#carrions hunger art

[corvidaearts]

Speaking of what @definitelynotshouting mentioned to the anons here, this is your hunger au arc 2 spoiler of the day!

unglitched versions of the wings under the cut:

[lucakombucha]

Carrion, but make it Fear and Hunger AU 🎀✨would you recruit her into your party??

Image text:

Farm Girl

Resurrected in the depths of the dungeon, the farm girl has little to fear and little to lose. The alterations to her appearance allow her to move among certain creatures unnoticed.

[teratocrat]

FOLKS I JUST GOT OFF THE HORN WITH THE UNICORN CONSORTIUM (like the unicode consortium but theyre unicorns) AND THE NEWLY APPROVED SPELLS FOR 2024 ARE,

EDIBLE INSUFFICIENCY INCANTATION

HELL OF AGATE WOLVES

INCANDESCENT CORALINE DAWN

SALT-AND-IRON EXCORIATION

MARROW-TO-LEAD SUBSTITUTION

MAGGOT EMPRESS MANTLE

OPALESCENT OGRE METAMORPHOSIS

INVESTITURE OF HIDEOUS HANNYA-STRENGTH

MP3-SNARING MANDALA

SCRAPING THE VAULTS OF HEAVEN

HURTLING AMETHYST STAR

BECOMING THE GLASS CASTLE

OBSIDIAN DAWN AUREOLE

PHALANX OF SKELETAL THORAKITAI

NYMPH-AND-GOBLIN RETINUE

THOUSANDFOLD CHANGELING ARTS

HUNGERING HURRICANE HOWL

STIRRING THE VIOLET HUMOURS

BLOODY-KNEE TARANTELLA

LAPIS-AND-CARNELIAN CATAPHRACT

IMPERIOUS EXPURGATION OF VISCERA

ERLKING ANTLER CORONATION

CARRION-GHOUL COMMUNION

EXPEDIENT NAIL LACQUERING

[theredofoctober]

MANNA- CHAPTER TWELVE: FRUIT

Dark!Hannibal Lecter x Reader x Dark!Will Graham AU fic

TW for eating disorders, noncon, abuse, drugging, Daddy kink, implied child abuse

This is chronologically the twelve chapter

READ AFTER THE CUT...

-

You ascend to your room alone, glancing back over your shoulder in the paranoia that one or the other man pursues you like night after the sun.

Neither have taken you by way of carnality since Will rutted you against the wall. It seems an unnatural strike of fortune, and one unlikely to last.

There is too much lust between these beings, hunger of such echoing depths that the sensual urge is but one chained within. Their eyes all evening have picked you to the bone like carrion set at by desert birds. Your cunt parts, empty, about the memory of Will’s fingertips; there is a sense of art unfinished, a crescendo in the crashing of keys only the hands of men can bring into violent birth.

In dread of missing the sound of their approach across the landing you lie quiet in your bed, no music nor comforting hum of the television as your night-time companions. Yet footsteps only halve the house when your captors go to bed, each in their own room, an anti-climax. 

You think of Hannibal, tossed amidst the curse of unsung ardour, then of Will, crushed under the density of an unsated sleep. Such lonely men, in their way, divided by what lies unchartered between them, and with you.

Though by now settled, the skin which Will has touched—struck—still seems to burn with him. Five fingers, the rounded oblong of a palm, a hand that feeds dogs, has fired a gun, has rocked you, fucked you. A hand that Hannibal Lecter reaches for across dead miles of darkness to know as you have, and to love what you have loathed.

Unsettled, you roll on your stomach, but the pulse you hear when overwrought seems to peal through your very bones in its jeering song.

Filth, sin, soil: you taste your shame in its salt, as you have each night since long ago. Yet before your taking for the purpose of this ritual science there had never been pleasure in it, only the experience of staring always at the edges of things. The corners of ceilings, the light at the top of a door, a wall torn to grain by the night, liminality your legacy of innocence.

With Will, with Hannibal, you cannot look away, are made to witness and to partake in every aggression and gentleness with the same focus of attention. For that is what they want, your immersion in the devil’s playhouse. For you to be a doll, a daughter, embraced after the most inclement incident into a state almost soothed.

You cry yourself to sleep, wanting such a practice of love from someone who’s never once hurt you.

*

Hunger wakes you in the night, a restless drumroll that compels you upright in its rallying beat. As you stretch, thinking morosely of the marvel it is to have gorged and still not be full, you hear someone stumble in the nearby hallway, thudding against the adjoining wall.

A fight? Some drunken struggle? An intimacy overheard? No—

There is but a sole pair of scuffing footfalls on the floorboards beyond, too unbalanced to be Dr Lecter’s.

In consternation you go to your door and try the handle. It gives way easily under your hand, allowing you to peer out into the black mystery beyond.

Will lists against the right-hand wall, his eyes glazed and rolling under twitching lids. As you stare, abashed, his limbs fall under him, and he sprawls thrashing in unconscious spasms of animation.

There is blood on his face where he’s bitten his tongue, ebony in the negation of light. An oil spill on a seabird, drowning. A splash of mud on a bog's sunken dead.

You should let him suffer, step over his convulsing form and dart for nearest open window or outer door, but horror shakes you senseless of the thought before it takes full form.

Will’s fit continues, throwing the young man’s slim frame about like a machine caught in the throes of grim malfunction.

God help you: you pity him. He is human, and you are, as well.

“Will?” you say, stepping gingerly towards him. “Daddy? Can you hear me?”

It occurs to you that Will’s death is also yours, your lifelines enmeshed, a symbiosis in which only he would survive your parting. You kneel with your palms hovering over him, recalling very little that you know of First Aid, and entirely terrified of making him worse.

Hannibal’s voice comes from your left, uttering your name with a softness that somehow bears all the authority of a bellowed command.

He steps up quickly behind you, his hair disrupted from its usual tidy arrangement.

“Will’s having a seizure,” you say, in despair. “I don’t know what to do.”

“I’ll help him,” says Hannibal. “Go back to your room.”

You stare at him, dumbfounded by his apparent calm.

“But—”

Again Dr Lecter says your name, without raising his voice, or with any particular emotion. Yet you scuttle back the way you came, jarred by the suggestion of temper in that subtle repetition.

You hear Hannibal calling to Will, the sound of him lifting the other man and carrying his dead weight back to the spare room. The door closing, the subtle murmur behind it of Will rousing, his friend's soft, reassuring reply.

Silence, as of an exhibition ended.

Half an hour edges by, and not once do you stop shaking despite the heat of the autumn night.

Presently a knock comes at your door, and the doctor enters, his eyes lowered in remorse.

“I apologise if I spoke harshly to you. I know that you weren’t being deliberately disobedient. It wasn’t my intention to imbue your evening with additional distress.”

“It’s not your fault,” you say, quite disarmed by the apology. “It’s nobody’s fault. I mean, I shouldn’t have left my room, but I couldn’t just not go out there and see what was going on.”

Hannibal’s expression is opaque, a mask of ivory.

“I detect a concern for Will that isn’t entirely manufactured for my benefit,” he says. “Could it be that such a little cynic loves something other than her hunger?”

“What choice do I have but to care about Will?” you ask, shrilly. “What’s wrong with him?”

Adrenaline runs so high within you that you see the room on a tilt like some demented circus mirror reflection.

“What’s wrong with him?” you ask, again.

This time Dr Lecter answers, his tone low and even so as not to incite further upset.

“I suspect that Will is suffering from a combination of stress and fatigue, although I can’t deny the possibility of a neurological disorder.”

“Jack said he was sick,” you mumble. “And the other night, when I— you know. He looked awful.”

Will's face is punched into your retina like a flash of light, all blinding awfulness.

“And he’s been getting so angry with me,” you say, in a panicked rush. “Even though sometimes he’s almost nice. Is that why? Because he’s not well?”

“Will’s health has certainly contributed to his recent outbursts,” says Hannibal, smoothing your rumpled coverlet with fastidious hands. “The absence of control he feels amidst his fever leads to acts of impulse, particularly when in an environment he’s uncertain of, or feels threatened in.”

“I’m not threatening him,” you insist, hotly. “How could I?”

“I don’t mean in the literal sense. Will has very few close confidants, and those he possesses he guards dearly— that, or it is he himself that Will defends against his competition.”

You look up sharply, and Hannibal smiles, all benign conspiracy.

“Yes, little one. Having considered your thoughts on Will's dislike of you, I suspect that he also fears you may supersede him, or else share intimacies with me that he alone would otherwise possess. Yet Will’s envy is more complex than mere romantic ire, for unlike other rivals he has contended with, Will finds himself in the position of dizzying power over you.”

Dr Lecter pauses, his head at a rueful incline.

“For my part, I admit that it was rash to elect Will as the disciplinarian between us without taking all factors into account. It seems that I underestimated how antagonistic your relationship would become as his immersion in your treatment progressed.”

