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 Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2026 6:54 pm
The way we started this a year ago and forgot we'd neither finished nor posted it lmaooooo. Backdated to Jan 2025 because I'm not editing to make it more current. Maybe if we post it we'll remember to finish now. “Do you ever feel like we’re on the verge of something?” Ganymede asked.
They lounged on the bed in the room set aside for Liesel in the Fortress of Valhalla, decorated as it had been centuries ago in the Ganymedean style. Takeout containers of food sat between them, some half eaten while others waited to offer a first bite. Date nights on Earth always ran the risk of interruption; Ganymede couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone anywhere or done anything around the city without constantly looking over her shoulder, or scanning a room beforehand to ensure no trouble waited for them—only for trouble to find them anyway.
Here, they could be alone. There were no youma lurking in the shadows, no agents of Chaos preparing to burst onto the scene. They had an open line of communication to Earth, albeit a bit finicky at times, and enough trust in those they’d left behind to watch over their children that they could almost relax.
Not that Ganymede really knew the meaning of the word anymore.
“Not anything good,” she elaborated. “Like things have been too peaceful and you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. Or like… I don’t know. Maybe I’m paranoid. I’ve felt that way for a long time, but it’s gotten worse since…”
Since the Velencians came. Since their worlds came back to life. Since Empyrean was killed. Since her time spent as a captive in the Dark Kingdom.
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Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2026 12:31 pm
Thunder rumbled low in the distance. Every so often, they somehow managed to visit Jupiter during a time of meteorological peace. Or as peaceful as a world like Jupiter could be. The winds weren’t as harsh. The clouds not as thick. The torrential downpours more like a spring shower.
Valhalla had noticed it more frequently in the last few years. He didn’t know if it was the particular location, or if something was changing in Jupiter’s atmosphere. And if so, was it magic? Was it something NASA would pick up on? He didn’t have the answers, but there was a calmness in his heart that seemed to match the calmness of the normally turbulent weather of his Wonder.
“Yes,” he answered quietly as he picked at some of the pieces of food from the takeout container.
After everything, he couldn’t trust that the Negaverse just gave up after stopping their attempt at crippling their operations. They hadn’t had any success in repairing the Void, but occasionally they would invite one of their Mauvian acquaintances to tinker with it.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen, but…”
Valhalla paused and sighed. He felt old, even though he knew he wasn’t. Not really. He just felt worn down, like all the optimism in him had been slowly seeped out over the years.
“What are we going to do if there’s more than just the Negaverse to deal with, you know? We didn’t know about the Velencians. Or the Senshi trapped on their worlds for a thousand years. There’s that merchant -- Almadel… He can’t be the only one of his kind. Or maybe he is, if the Senshi from space are the last of their kind. It just feels like… I guess it’s cheesy, but the peace before the storm, or the receding of the tide before a tsunami.”
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Posted: Sat Feb 14, 2026 11:50 am
Ganymede frowned. She took another bite of food and chewed slowly, taking her time to mull things over.
They’d had similar conversations before, with varying degrees of detail involved. They spoke so often of the war and their new and developing concerns that it could have easily become repetitive, but Ganymede couldn’t let it go, not until they had an answer, or came up with a solution, or exhausted all their options. Soon it would be fourteen years since the night she’d awakened. Any progress they’d made since then hadn’t been made on Earth.
“I wish I knew what to do about any of it,” she said.
They had no way to Metallia. They had nothing to offer Lyndin and his Vanguard to tempt them to their side without handing over Caedus—a prospect Ganymede was willing to entertain, but some of her allies were not; she wasn’t desperate enough yet to do it behind their backs. They had nothing to defend themselves against anything else that might be lurking out in space. The Surrounding was broken. Some of their Worlds and Wonders lived, but they were limited by what they could do there.
Every success seemed to come with a caveat.
Ganymede sighed and dropped her fork into one of the takeout containers. She rose into a more comfortable position, taking some of the pressure off her arm.
“I’m worried about Elsie.”
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Posted: Sat Feb 14, 2026 1:33 pm
Valhalla wished any of them knew more about what to do. Teaming up, working together…
That could only go so far. There were so many lives at stake. One little slip up could be the difference between life and death. Who they trusted with information mattered. They could be risking everything by saying the wrong thing to the wrong person.
