#and the street urchin who dragged himself out of the gutter is walking around with Incredibly Formal Speech Patterns

[tmae3114]

I think probably one of my favourite things with Diath and Evelyn is how they each have the speech pattern that you would expect the other to have

That’s just. a really neat bit of mirroring between them.

[sarriathmg]

Omega Jason Todd Week 2020 Day 7: Free day #2 - Historical AU - 1700s What happens if none of the prompts you wanted to do made it? Why, crunch them all on the free day, of course!

Pfft yall have no proof that I'm just looking for excuses to put Jason in various dresses AO3 link ----

“I despise this,” Jason whispered to himself as he ripped the elaborate powdered wig off of his head and threw it aside, “this is atrocious.”

He really didn’t understand the reason why he had to do this. The whole rationale behind having to use his omega charms to approach the Waynes completely evaded him. Not when he had to dress in these ridiculous red satins and side hoops, barely able to move with him tripping over his gown every second step. The tightly laced stays he wore made his torso stiff and the dainty shoes hurt his feet. Jason hated how demeaning the low laced collar was, practically revealing his breasts for all the world to see, evoking interested looks to shoot at him from alphas all around which Jason absolutely detested. He also hated the perfumes that he was made to wear. They were too sweet, too artificial. Too obviously omega.

“I will kill Roman for this,” he said through clenched teeth. And to think the bastard alpha had the audacity to suggest that he also powder his face white and rouge his cheeks. He missed his coat, his red-colored hooded cloak and his simple mask (not like the frilly one he’s forced to wear to the masked ball), and his boots (God, did he miss his boots). But most importantly, Jason missed his guns. He missed his belt and his firearms, and he wished he was anywhere but here, dressed in unisex habits wreaking havoc in the harbor near the Wayne’s ships instead of standing here pretending to be some vulnerable damsel wearing these demeaning pannier and bows and satins that dragged on the ground, trying to use his omega attractiveness against the supposedly unsuspecting Waynes.

Jason huffed out a frustrated sigh before looking around himself. And, after making sure that no one was staring, he quietly and stealthily took off the ruffled red domino mask to reveal his face. Jason wanted a break. He needed one.

The Waynes had three sons and only one of them was alpha, a rich kid who was more into playing around than any official courtship and more into forming his own pack of misfits than staying home and taking over the pack legacy like a responsible alpha son should. Jason had read all the files on Richard Grayson before Roman had made him prepare for the ball, and he wasn’t convinced one bit that this plan was going to work.

‘But wouldn’t it be easier if you used an omega with more finesse who is more experienced with higher society?’ he’d asked.

‘Son,’ Roman had answered, right before he helped lace on Jason’s stays, ‘you’re selling yourself short. Besides, your training made you the best omega for this job.’

Except it’s easier said than done. Trying to disguise himself as a fine omega who’s lived among aristocracy his whole life when he was in actuality but a street urchin found curled up in the gutter was bloody hard. Jason didn’t have a smidge of clue on how to act properly and pretend to be a respectable omega like the rich bastards he was finding himself amongst right now. Only making things harder was him trying to locate the couple of targets he was meant to seduce in a massive ballroom where every single alpha, omega, and even some betas had their faces hidden behind masks. Jason had no clue what either Wayne or Grayson looked like in real life, which meant it was almost impossible to locate them among tens of masked attendants.

And speaking of which, of course, someone just had to decide to speak to Jason the same moment he removed his.

“May I have this dance?”

The voice sounded behind him with a classy but seductive alpha timbre. Jason looked back only so he could yell at the pretentious male to get lost. But that’s not what ended up happening. As soon as he had his eyes set on the young man, Jason immediately forgot what he was going to say.

A young alpha - perhaps only a few years older than Jason and dressed in black and blue - was holding his hand out to him in a polite and gentlemanly way. His hair was raven black, wavy, and down to his shoulders. His coat had golden trims and decorations embroidered among the smooth surface of the bright blue satin, yet they didn’t look overly ornate in any way. If anything, they made the man’s cerulean-blue eyes stand out even more under his simple silken black domino mask.

“You’re not from around here, I presume?” the alpha asked, still holding out his hand, black silken glove with blue strips catching some of the light from the wall lamps surrounding them, “if there had been such a fine omega around Gotham before, I would’ve noticed.”

