claudiaartemis - Tumblr blog

[claudiaartemis]

Cale being genuinely kind and wanting what is best for himself and for the people he cherishes as friends, family and loved ones, but I want him to unleash hell on those that are his enemies. Let him hunt them down callously, sending hounds after them for they are not worthy of being a dragon's prey- and let them witness their last moments alive by promising to hand deliver their remains to their families.

In the end, he doesn't even keep that promise of his. They shouldn't have dared to trust him.

Leaning his cheek on the palm of his hand, he watches them breathe their last and whispers low and sweet in their ears, "I changed my mind. What better gift to give your family, than the bright hope that you may still be alive somewhere? Let them wait... until they forget."

He keeps watch over them as they claw desperately in the dirt, tears spilling over, cursing him as blood-filled spittle runs down their chin before failing to move again. "You shouldn't have crossed paths with me. I don't enjoy doing this, but people like you never learn, so I always have to do this the hard way."

[claudiaartemis]

when I was a little kid at some point I got upset with my parents because I didn't have a crucifix in my bedroom and they did- I was like why do YOU get to be safe from vampires??? you're okay with me getting my blood sucked???? so we took a little trip to the catholic store but the one closest to us was run by a group of nuns that had been moved here from romania. I got a little baby pink cross and this sweet old nun was like 'aww, is this a baptism gift?' and I was like no. I need to be protected from vampires. and she immediately got SO serious and was like 'this is the best one we've got, you'll definitely be safe' and since she was literally from vampire land I was convinced she was like, van helsing. like the whole time my parents had been laughing about how cute my fear was but she literally Knew dracula and was taking my concerns seriously I held this over my parents for so long lmfao

[claudiaartemis]

i will ALWAYS clap my hands excitedly and lean forward in my seat when someone tells a character to "keep your dog on a leash" only for it to turn out they're referring to another person

[claudiaartemis]

I know it probably won't happen, but I kinda wanna see Cale get mind controlled or something and fight everybody. Logically they could probably beat him or contain him quickly with a shield, but I'm curious. Who would they have fight him and how would they fare against his ancient powers and abilities? Would they hesitate because they don't want to hurt him? Would they hold back or use all their strength? Would they try to talk him down first to snap him out of it or go straight to attacking him?

How would it go?

[claudiaartemis]

“if there was anyone to ever get through this life with their heart still intact they didn’t do it right” andrew i’m trying to escape seasonal depression don’t do this to me rn

[claudiaartemis]

If I had the slightest discipline in me I’d be unstoppable

[claudiaartemis]

this scene made me cry.

[claudiaartemis]

he is half of my soul, as the poets say.

[claudiaartemis]

"For love, I'll go to heaven and hell; for you, I'll become invincible".

© STARember

[claudiaartemis]

You know it's crazy when Alberu is the voice of reason 😂

Alberu probably has a tiny Cale on his left shoulder and a tiny Choi Han on his right shoulder at every noble reunion. They are supposed to represent good and evil, and prevent him from having to smash the nobles, but he got two vicious bastards that whispers ways to wreck havoc, they just disagree in how.

[claudiaartemis]

Master lee and seo yul overestimating jang uk and assuming that it will be hard for him to choose between his morals and naksu 😭😭😭😭 that man will burn the world down without any hesitation if it meant he can dig naksu out of the ashes

[claudiaartemis]

Jang-uk is killing it every episode of season 2! He has come along so far. From being the kid who can't even use his energy to being the most powerful mage whose very presence is enough to make the king uneasy.

Imagine being so fcking strong that every single organization from local mages up until even the Royal Family are trembling on their knees to appease you.

Songrim really stepped up for him this episode. So proud of them!

I just wish Seo Yul will know everything that happened so he can realize how important and loved he is. 😭

[claudiaartemis]

ORV Constellation! Cale

As a myth-grade constellation, Cale Henituse, known as the Crimson Commander, is known to spend gold coins like water for his personally chosen humans when he sees them face the slightest hint of danger. God? There is no God when Cale Henituse's incarnations go to war. Blood will rain from the heavens if that's what they choose, and know this- those who bear his name will always find their glory.

[claudiaartemis]

Fantasy Kacchan. Love of my life. Reason for breathing. The greatest man of our generation.

Also, I post my WIPs, PSDs and animation frames on Patreon

[claudiaartemis]

The book community is just full of tired burned out depressed humans who use books as an escapism from the shitty reality and responsibilities and not to mention the weird sense of superiority towards others

[claudiaartemis]

And the Heavens Wept

Gather around my children and you shall hear of the most terrible, most implacable, most improbable friends ever met by our people. They came from the third planet of a tiny system, surrounded by desolate space. Not one sentient species for hundreds of lightyears, and they managed to propel themselves into space.

We watched from afar as they developed slowly. We watched as they warred among themselves, brutal and savage. We watched as they rendered regions of their planet uninhabitable to themselves, a hardy species able to adapt to even the most hostile of environments. We watched as suddenly and without warning they united under four banners, the rest falling by the wayside. We watched as they expanded into what we had begun to use as a buffer zone, to allow these humans to burn themselves out in.

