and then proved himself competent.

Acted vulnerable toward him, shared her back story so he would want to protect her more. Accepted him despite his weird eccentricities and then because of his physical damage.

Arty is a psychopath who may very well have a large part of Merlin in her, the bad part.

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>>5982180

>>5981812
>Vampires are apparently illegal to just straight up kill
Lorcan d'Eath spent nineteen weeks at number one on Magical Britain's music charts and was essentially Justin Timberlake for the magical girl set in the 90s.

>>5982180
「My Immortal」 is an old meme, a classic example of an incredibly bad fanfic (almost certainly a deliberately bad one) in which all the main characetrs of Harry Potter become goth Satanists and fall in love with a Mary Sue named Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way.

>The conspiracy
Harry Potter disappeared a bunch of glass and freed some snakes without a word or gesture OR wand, right?

>shitty Latin lessons
Assuming what we just learned from Arty is accurate, any wizard anywhere in the world who derives a killing curse independently learns the words 'avada kadevra', so likewise, 'crucio' must be a universal word of power, rehardless of your spoken language or culture.

>>5981945
>five students had been reported as missing
SUSPECTED missing, damn it! There's no way they checked every single named spider we hid at school already.
Unless they're talking about a different set of five students. Which would be very concerning if so.
Time to paranoia theorycraft on which other five students it could be.

>>5982180
If it comes to light that the Sorting Hat considered putting Arty in Slytherin, exactly like how it considered putting Elliot in Hufflepuff, I will write in Elliot proposing to marry her on the spot

>>5982181
So you all know how Arty mentioned at one point that you can't heal a soul? You recall who also had a damaged soul?

Someone who was an orphan as well? Who's mom died not to long after he was born as well. Her grew up in squalor, in a terrible environment?

A certain guy who also did some pretty fucked up shit as a child?

One who could also control animals?

This convoluted theory is probably not correct in the least but was fun to think about. That a 4'7 girl with less magic than an average 14 year old was the real final boss of the quest. If I happen to be right.. well QM would certainly have done a good job with this twist. After all, who would suspect Arty.

But any way, I was going to probably commission another thing for our tiny evil master-mind of a girlfriend soon so I need to know if people think a playboy bunny suit is better or a muggle "sexy witch" Halloween costume is better. I am leaning towards the bunny suit.

Either way she is getting that pair of impractical high heels which was mentioned at one point.

>>5982852
>muggle "sexy witch" Halloween costume
This one, please
>convoluted theory
If it happens, I'll still vote to go all the way with her. If not, then I'll be glad we don't have some dumb subversion happening for the sake of trauma twist

>>5982854
+1 to everything this anon just said

>>5982858
>new ip
ooh god dammit, my energy flicks for a second and everything goes down to shit, drawfag reporting again, i guess
fuck, now i gotta check if the K&Q thread is fucked too...

>>5982847
>I will write in Elliot proposing to marry her on the spot

I was going to suggest, if both of them make it through all this, and make it through the year that we propose. Not get married right right then and there but like a two year engagement, so Arty can finish school. Maybe ask if mom has grandma's old engagement ring we could give her.

Even if she did turn out to be evil... I would still want her, yah.

>>5982858
If sexy witch seems to be more popular or what not, I suppose I will start looking at reference images. I have a generic idea of what your basic white girl version should look like but there are different styles.

>>5982972
>Even if she did turn out to be evil... I would still want her, yah.
if anything, that only makes me want her more, can you imagine? our own gremlin evil spider queen

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>>5982985
Evil girls as well as unstable ones are hotter. This has been proven. So slightly evil is the only way that a 10 could be any better than she already is.

>>5982972
You mean 1 year, right? Because the quest started in Elliot's first week of 6th year. This means by the end of the 6th year, there will only be one year left. You'd want the timing to happen so that once they graduate Hogwarts the marriage happens that same week

>>5983033
I was saying more as so Arty could finish her education.

So if we proposed at the end of this school year, there would be the engagement and she could complete her 6th and 7th years since she is only 15 right now.

If she really, really wanted to, you can stop your magical education after 5th year and not get your wand snapped by the wizard feds as long as you completed your OWLs in 5th year.

Her idol, Newt Scamander was suspended from Hogwarts sometime after his 5th year.

Also guess what one of mister Scamander's middle names was?

Motherfucking Artemis.

Pertinger may be a regional variation on the name Pettinger. A family who has a family motto which roughly translates from Latin to:

"Courage against difficulties."

Seems quite appropriate for Arty.