There’s something...fraudulent in the alpha’s mannerism. The smile on his lips did not reach his eyes, his words were practiced, and Jason was way too familiar with the look in the man’s eyes which showed an alpha’s inquisitive behavior that Jason had known from his days on the streets. The scents he wore were also artificial, smelling eternally of calm sandalwood and lime, not giving away anything about the alpha’s true emotions or intentions.

Jason swallowed. His eyes quickly darted towards his side, catching a glimpse of Roman walking by while sipping a glass of wine, eyes trailing to him unsuspectedly under the black skull mask he wore. And Jason immediately knew this was a dance that he’s not allowed to turn down.

“You have a keen eye,” Jason said instead, couldn’t hold down the almost sarcastic tone in his voice as he placed his own gloved hand onto the alpha’s fancily clad ones, “care to tell me more about this city?”

As he let the alpha lead him down to the dance floor, Jason was beginning to feel anxious. Roman did in fact hire a tutor to train him in the dances of the upper-class, but Jason didn’t know if he’s adequate enough to keep up. He still had his mask in his hand, so Jason restored it back onto his face.

They began an allemande, starting their tip-toed dance to the trendy orchestral music that had gotten quite popular in the past decade before holding hands and twirling around each other, their fake alpha and omega perfumes mixing in a chaotic whirlpool of imitation of courtship pheromones.

“There’s a lot about Gotham that I could talk about,” the young and beautiful alpha finally spoke up, his long hair softly bouncing and whirling around with his movement, a loose strand temporarily stuck to the side of his mask before falling away and joining the others. “I don’t know what could interest a young omega like you. Do you rather talk about the elite or the poor?”

“Anything interesting, I suppose,” Jason answered with barely-concealed boredom, “my interests are broad, despite my designation.”

“In that case,” the alpha held his hand and they twirled around, a wave of dizziness suddenly catching Jason by surprise, “I suppose you might have heard about the mysterious red-hooded rogue who’s been attacking the harbors?”

Jason put on his practiced impassive visage and lied, “No. Care to tell me?”

Another swirl, and this time the alpha caught a hold of his waist and his hand, and they swayed in the music like two bodies in one.

“Well,” the alpha said thoughtfully, “forgive me for mentioning such a dark matter in front of an omega. The man calls himself Red Hood, and seemed to harbor a hate for the rich. He had been sabotaging Wayne's shipments for almost a month. But it’s nothing someone like you should worry about...we town folks are generally safe, despite being the ‘rich’ that the fiend hates so much.”

“Doesn’t seem like a topic one would talk about with an omega they just met at a ball,” Jason deadpanned.

“You’re right,” the alpha said, an amused tone in his voice, “but it’s something that’s been happening to Gotham which a newcomer might find helpful. And, since it appears this is your first ball, I think it’s proper of me to help...break the ice, so to speak.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Oh, many things,” the alpha laughed, “like how your mannerism doesn’t match with someone educated in high society from birth, or how you look like you are struggling to move in those garments.”

He took Jason’s hand and they made a swirl, the orchestral music in the ballroom ringing fancily in the omega’s ears.

“Although,” the alpha then mused, “isn’t it strange, that no one truly knows Red Hood’s designation, even though most just assumed he is alpha, like most rogues? It does seem a rather rare coincidence that a lovely omega like you would show up suddenly at the Wayne’s ball around the same time their shipments are being sabotaged by an elusive red-hooded figure.”

Jason was so shocked that he didn’t know what to say. He was suddenly glad that the perfumes he wore were heavy-scented enough that it could hide his true anxiety. He almost fell by tripping on the side of his gown, but the mysterious young alpha caught his waist just in time.

The alpha supported him until Jason was able to balance himself on his heels again. Then, he held his hand in a gentlemanly fashion as Jason stared at him speechless and dumbfounded.

“Forgive my ill manners,” the alpha said, “I apologize for my intrusive words. It’s not every day one could find a lovely omega to talk to. You seemed to be someone with similar interests as me despite your designation, so I let myself speak more than I should have.”

