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[royalreliquary]

merykthewanderer​:

Meryk couldn’t help but stare at what she could see of the knight’s teeth. They were… Metal? She had thought Bloodhound knights were people wearing armor but… It seemed like this one was the armor? Too early for conclusion, especially with a sample of one.

At least they had not taken off with her pot yet. The Tarnished tilted her head on the side, hand still on the handle of her weapon and considered. To follow the mysterious armored figure in the dark woods or not. Sounded like the beginning of a rather gruesome fairytale.

But it was something new, and unusual, and curious and damn she was too curious for her own good. Where had she rested at a Grace last? Altus Plateau. Fine.

“Alright, alright, I’ll follow you. Just let me put out the fire first, before we get a forest fire on our hands and we end up as the ones cooked instead.”

It took only a minute to drop a few handfuls of dirt on the embers and stomp on them once for good measure. Meryk turned toward the Knight and gestured toward the pot. 

“Give it to me, I have a free hand. It’ll be easier than with your teeth.”

Lorian huffs quietly, but sets the pot down, allowing her to carry it if she so insisted. He was much stronger, but it was her pot. Hopefully she wouldn’t walk too slowly.

Once the fire’s out, he turns, leading her along the path he’d taken, following the flicker of the flame. He seems to glow very faintly the longer he’s looked at, especially the silky mane hanging on either side of his neck, and his footfalls make very little noise apart from the creak of his well-oiled armor. 

Eventually, the pointed silhouette of a tower can be seen over the golden tops of the birches, its black stone walls glimmering under the full moonlight. Lorian stops, waiting for the tarnished to catch up.

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haligtreedream​:

St. Trina tilts her head and leans forward as if listening closer to the gesture. Of course there’s no sound to hear, but she’s walked in enough dreams to be able to glean meaning from most any language the dreamer wants her to understand. She nods and smiles again, “That should do wonderfully. Have you a name? And you seemed quite startled at my presence, any particular reason?”

With the rain drying and no longer impeding vision other details about St. Trina become apparent, the stains on her veil are bloody as well, seeping from beneath, and her eyes too are bloodshot and slightly sleepless. Despite this she’s cheery and patient as if there’s nowhere else she’d rather be than talking to a silent knight in the middle of a gruesome stormy ocean.

The heavy scent of iron fills his nose, now more apparent that they’re out of the rotten sea. Lorian hesitates. They didn’t have a gesture for his name; why would they ever need one? He thinks for a moment, then scratches the letters of his name into the soft earth with his claws. LORIAN.

Looking back up at the girl, he then rakes them lightly across the top of his arm. Hurt? He saw no stiffness in her movements, no pain in her face, but then, some people were very good at hiding discomfort. Much like rabbits, not wanting to show weakness.

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2019-04-25

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haligtreedream​:

The tiny saint smiles, and keeps a hold of his fingers as she turns around and starts leading him across the water. Between blinks a small island with a single twisted tree appears amongst the rain. Trina brings them up onto the grassy little knoll and beneath the shelter of the dense branches and leaves. As would be strange anywhere else, but makes enough sense in a dream, the tree is enough to shield them from the rain completely.

Trina drops Lorain’s fingers and begins wringing out her dress, the water coming out tinged slightly pink as it becomes obvious the dark brown stains creeping up from the hem are likely composed of old blood. She frowns for but a moment before smoothing her skirts and looking back up at the knight.

“Nice and dry as promised!” she says happily, folding her hands in front of her, “Now do correct me if I am mistaken, but you’re a silent knight are you not? Have you an alternative method of communication? I’d like to know more about you and this awful dream you’re having.”

Lorian sits upon the grass, looking out at the unsettled, black ocean, tasting the rotten seawater still sloshing around in his armor. This girl smells like blood, old and stale, not fresh but still worth concern. Had somebody hurt her? Or... was it somebody else’s blood, considering the abilities she’d shown so far...

He tilts his head at her question, thinking, then signs a simple gesture, opening and closing his claws. Talk. It was something he and Lothric used when nods and head shakes were not enough, but he doubted it could be understood by anybody else. Maybe she’d pick it up somehow? 

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haligtreedream​:

The apparent child in question misses his nod as she is wiping her face clean of the water Lorain shook from his back and a bit of putrid oozing flesh. She’s doing her best not to look disgusted, but isn’t very successful.