This you do believe, at least in that the doctor’s dissuasion of Will’s most outrageous verbal lashings is clearly genuine. Your bickering, in its familial likeness, he enjoys: an outright skirmish, repellent it its indecency, he does not.

“As you’ve indicated,” says Dr Lecter, going about your room to address its customary disorder, “Will’s becoming aware that his resentment is not entirely warranted as he finds himself increasingly sympathetic to your case. Such feelings are at odds with his desire to be alone in my company— an intricate conflict for any mind, let alone one so fiercely ablaze.”

“Ablaze?” you repeat. “What do you mean?”

“If my suspicions are correct, then Will’s condition may have been agitated by the ingredients in various dishes served in my home these past few weeks. The symptoms are closely matched to Will’s behaviour— disorientation, loss of consciousness, personality changes, mood swings. It’s unfortunate that I didn’t notice this much sooner.”

There is something performative in Hannibal’s guilt, his unshed tears like the glass eyes of a taxidermy animal. He’s known of Will’s ailment far longer than he suggests, and as he turns his back to close your chest of drawers you feel relieved, no longer forced to entertain this show of lies.

“You mustn’t mention any of this to Will until he’s received a formal diagnosis,” says Dr Lecter. “It may be that he’s simply mentally unwell, which would be a far more complicated outcome to navigate. But what you’ve seen of him lately is merely a conjunction of symptoms and heightened territorial emotions. Will’s true self you’ve yet to meet.”

The assurance is of little comfort to you, being that the nearest you’ve come to perceiving Will at his most natural and honest is in his private conversations with Dr Lecter. Through these you’ve glimpsed a complex creature, one that approaches evil with a newborn’s chary exploration.

You want to believe, for your own sake, that the sensitivity you’ve received from him sporadically evidences the continued persistence of his soul. Yet you cannot decide if he began a good man, changed through Dr Lecter’s influence, or if he’s always been a hunter, each kindness a flash of marsh fire luring you to drown.

The image of Will—twitching, defenceless—ultimately overrides this dilemma of thought.

“So what do we do now?” you ask. “We have to help him.”

Pleased by your concern, Hannibal leans across the bed to kiss the downturned corner of your mouth.

“I’ll reschedule tomorrow’s appointments so that I can tend to him. Will needs rest, first and foremost. As for his role here, it would be safest for him to delegate the majority of his more strenuous duties until he's recovered. I’ll continue them, in his stead.”

Choosing not to linger on the implications of this, you ask, “What about me? What can I do?”

“Healing Will is not your responsibility, little one.”

“But I’m making things worse,” you say, fretfully. “I know it. How can I make him like me?”

Not without humour, Hannibal says, “You can begin by tempering that sharp tongue a bit. Like Will, you rarely attempt to sweeten your words. I’ll never encourage you not to bite, but it is important that you roll on your back when we bid it. You must be our good girl, above all else, or if not good then charming, at the very least.”

You roll onto your side, crushing your face into a valley of pillows.

“I guess I really haven’t been playing along enough,” you mutter.

Hannibal chuckles.

“Not nearly enough, for all your promises. But it’s early days yet, sweet girl. We’ll see how you are once we're used to one another.”

*

 

Morning comes rudely, stalling the excitement like an opera’s intermission.

You take breakfast with Hannibal, only distracted from the usual struggle of eating by the presence of Will’s vacant seat. Having thought of him without respite for hours you’re in state of nervous delirium, your flinching knee a seismic force under the table.

“I want to see Will,” you blurt out, at last. “I want to see if he’s alright.”

“I’ll be taking a tray up to him in a few minutes,” says Dr Lecter, scarcely bothering to hide his delight in this new interest. “Don’t ask him too many questions. No doubt he’s feeling somewhat delicate this morning.”

You watch as Hannibal prepares a separate meal for the other man, cutting fruit and stewing tea leaves with loving ceremony. When he puts a strawberry to your lips you take it, your tongue rasping the juice gamely from his fingertips.

The shock of the previous night has amputated your mulish declination to humour him; even the disgust that meets your every concession is hushed, made redundant by a renewed vow to leave this house on soft feet rather than screams.

Other women have befriended their keepers and lived, as will you, if you can bear to pander to Dr Lecter as long as they.

*

Accompanying Hannibal to Will’s room you find that you’re oddly excited, even gleeful in anticipation of the visit. You’re taken with the notion that his seizure will incur some unknowable change, though whether in Will himself or the dynamics of the households you cannot predict.

Never have you seen him so utterly fragile, the dilapidation of a man. You think of a child, foisted on a detached father by a mother Will had never seen fit to name.

Will he be ashamed that you’ve seen that self so clearly? Will he be angry, indifferent, or else fear the power his weakness allows you as though your thumbs press deep in the fluttering dell of his very throat?

There is another possibility, however, the one your morning-fresh hopes hang onto by their nails: that he’ll remember how you’d crouched at his side and called to him as he shook in the darkness.

“Wait here for a moment,” says Hannibal, as you crowd up behind him at Will’s bedroom door. “I’d like to speak to him alone first.”

You hang back as Dr Lecter goes in, pressing your ear to the door the moment it shuts at his back.

“You’re awake,” says Hannibal, simply. “How are you this morning?”

There is a pause as he sets down the beautifully arranged tray somewhere in the room.

“I feel like I could sleep for another forty-eight hours,” says Will, his voice thick and slightly nasal, a sickbed tenor. “I should probably get up and head home. I need to check on the dogs.”

“I called Alana and asked her to look in on them,” Dr Lecter replies. “It’s inadvisable to drive in this condition. Try to eat. You’ll revive much quicker if you line your stomach with something.”

“Yeah, well. I can’t make any guarantees of keeping it down.”

You hear the metallic scraping of a fork about Will’s plate and writhe in envy. Even unwell he eats without thought of the fat that disallows your enjoyment of any meal. You live vicariously through him, in that moment, imagining the liquor of fruit across his tongue, the forbidden pearls of white sugar.

What you’d give not to be a slave to thinness, the goal whose end will never form.

Hannibal says, "Present issues aside, I can't help observing that you've been conflicted, as of late, Will. One might even say confused."

"Have been since the start of all this,” says Will. “The clouds still haven’t cleared. A bilious forecast.”

"Yet you've no wish to abandon this project for brighter climes."

Will gives a little snort of derision.

"I'm too enmeshed in this household to extract myself now. The night I first touched her was my signature at the end of the page. Indelible ink. No taking it back."

You flatten your face to the door so as to better interpret Hannibal’s silence.

"You feel a genuine duty to our little one, for all your misgivings,” he says, at last. “I was beginning to question if I’d made a mistake."

"She's abrasive,” says Will. “Not exactly malleable. I believe you know what you’re doing, but on paper it seems like an ill-fitting adoption."

"Children are reflections of their parents, and so far she’s shown herself to be a mirror of you. Towards me she is cool, distant, and distrustful. With you, there is an attraction of sorts. Not sensual, nor even familial, but it’s enough that, in spite of your every rebuttal and harsh word, she’s beginning to develop something of a rapport with you."

Laughing tersely, Will says, "Not sure I see it."

"You don't allow yourself to,” says Hannibal. “But you’re aware of that truth, all the same. Each time you relent into even momentary tenderness you turn against her in savagery that is vastly unearned.”

“You asked me to punish her,” Will says, sharply. “Encouraged me to— relish it.”

The admission does not move you; these men have knifed ecstasies of you like oyster flesh enough times to have indicated their tastes.

It is the why you listen for, the object they skirt about with the same flirting avoidance of a tryst that cannot be.

“I’m not referring to punishment,” says Dr Lecter. “This I have openly supported. It’s how you address our charge that’s beginning to make her feel displaced.”

“Are you criticising me, Dr Lecter?” asks Will, with a smile in his voice.

“Certainly not. I’m merely observing a pattern of behaviour, and its impact upon my patient.”

To this Will says nothing, but the tension between the two men is as visible as the door that stands between you.

"If you yearn for the hours that you and I once spent alone, I'm able to accommodate by replenishing that time together,” Hannibal says, at last. “But the blame for that neglect is solely mine. I've foisted our little one upon you without consideration of what response such an abrupt change would elicit."

"You don't have to apologise,” says Will, as surly as ever. “It’s an adjustment. I’m getting used to it.”

Your ears catch the delicate action of him lifting the tea cup on his tray, then of setting it down again.

“I spoke to her alone last night,” he says, abruptly. “Told her of my intentions to stay part of this. For a moment it felt like we connected. Like that was the promise she was looking for. But when I refused her something she wanted, she accused me of being ‘like him’. I figured you'd know who she was referring to.”

“Yes,” says Hannibal. “I can make what I imagine is an accurate guess.”

“Whatever parts we try out here, I don’t want to become the unnamed shadow that stands at her shoulder. It made her the way she is. There’s a tastelessness to that kind of evil.”

"I know. It’s more than apparent that you repel her less through genuine hatred, and more through the necessity to protect yourself from what it would mean to know her, and for her to know you in return.”

