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politemagic · 5 months

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The Haunting of Sleep Manor (Sleep Token Haunted House AU)

very very excited to start sharing this series!! the first chapter will be posted by the end of this week (hopefully tomorrow). i've been having a lot of fun writing it, so here's a little teaser 👻🖤

edit: Chapter I can be found over here or on ao3 if you prefer!

They didn’t have much in the way of worldly possessions, so all of their belongings packed neatly into one moving truck. The four vessels of Sleep squished together in the cab as they barreled down the quiet country road. Vessel was humming along to the radio, II lightly drumming along with his fingers against his thigh. IV’s mind had wandered off, his eyes slightly glazed over as he took in the passing scenery, III snoring against his shoulder. At last, they could see the wrought iron gates of Langley Manor, their new home looming at the end of the drive beyond. Vessel veered off the road, pulling up to the gates and shifting the truck into park, causing III to stir from his slumber.

Vessel hopped out of the driver’s door, unlocking the padlock with one of the many keys from the keyring he’d received from the realtor’s office the day before. The old house came with a ridiculous number of keys, he couldn’t even begin to imagine the various secrets it had locked away. Sleep wouldn’t have selected just any home, he was sure there was something more to this place than meets the eye. He pushed the gates open at last, quickly making his way back to the truck. The gravel driveway crunched beneath the tires as they neared Langley Manor, the vast expanse of land that came with the home sprawling out in luscious greens behind it. Vessel could hardly believe that he was finally here, that any of this was real. But the excited chatter from the others indicated to him that not only was it very real, it was just as amazing as he’d imagined it to be.

(original headcanons can be found here ☺️)

#i really just wanted an excuse to share the moodboard i made for this because i love a haunted aesthetic #i'm mostly just proofreading rn and making sure she's good to go but i'm honestly pretty happy with how it's turning out🥺#it's been a minute since i liked my own writing this much i just hope others enjoy it as well😌 i think it's going to be a fun series #it's not going to be quite as silly as my hcs were because i do have a Plot in mind but it will still be a good time!!!! (i hope)#sleep token #sleep token fanfiction #em's stcu #the haunting of sleep manor #<- i will be cross posting between ao3 and tumblr so that tag will be home to all my haunted house au thingymabobs🥰

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autisticrosewilson · 3 months

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First of all, you have given me so much to work with, thank you so much. Second of all, I’m really glad you could see where I was going with Grant’s real test not actually being about killing Slade. Third of all, I absolutely love what you’ve suggested with the powers and I am currently designing met gala esque outfits for the trio and Tara’s specifically is really fun to play around with. I’ve been thinking to show they’re becoming more divine I’ll change their hair and eye colours but not their faces for the most part. I was drawing robin Jason with Natalia and decided he should have brown eyes and a crooked nose from breaking it as a kid but once he returns his eyes get weird (eg go blue and occasionally other colours), a patch of his hair went white and he lost all of his scars. Also, I think the closer they get to divinity I’m gonna draw cracks on their body that glow with their specific colours just to hammer home how they’re shedding their mortal forms.

With Tara being able to see the strings of fate, I though it’d be fun to give her a harp and then with Jason having the see no evil trait I thought it’d be fun to give him weighing scales since lady justice wears a blindfold. Idk what to give Grant though. I mean probably a weapon of some sort or maybe a Shepard’s crook that he can turn into a scythe to play into the sheep, wolf, Hunter thing.

With Jason and Tara’s splintering, I love the idea of them making fun of Grant for being the baby god. He hasn’t even had a cult yet, gosh he’s so young. Also them being besties just holds a special place in my heart.

And I just came up with this, of course they have parallels to the trinity but in universe rumours of their existence have been around much longer than Bruce, Clark and Diana. They’re the big three of the justice league but these guys are justice gods. So they start calling themselves the justice trinity but then people get confused about which trinity is which because the justice leagues’ trinity sounds awfully close to the justice gods’ trinity. The new all caste is certainly more distinctive branding but the point isn’t to be distinctive, it’s to be petty.