>>5983152
I see. I forgot Arty is one year below Elliot. At this rate, there might be no way out of her dropping out one year before the end, unless we wait REAL patiently

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>>5983219
I mean, Elliot came from a good home and has a mom who has specifically warned him about teen pregnancy. Arty wants kids but also doesn't want Apollo to kill her boyfriend for getting her knocked up while in school. She is saving up money specifically to pay for her 7th year instead of relying on charity, so she has no plans to leave early. Wizard birth control is very good. And if she get preggers while she was still at Hogwarts, like if she is so hyper fertile normal anti-pregnacy potions just don't work? I mean she couldn't be the first in 1000 years. I am sure they have accommodations; you can also take the Wizard equivalent of a GED exam in the form of a WOMBAT test and get your diploma. And I think even if they didn't have accommodations, Elliot would make them.

If she leaves early, it would probably be due to getting kicked out because of being involved in Elliot's bullshit, if anything.

I do now want a picture of a slightly older Arty with a small baby bump and happy tears in her eyes telling Elliot that it is going to be twins.

>>5983671
Would that really be cause for celebration, knowing what happened to her and Apollo?

>>5983672
I think her and Elliot will be better parents than her mom and their caretaker were. And magical twins don't always end up taking stuff in the womb. Fred and George Weasley were just fine and so are Summer and Winter Nott.

We are also going to fix her problem so even if they were born like she and Apollo were, we can help them.

>>5983692
Makes sense. All we can do right now is wait for HeadQM to post his update

VOTING FOR ARTY HAS STARTED
I REPEAT, VOTING FOR ARTY HAS STARTED
THIS IS NOT A TEST!
BE SURE TO VOTE FOR HER
i will be delivering her wedding outfit in a few hours, to help with the fanart

>>5983769
Oh shit. It has begun...

The time of prophesy has arrived.

We will get a tiny princess crown for her.

If she doesn't win having some art of of her with a Burger King crown Elliot gave her would be very fucking funny.

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>>5983809

Arty´s wedding outfit has been posted in the K&Q thread along with my vote
however, thats just the lineart, i´ll post the colored version here in a few hours

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I left for a bit to go work why is everyone discussing teenage pregnancy

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>>5983945
Maladapted anons are the bread and butter of the site, I don't know what you were expecting.

>>5983945
Someone brought it up and the rest of us needed to ensure QM know we weren't in favor of it.

>>5983945
>>5983950

I mean, I was arguing that it wouldn't happen. Just to be fair.

I have a lot of fetishes but that isn't one.

>>5983944
It looks really good bro! I like the difference in "wedding" Arty's face and "daydreaming" Arty's face. It is cute.

Also still just love smug Linda.

Our girl does seem to have a fair lead so far.

Since everyone in the loser's bracket will get some art from OlympusQM, any thoughts on what we would like to see?

Also, since I have in it my head to commission a couple more pieces at some point let me know if you are interested. You probably deserve some money, given how much art you have given out for free.

>>5983971
Problem is he keeps bringing it up, guy just does not believe in birth control. Here's a tip: lets just pretend he's not here.

Once your eyes finally adjust to the light, you see the room you are in. It is, as best as you can describe it, a great castle made of white marble, though the culture eludes you. “Older than ancient Egypt” is your best guess, but it could be anything. Great pillars rise to your left and to your right, embossed illustrations on the walls showing what appears to be people battling, but it is difficult to be sure without a close examination, and it is difficult to examine closely without getting blinded, since even after several minutes of being there you still need to squint to cope with the light that seems to come from every direction.

“Where are we?” Brighton asks. “Are we still under St Mungo’s or have we been transported somewhere entirely?”

“I don’t think it really matters. Apollo, can you check if we can send patronuses yet?”

He does so, but his silver bear refuses to appear.

“Right. Cane, can you do anything?” You tap it against the floor and a red line briefly appears coming from its tip, slithering its way over the floor and disappearing in the distance. “Right... Are we supposed to follow it?”

“Uh, Elliot?” Linda says, pointing at one portion of the wall. “Take a look at this.”

The mural depicts a series of pictures, the first of which appears to be a bull-like creature causing havoc to a city by breathing fire over it, then two warriors fighting it and defeating it. Then there is a congregation of people of great importance looking displeased, demanding something, followed by one of the two warriors looking queasy, then ill, until finally dead. The other warrior despairs over the body of his friend and leaves his city behind.

“Oh come the fuck on!” You shout.

“What is it?” Arty asks.

“The Bull of Heavens… was supposedly killed by Gilgamesh and Enkidu. The gods got mad the pair had killed their creation, and demanded one of them to die. So, Enkidu became ill and passed away, which led Gilgamesh to become fearful of death and set out on a journey to find a way to become immortal.” You rub the bridge of your nose in utter disbelief. “The Epic of Gilgamesh is the single oldest written story we know of, we’re talking ancient Sumeria, four thousand years ago.”

“You don’t think-”

“I honestly don’t know. Was Merlin Gilgamesh? Is this here just because it was the first story of someone seeking immortality? Or was Gilgamesh someone else who was after immortality too, and who Merlin either helped or just watched from afar for his own amusement? I have no idea. It all seems equally likely.”