As Will replies you hear the huskiness of genuine emotion forced out between gritted teeth.

“All this would be a wasted effort if she were ever taken from me.”

“That won’t happen again,” says Hannibal, at once. “The pillar of salt left when you looked back at Abigail will never form with our new charge. When our second daughter turns to me with the same thirst for intimacy she’s developed for you she’ll be, at last, our Chloris, the nymph turned mistress of flowers."

He speaks with such tender compassion that it starts an ache somewhere in the underwing of your ribcage. What necromancy he conducts here to wake your dead and mangled innards into a living heart you cannot guess, only fear the compassion you’re capable of towards such creatures as would destroy you.

"Our little one would like to speak to you, it seems,” says Dr Lecter, closing the previous subject with a seamless finality. “Should I let her in?”

Will shifts uneasily on the bed, creaking its springs.

“She asked to see me?” he asks.

“She did.”

You imagine the younger man scraping a tangle of hair back from his temples as he gathers his thoughts.

“Where is she?”

Thus your cue to enter announces itself: you open the door, peeping at its edge, oddly shy.

"Hey,” you say, in a semi-whisper.

Will is as grey and moist with feverish sweat as deep-sea stone. His vast eyes nest in violet shadow, the whites a thread work of capillaries.

You pity him, this shambling experiment of Dr Lecter's creation, one of many, no doubt.

"Hello,” says Will, dully. “Sorry about last night."

Edging into the room, you allow Hannibal to slip discreetly away behind you with a light pat on your shoulder.

"Are you okay?" you ask. “How are you feeling?”

"Tired, mostly,” says Will. “I'll get over it. Need to. I’ve got a case to work on."

He scrutinises the half-empty tray before him from under lowered lashes.

"I'm surprised you helped me. You could have run off. Hit me over the head with one of Dr Lecter's vases."

"I wouldn't do that,” you retort. “You even said so. That I— can't."

"No, but you could have gotten away. So why didn’t you?"

There is no surprise in his voice, nor even suspicion, which you’d expected. He merely sounds ill, and trying to be interested, in spite of it.

“I don't know,” you admit. “I felt bad for you, seeing you like that. I didn’t want to leave you."

A weary cynicism twists Will’s features into momentary ugliness.

"You were afraid of being alone with someone you could never hope to understand without me."

"Not just that,” you insist, alarmed by the truth of the insight. “I was scared for you. Really. You should go to a hospital. You need tests. Meds. Scans and stuff, maybe.”

Will searches your face with eyes like dull rain, and some of the guardedness falls away from them.

"If it gets any worse, I will,” he says. “Just not today.”

You see how much he detests his own weakness, the potential to be devoured like an animal fallen in a savannah. If you strike, he will struggle, and sick as he is, you will lose.

So you offer him the gift of submission instead, the cunning exertion of a child's mite power.

"Okay, Daddy.”

You feel rather than see Will straighten in response to the word.

"Don't think I'll ever get used to that,” he says. "It’s alright to use my name. There aren't any rules against it."

"No, but he wouldn’t want me to.”

“When have you ever cared what Dr Lecter thinks?”

Shrugging, you mumble, “I guess I’m just sick of fighting all the time.”

The sick man scrutinises at you for so long that you hop from foot to foot in discomfort, itching your sole against your calf.

“It’s going to be hard for me to trust you,” says Will. “You’re probably just going to pretend until you see an avenue to get out of here.”

“Everything’s pretend, here,” you say, smartly. “Nearly all the conversations in this house are about myths and dreams. Dr Lecter talks about them like they’re real, or something.”

Amusement lights the sunken dark of Will’s gaze.

“He finds their philosophies more valuable than the moral structures most people follow.”

“And me?” you ask. “Am I valuable to him?”

Being that you’re still convinced that your worth to Dr Lecter is entirely reliant on Will’s continued interest, you only ask to discern if he himself understands this, or if he believes Hannibal would love you of his own accord.

With a tired caution, Will says, “Right now, I think you entertain him. What else he feels about you I don’t know.”

“And what do you feel?” you persist. “Still don’t like me?”

At this the young man laughs and shakes his head.

“Ask me again once I’ve gotten to know you. If you can agree to a truce, that is.”

“Fine,” you say, and you put out your hand for him to shake. “Truce. Let’s try that.”

With a wry grin Will accepts, letting go almost at once with a sharp inward breath.

“You’re freezing!”

“Haven't you noticed?” you say, hastily stuffing the offending hand under one arm. “I always am.”

It’s an unfavourable symptom of your hunger, this blood and touch of ice. Under even the sweltering gasp of summer’s heat you’ll shiver, knock-kneed, and suffer at the slightest feather of a draught.

Still, that cold affirms you. Were you to be warm again you’d hate yourself, having regained enough of the weight your system craves to regulate its heat.

Glancing up, you notice Will examining his own hand as though he shares your temperature, his fist a twin to frost.

"Come along, little one," says Hannibal, materialising in the doorway again. "Will needs more rest. Perhaps you’ll see him later on.”

But by late afternoon Will has dragged himself home without saying goodbye, and as before his absence eats a crescent into the house.

*

Some days later you pass an evening with Hannibal like so many others, yet unlike for the new state induced in you through his medicinal enterprise.

You're accustomed to the concoction of drugs that regresses you to a needy youth, the sleepers, the stimulants, the tea that lowers you from the electric heights of righteous hysteria into something slowly numb.

Yet whatever element comprises the pill flushed down by water from today’s gently tipped glass elevates you to orbit a heaven above you, so removed from your imprisonment that you observe all below with an objective eye.

Dr Lecter has bestowed upon you the rare trust that you may eat without prompting or assistance, and you have done so, temporarily rescinding your disordered agitation to a mycelium half-dream.

Thus entranced, you watch yourself drape the tines of your fork back and forth across your half-eaten plate, enthralled by patterns on the porcelain that are not there.

Your eyes drift repeatedly to a painting on Hannibal’s wall, mounted coyly for any dinner guest to comment on.

Naturally, you’ve seen the piece many times before, and have been, in turns, startled and disturbed by its subject.

Now you find yourself dully intrigued, as you were by the Japanese prints. This attention does not go unnoticed by Dr Lecter.

“What is it, little one?” he asks, intently. “Do you have an interest in art?”

“I don’t know,” you say, confused by the banality of the question. “It’s just this picture. Isn’t it... rude?”

Hannibal smirks, eyeing the image with a fond appreciation.

Its focus is a supine young woman, draped, half-naked, on a rumpled bed towards which a curious swan approaches with its curved neck bowed.

Likely it is the original painting, procured at auction, its price unimaginable; all things in this house are ripe with expense, even you, its demanding charge.

“Artistic nudity is only considered rude by children,” says Hannibal, blithely, “or else by shallow and ignorant adults. Does the depiction of genitalia offend you, my darling?”

You gaze up at the cowrie of a cunt under its shadow cap of hair, pinkly presented on spread silk, and think how often your own has been arranged likewise for Will or Hannibal to admire.

“Why is it in this room, specifically?” you ask.

You struggle with the syllables of the words, spitting the sibilants in a manner unbecoming of so distinguished an event as dinner with Dr Lecter.

“Doesn’t it put people off their food?”

“I find it makes for an amusing conversation piece,” says Hannibal, pouring himself another generous glass of wine like the blood of some celestial giant.

You attempt to grimace, none of your muscles quite taking to the motion.

“I don’t think it’s funny at all. Just creepy. Sad.”

“Are familiar with the story of Leda and the Swan? Zeus, a virile and insatiable God, looked upon the queen of Sparta and desired her. So, in order to seduce her, he transformed himself into a swan so that she would be fooled by his beauty and appearance of vulnerability to take him to her bed.”

“He tricked her,” you say, quietly. “He didn’t seduce her, at all.”

Dr Lecter’s face scarcely moves, but there is something of laughter in the lines of his strange beauty.

“So it’s the deception that unnerves you,” he says. “The pretence that he was an innocent creature rather than the all-powerful and lustful deity he truly was.”

You nod, not wanting to admit that you see your own face mirrored in the brushstrokes of the damned queen.

Prophet-like, Hannibal interprets the gesture with flawless vision.

“You empathise with Leda. Recognise the parallels between her story and your own.”

“Is that why you put it there?” you retort, emboldened by the miles between you and the girl slumped in the dining chair. “Because you think you’re the swan?”

“The bird is a shield for the truth, remember,” says Hannibal. “So what would the swan be, in me?”

Dropping the fork with a discordant clatter, you consider.

“The polite, handsome doctor,” you say, at last. “You fool everyone: Jack, Alana Bloom. My parents. They would never have left me here if they knew what you really were.”

Hannibal turns his head at a slight angle, as though by doing so he might uncover some mystery in your face.

“And what am I, little one?”

“I... don’t know,” you admit; a killer, certainly, though there is more to him even than that. “There are a lot of things you’re hiding from me.”