I'm so glad my unmedicated rambling helped!!! And I'm so excited for the outfits!!! I love when characters start becoming less and less human, when they're stuck in that uncanny valley spot of not quite human but not entirely Other, when they lose control and the cracks start to show...um I should probably give a warning for slight body horror elements. Not in the gore sense, in the "this body is not made of flesh and there is something divine clawing it's way out". Uh also there are teeth. Just. Teeth. I dipped into a little bit of cosmic horror at the end there because I wanted to cover my bases with mixed mythologies

Jason, with his defined splinters, is usually depicted with three faces in ancient texts. The Child, gaunt and dark colored, is said to appear before the downtrodden and impoverished. The few stories remaining tell of kindly people who give him an offering, and in exchange he reveals his true form, with his crown of golden ivy and beautiful strong wings to gift them bounties of food and water and riches. Other stories tell of not so kind encounters, where The Child witnesses an injustice - typically against women or children - and again reveals his true form, one with clawed hands and a mouth dripping with blood. Scholars argue what the wings looked like, but whichever All-Caste member annotated it before has compared their likeness to either a Robin or a Shrike.

There's also The Ghost, He appears young at first glance, but his hair is wirey and gray, his eyes milky and unseeing, in bloodied armor he greets the souls of the damned as they're delivered to him, and with scarred hands he wipes the tears of children taken too soon. Accounts of this face are few and far between, but all of them are entrenched in sorrow.

Finally there is The Soldier, scarred and still smoking from the ruins of battle he emerges, giving voice to the weak and resources to the needy. He champions revolutionaries and philosophers first, a strategist who delights in the liberation of the people from corrupt systems. Accounts of him usually come from times of famine and war, and he was particularly popular with poor villages, who would mark the graves of their dead with the symbol of his sword as offerings. For some reason or other, he got particularly popular with the youth, girls and boys both seemed to pray for him and leave him offerings.

The way these manifest on Jason is subtle at first. I could go the body horror route, but I won't. Yet. Instead I think his splinters show up as reflections, shadows, imprints. The faint echo of bell-like laughter when Jason does a move he learned as Robin, the image of a younger him with longer hair and unblinking eyes staring at him in the mirror. It gets worse when he gets the blades, the white streaks his hair, the swirling mark covers more of his skin every time he uses them, he trails the scent of smoke and blood behind him like a signature. His scars...they should disappear. They have for everyone else who used the pit, but instead his skin starts cracking. Any place he's ever been scarred glowing cracks break up his skin. He can't feel them, but he's always aware of them, the meaning behind them, the divinity literally leaking through his body. His eyes aren't brown anymore. They aren't even green. He looks in the mirror and they are copper, molten and burning. He tries his best to keep his mask on.

What do you think of when you imagine the word divinity? Probably something like Tara. Something with skin carved from stone, with moss and fungus crawling up her legs and snow laden shoulders. They say her hair is made of swirling clouds and the sun and moon are her eyes.

Some say she's a nymph although no one knows what kind. You're just as likely to see her name among the naiads as the dryads. Whether flowers bloom where she dances or waves crash when she sings, she's known to be more vicious towards suitors than her sisters.

Others have said she's a faerie, who takes the faces of lost daughters and lovers, slipping into their places seamlessly, forcing unruly men to pay their dues. Others say she's a shifter of a different sort, with a shawl of feathers and a crown of twine and gems. Stories range from men trying to steal her coat (and paying dearly) to lost children returned safely home on the back of a swan.

