macroglossum - Tumblr blog

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for my mental stability🪑

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Ghost band OCs I’ve had since November 2022 🫣🫣

Doctor Uccello: he/him, primary care physician, ghoul specialist.

Whisper Ghoul: they/it, summoned during Impera era, ministry’s organist.

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Coyote skeleton sleeping inside of a table. Had a lot of fun with this project!

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i drew her year ago eheh

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Trying to figure out my canon ghoul hcs/designs

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a tune-up with sir victory

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He knows you are looking

cw: ghoul ass

some pin up (kind of) drawing of Cinis from last week,,,,malewife behavior tbh

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the government wants him killed on sight

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something gentle

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yippeee

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Silvanus's boyfriend, Eofor

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the eeper

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some GHOST drawings from last year

spillways is also available on my inprnt store!

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Two doodles I haven't posted here yet. This is Quasar and Silvanus!

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Tonight’s bedtime doodle 😌 my sweet Zephyr

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✨ Look into my face, then look again We're not the same, we're different ✨ A lesson in mimicry. Written, as always, with @yetanothergh0ul who Aberron belongs to. More art below the cut too.

“Again.” 

The vast, looming figure that is Varjo paces, slow and measured, around his smaller, visibly tense protégé. Many hours devoted to imparting some fraction of the deep well of ancient Shadow knowledge he possesses have led up to this practical lesson in the art of mimicry, and the results thus far are disappointing, to say the least. His son, though he is loath to use such a familiar term, has little command of the quintessence he ought to have surging thick and potent in his blood. 

No doubt the blame for this can be laid squarely at the door of that accursed Celestial. 

Varjo’s expression betrays little, the short intake of breath through his teeth being the only sign of his mounting impatience. 

“Concentrate. Live up to your title, Commander. Your magic answers directly to you, so prove you are capable of wielding it.” The multiple voices Varjo chooses to speak in bounce off the walls of the chamber, cacophonous orders growled from all directions hitting Aberron, stood in front of the full-length mirror, with a dry, uncaring force. It hurts. 

Aberron stands rigid and staring into the full-length mirror before him, focusing on the reflection of eyes that aren't quite his own. It's his face, surely it must be, but it isn't. Not quite. Like a distorted, ill-fitting mask pulled taut over the bones below, it's a collection of features he knows all too well but none of which match up right. 

Wrong. It's always wrong. 

His jaw aches from clenching it so tightly for hours in concentration. Underneath his Commander's uniform, the fresh tattoo etched into his chest burns like a brand of unrelenting shame. 

Worthless. 

He blinks hard. When he opens his eyes again, he sees Astra looking back at him, his expression almost pitying. Aberron's stomach lurches. "I can't--" he hisses, biting the inside of his cheek until it bleeds. He tries so hard and with such effort to make the visage shift to anyone else's that he digs his nails deeply into his palms, his hands clenching into white-knuckled fists at his sides, but it doesn't budge. 

Wisps of shadowy magic shimmer in the air around him, caressing his stolen face in mockery.

The noise when he exhales through his throbbing teeth is just as easily a laugh as it is a sob.

Varjo’s ears prick up, the swirling ink of his eyes flicking directly to the source of the noise. 

“You can’t what?” Long, sharp claws press into the fabric of Aberron’s uniform. Varjo stoops, heavy curls dropping over his hulking frame, unfurling and surrounding them both like thick black smoke. His gaze, reflected in the mirror before them, stares out cold and unrelenting. He studies the gritted teeth, the evident distress plastered across those mimicked features. “The face of your predecessor is particularly unbecoming on you, Commander.”

The vice grip on Aberron’s shoulders tightens as the seconds tick by, a low rumble of displeasure rolling from deep in the ancient Shadow ghoul’s chest. He has little attachment to his son, but the fierce resentment at the figure that bears a striking resemblance to both the mutt that got away as well as the age-old nemesis who spawned him, is reaching its boiling point. 

“Perhaps you are a lost cause,” It’s less a suggestion, more a statement, snarled into Aberron’s ear. “Again. Make an effort this time.”

A shiver shoots down Aberron's spine the moment the giant Shadow ghoul, his father, grips his shoulders and leans in close, but he refuses to call the reason for it fear. His wide-eyed gaze flicks to meet Varjo's in the mirror, holding it for several seconds in bold defiance before quickly looking away once again. 

A mix of rage and humiliation turns his insides. Bile burns at the back of his throat. Squeezing his eyes shut so hard that colorful shapes dance behind his eyelids, he exhales a harsh breath through his nose. 

He concentrates, and tries again. 