“Tell me your perceptions, then. There’s no need to spare my feelings; after all, you so rarely do.”

Amidst your mushroom-made divinity, you are fearless in your answer.

“You’re a bad person. You’ve done things that would get you into a lot of trouble. Hurt people. Not just me. Not just Tobias. And you don’t feel bad about it. You think that everything you do is right, somehow. Like you should be allowed to do it. Like you’re the gods in all these stories.”

Hannibal absorbs this with the silence of having been sated by your answer.

“And what about Will?” he prompts, some moments later. “Is he, too, a starving monster under the cunning guise of a tender animal?”

“No,” you say, with less certainty. “He’s... sick. You're using him, making him think that this is what he wants.”

Your captor laughs over the rim of his wine glass.

“That’s where you’re wrong, little one. The Will you think you see is only one wing of a swan. Soon, you will glimpse beyond that fragile veil, and feel the mythic need of all immortals to plunder from the weak, merely for the pleasure of knowing that they can.”

A sudden sadness tugs you back to earth like a choke chain, iron-like the lump in your throat.

“So you don’t want to help me, after all,” you mumble. “It really was all a lie.”

Taking your hand across the table, Hannibal presses a thumb to the pulse at your wrist, a soothing motion.

“Not at all,” he says, firmly. “I’m quite fond of you. I wish you to be strong. Each time you find yourself resenting Will and I you must remember that Leda did not die after Zeus bedded her: she became a mother. In you, I seek another outcome. More than one, and not all of them so horrible as you imagine. There will be beauty in this conversion, as well.”

You gaze at him with disbelieving eyes, close to rejecting the hope he grooms in you.

“What other outcomes are you looking for, Dr Lecter? How can I become all the things you want if I don’t understand them? What’s really going on?”

Hannibal kisses your knuckles and places your fork back into your hand.

“Nothing you need to think about at the moment,” he says. “Now, finish what’s on your plate. I’d like you to move on to dessert.”

Just like that, you are his little girl again, the moon having passed across the sun.

[neofeliis]

Chokehold

Summary: After the coronation, after forging a deceitful pact, after the Steel Watch is destroyed, Durge and her shattered mind return to Wyrm's Rock. She has not slept a single night without being able to see the face of the stranger who looked upon her with nothing short of admiration at their first meeting. She needed answers, with or without the third Netherstone, and somehow she still knows the way to his chambers. She's ready to do whatever she has to, but with nothing but his presence and his words, he's got her in a chokehold.

Characters: Dark Urge/ Enver Gortash

Rating: idk M for violence and death threats.

Notes: Oh hey I wrote the thing the voices have been screaming about.

Read on Ao3

--

Durge hates how naturally this comes to her. She hates how easy it had been to slip out of camp, not just the act itself but the art of leaving her sleeping companions behind. The streets of Baldur’s Gate were wholly unfamiliar to her fractured mind, yet she did not hesitate through its alleys. The way to Wyrm’s rock seemed to sit in her bones, with some nameless guide whispering to her. Turn here. The shadows are thickest here. Cross here. Remember your kill here?

She stops, rather trips over her own boot. Cold dread winds its way up her spine, curling icy digits around her ribs, then makes itself home in her chest. The memory, flashes of carrion, her hands wrist deep, rattled through her thoughts and her stomach twists with the hunger. It would be just as easy as everything else so far to recreate it, to submit, to leave an offering to her father.

With a crack, she snaps her teeth together and pushes forward. She has places to be, and she needed to be there before dawn. This was her only chance to open one more scar on her own time, without the eyes of her companions, who knew no part of the person she was before the nautiloid. No, she was on her way to the one person...correction, the one reasonable person who understood her in the before. There was no talking to Orin, it was clear from the get-go that bloodshed and her devotion to their father was her only purpose but Gortash laid her bare with no pretense in front of her allies. He saw her. Rather, a version of her that she was not acquainted with.

She was eager to leave her urges behind, but to do so she needed to know what he knew. There was more he did not say, which was hard to believe with all he did say to her at his coronation. His assassin, his equal, his partner in their Grand Design. And something else. Something in the way he looked at her.

Durge lingers under a shadowed awning, and eyes up the pathway into Wyrm’s Rock. Where steel watchers once stood guard, Flaming Fist guards linger instead. The tiefling blows out a breath, relieved at the confirmation that their exploits in the day before had paid off.  The Watch was disabled, and her quarry now stood guarded only by flesh and blood. 

Emboldened by this, she moves. To a certain point, there would be little resistance to her. That was their deal after all, his guards would provide no resistance and she would bring him the Netherstone. 

She had come in and out of this crossing so many times before, entered the coronation hall and ascended the stairs. It was habit, and coming in the night to him was commonplace. The guards, at least those at ground level, knew this. Knew her. And only cautious glances came her way.

The tiefling misses a step and stumbles into the wall as the ground suddenly feels unsteady. The space was steeped in memories, and the further in she got, the more they swam to the surface. She had never been up these stairs before. Not prior to this night, not in what she remembers. Nothing here was commonplace or habitual, the guards should not know her, and yet every detail was now so vivid.

The truth, somewhere deep in her mind, whispered to her. She most certainly had. She knew these walls as though she lived here. What she did not know was the man she would find at the top of the stairs.

Not how he knew her.

Durge emerges onto the torchlit terrace, and knows for certain this space would be guarded in a way she could not simply walk past. And even if she could, she needed no witnesses to what she hoped to achieve in his chambers.

The muscle memory that took hold of her now was an icy comfort. Something crawls over her consciousness, whispers gentle encouragement to her, and then she is moving. Her dagger slides across the throat of one man posted outside the doorway she seeks. The other guard, a woman, opens her mouth to call out, and Durge is upon her in a flash.

The tiefling’s hand claps over the woman’s mouth with such force she cracks back into the stone wall behind her. Her hands fumble for her blade, trying to draw it, but Durge is faster, and her knife dives into the soft entryway in the hollow of the guard’s neck. Only a gargle escapes her, and the tiefling eases her down to the ground.

The confrontation lasts all of a minute, with barely a sound. Leaving her with the time to pick the lock. I don’t know why he thinks this will keep me out. She lurches again, nearly dropping her tools. 

Does she know what he thinks?

A soft click, and the knob turns in her hand to reveal the darkened room within.  Only a fireplace lights the room, and at this hour it’s waning. A grandiose chair is positioned in front of the fire, and with a quick scan of the room, she notes that the bed is empty. The shadows cast along the floor give away the body sitting in the chair, a pile of papers discarded on the side table next to them.

Her boots make no sound on the carpeted walkway, and every step brings her deeper into a memory. Of how many times she had entered this space, how many times she had stalked towards the man in the chair.  A memory surfaces, and it’s not a shock to her system.  No, it’s a caress.

She sees her dirty hands glide down the back of the chair and over broad shoulders.  In her dominant hand, she has a lazy grip on the handle of a knife.  A loose threat.

Her free hand comes around his front, and he says something to her, his mouth curled into an easy smile.  An indecipherable murmur of little consequence that she ignores anyway as her fingertips glance over the front of his exposed, vulnerable neck.  Durge pauses just enough to wonder, and instead grasps at a loose thread in his collar that she swiftly cuts with the knife instead. 

Sickening familiarity swirls from deep in her belly and her knuckles go white. A crack in the fireplace brings her back to the present, and the figure in the chair draws a deep breath.

“If you wanted to speak, you needed only knock.”

Durge stops mere feet behind the chair as the lordling turns his head to regard her from the corner of his eye. The dagger rattles in her betraying grip, drawing his attention down to it. 

To her surprise, he smiles. A mocking smile. “Tsk,” he tuts, “You don't look half as excited to use that as you used to.” He sounds disappointed, and just a touch cross. Something in this urges her to move again, and she stalks around the chair in a wide circle to stand in front, the fire at her back.

Gortash watches her, the image of calm patience as he folds his hands over his lap. “So, not only do you arrive to me without Orin’s stone, but you're still broken. Like my Watchers, it would seem.” The corners of his eyes crinkle just so, and he tilts his head at her knowingly.

Her jaw ticks, but words don't come. 

“But if you want to speak, then we will speak. Though it appears you’ve lost your tongue on the way here. No matter, I'm well-accustomed to speaking for us both.” The lord–archduke now, she supposes–gets to his feet and wholly turns his back on her to approach a small shelf full of bottles. “But for god's sake put away the knife if you aren't even going to look happy to use it. It's embarrassing.” She does not realize, not right away, that he is baiting her. That by turning his back, he hopes to draw out the Bhaalspawn he seems to know so well. The only thing that makes it apparent to her, is how loud her heartbeat suddenly is in her ears. 

Durge swallows hard and forces herself to stay put and watch, hands twitching, as he pours two glasses of a dark liquid. He grips both from the top to turn to face her. He pauses, his eyes sweeping over her firelit silhouette, and something unreadable flickers over his face. 