[Cont.]

>>5984008

“What is the meaning of this?” Hisses a voice behind you, sounding displeased. You all turn, wands raised, to see… Yourself. Same look, same voice, same vests, same scars. It doesn't look like a ghost, just a perfect reflection of you. There is just something slightly off about his eyes that you can't quite pinpoint.

“Uh-huh,” Linda says in a tone of voice that makes it clear there is no remaining space in her for surprise. “So that’s what’s happening right now.”

“They do not belong here,” the not-you says, a strange look in his eyes. As he speaks, his tone climbs in fury. “The living have no business in Kur! Was Arthur not enough? Must you bring chaos to my lands once more!? Must you disrespect us at every possible point!? Have we not suffered enough!?”

It takes a moment for your mind to gather its pieces from being blown. Whatever is happening, whoever this creature is, it clearly hasn’t realized you are not Merlin. Would he be as angry if he knew you weren't him, or would knowing only make things worse?

If you are not mistaken, Kur was the old sumerian afterlife, though you don’t remember much more than that. It is possible you could get information from this creature by pretending to be Merlin, but if it realizes the ruse it could become more violent. At the same time, you could pretend to be Merlin and try to get it to help you get through this place, at the cost of not asking him anything. Or you could reveal who you are, and ask for help.

What will you do?

> Pretend to be Merlin and focus on gathering knowledge (What questions will you ask?)
> Pretend to be Merlin and focus on moving on from here/finding a way to regain your memories
> Reveal you are not Merlin and ask for his help
> Attack before he can react
> Other (Write in)

>>5984009
oh boy, we cant just catch a break, cant we?
i say
>Reveal you are not Merlin and ask for his help
if we have any chance of doing this peacefully i say we take it
if he finds out we bullshiting him, things most likely will get ugly
he clearly hates Merlin, maybe if we tell him we are here to stop him or put an end to his shit, maybe he could ally with us?

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ok, i think i bit more than i could chew with these shadows, not hard, but time consuming, so this wont be ready tonight as i wanted it to be, but at least im done with them, next step is light and finally color
hope you all enjoy this so far

>>5983973
>any thoughts on what we would like to see?
how about Arty riding an acromantula while pointing ahead as if looking for adventure and enjoying herself?
>spoiler
i mean, i wont say im NOT interested, but how? i dont have any accounts on anything

>>5983974
I won't bring it up again this entire thread just to be "fair" to you, okay?

>>5984014
+1

>>5984009
>> Reveal you are not Merlin and ask for his help

>>5984077
That would be funny. Arty totally would saddle up on giant dangerous creature and ride toward adventure.

As for the other point, I have no clue if you don't want to set up an account on something like paypal. Just asking because you have put a
lot of effort into contributing to the quest.

If you decide here is the burner email I set up to pay for IGs art and paying for part of the Q&K competition.

Stuff4Quests@proton.me

>>5984009
So is this guy Nergal or Neti? Just the shade of an Atlantean?

It is also fun that in quite a few ways we are mirroring Merlin and a lot of immortality/power seeking people, including the first "hero" extant in written legends.

>We seek to oppose Merlin. Make it so he could never trample among the dead again. I understand it is Hell down her. Can I offer you a glass of water, a libation to sooth your suffering and anger.

I will also remind anons that how Gilgamesh lost the cure to death after journeying below to find it was he left it on the side of a river for a minute because he wanted to drink and wash up some, since he was on his way back to Uruk and obviously needed to look his best.

Then a tricky snake ate the herbs which would grant him hiw youth once more.

Campbell had categorized one portion of the Hero's journey as the part where he descends into the underworld or into and returns with the "Elixir" after his many trials.

The Fool's journey in Tarot mirror's many of the part of that journey.

Being ignorant, a "Fool" finding his friends, the Magician, the high Priestess, the Lover, the Heirophant... ect. And then he must endure struggles, including the Tower card which represents adversity or great misfortune. He then must confront the Arcana representing Death and overcome it. Only then can the Fool advance towards ultimate freedom, power over his own life.

>>5984077
Could you link your art blog or site?

>>5984132
I do not have an art site yet, I have a deviantart page, but it’s literally empty and doesn’t even have the same name I use now
I’ll try to get everything in there soon tho, just gotta pay to change the name, i’lll link it up whenever I do that

>>5984097
>paypal
ooh, i actually think i do have an account there from long ago, it should work, i´ll send you an email when i get out of work

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>>5984265
Cool. I hope you have a good day at the job.

>>5984009
> Reveal you are not Merlin and ask for his help
Looks like we share a mutual enemy, sort of.

Ok finally finished reading thread 5. I am fully caught up now.