“Well now that we’re both on equal footing, I am Trina, saint of dreams. Come along, lets get somewhere dry and then we can figure out who you are.” The little saint’s voice grows sweeter as she collects and introduces herself. Her face as clean as it will get she offers a single hand this time and blinks up at Lorain with wide golden eyes.

Lorian stares back at her. The idea of getting dry when they’re both still being pounded by the sheeting rain might have made him laugh, if he was capable of laughing. It’s almost as funny as her sticking her hand out to offer him a handshake. Nobody had ever tried to shake his hand before. Might as well offer to shake hands with a dog.

Delicately, he lifts his arm and places two of his clawed fingers in her palm. It’s all that will fit. 

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merykthewanderer​:

“Oh, fuck me.” Meryk groaned as she struggled to get back on her feet.

Of course. Could have be a daring fox, or maybe a demi human, but instead it’s a massive… Bloodhound knight? Maybe? They are bigger than Darriwil but the pointed helm is a dead giveaway. A knight, from a legendary caste of warrior, was interested in her dinner.

Drawing herself to her full height, which might be impressive next to anyone that wasn’t horse sized and armored from head to toe, and hand resting on the handle of her flail just in case, the Tarnished cleared her throat.

“So, big guy, that’s my dinner, thank you very much. I’m willing to share if you need it, but it’s my only pot and I’m certainly not letting you run off with it.”

At least they’d not tried to kill her yet, which placed them above every other Bloodhound knight Meryk had ever seen before, but nobody touched her precious cookware without her permission and didn’t get a good ass kicking for their trouble.

Share, would she?

There’s a metallic jingle as Lorian noses at the handle of the pot, lifting it from where it rests and holding it in his mouth. His serrated metal teeth glint in the firelight. He lifts it from the fire, but doesn’t move quite yet, raising one hand to beckon her with his claws. They would go to his camp instead, where it was safer. And if she didn’t want to come, he figured he could get back with at least some of the soup intact. He knew someone who needed it, but it was safer for them to stay put.

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haligtreedream​:

“Oh come now, don’t be like that,” the small figure admonishes as she trots along the small distance he manages to cover, tangled as he is. She frowns and reaches into the water, grabbing the decorative chain on the back of his armor and tugging.

She shouldn’t have the strength to move him in the water, let alone haul him up out of it, but sure enough she drags him above the surface as far as she can at her height, the hair sliding off him as she does. Where he to get even one limb up above the surface he’d find it solid enough to stand on when pushed down upon.

Lorian flails briefly as he’s lifted clear of the water, clambering onto the solid surface that’s materialized beneath his feet. Clumps of hair cling to him, tangling around his claws and catching on the jagged parts of his armor. Some carry chunks of black, necrotic flesh. He shakes himself like a dog, swiping as much of the strands off his body as he can 

His head swims as he sees the waves still roiling beneath his feet, letting out a low, uneasy growl. Magic was capable of strange things, he knew, but it doesn’t make it any easier to look at. Looking away he dips his head in thanks to the strange child who’d plucked him from the water, breathing heavily. 

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What rustling she hears is far too faint for the creature that emerges from the indigo darkness, firelight shimmering off its glossy black armor. A knight the size of a warhorse, its body distorted into a bestial four-legged shape, face hidden behind its pointed helm. Its silvery mane falls over either side of its long neck, adding to its equine similarities. 

Lorian regards the tarnished silently, steam rising from the pot of stew wafting across his face. He can smell mutton becoming tender in the heat, melted fat, herbs and rowa berries. Bland but filling. Not for him, of course. He hadn’t needed to eat in quite a while. Something he dearly missed. 

He sniffs at the pot, ghostly vapor wafting from the slits in his helm, seeming disinterested in Meryk herself. 

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Not enough salt.

Of course not enough salt, Meryk thought as she let her wooden spoon fall back into her little pot of stew. She was in the middle of the woods, far too close to Leyndell for comfort and cooking with the bare minimum. What did she expect? Dishes of glazed meat and honey, served on perfectly steamed vegetables, with a dessert of berries and cream? It would be mutton stew with roots and herbs she’d managed to forage, and that was it.

Better than nothing, though. And it was even good for what little she’d managed to scrounge up. Tarnished didn’t need sustenance, true, but a little bit of comfort went a long way between death and agony and the endless search for powers they didn’t understand. That’s why Meryk had risked it, hidden under a grove of trees growing close together, hoping that the branches would hide the light of her little fire She could have gone back to the Hold, to use the kitchen here, but meh. She was good on her own, with just the sounds of the night birds and crickets flitting around, and of course the boiling of her pot.