And then he kissed his hand, soft lips feeling warm even as they were obstructed by silken gloves. The young alpha’s long hair dropped down and tickled him through the fabric, and for a moment Jason had the insane thought that even his fake sandalwood scents smelled pleasant.

“We will meet again, my lovely omega,” the alpha said as he began to step away, still holding Jason’s hand a while longer as their arms stretched a little to accommodate. There’s something in the alpha’s expression and tone that told Jason he wasn’t just speaking to be polite. He actually meant it.

Then, the alpha was gone, leaving Jason to stand and contemplate the situation by himself.

[luninosity]

For @viperbranium, who was interested -

I started what I’m pretty sure is a new original short story while hanging out in office hours and waiting for students, yesterday. Want to read some?

##

Cadence Bell sat on uncomfortable grey rocks at the far end of the curve of the dull grey shore, and watched the waves crash over and over under the looming grey sky. He’d been sitting on stone long enough for his left leg to go numb. He ignored it.

 Water flung itself into the rocks again. Ceaseless. Mindless. Unconcerned with his presence. This felt oddly reassuring: insignificant, he couldn’t harm the world.

 Insignificant. He shifted a hand, discovered a pebble, tossed it. It sank beyond his sight.

 Beyond sight, beyond reach: like the world he’d left behind back in the glittering multifaceted gem of Londre, capital-city spires stretching to the sky, streets bustling with broadsheet-boys and violet-sellers, parliamentarians and Queen’s men, politics and taverns and theaters. Above all: theaters, palaces of imagination and greasepaint and paste jewels and stories that could change the world.

 Cade had taken a bow, laughing, dragged up onto that stage by his players. An author surrounded by love. A Queen’s commission, court masques, rubies in his hair. A prodigy, the Court had murmured. They’d lavished his work with praise.

 He squinted into the wind of Gull Skerrie, which was about as far from the kaleidoscopic twirl of Londre ballrooms as he could get. The wind burned his eyes, unless that was something else. The waves murmured upward, though they did not sing of joy and farce and playful springtime dances. A year ago, when he’d written the lines for that pageant, the Queen herself had worn a flower coronet to play Spring.

 A year ago he’d had no sense of the stone about to land in his life. Ripples and ripples, and he was sinking.

 “Cadence Bell,” he said, to the wind and the sea, “Queen’s playwright and councilor.” The sea sighed at him with voiceless well-meant soothing rhythm; but it had no advice to give.

 He squirmed around on his rock. The curlicue of neighboring Harbor Skerrie rose to the south, followed by dotted islands that question-marked into the mainland. Cade did not need question marks at the moment.

 He did not look at the village as it lurked behind him. He especially did not look at his parents’ inn and boarding-house. His inn and boarding-house.

 Cade did not hate The Bell. He never had. He’d loved his childhood: laughing, crawling about under fishermen’s legs, being scooped up and told stories about the selkies and the sirens and the vast and terrible storms and the narrow escapes and the giant sharp-beaked fish. He’d loved every curl of pipe-smoke and sea-soaked wool, and had fled Gull Skerrie as soon as he could, with his parents’ blessing at his back.

 He found a bit of driftwood to gaze at, brown and thin as his thoughts.

 He had not been able to write since coming home. He had not been able to write through the end of his father’s long illness, and his mother’s short and sudden one. He had not had time to think, and even when he had, thoughts had flapped around like the island’s namesake gulls: clamoring, wary, restless.

 His shirt was not warm enough, and his boots were growing wet from spray. They’d been bought for city streets and Court debates about patronage of the arts. Cadence Bell, at seventeen, had known his own destiny lay in those streets, that Court patronage. He’d even been right.

 He could barely recall those first exhilarating beribboned nights. Chess and banter and wordplay that might alter the fate of nations. Wine and lute-playing and invitations to operettas. The operettas drowned under the changing of sheets and the sound of his father coughing and the weary gnawing knowledge that someone had to open the inn and count money in the cashbox and pay the physician and settle the will and stare at the business now in his name.

 He found another pebble. Overhead a single gull called out, lonely on the breeze. The afternoon floated like the twig, adrift. He’d left Gwen and Rhys in charge; the pair of them could conjure up marvelous chowders and miraculous flaky fish, but had given him worried expressions about the cashbox. Cade probably ought to worry as well. Couldn’t find the energy. Couldn’t summon the interest.