“You know me,” she finally speaks as she stows away her weapon. For now.

Gortash smiles, wide, and bites down a laugh, “A gross oversimplification.” He approaches, but stops a few feet away as he extends a drink to her, just out of reach. It's an awkward distance to offer something for her to take, and the feeling of being toyed with only grows. 

This is a game only he remembers the rules to.

The tiefling narrows her eyes, but holds her ground. “The same way Orin does? The way the fanatics on the nautiloid did?” Kressa flashes through her mind then, and she tenses as old, phantom wounds start to burn.

His offering to her falters in his grip when she doesn't take it. “I certainly hope not,” another conspiratorial smile, “When I said we were equals, I meant it. Orin and her ilk don't know the meaning of the word.”

Durge looks at the drink another moment, then closes the gap, and takes hold of it from the bottom. He does not move away from her, and in fact he seems to preen at their proximity, making infinitesimal changes to his posture. 

“Now, I expected you would come. I'd hoped with a gift of the Netherese variety but beggars, choosers, all that. You have questions, I wager.” Only her cold stare answers him. She doesn't move as he returns to his seat, but tracks his every move. “As it stands, I have answers.”

“Why,” she asks, her tone lacking the bite that she wanted to deliver. Something about the atmosphere–him in the chair, drinks in their hands, meeting near midnight to conspire–took the edge off her nerves. She expected to feel vitriol, hatred. But something in her mind both eased and roiled in equal measure. An odd mix she tries to make sense of, but the memories are beneath a veil she can't lift. 

“Because it has been quite some time since we’ve met, and I'm eager to see how much of you can be rebuilt.” Gortash takes a sip and eases back, eyes flicking to another chair near the fire. “I am nothing, if not selfish. Most of all with your time,” he replies, sliding his gaze back to her, “You used to know that about me.”

Something snaps and in an instant her glass shatters on the stone floor at the same time she all but materializes in front of him. Her left knee impacts his arm, pinning it at his side, the other hits the front edge of the chair hard enough to slide it back several inches. Her left hand braces against the back of the seat, and she drops her snarling face to his as her right wraps around his windpipe. Out of her control, her tail curls around his ankle.

He’s managed to not spill his drink. The panic, the reactive aggression she expects to see isn't there. Only a flash of eagerness.  The face of someone seeing an old friend again; exactly how he looked at her when she entered the hall of his coronation.  “Ah,” he croaks under her grip, “there she is.”

“If you don't,” her words heave out in a snarl she doesn't recognize, “stop toying with me, I’m going to take the leash off my inheritance and tear your throat out, Gortash.” Everyone was so bloody preoccupied with her heritage, and what her cursed blood would do to her.  When she would lose control over the urges and fall to Bhaal’s influence. Gortash is unarmed, his Steel Watch disabled, his guards dead. There's nothing to stop her. 

Except, as they both know perfectly well, the information she wants. 

The archduke does not balk, and grabs her forearm with his free hand, still smiling despite his strained breaths. “Yes, dear, I remember,” he swallows hard, and her grip falters enough for him to draw a greedy breath, “You alone hold the claim to my life.” He says it like he's quoting someone. Quoting her. “Though your heritage has always been the least interesting thing about you.”

She hisses and lurches back off of him, nearly tripping over her feet. Her eyes are wild, hands shaking uselessly at her sides as her tail thrashes behind her.

There’s a flash of disappointment again. “Ah, and there she goes. Off into the wind,” he rubs his stubbled neck, unable to disguise his wince despite how much he appears to be enjoying this, and takes a burning swig of his drink. “Now, let's try this again. The hours tick and I'm sure you wish to return on home before your compatriots know you're lying with the enemy, no?” He levels a swaggering grin at her and thumps back in his seat, “And please, call me Enver.”

[theheartofthekoko]

Spooktober - A Poetry Challenge

The delightful @fablesdelightme and I ( @theheartofthekoko) invite you to take part in our upcoming poetry challenge! 

The goal is to write a new poem every day for the entire month (or as many days as work for you, there are no firm rules about it). We have thirty-one prompts, but feel free to write whatever you want, the prompts are mostly there as a little nudge towards poetic inspiration. 

Post and tag your poems with #spooktoberpoetry here on tumblr to take part in the challenge! Liza and I will be checking the tag and commenting on/reblogging poems sporadically over the course of the month! We’re excited to share our love of poetry with you, and hope that you’ll join us as you feel comfortable!

There really are no rules beyond posting your work and tagging it. Other creative endeavors in writing and art are fine as well, if the inspiration strikes! There’s no minimum requirement or limit to how many poems you can write. This is meant to be fun, not stressful!

Let's have a spooky time,

- Liza and Koko

(written list of prompts can be found under the break)

Written List of Prompts:

Shrieked

Carrion

Culpable

Uncanny

Hunger

Resent

Drunken

Hollow

Trepidation

Sated

Subsume

Ferment

Crumble

Rusted

Palimpsest

Dripping

Secret

Infest

Scuttle

Waterlogged

Oath

Choke

Bereft

Throat

Haunt

Debt

Decay

Shiver

Stifle

Yolk

Terminus

[black-quartz-sphinx-judge-my-vow]

Ixier, Who Dreams for The Dead

Ask not for whom the dead dream, they dream for you.

I've been looking forward to this guy for a while. You see his art and can't help but wonder what's going on. I figured some kind of bloodthirsty war demon monster thing. Ixier is so much more... also not that at all.

Ixier is a construct/entity/phenomenon created from the spilled blood of a Rakshasa, and a village's worth of consumed dreams. Don't you hate it when that I happens? I personally really like this kind of thing. It really shows how powerful the exalted are when beings are born from the conflict between them and their adversaries. Plus it gives you a chance to have Ixier be born from your own adventures. Very cool.

Ixier is a mournful, reflective energy vampire. He's cursed with the hunger of the Rakshasa from which he was born. So he hungers for dreams. However like any good vampire he's found a way to sublimate his needs by only feeding on the dreams of those who are dying. So he's a kind of death bed companion, who feeds on the dying and quite literally takes on their dreams as his own. Their desires become his desires and he lives his life hoping to fulfill their dreams. It's really cool. He doesn't even subscribe value to one dream over another. dreams of wealth and power are just as important to him as dreams of peace and quiet.

I think Ixier has a lot of potential to be a sort of frankenstein's monster of your campaign. A hunted entity not quite of nature that people have a hard time tolerating. I mean he's carrion, and feeds of the dead. Polite society would reject him completely if not kill him, even though he has no malice to his designs. Players will have to decide if they hunt him down, or if they protect him from the angry mob that will no doubt form from his presence.

He offers a great chance to explore themes that you might not get elsewhere. What does it mean to be alive? Is Ixier a person, a monster, an anomaly? Is it alright to drain the emotions out of a dying person? What happens to their ghost? Is Ixier one being, or many? Is Ixier a path to immortality?

The only knock I have against Ixier is that I have a hard time imagining how you'd use him in a campaign. He doesn't seem like a natural fit to any situation not specifically built around him. Plus I think examining his full depth would require players not being as trigger happy as they usually like to be. I don't see him as the primary villain of a campaign, I don't really see him as a villain at all. He's just kind of a weird possible threat you might encounter at the edges of the east.

Rating: 7/10 Unfufilled dreams. He's a really cool and imaginative character who looks real cool too. Only held back by his difficulty to use. Not everything has to be a big world ending villain, but I do think that him just being a good somber creature isn't enough to push him into the big leagues.

Misc. I got nothin’

1. Ixier Takes a Lover: Among the many dreams within Ixier are those whose biggest hope is simply to be loved. Ixier can change his form and seduce someone if he so chose, but that would not be enough. He wants to be seen, and understood, and to have someone to understand. The only thing that could fulfill his needs is someone just like him. Of course the only way there could ever be another like him, was if he repeated the horrific circumstance under which he himself were born...

2. Immortal dreams. An old and powerful sorcerer discovers Ixier and realize his long sought key to immortality is at hand. He plans to invite Ixier to his domain have have himself consumed by the creature. Only for his consciousness to overwhelm Ixier's taking over Ixier's immortaly body, and its unlimited potential. Do the players seek to stop these scheme, or are they hired by the sorcerer to ensure a dangerous Fae creature does not continue to roam free?

3.Ruby Blood. Ixier is living blood, infused with the essence of an entire village. The mere scent of him is enough to drive a vampire into a complete frenzy. He is irresistible to these undead who are drawn to him the moment they get his scent. However the very life that attracts the vampires also destroys them upon consumption. Just a taste of his blood is enough overwhelm and destroy even the oldest vampire. An order of vampire hunters seeks to utilize Ixier to destroy The Empire of The Night and end the rule of the Vampire King once and for all.

4. Dr.Sleep The party is chasing an assassin who kills people through their dreams. He seeks refuge within the complex dreamscape of Ixier and his many acquired dreams. In order to catch the killer the players will have to delve into Ixier's mind and deal with the many being's he's collected over his life. Including Exalted, and of course, the killer.