>>5984362
thoughts so far? how was it?

>>5984374
Amazing start to finish. It'll be additionally better when the drawfag and writefag can archive their shit properly, but still very good. Do you think we can walk straight out of the path to Avalon when we're done here, or will we get autoteleported out and the place seals up again? It's just a straight path from the doorway in through the statue section, then around the lake of rot, then down the stairs to the trauma door, then through it into this white castle afterlife zone

>>5984388
>when the drawfag can archive their shit properly
i´ll set up my deviant art page soon, just need to get some important expenses out of the way soon, then i´ll dump everything there, i promise
i wonder if i should make a pixiv too?

>>5984403
Up to you, drawfag

>>5984388
>Amazing start to finish.

Even during the first thread it had good writing and it only got better as I imagine QM got a better handle of where he wanted to have the campaign go. I also thought Arty's little accent in our first couple of interactions was cute even though she dropped it eventually.

I am sad you couldn't be there for things like our first attempt at war crimes or rolling for Elliot's dick size and coming up with 1's again and again. That was probably the moment that as a player laughed the hardest. Get it? Hardest?

I will try to work on sticking the now like 100 pages of shit I have written as fanfics of a fanfic somewhere soon, as I was trying to go through and make them less bad; I have no clue why suptg decided to not archive pdf's for /qst/ when I swear it used to.

I will also post the short shitty thing I wrote speculating if Arty ended up being evil tonight likely.

I was planning at one point to put the updates in into a pdf but I have probably abandoned that project for now, since I wanted important posts, write ins to be added for context and it is a bitch and a half to find all of those and add them.

>>5984403
Doubling up is never a bad thing. I think I still have a pixiv too, from back when I still drew some.


Also, it looks like Arty is going to take her 1st round by a good margin!

>>5984419
I seem to recall the reason cited for not archiving PDFs was disc space. Not quite sure I follow that since a PDF is just as subject to the filesize cap as an image and the proportion of PDFs is tiny compared to images. Suptg is best part of 20 years old though so maybe things worked differently on 2007-chan.

>>5984424
Lord Licorice does this shit for free so I can't really blame him for his choices.

Anyway, back to writing about Arty having manipulated everyone around her for her entire life and when she had ultimate power in front of her, she turned away because she had truly fallen for Elliot and loved him. Him and the twins which are on the way.

Why yes I am a hack and love angst and cliches.

WE DID IT! SHE WON HER FIRST ROUND!

>>5984388
>>5984419
>I also thought Arty's little accent in our first couple of interactions was cute even though she dropped it eventually.

Yeah, she was supposed to be scottish-ish, I think, but then I decided I know shit about accents and would either not be able to keep up with them or forget to put it in every other phrase, and just dropped it entirely.

My biggest curiosity about a PDF would be just to see how much I wrote in total. I feel like it is a lot, but then again, I have two other TTRPG in which I put far too much time DMing

Also, thank for the compliments! They do help and motivate a very great deal!

--

“I am no Merlin,” you say, wand still pointed at your clone. “And these are not Arthur. We are here because Merlin failed and fell. But there are those who seek his power to bring great doom upon the world, and we are here to ensure they never do.”

Your face seems to retract from its fury then ponder this for a moment.

“The Thief of Atlantis cannot fail. He has the Sight Beyond Sight.”

“There are shadows that not even the Sight Beyond Sight can pierce. Merlin walked into such a shadow, and there he perished.” You say. There is something in this person’s tone of voice, like that which you’d expect from someone telling a tale of old. You feel inclined to follow suit. “Yet still he tries to flee from death’s grasp, yet if he succeeds, he will bring doom upon the world and darkness upon the earth. That, too, we seek to mend, if not in this place, then on another.”

“If the Thief has perished, humanity is soon to follow,” he insists. “And your journey is in vain. We do not believe you. No man’s hand can end him.”

“It was no mere hand which felled him. It was his own. His Greatest Work went awry and took him with it. Believe me or not, we have gathered his Cloak, his Wand and his Stone. Merlin would not part with such, if he was not dead. Nor with his haven’s location.”

He takes a moment to consider this.

“The Thief is no more?”

“Not for a millenia.”

“Yet his work endures. That may be an acceptable way to interpret the visions of the Sight Beyond Sight, though whether that means life has any hope of surviving, we do not know. We are filled with grief.” His face did not show any changes to reflect any sadness. “For the Thief was the greatest of those who remained, even if that is as little a praise as one can give.”

“Who are you to speak such from the Great Merlin? Who are you to call him a Thief?”

[Cont.]

>>5984715

“We are Irkalla, and We are that which the Thief stole and remade. We are the last Great Work he took for himself before being banished. We were the guardians of where the Great Ones rested. We are now the guardians of these lands, where the tears for the dead which the Foul One above purified are turned to power through the distillation of Time. A process which We cannot stop, and which your companions’ presence disturbs. We are the guardian of the Grail of Memories, where the one with Sight Beyond Sight can remake himself for his next life.”