 His parents were gone. His life was gone. He was somehow still here. Tidying up loose ends, or not tidying them up, or not doing much of anything at all.

 This pebble felt smooth, and chilly, and surprisingly round. He glanced at it in mild interest before throwing it.

 Blue-white shimmer caught his gaze. He lifted it, turned the gleam around in fingertips. Iridescent promises caressed his skin.

 A pearl, he thought. Under the dome of the sky, at the end of the world, on rocks in a fishing-village: a pearl.

 Quixotically, unpredictably, it suggested another life. A dream of wealth and extravagance and recognition of talent and gifts given for those talents. Strewn at his feet.

 He looked at the pearl. It developed a voice, a hum; it sang to him, a wordless peal of high exquisite music in his hand.

 He dropped it, shaken. That’d been the tune he’d written for the last Midwinter masque, when they’d ended with a dance; his occasional partner-composer Felix Fellini had sent over a delicate wild fantasia of melody, and Cade had put words to it, a song of wintry folklore and elfin legend with a giddy chorus. Felix liked difficult twisty compositions; Cade liked writing tunes the Court could actually sing. Between them they’d woven a musical.

 And the pearl had sung it back to him.

 He stared very hard at it, as it lay on cold grey rocks. It did nothing more: it was a pearl.

 “I think,” he said aloud, “I might possibly be insane.” Surely that happened. From grief. From an odd hollow lack of grief, as if he’d been emptied out. From the inability to write. Twenty-two years old, he’d be a tragic cautionary tale, a genius burnt out too soon. Trapped by an inn’s cashbox. Never living up to the glorious promise of his youth.

 The pearl said nothing.

 Cade extended a finger. Nudged it. Still nothing.

 “Well,” he sighed, “you’re no help, are you?” A larger wave hit the rock three down from his. Icy ocean exploded over his shoulder. He started to swear at it in gutter Firezi he’d learned from Felix, felt emotion ebb and drain away, and gave up.

 “I might not be,” said the rocks, holding out a thick woolen blanket, “but would this, at all?”

 Cade attempted levitation, flailed, slipped on wet stone. Jeremiah’s hand caught his wrist, pulled him to safety. They stood blinking at each other for a moment under slate-slab sun; Jeremiah’s mouth quirked. “I should’ve known you hadn’t heard me. Thinking?”

 “Trying not to.” He scooped up the pearl, an impulse, and tossed it into a weatherbeaten trouser-pocket. “Are you done already? It’s still early, isn’t it?”

 “After three, now.” Jeremiah put the blanket around his shoulders. Jeremiah Carver thought of details like that: caring for the world. “I’ve got the afternoon to help out. Whatever you want.”

 Cade, feeling prickly and spiky and black-mooded as a sea urchin, grumbled, “I want to not be snuck up on, thanks.”

 “Sorry about that.” And he was. Sincerity in those soft brown eyes, in broad shoulders and strong arms. They’d fallen into bed the night after Marian Bell’s funeral, after Cade had drunk too much local moonshine and run out into pounding rain and stood with his face turned to the sky, shaking with too many emotions. Jeremiah had followed him, had touched his shoulder; Cade had turned and kissed him fiercely, angrily, smothering the storm with fire. Jeremiah had kissed him back, or had let himself be kissed, or perhaps there’d been no difference; he’d come upstairs to Cade’s room readily, and had knelt and been shoved to his back and touched Cade’s body with endearing solemn awe.

 Cadence, unfair and knowing he was being unfair, muttered, “Don’t do it again.”

 “I won’t. I can make noise.” Jeremiah offered him a smile. “I’m having the advanced class read Spense’s Fairy King, like you recommended. They’re liking it. I am too.”

 “Mmm,” Cade said, noncommittal; and discovered that he could not quite meet that gentle schoolteacher’s gaze. Jeremiah organized the island’s one schoolhouse and multiple levels of ability with the tender efficiency of a beloved general, and had ever since taking it over from the now-retired Miss Beatrix, who’d taught them both arithmetic and letters and book-lore.