Meryk leaned back on her elbows, trying to look at the stars between the leaves, but what little she could glimpse of the night sky was obscured by the full moon. Disappointing. That, and silence. Not a great night.

Wait. Silence? Where had the crickets gone?

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haligtreedream​:

There’s something out of the ordinary in Lorain’s nightmare tonight, a small figure gliding across the water’s surface in a drenched purplish grey dress. Clearly the size of a child, more details can be picked out of the darkness as she approaches with hurried footsteps. Around her waist is a girdle belt embroidered with lilies knotted to fall elegantly down the front of her skirts, a stained white veil topped with a silver circlet is wrapped around her head concealing her hair, and her face appears just as young as her frame would indicate.

“Oh, what a dreadful nightmare you’re having,” she breathes once she reaches where Lorain struggles to keep his head above the surface. She puts out her tiny hands for him to grab and smiles warmly. “Let’s see you out of there shall we?”

A child? Had there ever been a child in his dreams before? Lorian hesitates. No child could possibly lift him. Nevermind that no child could walk on the surface of the water either. He shakes his head, water seeping like tears from his eyeslits. He’d surely drag her down too...

Something slides past his foot, icy cold and soft, fleshy. Lorian’s movements grow more panicked as he tries to swim away from the child. Something’s tangling his limbs, floating on the surface like kelp. In the lightning’s flash it glints gold. 

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@haligtreedream

The dead don’t sleep, not in the same way the living do. Lorian worries sometimes that if he dozes too deeply, he will slip into whatever afterlife awaits him, and Lothric will be left stranded, without his protection. So when he does rest, he rests lightly. He has no body that can grow exhausted, but his mind worries enough without it. 

He never dreams. He only has nightmares. This time he finds himself in a familiar place, on the surface of an oily black sea. Rain pours ceaselessly from the heavens, seeping through the slots of his helmet and blinding him as he paddles aimlessly. His armor dragging him down, he soon will tire and slip under, and once again he’ll see that face, those dead, cloudy eyes leering up at him from the abyss. 

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Rucae encounters Varré, and is not thrilled with his blood cult sales pitch.

then Varré hit her with the mace.

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toying with the idea of making a sideblog for my misbegotten OC because she’s such a horrid little creature and very fun.

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verses - bloodborne

In an effort to break the curse that’s afflicted the city, the Choir attempts to recreate Kos’s lost child through ghastly experiments. The infant abandoned on the doorstep of the cathedral was so frail, he’d surely have perished anyway, so there was nothing to lose. 

Lothric is cared for and guarded day and night by Lorian, a servant of the Healing Church. While all were brothers and sisters of the faith, he comes to regard Lothric as his sibling as much as his charge. It pains him to understand that Lothric will be reunited with his Mother someday, even if it’s something that must be done.

The experiment is a failure, and the ceremony kills every last attending member of the Choir. Lorian steals away with Lothric before anybody else realizes what happened, taking him to the outskirts of the city so nobody will know the truth. If they found out he’d survived, they’d surely want to open him up, inspect his innards for where they’d gone wrong, just as they’d done with Her last child. 

The two of them hide out around the beaches and docks of Yharnam, Lorian finding work as a lighthouse keeper. It’s isolated enough to be safe, and nobody recalls the face of the pale, slimy creature that lives in the tidepools, no matter how hard they try. 

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I have a lot of Thoughts about the culture surrounding Lothric as a holy figure, since he's extremely important to his people as basically their Second Coming of Gwyn but very few people have actually seen him let alone met him. He's basically as big a cultural figure as Jesus Christ but virtually everything the common folk know about him is a lie, and much of it contradicts itself. Many of Lorian's accomplishments are attributed to him as well.

For example he’s well-known for having prophetic visions, and these are a common source of sermons designed to spread the faith about him. However, no effort is made to distinguish between what are mere fever dreams and what might actually be prophetic, and Lothric largely does not tell the clergy about any visions he thinks might actually be reporting the future. They’re determined to interpret virtually anything he says or does as divine regardless of his sayso, if they think it’ll serve their message, and are not above just making shit up about him. 

Really, there’s very little resemblance between Lothric the Holy Prince and Lothric, the real guy.

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“My humors are so very imbalanced.”

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Diamond, nephrite, and rock crystal lily of the valley brooch (at 1stdibs)

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