“And how can one reach the Grail of Memories?” You ask, a moment of relief going through you. “For the Foul One above has done her duty even when her master has already fallen, and injured me greatly. My memories must be put back to where they belong, before they fade into nothingness.”

“You must undergo the Test through which Merlin put himself through. To live is to improve. To live is to become better. Or it should be. For those who have Life Eternal, it must be. And so, upon his return, he faced an Echo of his old self in battle, for he must prove to himself he was better than he was before. You must do the same.”

Your stomach sinks, and for a moment you forget about talking like an old legend.

“I… I need to fight Merlin? I mean, Lailoken?”

“No. For the Thief brough another here. Another, which he tried to bring back from the dead. We warned him it would not succeed. This is not this place’s purpose, and he failed. Yet that body is still within us. That body is our memory. He is the one you must face.”

“Arthur,” you whisper. That was certainly an improvement to facing the most powerful wizard in recorded history, though there was some part of you who had many problems with facing the Once and Future King. It at least brings you enough calm to speak anciently once again. “And what shall be the nature of such a duel?”

“That which the Echo does best. There have been battles of wits, there have been battles of power. What it will be, we do not know.”

You nod.

“May I have my allies with me in battle?”

“That will depend on the Echo’s wishes. Once I bring him forth, you shall be at his mercy.”

“Wait! Before you go, may I ask you more? There is much we do not understand, much we do not understand.”

Your clone ponders for a moment, before nodding.

“Very well. Ask, and though there is much I do not know, I shall answer what I can.”

> What will you ask before the Echo is summoned? (Write in)

>>5984717
jesus fucking christ, i was not expecting it to go this well with our clone, yet the situation grows dire by the minute...i dont think i have the mental capabilities at this time of the night to ask a proper intelligent question, so i´ll go with the next best thing i can do:
>"should we come victorious from this duel, would it be possible for whatever magic that resides deeper within these walls, be capable of..."mending" a broken soul? a stumped magical source? for one our companions is in need of such magic, we do not seek to abuse its power, simply mend a terrible and unfair accident, would they be able to use it and come forward with a renewed spirit and vigor?"

there, please somebody ask something more relevant to our main quest, for i´ve asked about our adorable companion to the best of my insomniac limited ability

>>5984732
or...you know, something along those lines, dont wanna put Apollo in the spotlight

>>5984732
I really have nothing to ask him which is clever. We could check to see if he knows about Excalibur and whether it still rests in this place. Ask if he knows how long he has been active for, to get a better timeframe on when Atlantis existed.

I love how Merlin stole/ re purposed magic AI's when he fled. At least this one seems more civil than Nimue, slimy bitch.

It is also fun he took Elliot's appearance and our next challenge will be to over come King Arthur. Elliot is the next coming of Arthur, the greatest king in British history. I doubt we are getting in a sword fight. King Elliot when?

I imagine it is either a test of rulership qualities, being just, fair, clever and wise.

That or a battle which tests your ability to unite and lead people, since Arthur was the one to lead his people to defeat the Saxon invasion. That would be a good way to make our army bonus relevant again, since for now we stopped participating in Battle class.

If the latter is true, Raven will be invaluable.

>>5984717
>"That mural there, that is the story of Gilgamesh the king. Even outside here, in the rest of the world, that is the oldest story still known that survived to the present. How is it related to Merlin and this... process he devised here?"
I am half-tempted to ask him about the Mirror of Erised and Atlantis, or about what happens to this place once the trials end. The latter is kinda dumb because of course Merlin made it so he goes back out with the three hallows released from the gate, otherwise this entire place loses the reusability that Merlin has relied on for so long. I imagine he made it straightforward and idiot-proof on purpose for his own convenience too, because the path from the way in to this section is completely linear. But anyway, how can we ask this guy about Atlantis?

>>5984762
The Excalibur/Caliburn question is also another good one, but I don't know how much time we have to ask him things. With Nimue we had no time because every question cost memories as permanent stat loss. Still suck we lost like 9 potions stat, but we can always relearn and return to form. Elliot has Most Potente Poisons completed and has his own notes plus Snape's 5th year book. He can make a potions comeback

>>5984788
I could support asking about the Mirror, since I have theories about it. And Caliburn/Excalibur seems appropriate, give its connects to the the legend of the lady of the lake. It might just be a metaphor for how Merlin himself tossed himself into the lake to be reforged, but it has been referenced a couple of times already.