 Cade had loved every drop of story. Had pleaded for more. When that wasn’t sufficient, not enough tales of magic and fairies and faraway lands, had scribbled his own. Had left Gull Skerrie at the age of seventeen, accompanied by a band of newly arrived traveling Neraly players and his parents’ best hopes for a life beyond rocks and fish, and had not looked back.

 Jeremiah Carver had been a year behind him in school, stoic and silent and seemingly etched out of rock: big and calm and deliberate. Cade hadn’t known him well then, not beyond the simple fact of another boy in the school-crowd who’d listened wide-eyed to made-up stories about pirates and sea-treasure and merfolk. Jeremiah, he’d discovered since returning, had begun helping out at the inn several years ago, when Leigh Bell’s hands had first begun to shake and his chest to ache.

 “Gwen said you went for a walk,” Jeremiah ventured, hand tugging the blanket more securely around Cade’s shoulders and then resting on the closest one, not quite an embrace. “If you don’t want company I can go.”

 “Where would you go?” Cade said, and waved an irritable hand from under woolen conquests. “Stop that. We’re at the most godforsaken spot in the most godforsaken end of the Northern earth; where can any of us go? Besides the fishing fleet, I suppose. If you like mackerel.”

 “I don’t mind mackerel,” Jeremiah said. “It’s a fish. Your hair looks cold.”

 “My hair is wet and full of salt. I know, I know, it’s my own fault, yes I’m coming back, Rhys has probably set the common room on fire by now.” He picked his way up across rocks, with Jeremiah’s help. “How’re your students? Any interesting ones?”

 “I like this group,” Jeremiah said. “All of them. There’s a really bright girl in the third class, though, Rosie Conway, you might remember her mother, she’s Elsie Carrock’s daughter, well, Elsie Conway now, but you knew Elsie, she was your year, she married Peter Conway after you left?”

 Cade, who remembered none of this, nodded. Easier.

 “And anyway Rosie’s adorable and also some sort of mathematical magician, I think.” Jeremiah’s eyes were pleased and proud, dark and bright as a sea-bird’s, excited about a fisherman’s daughter doing math on a rock. “She’s nearly past what I can teach her, I’m having to keep up, I’m wondering whether it’s worth trying to send her off to the capital for school? Really proper school, I mean.”

 “Then you should,” Cade said, half-listening. His fingers brushed the pearl in his pocket, the pearl that’d whispered his own song at him.

 “You think so?” Jeremiah paused to glance at him. With longer legs, he’d been shortening his stride; Cade, though generally a fast walker, got easily annoyed at effortlessly tall persons. “It’s awfully far. And the money is, well…”

 “If it’s what she needs, then they’ll make it work.”

  Jeremiah started to answer, stopped, shook his head. “You’re likely right. After all, it worked for you. Did you find something? A shell, or a bottle, or something?”

[ruleandruinrpg]

ALTAN YUL-SUHE

THIRTY-TWO ❈ HEARTRENDER THE ORDER OF THE LIVING AND THE DEAD (CORPORALKI)

He was born knowing the taste of dirt. How it felt on his hands and between his toes when he dug at the ground for scraps and roots to eat and bones to suck on, what it was like to sleep like a dog. He was a boy forsaken, a boy who learned how to run before he could walk. Altan’s family was no better, they’d all been born neglected, forced to become scavengers to survive, and they were some of the many invisible undesirables of Shu Han. While other children spent their days in the sun, Altan and his siblings traveled from corpse to corpse in the ruins of battlefields, looting what they could find and selling their meager bounty to buy their meal for the day, teaching themselves to make it last just short of a week. It was a miserable existence, being born to die in the gutter, and so dismal that he could not even imagine a better future to hope for. With Altan, and all nameless street urchins, there were no false suppositions, no daydreams, no ambition, no sights beyond what was in front of him - only resigned acceptance. 