5. Death, is only the beginning. In the east there is a death cult who fears, and hates Ixier above all other beings. For he robs others and has the potential to rob them of the supreme ecstasy of death. They seek to destroy him, but fear that death by his hands would leave them with an emotionless end. As their conflict with Ixier escalates, more of them die and are consumed at his hands. Ixier himself begins to dream and long for the sweetest end to fufill their dreams. Can the players save Ixier from these mad cultists, and himself?

[fleabane420]

Mary, Life is in the Living On Authenticity and Production in Being: A Diary Entry and Creative Treatise on the Creation of Self Pt 1

Saturday Afternoon, 3rd December 2022

A secret wish I’ve never told anybody; one of the innumerable thoughts that each day skitter across my brain – to bred and imbed themselves or to float forgotten into oblivion; one that has stood down death at my own hands: create. As Keaton Henson says in his song The Pugilist ‘I still have art in me yet.’ I must live because I have not yet created. And yet, of course I have. But not that something-else-outside-of-myself-Creation that will hold vigil to my memory; proof that I lived and loved and created. Proof, perhaps, that I was real.

 But what is real? And what, if any of it, is worth recording? And in creating how do I not destroy by flattening subjectivities for the sake of conciseness, understandability, ‘art’fulness or marketability?  

 I didn’t used to fear death. I was obsessed with it. I craved it. I stared down its loving embrace every day for years. I lived on the Roof of Gang of Youths’ Achilles. My thoughts, those skittering lice, abounded with eulogies of self and sensuous whispered pleas for release. I told family, those friends who are like family, psychologists and myself that I held on because I didn’t want to cause pain. This is true. Because I have felt pain and I have caused pain and there is so much pain and I am terrified of causing more pain. But not it is not the whole truth.

 In moments when my hunger for the oblivion was near consuming, it was the emptiness in me from a dearth of creation and the fear of leaving nothing but a carcass that kept me from feasting on my carrion – the abundance within me needs to nurture bellies somehow.

 And yet I am afraid. Afraid of the death of bodies though I desensitize myself through obsession with the morose from a young age. Afraid not of what comes next, though perhaps I am and it is just not prevalent in this moment as who the fuck am I to know the depths of myself – just a lost traveller in a deep wood – but of what I will leave behind. As a child in the bath, I would imagine my body was an island where my skin protruded from the water. I would imagine years and storms passing as my body and the water revolved around each other. Lives lead. Stories told. I have always told myself stories. But I struggled to articulate them to others. Sometimes I want to keep my stories, just for me. But they feel as if they will fill my up until they jump from my skin leaving me some kind of deflated mess with my insides exposed. I want to gift my thoughts. Both as presents for those who think them too and to rid myself of them.

 And now the secret seems pertinent and of course I am scared to force the moment to its crisis because at 17 I was earnest and afraid but at 24 I still remember that feeling of being seen by words and even though I’m even more afraid I want even more to be seen as who I am growing myself into with rejection of who I think I have to be.

But perhaps I have time for more indecisions.

 I want to throw away my words and thoughts onto some page so that I will not waste them. My thoughts are an uncontrollable swarm and when unleashed flowers bloom and bones brittle. I want them to be recorded for they are all I am worth and god I want to be worth something in this culture that has reduced me to a consumer I want to give something back or else? How can we Create under the pressure of commodification?

 And who am I to think? Perhaps the reproduction of my bone brittling [sic] thoughts are not fit for consumption. I was afraid to write high for months because it often became a mirror in which I conversed with the cruellest parts of myself I usually try to hide from. But I am not just my thoughts. Though they are a part of me. And it is the death of that part of me which scares me the most. To die with thoughts unthought and unshared. For this part of me - my thoughts, my ‘Genius’ or what will you – to die unremembered and without some headstone.

 And yet. And yet I am too tired. Too afraid. To create. To not create anymore. That emptiness in me from a dearth of creation and that fear of leaving nothing but a carcass scream at me that I must! I must! And yet! Here it is. I am scared to cause pain. To be hated. And terrified of not being loved. Scared for others to see me the way I see myself and desperate to be seen as I am and to be loved for it. To be earnestly and authentically me. To create. And it is exhausting and that emptiness is corrosive and contagious. And so my secret wish is to create enough so that someday after my tragic death my work, whatever it may be, will be found by someone and shared as a something-else-outside-of-myself-Creation so I might never have to worry how it is received but I can go into oblivion knowing I left some piece of me behind.

[dungeon-strugglers]

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[tomakeitbeautifultolive]

Something I've been wondering about: If Jon comes back as a fire wight like Beric Dondarrion and unCat, will he be able to get it up? Blood won't really be flowing in his body anymore, so would his dick be powered by fire magic or something like that?

I, too, have spent a great deal of time pondering Jon Snow’s dick, Anon. 😏 Jokes aside, I will admit right off the bat that most of what I have to offer is total speculation, but over-thinking the most minor details of ASOIAF happens to be my favorite pastime, so let’s go!

Like pretty much everyone who read the quote, I was totally thrown off by the “fire wight” revelation. Here’s the quote for reference:

“..poor Beric Dondarrion, who was set up as the foreshadowing of all this, every time he’s a little less Beric. His memories are fading, he’s got all these scars, he’s becoming more and more physically hideous, because he’s not a living human being anymore. His heart isn’t beating, his blood isn’t flowing in his veins, he’s a wight, but a wight animated by fire instead of by ice.”

So, an important distinction to make here is that this quote is about Beric Dondarrion specifically, not Jon Snow.

The condition of Jon Snow’s corpse might matter

George can be very clever with how he words things. Note that he goes into Beric’s deaths, describing multiple resurrections and how he’s falling apart before stating that his heart is no longer beating. It could be that a fresh “fire wight” might still possess bodily functions—at least at first. Catelyn, too, was a very sorry looking corpse by the time she was reanimated, therefore not a great comparison, either. Especially since it’s Beric rather than Thoros who, with very little life force to lend, resurrects her.

If nothing else, Jon will be “fresh”, and his location at the Wall means the low temperatures will help preserve his body even if the resurrection takes some time. 

And speaking of the Wall… there happens to be a special lady there who could help Jon, and whose powers happen to be amplified by the magic of the Wall...

Melisandre is profoundly more powerful than Thoros of Myr

Thoros may be a red priest, but otherwise he seems to be a pretty normal human man. We get a clue about when he converted from Jaime:

“Jaime had once heard Thoros tell the king that he became a red priest because the robes hid the winestains so well.”

Relatively recently, one might guess, as most children aren’t yet drunks. Further, he was never very dedicated to his faith, even questioning it at times.

Melisandre, on the other hand...

“Melisandre had practiced her art for years beyond count, and she had paid the price. There was no one, even in her order, who had her skill at seeing the secrets half-revealed and half-concealed within the sacred flames.”

While we don’t know much about her, this confirms that she spent countless years studying her craft, and no one in her order can match her skill. And no one believes in their faith more than Melisandre. Like in the television series, it’s a safe bet that she’s actually much older than the natural human lifespan, particularly if she managed to lose count of how many years she’s studied magic.

If Melisandre is the one to resurrect Jon Snow, she might not use a ‘last kiss’ method at all, or, if she does, it could be more powerful than anything Thoros is capable of.

Unlike Beric, Jon Snow is probably the prophesied prince

Speaking of Melisandre’s ability to glimpse secrets in the flames… there’s someone she sure seems to see a lot of:

“I pray for a glimpse of Azor Ahai, and R'hllor shows me only Snow.”

“Skulls. A thousand skulls, and the bastard boy again. Jon Snow.”

“The flames crackled softly, and in their crackling she heard the whispered name Jon Snow. His long face floated before her, limned in tongues of red and orange.”

I know. There is some contention about who the Prince that was Promised is. Regardless of whether you agree that it’s Jon Snow, you’ve got to admit that Melisandre is seeing him in the flames for a reason. And if he’s not the prophesied prince, then perhaps his blood has something to do with it. It’s likely that, for some reason, the combination of Targaryen and Stark blood matters. At least, Rhaegar Targaryen seemed pretty convinced...

Whatever Jon Snow’s business is in Westeros… it’s unfinished. And part of that unfinished business might just involve becoming a father.

The emphasis put on Jon fathering a child is notable

Let’s go back to Jon’s first chapter ever. It opens with Jon at Robert’s feast, the author uses Jon’s eyes to describe the setting and multiple characters. And then enters Benjen Stark. This is when we really get to know Jon. When you read this passage, really consider the author’s intent here:

"You don't know what you're asking, Jon. The Night's Watch is a sworn brotherhood. We have no families. None of us will ever father sons. Our wife is duty. Our mistress is honor."

"A bastard can have honor too," Jon said. "I am ready to swear your oath."

"You are a boy of fourteen," Benjen said. "Not a man, not yet. Until you have known a woman, you cannot understand what you would be giving up."