Tara doesn't think about it at first, the way gravity tends to cede to her, she doesn't notice how sunflowers turn their faces towards her instead of the sun. She doesn't notice the way her face...shifts. it's imperceptible really, and it's not like she looks in the mirror all that often. But everyone around her notices it, on some level, the way her expressions are off. A little too exaggerated. The way her limbs bend just a little too oddly. The way she never looks quite the same as she did the day before, the way she picks up features from the people around her the way she picks up rocks from ground to add to her collection. Clay molded subtly into the image of those she loves, a museum of everyone she's ever met. She does notice when her hair starts going white at the ends, the strange way her hair starts to curl unnaturally, almost floating. She's not so upset about her eyes, the deep blue of her father that has glared down at her day after day, she has changed her hair, her face, her language but she could not change her eyes. It seems she didn't have to, when she wakes up with one a little too silver to be gray and one a little too gold to be brown. And then her skin starts splitting, a cavern made from a broken rib and ravines made by the slashing of knives. She doesn't even bleed anymore, they never scab over. They crystallize, amber like ambrosia, like ichor. Her body a geode waiting to be cracked open to let the thing within finally break free.

They know the least about Grant, whatever he used to be. Half written scrolls, torn or burnt or simply stopped abruptly, illegible journal entries with symbols never recorded in any known language, half finished sketches where the details are never quite clear. A few things are usually consistent though, signs that he's been there, usually from hunters down on their luck or the particularly old and sickly. First, the howling. Like a wolf or a storm, although later accounts would add that it occasionally sounds like a mechanical whirring. Then the rabbits, dead and gutted, but not a trace of blood. Piles of them left in heaps on doorsteps or windowsills. Some have reported knocking at strange hours or finding teeth in their homes, a mix of human and animal. There is one photo on record, the most recent thing in the archive most likely, of claw marks on the side of a barn, too big and oddly serrated, certainly not from anything native to the area. Elderly that report these phenomena typically pass from heart problems within the week, according to some of the old medical files.

Grant came back wrong. Physically, at least. He knows that he's still himself for the most part, dying didn't make him a selfish asshole he did that all on his own, but...but something is wrong with him. It's the way lightbulbs flicker when he's mad and how cameras, no matter the quality, never quite get a clear shot of him. The way Joey can't ever grasp his features, not fully, the details slipping from his mind like water. The way eyes on his face slide right past, unable to look directly at him. It's in the gray spreading from his roots and his eyes too wide and dark to belong to something human. It's the way death clings to him like a second skin, sickly and pallid turning the tips of his fingers gray. His teeth are starting to feel too sharp for his mouth, and he hears things no one else does, whispers of voices that Are Not and Can't Be. The worst part is the orange, liquid candlelight under his skin, lighting up all of his veins and scars, webbing together like the world's worst game of connect the dots. No, there is no mistaking him for something human, so there is no reason to try. If this is his fate then he will take it, because he is not a sheep and he will not be a wolf, he is a hunter, and he is hungry.

#Jason as a Christ like figure is funny to me #Imagine growing up with a Catholic mother going to church praying for her health #and then you find out your soul predates the mf AND he plagiarized you 😒#that's more sad than funny but you get the picture #I also wanted them all to be represented by prey animals that are actually known for being really aggressive #like birds are typically seen as Docile but Shrikes are vicious assholes #and Swans which are coveted for their grace and beauty but are actually FERAL #it also marks Grant yet again as the odd one out by not giving him a bird #I gave him a rabbit because while I did consider a sheep it didn't work as well #Rabbits aren't dangerous to humans but they are aggressive to each other and won't hesitate if you push them #but they're also very sought after for hunting and as pets #I think Tara should have a very Changeling type vibe #y'know a little bit of fae energy #Grant is very much like a cryptid to me #cryptozoology is pretty new and people are still spreading stories about them #so it feels appropriate for a younger god to be associated with #there's also every chance he DID exist before the recorded records of him #but for some reason or other there's just less of him mentioned #Jason Tara and Grant have always been three after all #So what's obscuring Grant's mythology? fun little mystery 😉#dc #jason todd #tara markov #grant wilson #New All Caste au #also I have a whole Pinterest board dedicated to Tara and fancy clothes for her #because she has SO MANY INTERESTING AESTHETICS #I also really like your skin cracking idea so I tried to individualize it a little 😊#Grant's did get kind of body horror though

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