There had been one thing that Altan had wanted to keep for himself - a small, dull dagger he’d found off a fallen Ravkan lieutenant. It was a far cry from lethal, and the embedded jewels had already lost their luster, but he’d tucked it away, wanting just one thing to keep, something to possess. But his brother (he hardly remembered his name now) snatched it out of his hand and rebuked him for being moved by sentiment and materialism rather than by self-preservation. “We’ll sell it and feed our house for two days - keep the poor bastard’s damned bones if you need something to play with.” There was nothing quite so dehumanizing as his own family reaffirming nothing was truly his, that no possession was singularly his to keep. Perhaps it was selfish to think so, perhaps the fault was in himself for thinking of himself over his family. But even boy conquerors did not think in terms of rations and loud mouths to feed - they thought of glory, they thought of battles to be won, the sea of corpses that would lie in their wake. Perhaps that was when Altan first realized even if he was born to rot and be forgotten, even if it was his destiny to die nameless, there was a perfect storm of ichor and teeth and claws within him that refused to be snuffed out by any forces aside from than himself. He remembered turning to look at his brother, his gaze burning, and for the first time looking at someone else as if they were beneath him. Then - his brother fell to his knees, his face turning blue, his usual sour expression contorted in agony as he gasped for air, hands outstretched. Only later when soldiers were at their doorstep asking for the Grisha did Altan realize it was his doing. And only when, as he was dragged away, he saw one of the soldiers drop several coins into his father’s and brother’s hands did he realize blood counted for nothing.

He’d heard stories of what was done to Grisha, how people would rather risk leaving Shu Han with nothing to their name rather than be experimented on by the army. Images of being tested upon with poisons and chemicals, exposed to the elements, forced to fight boars and rabid dogs flashed through his mind as he was taken to an imposing building, cold and grey, and then blindfolded. ‘Heartrenders need to be able to see their targets’. He wouldn’t be granted his vision back for another three years. Theories, as it turned out, counted for nothing when the real thing was far, far worse than he could have imagined. Altan endured, not only because it was the only thing he could do, but because there existed in him a new thirst for life that only came about knowing he was wanted dead so fervently. That they cut into his will because they feared how powerful he could become - and this alone was reason enough to survive. To feed their fear and lull them into a false sense of security, to convince them the little starving feral thing they found in the outskirts was finally learning their scent, learning to feed from their hand. The day came when, despite being ragged with hundreds of near-deaths and being dipped into hellfire, he felt a thrum of power surging through his veins, clamoring to be unleashed upon his keepers. And unleash it did. The Darkling was there to receive him, a beacon of sheer power that lent itself to his own, and he followed him back to Ravka where he joined the Second Army, climbing the ranks despite the revolted whispers of ‘Shu’ and ‘monster’ that followed him the entire way. They fancied him powerful merely because of the experimentation, but they neglected the divinity in him, the primordial terror in him, only to see it for themselves on the battlefield as he coiled intestines around each other with the crook of his fingers and wrenched the red and blood from a beating heart. But what they didn’t know yet was that he still had to reach the peak of his capacity, that he still hadn’t fully grown into his shadow, and the thought was as terrifying to others as it was thrilling to him. He watched Ravkan soldiers tremble at his orders, at a Shu’s orders, and he thinks divinity is a fine taste on his tongue.

How does a man become an empire? How does one become the second most feared man in the Second Army? How does one find his place at the Darkling’s right hand? The full answer is as calamitous as the shadow himself, full of sharp teeth and songs of the razings of lesser kingdoms and smiles with all the worlds daggers and molten meanings behind them. Past emperors and warlords make their home in him, gifted with anointed wisdom and bloodthirst from the far reaches of hell, and he is as cutting as he is sly, as sharp as a blade licked by brimstone and fire. His is a cruel concoction, the twist of black blood intertwining with ambrosia, and perhaps if he were anywhere else but beside Darkness himself, he would languish in his own cataclysm, spill his own blood just to have red on his fingers. But divine things often find where they’re meant to be, and he was no exception. At the peak of havoc, at the helm of the ship, ensuring it cuts through bodies and sea alike.

CONNECTIONS

THE DARKLING: Altan knows better than to become complacent in the knowledge that the most feared man in Ravka trusts his competence more than anyone else’s in his army. He refuses to dwell on the thought, for fear of becoming cocky or arrogant, and simply focuses his efforts on proving The Darkling right and cutting down whatever or whoever is fool enough to linger in their path. Every part of him knows that men like them are too often defined by their brutality, and he’s not stupid enough to believe that The Darkling keeps him around for anything beyond what use he can provide. Fortunately, Altan has barely even started.