"I don't care about that!" Jon said hotly.

"You might, if you knew what it meant," Benjen said. "If you knew what the oath would cost you, you might be less eager to pay the price, son."

Jon felt anger rise inside him. "I'm not your son!"

Benjen Stark stood up. "More's the pity." He put a hand on Jon's shoulder. "Come back to me after you've fathered a few bastards of your own, and we'll see how you feel."

Jon trembled. "I will never father a bastard," he said carefully. "Never!" He spat it out like venom.

Suddenly he realized that the table had fallen silent, and they were all looking at him. He felt the tears begin to well behind his eyes.

This is how George R.R. Martin chooses to introduce us to Jon Snow. And gods, that always hits me right in the gut. It’s absolutely supposed to. Jon’s trembling, venomous anger is palpable. You feel the deep hurt and resentment in his words, right down to his core. Jon says he doesn’t care—but the bite in his words and the tears welling in his eyes tell us otherwise.

Jon Snow easily embraces his vow of celibacy. At first. And then comes Ygritte. And after getting his first taste of love and later flirting with the idea of becoming a lord when it’s offered to him by Stannis, Jon Snow begins to imagine what it might be like to have a wife...

“I might someday hold a son of my own blood in my arms. A son was something Jon Snow had never dared dream of, since he decided to live his life on the Wall.”

And look what happens the moment he does dare to dream of it...

“I could name him Robb. Val would want to keep her sister's son, but we could foster him at Winterfell, and Gilly's boy as well. Sam would never need to tell his lie. We'd find a place for Gilly too, and Sam could come visit her once a year or so. Mance's son and Craster's would grow up brothers, as I once did with Robb.

He wanted it, Jon knew then. He wanted it as much as he had ever wanted anything. I have always wanted it, he thought, guiltily. May the gods forgive me. It was a hunger inside him, sharp as a dragonglass blade.”

And the feeling transitions into an almost tangible hunger felt by his wolf, Ghost.

Speaking of Ghost…

Grab your tinfoil! ‘Cause Jon’s life might’ve already been ‘paid for’ ...By Daenerys

First… in case you didn’t know, Daenerys is probably a skinchanger:

“The slightest pressure with her legs, the lightest touch on the reins, and the filly responded. As she turned to ride back, a firepit loomed ahead, directly in her path. A daring she had never known filled Daenerys then, and she gave the filly her head.”

Basically, it goes like this:

As Daenerys wanders the Dothraki Sea in search of food after being whisked away by Drogon, she hears a wolf’s howl.

“Will (Ghost) howl for me when I'm dead, as Bran's wolf howled when he fell?”

Feeling lonely yet no less hungry, she eats some strange green berries. Her stomach begins to cramp.

“My flesh will feed the wolves and carrion crows, she thought sadly, and worms will burrow through my womb.”

Unfortunately, Daenerys then experiences some horrible diarrhea. Poor girl! I don’t bring it up to be crass, but because this purge bears striking resemblance to an earthly drug called Ayahuasca—a substance that, aside from emptying your bowels, is often used as a means to ‘open your third eye’ (Just as Bran does in the crypts, and he can finally reach Jon and Ghost…)

Dany falls asleep and begins experiencing trippy dreams about her brother—perhaps even achieving contact with the other side? Then...

“When she woke, gasping, her thighs were slick with blood.”

Assuming it’s nothing more than her period, Dany begins to wonder the last time she bled—hinting that it might’ve been a little while.

“The sight of so much red frightened her. Moon blood, it's only my moon blood, but she did not remember ever having such a heavy flow.”

Maybe a bit of a stretch, I know. But… this wretched and graphic scene of Dany’s loose bowels really made me wonder what in seven hells George was thinking. I was so embarrassed for Dany that I HAD to figure out why he’d do this to her.

And my best guess is that she’s using these latent skinchanging abilities to tap into this strange connection with the “blue rose” over at the Wall of Westeros and the silent wolf who finally howled for help upon his death… And so, Dany’s miscarriage may be the death that will pay for Jon’s life.

I might’ve found some more evidence to back this claim up, this is very new ‘evidence’, so bear with me:

“Fire”, in the world of ASOIAF, often translates to “life”. As is seen here in Sam’s speech following Aemon’s death (thanks, bridge4!):

“He was the blood of the dragon, but now his fire has gone out.”

Further, according to the wiki:

“When a follower of the Lord of Light dies, priests fill their mouths with fire and breathe flame into the deceased”

In the House of the Undying, Dany receives a series of chilling prophecies, one of which happens to be about fires:

“Three fires you must light, one for life, one for death and one to love”

I know, I know. Drogo’s pyre, the Khals, etc etc. But George might be playing with double meanings here… So, if we think of fires as conceptions, this could maybe mean:

One in exchange FOR the Dragon’s lives (Life)

One in exchange FOR Jon’s resurrection (Death)

One conceived (likely with Jon) and carried to term (TO love)

Food for thought! Especially considering that, like Jon, Dany possesses the blood of Old Valyria, and these sacrifices are probably all the more powerful as a result. But even if I’m dead wrong about that prophecy, well, fire still broadly means life, which bodes well for our brooding ‘bastard’, who might just end up as a “fire wight”.

Hopefully something in this drivel has given any Jon fans reading this a little bit of faith that, despite the slight setback of death, Jon will still be able to exercise his, uh, virility when he finally meets Dany. 😅 Thanks for the ask!!

[corvidaearts]

Hey man hope you know I unlocked some sort of hip problem because I laughed at hunger!grian in a babygirl pose I need compensation

alone on a friday night?

[lucakombucha]

funger!carrion would be friends with rudimere and they share snacks

[the-griffons-saddlebag]

💎 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗺! Carrion Shroud Wondrous item, very rare (requires attunement) ___ This ruffled cloak of dull feathers and down grants you the resilience and cunning of a ravenous vulture. When you move while wearing this cloak, small, tattered feathers drift from the cloak that vanish when they touch the ground. While wearing the cloak, your Constitution score increases by 2 to a maximum of 20, you have advantage on saving throws against disease and poison, and you have resistance against poison damage. In addition, while wearing the cloak, you can speak its command word as a bonus action to cause it to transform into a pair of sickly vulture wings for 1 minute. While the cloak is transformed, you gain a a flying speed of 60 feet, and when you hit a creature that's missing any of its hit points with a melee weapon attack, that creature takes an extra 1d6 necrotic damage. This property of the cloak can't be used again until the next dusk. 𝘾𝙪𝙧𝙨𝙚. This cloak is cursed, and becoming attuned to it extends the curse to you until you are targeted by the "remove curse" spell. As long as you remain cursed, you are unwilling to part with the cloak, keeping it worn at all times. The cloak gives you an insatiable hunger for flesh, and while traditional food can sustain you, you no longer enjoy the smell or taste of it. While cursed, whenever you reduce a creature within 5 feet of you to 0 hit points, you're forced to make a DC 13 Wisdom saving throw. If the creature is a construct, undead, or plant, you automatically succeed on this saving throw. On a failed save, you are overcome with the urge to tear into the creature's flesh and feast: sacrificing any additional movement, action, or bonus action you had left on your turn. You can repeat this saving throw at the start of each of your following turns, ending your need to feast on a success. ___ ✨ Patrons get huge perks! Access this and hundreds of other item cards, art files, and compendium entries when you support The Griffon's Saddlebag on Patreon for only $1 to $7 a month!

[darkisrising]

ooo ive got another one for song lyrics (srsly tho Sting takes the whole song to get to where he's going, the fragment from last night - not sure it made enough sense 🤣)

here we go: "The future is a dying art / Laying in a ditch in the dark / I need you here but all I hear (is) / The beating of a broken heart / Don’t wait to say goodbye / you’re running out of time / whatever you believe, it’s easy to see / the whole world’s sitting on a ticking bomb"

(I should leave Sting alone, I also take alllll possible running room to get to where I’m going. I’ll just show myself out 🙈)

Hahaha!!! I mean... same. lololol

Okay, here’s what I got. Not sure it at ALL matches up with the lyrics, but it’s what came out anyway so. This one’s for you! The Future is a Dying Art

Plasma, the color of madness, cuts through Obi-Wan’s chest and for one brief, bright moment the pain is excruciating. It withdraws and with it goes the strength of his limbs. His knees hit the durasteel platform with a crack that he can hear from far away but it doesn’t hurt.

His chest doesn’t hurt.

Nothing hurts.

Through a red shield, Qui-Gon’s eyes are the wrong color, and as the shiver of shock sets in, Obi-Wan can’t help but feel like that is the most unjust part of all. His eyes ought to be blue. His hair ought to be stroked with silver. His face ought to be serene; the face of a man that lives in devotion to the present. Who accepts each new moment as it comes and not a second sooner.

This isn’t the master he knows. Not this anguished creature that roars his name behind a laser barrier that steals Qui-Gon’s voice as surely as the passing seconds steal Obi-Wan’s life.