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>>5984717
I have no idea what to write in and am too busy to come up with something

Just wanted to say that this is fucking awesome

>>5984788
I’m gonna second this anon’s idea, at least, since it’d be worth bringing up the mural when we have time

>>5984732
>>5984788

>>5984717
I'm >>5984307

>>5984788
I'll back the Arthur and Gilgamesh questions, especially Arthur since we're about to throw hands.

technically, we can ask more than one question, right? he did said: "I shall answer what I can.”

>>5985225
Yes, you may ask whatever you want (whether he will answer or not, or take offense to it or not, that is something else entirely)

>>5985238
So basically it's
>Gilgamesh questioning
>Arthur questioning
>Mirror of Erised questioning
>mending broken soul questioning
Hmmmmm... I wonder what would happen if we took Alice and Frank through the Avalon trials. Would they get their memories and mind back, or are they perma-goners?

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>>5985241
It honestly would have been interesting to see what would happen with Frank/Alice or rather Goddy/Rae with us, considering they knew Merlin and Rae had some of his memories. Might have been useful but I do think getting them in healthy young bodies is going to pay dividends in the end. Linda and Brighton were already pretty good duelists and magically powerful by normal 16 year old standards. They haven't been trained by a crazy death eater like us and Arty but them eventually being able to get a power and skill boost is going to probably be really helpful when we eventually have to take down Potter in the end game.

We do probably need to figure out if Brighton knows any Occulemency and if not, try and get him some lessons.

Regardless, if we still have the battle classes for a while after Avalon shakes out, Linda is going to be a beast with the smartest of the founders to advise her. She was already smarter than us with tactics.

I am also glad way back in thread 1 we picked Raven to be one of our best friend. She is snarky and amusing. Her accidentally getting a broken nose from Taylor when we first started Battle class and given him shit saying she was going to call the Aurors for him being a woman beater was great. Her Muggle studies specialty and being able to give a banked roll saved us a couple of times in the fights, even if it seems like the second or third least good specialty an ally could have. I also wonder what it would be like if we pursued her as a love interest. Her speculating on if Rowena could give her a futa cock and would be DTF was one of the funnier things I recently recall.

And gave me a little bit of incentive to try and write a brief sex scene about it, even if futa is not one of my many fetishes. If the founder of Ravenclaw was as thirsty as "Faith" was after a 1000 year long dry spell? She might do it. Plus given how familiar she is with her "toys", Raven could probably manifest a few in her dreamscape. Picrel is why Raven knows you cant have kids from a ghost, btw.

I will go ahead and support all these questions QM.

>>5985397
>spoiler
do it in your next fanfic

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>>5985592
I might give it a shot and see what I can come up with, if I like what I put out. I probably could use a pallet cleanser if I manage to finish the "evil Arty" one and the very disturbing other one.

I managed to get the really fucked up part of the other one done but I might try and make it even worse. The part where

Arty is tortured and sexually assaulted by Crouch who has smuggled in a real wand in front of Elliot. Has her vagina turned into a bloody mess by him and breaks to the point she begs Elliot to kill, her all for the purpose of forcing him to use the Killing Curse.

Now I just need to write the aftermath.

So some wholesome futa goth teen on 1000 year old ghost might be what I need.

I had also considered a wholesome one, aside from all the sex at the front, where Elliot proposes to Arty.

>>5985607
>that spoiler
Very despicable. Question is how can Potter even let this happen? Anyway, the rest of the fic ideas sound good

>>5985607
>spoiler
oh man, kinda would have preferred if you had keeped it a secret, but still eagerly waiting for more lewd fanfics

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>>5985607
>the spoiler

>>5985611
Takes place after a theoretical version of Avalon with his time turner destroyed and Crouch blocked off Appiration/Portkeys once they got there. Had his old house elf who found out he was alive, the one who got him a real wand, cause a disturbance at Hogwarts when Potter dropped us off to distract him. Only way left to make it to the island is with brooms which would give him plenty of time to do this, given it is in the middle of no where.

>>5985616
I assure you, I am not writing it because I get off on any part. It was more just, "What would make Elliot hate enough to use that spell when what was describe as a demon killing his best friend couldn't" interested me.

I do love my angst and whatnot, but this is in no way meant to be a lewdfic. I am sure there is someone out there who would use it like one.

It is the worst thing I have ever written, and I like Arty enough to commission art of her.

>>5985612
The fact that someone cares enough to be sad about the spoiler and reads this shit fills my withered, blackened heart with joy, enough I could cast a Patronus if I had a wand.

>>5985627
>The fact that someone cares enough
>someone
>check IP
>new one
FUCK THIS INTERNET!
its me, the drawfag
oh great, now i have to check the K^Q thread again

>>5984097
hey, sorry it took longer than expected, i send it to you already

>>5985739
I got the email bro. How about a quick head shot of a smug Linda, something like what you did for her in the spider wedding photo?