MARGARETE STARIKOV: She bores him. Or, at least, she had once. He remembers her when she was a slight little doll wandering through the halls of the Little Palace, her tiny hands balled and itching to prove what she knew she was capable of - but her ambition was nothing new and echoed that of countless Grisha before her; a dove of a girl desperate to prove she was as much predator as the rest of them. Her family was a nuisance as well, as unsightly as a wart when they begged him to place her with the Healers rather than with the Heartrenders - in the end, he acquiesced. But the rumors as of late speak of a... ruthless girl, a murderess, a far cry from the wisp of a thing he thought he knew. He’ll admit his interest has piqued, but rumors aren’t quite so convincing as action.

FELIKS BAZIN: A living testament to his power, a walking trophy. Altan resurrected him on a whim simply because he knew he could bring back someone from the dead and wanted to prove it to himself. To consider how that knowledge must affect the boy’s psyche, how it might create a hell in his own head never crossed his mind or what was left of his conscience. He toys with the guard with curling, twisting words, and is always quick to remind him who it was who granted Feliks this long glimpse of limbo. “Consider this your penance,” he’d whispered once into Feliks’ ear. “Or consider this your purgatory. Makes no difference to me, and certainly not to you.” 

ALTAN IS PORTRAYED BY BANG SUNGHOON & IS TAKEN BY ADMIN EM.

[ruleandruinrpg]

ALTAN YUL-SUHE

THIRTY-TWO ❈ HEARTRENDER THE ORDER OF THE LIVING AND THE DEAD (CORPORALKI)

He was born knowing the taste of dirt. How it felt on his hands and between his toes when he dug at the ground for scraps and roots to eat and bones to suck on, what it was like to sleep like a dog. He was a boy forsaken, a boy who learned how to run before he could walk. Altan’s family was no better, they’d all been born neglected, forced to become scavengers to survive, and they were some of the many invisible undesirables of Shu Han. While other children spent their days in the sun, Altan and his siblings traveled from corpse to corpse in the ruins of battlefields, looting what they could find and selling their meager bounty to buy their meal for the day, teaching themselves to make it last just short of a week. It was a miserable existence, being born to die in the gutter, and so dismal that he could not even imagine a better future to hope for. With Altan, and all nameless street urchins, there were no false suppositions, no daydreams, no ambition, no sights beyond what was in front of him - only resigned acceptance. 

There had been one thing that Altan had wanted to keep for himself - a small, dull dagger he’d found off a fallen Ravkan lieutenant. It was a far cry from lethal, and the embedded jewels had already lost their luster, but he’d tucked it away, wanting just one thing to keep, something to possess. But his brother (he hardly remembered his name now) snatched it out of his hand and rebuked him for being moved by sentiment and materialism rather than by self-preservation. “We’ll sell it and feed our house for two days - keep the poor bastard’s damned bones if you need something to play with.” There was nothing quite so dehumanizing as his own family reaffirming nothing was truly his, that no possession was singularly his to keep. Perhaps it was selfish to think so, perhaps the fault was in himself for thinking of himself over his family. But even boy conquerors did not think in terms of rations and loud mouths to feed - they thought of glory, they thought of battles to be won, the sea of corpses that would lie in their wake. Perhaps that was when Altan first realized even if he was born to rot and be forgotten, even if it was his destiny to die nameless, there was a perfect storm of ichor and teeth and claws within him that refused to be snuffed out by any forces aside from than himself. He remembered turning to look at his brother, his gaze burning, and for the first time looking at someone else as if they were beneath him. Then - his brother fell to his knees, his face turning blue, his usual sour expression contorted in agony as he gasped for air, hands outstretched. Only later when soldiers were at their doorstep asking for the Grisha did Altan realize it was his doing. And only when, as he was dragged away, he saw one of the soldiers drop several coins into his father’s and brother’s hands did he realize blood counted for nothing.