This time, as his features struggle to shift, they eventually settle on yet another all too familiar face. 

One that haunts his every moment, waking or otherwise. When finally he cracks an eye open and takes notice of the stark white antlers crowning his head like a disgrace, his heart thuds painfully as realization dawns on him. 

Perhaps you are a lost cause. 

He stares back at his disappointing reflection, directly into those cold violet eyes, a scream of frustration welling up from his throat and settling behind his teeth. 

Useless.

With a tut, emanating in a harsh chorus all around the low lit room, Varjo takes a step back. The grip of his leather-clad fists loosen abruptly, it isn’t a shove but may as well have been one for the effect it has on the young Shadow ghoul veiled in the unmistakable guise of a Wildling. 

He stands tall, brushing the front of his heavy coat as though ridding himself of filth, perceived or otherwise, the disgust evident in his face hanging in darkness over the antlered head reflected back through the mirror. 

The familiarity oozes forth alongside the venom he would be well prepared to spit at his son, soon followed by intrigue. The resemblance is uncanny, even through Aberron’s lackluster mimicry. He knows this particular Wild blood. The crescent scar, remnants of Celestial atoms glinting in the dim light, twitches as Varjo’s lips part into a grimace. 

“Tell me, boy,” This voice, drawn up out of a deep, dusty memory, is solitary. It’s a hiss, a ghost of a northerly wind. A deliberate, cutting choice. “What brings this Wildling so readily to your mind? A friend, perchance?"

Aberron bares his teeth in a wordless snarl as he stumbles forward a step, caught off guard by the voice Varjo chooses to adopt and left flinching as if struck. He barely stops short of colliding with the mirror by way of a hand pressing firmly against the glass to catch himself, his talons etching thin lines into its reflective surface as his fingers slowly curl inward. 

It gives him ample opportunity to see the features his mimicry has chosen up close and in vivid, sickening detail. The deeper he stares at those familiar eyes, the further he's drawn into them. 

He inhales, broken and stuttering, through his teeth. 

"He's--" Nothing? Aberron pauses, the lie turning to bitter ash in his mouth. Lowering his gaze, he replies, his voice a painful hiss of his own. "... He's everything to me."

There is a moment of silence, the tension of which feels ready to snap under the pressure in the air between them. Varjo had wondered, of course. In the brief spell he’d spent so far as advisor to the new Head of the Manipulators, he’d garnered something of the sort, but that look cast upon his son’s face now all but confirmed the suspicion. 

He is well versed in the trademark signs of an echo bond. It is a loop of sorts, attached though it is to another like a true bond would be, feeding straight back to the soul that hosts it. Of course, of all creatures between Hell and Earth, his idiot son had managed to forge such a link to a Wildling. 

“Your everything?” He scoffs, a hollow, dismissive laugh. He’d heard a statement along those lines from the voice belonging to the opposite end of his own one-way bond, frustratingly aimed at one quite other than himself. “How quaint.” 

He breathes out his nose, short and sharp, before turning with a billowing sweep of curls and coat tails. “You would do well to put such thoughts out of your mind, Commander. I fear we will not make much progress if all you can wring out is a set of antlers and the face of your own brother.”

Hunching in on himself, flinching from the other's cruel words, Aberron waits to hear the door click shut before releasing the trembling breath he's unknowingly been holding. Once alone, an ear-ringing silence settles in the air. He stares, unwavering, into the eyes of his reflection until his own begin to burn. 

When finally he's forced to blink, his features quickly shift, and soon, it's his brother gazing back at him once more. 

The face of your predecessor is particularly unbecoming on you, Commander. It's then that something snaps in Aberron. The floodgates retaining his rage open, and the ensuing wave released rushes out to fully consume him. 

With a roar, he raises his fist and slams it down onto his accursed reflection with enough force to make the entire mirror shudder on its very frame. He hears a sharp crack of bone as the glass spiderwebs from the point of impact. Searing pain spreads up his arm. 

How quaint. 

Raising his hand with a snarl, blood streaking through the air, he strikes again. Again. Again. He loses count of how many times. Eventually, he goes numb, but he continues until every inch of glass at eye level is shattered. 

It's only the burning in his chest that finally pulls him from the depths of his wild fury. 

Breathing heavily through his teeth while blinking away hot, furious tears, he slumps forward, breath fogging what remains of the glass, and slides to the floor. Once there, Aberron claws open the front of his uniform, gasping at the minimal relief that open air on his heated skin brings. His head drops back heavily against the broken mirror, and as his vision starts to vignette and waver around the edges, he cradles his ruined hand and breathes a fractured, humorless laugh. 

He is my everything.