But they could also be receiving a wealth of knowledge and amazing allies with a bit of trust. It was too much to risk, still. Especially when--
He sighed when Ganymede sat up and voiced her concern about Elsie. Valhalla feared it was only a matter of time. Just like it was only a matter of time until Henry--...
“Sometimes I think it might be a good idea to at least prepare her for what might happen,” Valhalla cautiously suggested. “Abby and Henry were lucky that you were right there when Abby awakened. If Elsie was alone? If another Mauvian happened to cross her path. At school? If something was happening and we couldn’t get there?”
He shook his head, not really knowing what to do about their children being pulled head first into this war that seemed like it would never end.
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Posted: Sat Feb 14, 2026 2:26 pm
“I know,” Ganymede said, but it was tense, half strangled, full of fear and guilt—and fury, that the war continued on so long her own children had no choice but to face it.
She wondered, sometimes, if it had been a mistake to have them, if she and Chris, being so young at the time, might not have been thinking clearly. Having Henry and Abby had been an act of defiance. Ganymede had seen a future she hadn’t wanted, and she’d done one of the few things in her power to change one tiny piece of it. Looking into their sweet faces, she had allowed herself to hope. She had believed, for a few short years, that the worst had already come. Having Elsie had been a celebration. They could live their lives like they might have without the war. The future she’d feared never came to pass.
Now the future was murky, their fate uncertain, their youngest children an act of desperation—to hang onto hope a little longer.
“I keep telling myself not to worry, that she might get lucky and not be involved at all, but so much of it seems like destiny,” she said, and felt ridiculous for it, except that she and Valhalla both had phantom scars across their palms. “I still see faces I don’t have names for. In Liesel’s memories. Other children with Celia. Or I hear whispers—names I don’t have any memory of yet. It was like that before Abby awakened. I remembered Celia and then… there she was. Ours, like she was before.”
Ganymede saw her ghost in the room sometimes, prancing through in her nightdress with her dark auburn hair twisted into a braid, cradling a book of fairy tales in her arms.
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Posted: Sat Feb 14, 2026 4:30 pm
Valhalla carefully pushed the containers of food aside. They were close enough on the bed that it didn’t take much for him to inch over a little more and wrap an arm behind Ganymede, trying to coax her further into his embrace.
He knew they’d been reaching when they agreed to having children. They wanted something that only they could have. But the universe seemed to want to take that from them as well.
“Maybe it’s because they’re safest with us,” he gently suggested, rubbing Ganymede’s back and pressing a kiss to her temple. “If it was Celia’s time to be reborn, at least she’s with us.”
He didn’t know how everything worked. Why destiny seemed like things fell so easily into place. How past lives crossed paths so frequently. It was as though they were given another chance together. Or maybe it was something else.
“If Elsie is awakened… if Henry--”
Valhalla paused and frowned. He didn’t usually get emotional, and while he wasn’t now, his voice did seem to strain.
“They’ll be more prepared than we ever were. They won’t be alone, wondering what was happening.”
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Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2026 9:23 am
That was the only consolation—that their children had them; that their children had each other; that they could be given love and safety in this life, and be prepared for what might come to pass. Ganymede hated that it was necessary, would rather they grow up ignorant to the things she and Valhalla had faced, but that wasn’t to be, not until the war was over.
They’d cursed their own children to the same fate.
Ganymede would do all in her power to ensure they had all the skills and the tools they needed to face it.
She took one of Valhalla’s hands and gave it a desperate squeeze, accepted the kiss to her temple and leaned in to rest their heads together. She heard the strain in his voice and wished she could take it away. Henry hadn’t awakened. Maybe he wouldn’t until he was older. Maybe he wouldn’t at all.
Empyrean had no knight now. Maybe it would again.
A memory snaked through her awareness, so closely aligned with reality it took her a moment to parse one from the other. Liesel sat with Serge near enough to kiss, hands clasped in the flickering candlelight. Liesel fidgeted as he tended to when he was uncertain or overwhelmed, playing with Serge’s fingers. He touched a ring, skin-warmed gold and deep red stone, twisting it around fretfully. Ganymede closed her eyes to focus on it. The ring stood out against Serge’s signet ring—less functional and more decorative.
I love you, Liesel whispered, like he was still ashamed to say it.