He’d heard stories of what was done to Grisha, how people would rather risk leaving Shu Han with nothing to their name rather than be experimented on by the army. Images of being tested upon with poisons and chemicals, exposed to the elements, forced to fight boars and rabid dogs flashed through his mind as he was taken to an imposing building, cold and grey, and then blindfolded. ‘Heartrenders need to be able to see their targets’. He wouldn’t be granted his vision back for another three years. Theories, as it turned out, counted for nothing when the real thing was far, far worse than he could have imagined. Altan endured, not only because it was the only thing he could do, but because there existed in him a new thirst for life that only came about knowing he was wanted dead so fervently. That they cut into his will because they feared how powerful he could become - and this alone was reason enough to survive. To feed their fear and lull them into a false sense of security, to convince them the little starving feral thing they found in the outskirts was finally learning their scent, learning to feed from their hand. The day came when, despite being ragged with hundreds of near-deaths and being dipped into hellfire, he felt a thrum of power surging through his veins, clamoring to be unleashed upon his keepers. And unleash it did. The Darkling was there to receive him, a beacon of sheer power that lent itself to his own, and he followed him back to Ravka where he joined the Second Army, climbing the ranks despite the revolted whispers of ‘Shu’ and ‘monster’ that followed him the entire way. They fancied him powerful merely because of the experimentation, but they neglected the divinity in him, the primordial terror in him, only to see it for themselves on the battlefield as he coiled intestines around each other with the crook of his fingers and wrenched the red and blood from a beating heart. But what they didn’t know yet was that he still had to reach the peak of his capacity, that he still hadn’t fully grown into his shadow, and the thought was as terrifying to others as it was thrilling to him. He watched Ravkan soldiers tremble at his orders, at a Shu’s orders, and he thinks divinity is a fine taste on his tongue.

How does a man become an empire? How does one become the second most feared man in the Second Army? How does one find his place at the Darkling’s right hand? The full answer is as calamitous as the shadow himself, full of sharp teeth and songs of the razings of lesser kingdoms and smiles with all the worlds daggers and molten meanings behind them. Past emperors and warlords make their home in him, gifted with anointed wisdom and bloodthirst from the far reaches of hell, and he is as cutting as he is sly, as sharp as a blade licked by brimstone and fire. His is a cruel concoction, the twist of black blood intertwining with ambrosia, and perhaps if he were anywhere else but beside Darkness himself, he would languish in his own cataclysm, spill his own blood just to have red on his fingers. But divine things often find where they’re meant to be, and he was no exception. At the peak of havoc, at the helm of the ship, ensuring it cuts through bodies and sea alike.

CONNECTIONS

THE DARKLING: Altan knows better than to become complacent in the knowledge that the most feared man in Ravka trusts his competence more than anyone else’s in his army. He refuses to dwell on the thought, for fear of becoming cocky or arrogant, and simply focuses his efforts on proving The Darkling right and cutting down whatever or whoever is fool enough to linger in their path. Every part of him knows that men like them are too often defined by their brutality, and he’s not stupid enough to believe that The Darkling keeps him around for anything beyond what use he can provide. Fortunately, Altan has barely even started.

MARGARETE STARIKOV: She bores him. Or, at least, she had once. He remembers her when she was a slight little doll wandering through the halls of the Little Palace, her tiny hands balled and itching to prove what she knew she was capable of - but her ambition was nothing new and echoed that of countless Grisha before her; a dove of a girl desperate to prove she was as much predator as the rest of them. Her family was a nuisance as well, as unsightly as a wart when they begged him to place her with the Healers rather than with the Heartrenders - in the end, he acquiesced. But the rumors as of late speak of a... ruthless girl, a murderess, a far cry from the wisp of a thing he thought he knew. He’ll admit his interest has piqued, but rumors aren’t quite so convincing as action.

FELIKS BAZIN: A living testament to his power, a walking trophy. Altan resurrected him on a whim simply because he knew he could bring back someone from the dead and wanted to prove it to himself. To consider how that knowledge must affect the boy’s psyche, how it might create a hell in his own head never crossed his mind or what was left of his conscience. He toys with the guard with curling, twisting words, and is always quick to remind him who it was who granted Feliks this long glimpse of limbo. “Consider this your penance,” he’d whispered once into Feliks’ ear. “Or consider this your purgatory. Makes no difference to me, and certainly not to you.” 

ALTAN IS PORTRAYED BY BANG SUNGHOON & IS TAKEN BY ADMIN EM.