But they did not burn themselves out. Despite their warring among themselves. Harsh people. Humankind is a race of warriors, do not be fooled by the eloquence of their diplomats. In their own words, “All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means”. Their greatest artists and philosophers were born from blood and conflict. I had the privilege once to view a painting by one Pablo Picasso, entitled Guernica. It was a savage piece, with not a drop of color. It showed the horrors of war, and the irony of it all was that the painting hung in the office of one of humankind’s generals.

It was sudden, when they burst from the containment zone. When they realized they were not alone. And we, with heavy hearts, prepared to fight them bitterly and to the last. Imagine then, our surprise when humanity embraced us among the stars as long lost brothers. They were overjoyed to discover they were not alone in the darkness. Despite their brutal and warlike culture, despite their glorification of death and violence, their people do not seek out combat. An ancient general of theirs once put it thusly “Although a soldier by profession, I have never felt any sort of fondness for war, and I have never advocated it, except as a means of peace”.

For centuries humanity worked to better itself. They unified under a single Interstellar Empire, the Empire of Man, the Human Empire, however you called it. They enjoyed art and music. They became leisurely at home, exploratory in the field. Their weapons of war were long gone, beaten into plowshares as they say. Humanity was finally at peace. There was no conflict among them, a few border skirmishes for certain, and they kept a small standing military, but nothing more than that. We considered them domesticated.

At first we were surprised at their transformation, then overjoyed. We welcomed them into the fold of the cosmos, embraced them as they would embrace us. We thought we knew humanity then, that we had seen them at their best and their worst. We were wrong, so very wrong. We did not truly understand humanity until the Texar-Hakara came into the void between the stars.

Seemingly more brutal, more bloodthirsty than even the humans, they swept into our region of space like conquerors. They smashed whatever feeble resistance the Yungling managed to put up, took their planets, enslaved the survivors, and pressed on. The Junti were next, utterly destroyed. The four great races left, ourselves, the Itaxa, the Kukrama, and the Illnaa, banded together to try and stop them. In our arrogance, we did not include the humans in our pact. Too few in number, too weak in frame, too backwards in technology we thought.

The Texar-Hakara hit our borders like the great wave that sweeps life from the beach. We hardened our hearts and prepared for the worst. Seeming without pause they crushed our border defenses. They obliterated the first fleets we sent to them. The Itaxa fell to the Texar-Hakara, enslaved, killed, scattered to the corners of the galaxy. Then the humans sent us an offer, a request really. They asked to fight alongside us.

Bemused, we accepted. What else could we do? Deny them the right to fight with us for their very survival? We thought to assign them as rearguards, to ferry our people to safety after our fleets fell. We thought wrong.

Humanity swept into the stars with a fury unmatched by any other. Their fleets were not the heaviest. Their guns not the most accurate. Their soldiers however. Their sailors. Their warriors were unmatched by any others in the cosmos. I remember the first battle in which the humans fought the Texar-Hakara like it was but a single solar cycle ago. Our forces were on the brink of breaking and fleeing. Our ships were gutted ruins. Our fighters exhausted and out of missiles. Then humanity fell upon the flank of the enemy, and the full force of the Human Empire was unleashed in a single moment of utter fury. Landing craft spat across the distance in an instant, slamming into enemy hulls and disgorging humanity’s greatest weapon, their Marines. In close combat humanity is unstoppable, and so they took the vast distances of space combat out of the equation.

Their ships belched fire and plasma. Lasers crossed the vast distances in the blink of an eye. Half the Texar-Hakaran fleet was obliterated in minutes. The other half turned to face this new enemy, only to be wracked by internal explosions as the Marines did their work. Their greatest ships turned on the rest of the fleet, a handful of humans holding the bridge against waves of enemy attackers to turn the tide of battle.

The Interstellar War came to a screeching turnaround. The advance of the Texar-Hakara halted, like it had hit an immovable wall. In many ways that is what humanity is, an immovable, implacable wall. Then, with the ferocity humanity is alone capable of, they routed the Texar-Hakara. Not from that lone battle. They pushed them out of Itaxa space, liberating the slaves. The space of the Junti and the Yungling was swept clear of invaders. Then the Texar-Hakara committed the gravest of sins in humanity’s eyes. They warped a fleet to Earth, jewel of humanity’s empire. They burned that blue and green world. They destroyed it, and the trillion people it housed.

Humanity is a forgiving race my children. Even their most terrible of wars have resulted in lasting friendships between nations. When they left millions dead and broken on the muddly fields of their world, they rebuilt the aggressors. They raised them from the mud, dusted them off, and welcomed them back into the fold. But there is one thing that humanity cannot, will not, tolerate. It is abhorrent to them my children. To strike at their home, to strike where they raise their young ones. Where they leave their mates and non combatants. To strike there is to raise the ire of the human race, truly.