>>5984732
“What do you know about the magic below?” You ask. “You said it could not bring someone back from the dead. Then what can it do?”

“We do not know for certain. We are not one of the Great Ones, only their creation. We do not possess knowledge ourselves, only a blurred view of it, like a man walking through fog. No, less than a man, for we are not truly alive, nor do we truly think.” Irkalla says, and it is strange to see him say he does not think. He seems pretty thinking for you. “We are but a cog in this machine, and it is a machine to create a body. But a body needs a spirit, and that this Great Work cannot create. It can only move and repair.”

“What do you mean, repair?” It is Brighton who asks, jumping at the opportunity. “There are… there are people we know. They were tortured to insanity. Can it- can this heal them?”

“We do not know. There is Khet and there is Sah, there is Ren and there is Ba. There is Ka and there is Ib, there is Shut and Sekhem. Not all can it heal. Not all can be healed. We do not know which is which. We do not know what is needed to achieve the Thief’s Great Work. All we know is there are some it cannot create or repair.”

Brighton turns to you.

“What is he talking about, Hallaster?”

“Those are Egyptian,” Linda says, cutting in. “They thought the soul was divided into eight parts. Body and spirit, name and personality, life essence and heart, shadow and form. I suppose that a dead body, like Arthur’s, doesn’t have something that it needs for Avalon to work. Or maybe it lacks too many of them. I suppose that if it could bring back a dead body to life… It would also just be able to create a brand new person out of thin air.”

"Why is it talking about Egyptian stuff? Hallaster said it was sumerian."

“Because it isn’t speaking modern English either,” you say. “The most recent person it spoke to was Merlin, who spoke ancient English. So it is using our knowledge, filtering its speech through what we know. It is… translating as best it can. Some things are bound to come out with some imprecision.”

>>5984762
“There are many stories in this place,” you say. “Or at least people who are stories in my time. Gilgamesh on the walls. Arthur, which you said is resting below. What are they? Why are they here?“

“The Great Ones did not age,” he says. “How, we do not know. But still, some died, for the flesh is frail and can be sundered. We were the keeper of those who fell. Yet there were some who were not content with this. Those who feared death even then. The one on the wall is one who did not accept his fate, for given eternity, everything that has any chance of happening will happen, and so, as there was a chance of them dying, they would die in time.”

[Cont.]

>>5985957
“When his lover died from the cursed blood of a foul beast, he sought a way of stopping it from ever happening. He left the lands of the Great Ones, in search of a solution. It is then that he found one of the Lessers, and from their union the Thief was born. How his story arrived at your ears, we do not know, for it happened in a time before history, and when the Land of the Great Ones ceased to be, it did not happen at all.”

“In some stories, Merlin is said to have no father. Because his father was an Atlantean. Because his father was erased from time,” you whisper in disbelief. Others said his father was a demon, also because he had been Atlantean. Both had been true. It was almost ridiculous how a lot of the legends fit, once you saw the stumbling path through time they had taken. You shake your head, getting back to asking questions. “And Arthur?”

“That one, we do not know. Merlin insisted he needed to be brought back, that maybe this Great Work would bring him back if given enough time. We told him that he would not succeed, for not even the Great Ones had done so, and he was Below them. He dismissed us. And time has passed, and we have not felt the Basin of Life ever deplete, nor Arthur ever wake.”

A far less important but still quite relevant thought crosses your mind.

“Did… did Merlin bring Arthur’s sword with him to this place?”

“Elliot!” Arty chastises you.

“Look, I’m curious to know if I can claim rulership of Britain, alright?”

“He was brought with his armor,” Irkalla says. “Whether he carried a sword or scabbard, we did not see.”
>>5984788
“There was this Artifact we found. A Great Mirror which surpasses any other Ancient Artifact I have ever found. Would you happen to know of it?”

“No,” Irkalla says. “If Merlin possessed such Great Work, he never brought it through us.”

--

You sigh. There were a lot of “We do not know”s in that conversation, but you suppose that if you asked the Sorting Hat about the inner workings of Hogwarts, his answers would also be filled with unknowns.

But now you knew the Atlanteans had been immortal, at least when it came to aging. And it still hadn’t been enough for them. Merlin’s father, whoever he had been, had searched for a way of making them all truly immortal, even to the death of the body.

And either the wizards of Atlantis all had their Horcruxes in Atlantis when it was destroyed, or… They had never managed to produce them, which is an encouraging thought, if you think about it. It means they didn’t know everything, that mere Lessers had done something they hadn’t been able to.

Because Voldemort had survived the death of his body, even if at a high cost.

[Cont.]

>>5985958

“What happens with this place when we pass?”

Irkalla points to your cane.

“The Line of Reality brings with it the Essence of the World Outside and carves an open path so that the energy can flow. And, at the end, the spiral becomes a circle, the Great Work done, and the cogs are removed from the machine.”