The memory was early, then. Before his exile.
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Posted: Fri Feb 20, 2026 6:20 am
Valhalla held her hand tighter, thumb brushing over the glowing scar against her palm. He pressed his forehead to hers and held back a sigh that was trying to surface. He couldn’t see her memories, but he could feel the way she tensed, like she was focused on something. He didn’t want to disturb that.
In her memory, Serge’s hand caught Liesel’s fidgeting hand at last, trapping it gently against his palm. Their other hands were still clasped together. A promise. A vow. Just like the scars on their palms.
Don’t you know? he’d asked, as if the answer might disappear if spoken too loud. His eyes burned with a force of the words he couldn’t keep contained.
I love you, Serge said. He didn’t whisper. There was no shame in his voice. Just fierce devotion. Even if the world casts me out, even if I’m nothing tomorrow, that won’t change. Not ever.
The ring glinted in the firelight. It looked both fragile and eternal at the same time. Magical in ways only deep bonds knew.
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Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2026 8:40 am
Ganymede focused on what details she could, peering through time, grasping at memories which seemed to ebb and flow like the tide. Sometimes they were as distinct as her own, curling through her mind with such clarity she thought she must have experienced them herself. Other times they were murky and shrouded by distance, materializing just out of reach, faint ghosts she could neither hear nor touch.
Liesel clutched at Serge’s hand, fingers loosely twined. Ganymede felt the flutter of his heart like it was her own. The scar across Liesel’s palm was raised, not new but not old either. It was months after, perhaps. Surely less than a year. Celia was not yet born.
Even with both his hands held, Liesel continued to fidget. He touched his thumb to his own finger, where a ring of his own sat—gold and a red stone, almost an exact match, except that his fingers were slimmer, his skin paler. The red stone gleamed, at once dark and vibrant, too conspicuous to ignore.
Liesel rarely wore jewelry. He had combs and clips for his hair, but no jewels for his ears, no pendants for his neck, no bracelets for his wrists. The diamonds which seemed to drip from his attire in his strongest form did not adorn his day-to-day clothes. He was a Prince—by power; by blood—but he did not always enjoy the gaudy decadence of his own world. There often seemed to be no point in decking himself out in precious stones when his power was already so apparent. He was Ganymede. He had been Ganymede since the day of his birth. He would be Ganymede until his last breath.
When he wore golden trinkets, it was usually because Serge had given them to him.
Ganymede blinked. Valhalla’s face swam before her, half Chris and half Serge. She untangled herself from him slowly, fingers slipping away as she rose from the bed, staring around the room Serge had put together for Liesel long before the scars, when all they had to show of their feelings was the eagle brooch pinned to Liesel’s jackets. It gleamed from Ganymede’s collar now, wings stretched open protectively.
She wore a different ring on her right hand—small diamonds arranged in a starburst design, given to Liesel after the brooch. To enhance strength. To bolster his confidence when he felt himself faltering. But the magic emanating from it was different from the red stone in her memories. The starburst meant security, stability.
The red stone meant passion. It called to her from the past, a steady pulse she usually only felt on Ganymede. Thump-thump thump-thump thump-thump. Like a heartbeat…
Ganymede drifted, letting instinct guide her, following memory wherever it took her. She ended up back at the vanity where she previously found the starburst ring. This time she had no need to rummage through drawers. Two rings sat upon the wooden surface as if they’d only recently been left there—by some cosmic force, perhaps, or by Liesel himself, reaching across the centuries to ensure his love survived.
As Ganymede reached for them, another memory burst through the veil which still obscured parts of Liesel’s life: A dark cave. Beads and baubles scattered across a workshop. A man with dark hair and sharp features leaning over his work.
“Altamira…”
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Posted: Tue Mar 03, 2026 12:53 pm
Valhalla felt the shift the moment her fingers slipped from his. He didn’t try to stop her. Instead, he watched. There was a different kind of stillness to her now. Less fear, and less spiraling worry. More focus. He rose from the bed a second later, not crowding her, but not letting her drift alone either.
When she moved to the vanity, when she didn’t have to search this time, when the rings were simply there and she knew what she was looking for—
A quiet chill went down his spine.