Humanity raged. Their attempts at obtaining the surrender of the Texar-Hakara halted. The war turned from a righteous war of liberation to a furious and hateful war of retribution. We begged the humans to stop, to leave what few planets the Texar-Hakara had alone. Our pleas went unanswered for months, until a single human ambassador came to us. His face was cold and emotionless. He told us, in no uncertain terms, that the Texar-Hakara had doomed themselves and that any trying to aid them would suffer the same fate. Quietly we watched then, as humanity wiped the Texar-Hakara from the stars. The Texar-Hakara pleaded for mercy. They offered their unconditional surrender. They came to us and begged on bent knee for us to reign in the mad dogs we had unwittingly unleashed into the universe. Humanity had for so long repressed their warrior culture. Tried to become better. Then we had given them back into the fires of war, and humanity had awakened it’s warrior past.

The Texar-Hakara ambassadors were taken from our halls by grim human Marines and thrust out airlocks. Finally there was but one planet left, and we came to the humans, we pointed to our own losses, our own dead friends some of whom had lived for longer than humanity had been among the stars, and we begged the humans not to take the last of the Texar-Hakara’s lives.

I watched, children, I watched as the Texar-Hakara’s world burned. As humanity left but one of their planets alive, a simple backwater colony of no more than ten million. Ten million, out of the trillions. Then the leader of the human military turned to me, and with no emotion in his voice, told me that humanity accepted the unconditional surrender of the Texar-Hakara, and walked off the bridge of my ship.

My children, the lesson here is that a warrior past is never truly gone. Only buried, mayhaps even wiped from living memory. But gone? Never. Humanity showed us that.

[claudiaartemis]

Humans are called space angels. What they don’t tell you, however, is which type of angel they can be.

The Dictionary of Universities defines “angel” first and foremost as “an immortal and divine creature from religion, who serves to carry on the will and messages of a god, normally by protecting and communicating with mortals”. The second paragraph says “a word used to describe someone who protects and takes care of others”. The third, and most controversial one, is “someone who is good-natured”.

“Good-natured” is relative amongst species. The consensus is that “good” refers to “not harming or being cruel to others, but not ignoring them”. “Natured”, however, is for an intelligent creature that will always prefer, without even properly thinking about it, to do and be good.

Humans do not fit in to the third definition of “angel”. Their morality, like the majority of species, is to be morally gray. There are many other definitions that they also do not fit.

The krook have angels. They are described as “divine creatures as dark as the depths of the infinitude of space, who, once upon a time, were mortals, much like us, but ascended after many lives of choosing to be good”. Wonderful creatures that whisper soft healing melodies for mortals to be safe.

Humans, when they discovered other intelligent creatures, were described as being similar in habit to those angels. They sang beautiful songs that restored entire planets. They sang and danced around, helping plant life grow and for animal life to once again thrive.

But humans don’t come from the depths of space, nor do they live many, many, many times of goodness, do they? But they sing.

The nobos fear the wrath of angels. If they are too selfish, too greedy or too ambitious, an angel would come, wielding a sharp blade, and would cut their selfishness, greed or ambition in half. They would take a part of it with them, and come back a day or two later with a crooked item made of blood. If the cruel nobos doesn’t undo their ugly deeds, the item consumes them.

The nobos saw what the humans did, when they declared war. They saw the blood and they saw the oranges and red, and they saw the teeth and they saw eyes that haunted many for years and years to come. The nobos were selfish, and thus were gifted evil items.

But humans didn’t make those things with blood. It was with iron, and it didn’t eat the nobos. It was a set of statues they would have to display around their museums, as a grim apology for the war.

But humans, on the other hand? They think of angels as divne creatures of goodness. So good, they become holy, delivering messages, doing the will of a God, protecting children and blessing those who ask for help or who are good enough. They categorise their angels (of course they do!), and many of them have appearances they consider to be horrifying.

But, above all else, their angels are holy. Their angels are good. And humans are not. Much less holy or divine. Call a human that, and they might look at you with a strange expression. Humans do not fit the first category of angel.

They do fit the second. Creatures that always looking around for others, is what the humans are. Haven’t you heard? They are trying to figure out how to donate their blood to other intelligent creatures, so they can help. They made a thing named “The Library of All Alexandrias”, containing every single piece of written language, art and sound ever imaginable, so they can protect. They are making unusual weapons that do not kill, so no one has to spill out blood.

They train each other. They watch over their libraries and museums. They walk around, wearing white clothing, always watching. In spaceships, with their colorful cloths and silks, they protect. They heal. They love.

They don’t call themselves holy. But when you are like me and see your fragile human friend risking their life to save you from pirates, asking you to keep your eyes wide open so they can sing a song you taught them so you won’t let death overtake you, taking care of your mortal wounds, you would too think that they might have a single drop of something holy.

Many creatures think humans are the second definition, but I won’t discard the first one. “An immortal and divine creature from religion, who serves to carry on the will and messages of a god, normally by protecting and communicating with mortals”.

Their divinity is one of the depths of their “Earth”, with their voices and crudeness, with the red of their interiors and stories and myths of legends. Their immortality is one kepth within their libraries, within they All Alexandrias. They protect and tell each other and us about messages they do not quite understand yet.

But one question remains. One that I fear I will never get the answer too:

Which gods sent these creatures to us?