You didn’t understand half of that, but you’re pretty sure that means you’ll have an easy way out and the Deathly Hallows with you. Good, at least one less thing to worry about.

“Very well, I think that is everything I wanted to ask. Bring on Arthur.”

He nods. “Good luck, Elliot Hallaster. May you succeed where Merlin has failed.”

Your clone fades, and there is silence. Then, slowly, the scenery around you starts to shift. The white walls become gray stone. The embossed images become paintings or windows, and through the windows you see great green hills, then the sea.

“So it seems I must face a battle once more,” says a voice in front of you. You turn to see a handsome man in his forties, maybe fifties. He wears armor, a beautiful red cape, and a crown over his dark-brown hair. He has a beard, and eyes that look tired, not from sleep, but from something much deeper and far more difficult to heal. And despite the weariness, he looks royal and kingly, the way all tales say a king should look. “I can only hope for a worthy opponent, for a worthy death has been denied to me.”

You look around and realize that you are sitting opposite to him at a table. A Round Table. If you weren’t in the middle of the biggest heist in history, you’d squeal. By your side, two on each side, are your friends.

“Your Majesty, it is a great honor to meet you,” you say, not quite managing to keep your voice from shaking.

“It is no honor at all, for you do not meet me.” He says, and it pains you to see him like this. If nothing else, it reflects how Arthur had been on his end days. Hurt. Exhausted. Wanting to lay down and rest for a long, long time. “I am but a shadow, a passing lie. For there are no true thoughts within me, I know that above all. Yet perform my duty I must, and so test you I shall.”

You nod.

“Very well, your majesty. What shall be your test?”

[Cont.]

>>5985960

“It would not be fair of me to choose our battle. I am a king, you are but a child. So, a choice. I was a strong man, so we may battle like we did in my time. With swords and shields, with sweat and grit. You against me.”

“Yet I was also a wise man. I passed judgment against people, as was necessary for a king. I negotiated, I threatened. We shall test your wisdom against mine. Three scenarios I shall place before you, things that happened in my life, problems that I faced, and you shall tell me your solution. If I judge them worthy, if I judge them wiser and fairer than what I did in life, then you shall pass.”

“But I was also a leader. Not all battles I fought personally, but I had to know who to send to them. I had to know the weaknesses of my soldiers, the strength of their fist and the power of their character before sending them to battle. Me and my four soldiers against you and your four, each in a different situation. You choose which of yours to send on each confrontation, each one once, and if your win most of them, you may pass.”

“What will you choose, Elliot Hallaster?”

> The Test of Strength
> The Test of Wisdom
> The Test of Leadership

You may also write in any questions to attempt to ask him throughout whatever trial you choose.

>>5985962
>> The Test of Leadership
this feels like the one we'd have the best chance of succeeding at

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>>5985962
>strength
nah, we arent that strong nor clever enough to beat him in magicless combat, thats a hard pass
it has to be either wisdom or leadership

>Wisdom
a good option, but there are many things we dont know, context we lack, Elliot is something of a history nerd, but i doubt he or anyone has enough TRUE information about Arthur himself and maybe some of the stuff he know could be wrong
i say Elliot would know he is wise enough to know he isnt wise enough

>Leadership
this has to be our best shot at beating him
we are basically a power rangers team, we have different strengths and we know our team, we´ve commanded an army before and we won the "war", Elliot gazing into the mirror, pulling the heist of the millenia and stealing the 3 most powerful magical artifacts to get here to begin with is proof enough.
we´ve lead our team through the lake of rot, tanking the hit, we calmed them when they had to face their worst memories to move ahead.
we are not the GOAT at anything, but we are a great lider and having OUR ENTIRE TEAM make it here basically intact shows we know what we are doing and are at the VERY LEAST competent at being the lider

my vote is for
>The Test of Leadership

>>5985962
>Leadership

>>5985962
> The Test of Leadership
This one is cool

>>5985993
>>5985985
>>5985988
>>5985995
We got any questions for the big A-man himself? Excalibur/Caliburn? His armor? If we can do anything with his body, if Merlin couldn't revive him and Merlin is gone now? Maybe carry his corpse out of Avalon to give him a proper burial? Maybe ask him questions about Merlin as a person? Fuck, Arthur isn't even Arthur but an artificial AI facsimile made to play a role here in this process for Merlin to "reincarnate" himself.

>>5986008
>Maybe carry his corpse out of Avalon to give him a proper burial?
i like this one, it would show him we have compation, even if its for whats basically a magical AI

>>5986011
>walk out of Avalon path gate
>dozens of aurors stationed in the secret lab outside
>all point wands at the new arrivals
>suddenly notice the dessicated corpse with a crown being levitated next to Elliot
>"Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... King Arthur!"