He knew that look on her face. He’d seen it the night she brought the twins home after Abby had awakened. When Celia’s name had first surfaced in their conversations. When fragments of Liesel came too close to the surface to ignore. A quiet knowing. Perhaps one more thing inescapable by fate.
His gaze lowered to the rings.
The red stone caught the light in a way that felt… alive.
It wasn’t like the starburst. That one seemed to radiate steadiness and strength. This one seemed to pulse — not visibly, but he felt like he could feel it. Faintly.
“Altamira,” he repeated, softly.
The name was familiar in the way old stories were. He didn’t know the full details, only fragments. Whispers of a Knight of Ganymede who worked not just with gold and gem, but with blood. Intimate commissions. Devotions crystallized and made wearable.
Valhalla stepped closer, careful. His eyes didn’t leave the red stone. A faint furrow touched his brow as the air in the room seemed heavier, somehow. “Are you remembering him?”
He didn’t sound jealous or threatened. Just curious. Concerned.
Then, softer still —
“That stone isn’t decorative.”
It wasn’t a question.
He reached out, not to take it from her, but to hover his hand near hers, ready to offer her support if she faltered. “If this is something he made…” His voice lowered. “It would have been intentional.”
On Ganymede, nothing that intimate was ever accidental.
“If that’s bloodwork,” he added quietly, his thumb brushing lightly against the scar on his own palm. “It would have been made for love.”
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Posted: Sun Apr 19, 2026 9:13 am
Ganymede nodded. She was silent for a while, watching firelight play along the rings, grasping for the fading tendrils of memory.
Liesel was a child, staring around the caves as something rumbled deep below. Altamira stood beside him in the full regalia of a Knight, fearsome in a way he wasn’t when he tinkered in his shop.
Liesel was an adolescent, kneeling in the throne room while a priest traced the symbol of Ganymede onto his forehead with anointing oil. Altamira stood by the throne, clustered among familiar figures—some whose names Ganymede remembered, some who remained long forgotten. Serge stood near him, too stern for his young age.
Liesel was an adult, hand in hand with Serge in Altamira’s workshop. The golden rings sat together in the palm of Altamira’s hand, red gems catching the light.
Liesel was a child again, looking over Altamira’s papers, his projects, but not touching. Never touching. Altamira watched over him from a nearby chair, a sketch half finished on the desktop before him. In each of his ears, a small red gem glimmered.
“Did you make those?” Liesel asked, peering curiously at the earrings.
Altamira nodded.
“Did they belong to someone else?” Liesel knew the question wasn’t quite right, but he didn’t know how to ask whose blood it was when he knew, even so young, how intimate such things could be.
Altamira’s frown deepened. He brought a hand to one ear and touched the tips of his fingers to the gem.
“They’re all that’s left,” he said.
Liesel knew not to ask anything more.
Another flash from childhood to adulthood, back to adolescence, then childhood again. One memory, incomplete. A second, no more than a fragment. A rapid sequence, too fleeting to pick through, too insubstantial to understand.
Then, rain. Clouds too thick to see through, obscuring Jupiter’s many moons. Serge heavy and motionless in Liesel’s arms. The glimmer of red in the ears of a familiar man, older and more worn than Liesel had known him on Ganymede.
A sword…
Relief….
Liesel’s death had been quick and painless—a mercy that would not have been extended to him by anyone else on the field that day.
Darkness, then flickering light. Liesel and Serge stood hand in hand in Altamira’s workshop again. Altamira surrendered a ring to each of them. He seemed to part with them reluctantly, his steady gaze locked on Liesel’s face, perhaps searching for traces of the child he once was.
“Thank you,” Liesel said. He smiled shyly, heart racing—afraid, but giddy, too. Torn, always, between duty and love.
Liesel slid the ring containing his blood onto Serge’s finger. Though he had eyes for no one else at that moment, Ganymede still saw Altamira in Liesel’s periphery. He watched the exchange with a grim frown. One hand rose to an ear, fiddling with the red gem.
“I love you,” Liesel whispered, even softer than when they were alone.
Serge touched a hand to Liesel’s face.
Altamira turned away.
“Liesel and Serge had these made for each other,” Ganymede said. She took the rings into her hand, letting them settle into her palm. They were strangely warm, as if they’d recently been worn. “I don’t think Altamira approved, but… he still made them. Liesel trusted him enough to ask. He knew their secret would be safe with him.”
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