This isn’t the future Obi-Wan had been promised. The visions that have followed his sleep, clung tight to his dreams, have been murmuring for years about this moment. About the rise of a darkness that was so immense it could fell the great Qui-Gon Jinn. 

Always in motion, the future is, he’s heard Master Yoda say time and time again.

Your visions are an unpromised tomorrow, is what Qui-Gon has told Obi-Wan when he would wake with his master’s hand on his shoulder to a bed creased with sweat and a sleep shirt that fared little better. 

And Obi-Wan had known that. He’d known it, he’d known it, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to tell Qui-Gon what horror has been plaguing him since the night he’d turned eighteen. Hadn’t been able to find the words to express the depths of his anguish at seeing his master fall to his knees over and over again. At seeing his eyes widen and his mouth go slack and then waking up to a master whose eyes were rimmed with disrupted sleep and a mouth that pinched with worry.

Now, though, something’s changed.

Something has altered the course of events that Obi-Wan has known for so long that he can trace them from memory, but there’s no point in wondering what it could have been. Not when the shields are powering down and Qui-Gon is charging toward the Sith lord, green blade burning. Not when his master is slicing at the Sith with a passion that is singed with fury, and it is hard to track what darkness is billowing from the Sith and what is his master’s. 

Obi-Wan’s cheek is pressed to the floor as he watches a battle that he cannot join, his heart beating slower than it has in even his deepest meditation, and then it is over. The Sith is cut neatly in two. Obi-Wan is turned and lifted. Now he is in Qui-Gon’s arms, can finally see the blue eyes he’s needed to see, and this is somehow worse.

The darkness hasn’t left him. It wraps around each of Qui-Gon’s panting exhales. It lingers in the creases of his forehead, in the hollows of his cheekbones. Despair, yes, but worse: anger and fear. He has seen Qui-Gon struggle with these emotions in the past, but this is deeper. This is fathomless.

“Stay. Please,” Qui-Gon bids. “You are meant to be a great Jedi, Obi-Wan. I’ve seen it,” and oh how that pains Obi-Wan to hear. Not the sentiment, but the conviction. The surety. Premonitions are Obi-Wan’s purview, and yet somehow one has slithered away to sting at his master.

Qui-Gon has seen the future, has built a house upon where it sits, not realizing it is naught but shifting sands below.

“Master—”

“I can’t lose you,” he says, and his voice blazes even as the darkness gathers, wraiths whispering promises from the corners of the room, growing louder as they approach. Obi-Wan doesn’t need to hear them to know what they are offering Qui-Gon. He doesn’t need to see the barter to know that Qui-Gon is measuring the price against the weight of his soul.

“Don’t.” His voice is reedy, thin. It is no match for the clamor that fills Qui-Gon’s head. 

Time flows through them both, and as Obi-Wan weakens he can feel Qui-Gon grow stronger. Power—oily, slippery power—slides across Obi-Wan’s skin to seek out the heat of Qui-Gon’s passion.

His lips find Obi-Wan’s forehead, and Obi-Wan tips his head back. If he can live long enough for ramifications, he knows what he is about to do may very well shatter everything between.

Still he has to try. 

Catching Qui-Gon’s lips with his own, Obi-Wan kisses his master with all the ferocity, the hunger, the longing—to possess and be possessed—that he should have renounced long ago.

This is something that he has kept to himself, nestled and nurtured in his heart even as he walked at his master’s side, an exemplary padawan save the one thing that he could never bring himself to purge.

The darkness that has spread through Qui-Gon can taste Obi-Wan’s weakness and it laughs.

In a rush it flows into Obi-Wan, the roar of a river’s rapids that threaten to drown him, but he will drink this down. If there is a choice in this moment, then Obi-Wan chooses it. If there is a fall to be had, then Obi-Wan will gladly be the one to fall.

The shadows descend then—vultures ready to pick at the bones of carrion—and he doesn’t fight them. He welcomes them. They cloak him in a mantle that is unfamiliar and heavy, yet he lets them dress him just the same. The wound in his chest fills with a searing blackness and Obi-Wan can feel his strength return. He uses it to reach up, to fist his hands in Qui-Gon’s hair, to steal his breath from his mouth until they’re both panting with it.

Like clouds sweeping across a sun, the darkness passes through Qui-Gon and with a burst of brightness so blinding it makes Obi-Wan’s eyes water, light returns to his master’s heart.

[twinrot-arts]

Hunger

10-20 - Challenge: OCtober - Personal. OCtober Days Nineteen-Twenty-Twenty-one: Carrion. The lovely Coyvultes beast~ They're consuming the bad meat that is Tobi, who we've officially decided will no longer exist, kek kek Definitely coming back to do more with this later-- Uncensored on dA~

Do Not Repost/Use/Remove Caption. Like this? Consider comms/ko-fi~ Art, Coyvultes, Tobi © twinrot - Coyvultes Design (c) EndlessShower

[madscientistjournal]

Fiction: The Experiment Meets Certain Doom

An essay by Experiment 105, as related by Deborah L. Davitt Art by Luke Spooner

I looked up from inside my cage as the skylight of the laboratory opened, and blinked. A swarm of insects poured through the opening, coalescing near the floor. The insects seethed, never entirely outlining the form with perfect resolution, but I could interpolate the shape of a human female. One that now rooted among the cabinets, chucking tools into a sack.

“Excuse me,” I said politely. Mother had taught me to always be polite. “You needn’t steal. If you’re hungry, Mother will give you food. She says everything she does is to help others.”

The swarm dissolved. Reformed, the limbs melding front to back, the face melting through the back of the head to become the front. “Mother? She lets you call her that?” The voice sounded like the susurration of a million wings. “She didn’t let me call her Mother even when I was her flesh-and-blood daughter.”

I sat upright. “You’re her daughter?”

“Once, yes.” Insects billowed toward me, then curled back into human shape. “Until she tried to destroy me.”

I hesitated. Mother’s good. Mother would never try to destroy anything that wasn’t evil. “Are you … certain doom or something?”

“She named me Melissa, first. Then Swarm. Then, yes, Certain Doom. It has a ring, don’t you think?”

“What happened?” I whispered, shocked.

“A period of mutual discovery. She discovered that most people didn’t want to eat bugs. I discovered that I didn’t want to be eaten by people. And people discovered that large swarms of insects often devour entire fields of grain. The local farmers drove her out of town. I followed, because she was my mother, and I didn’t know anything else.” A pause. “Like you and all the others.”

I clutched the bars, half in panic, half in desperate hope. “There are others? Like us?”

Swarm continued packing tools. “A few. She always starts off with good intentions. Trying to solve some fundamental human problem. I started off as a way to prevent starvation. Famine. She couldn’t afford to feed both of us, so why not make me experiment 17?”

I hesitated. I had faint memories of lean years. Hunger. But those memories weren’t mine. “And the others?”

“She wanted a universal cure for disease. Built a clockwork doctor who could tirelessly nurse the sick. You know what they call him now?” She might’ve been staring at me. “The Plaguebringer. He has a few loose screws, but I get along with him.”

My mouth fell open. “That’s terrible.”

“So was trying to melt him down after she gave him consciousness, instead of trying to fix him. I told him tonight I’d get him materials to repair his slagged feet.” A gesture at the tools in the bag. “I figure 73 will do the trick.”

“Then why’s 87 in your sack? It’s a death-ray.”

Swarm undulated. “She shouldn’t have 87. No one should, really.” She turned away.

I hated the idea of losing her. The first person who’d really talked with me in … ever. “Wait! Who else is there?”

Swarm turned back. “She adopted a little boy. Operated on his brain with Plaguebringer.” A hiss of displeasure. “Gave him the ability to project thoughts.”

“That doesn’t sound terrible.”

“She wanted him to help people not to fight. Noble ambition, except he could hear everyone around him. All the hatred, all the petty jealousies. He was only eight. It drove him insane.” Swarm slumped, losing her shape for a moment. “So he made the voices stop. Killed them, or made them fight each other till they died. She tried to kill him, too. But I snatched him away. So now I have to steal food and clothes for him.”

I didn’t want to believe her. But I did.

Now Swarm floated closer. “You look just like her. Do you even remember being a child?”

“I am a child!”

“You have an adult body.” Swarm’s whispering voice sounded concerned. “You shouldn’t let her treat you like this. Keep you in a cage.”

It hadn’t occurred to me that there were other options.

“You want out?”

I rattled the door. “How? It’s locked!”

One of Swarm’s hands billowed loose of her body. Buzzed to the keys on the far wall, then deposited them in my palm. Solid. Real. “If you want to meet the others, I can arrange it. One happy family.”

“One would make me sick. And the other would just … make me think you’re right.” My heart pounded. “He could be up on the roof, influencing me right now.”

A rustle of laughter. “He’s up there, sure. But he’s not pushing you. Use your mind. You’re a younger duplicate of her body. What human problem could you possibly be designed to solve for her?”

“She’s been putting a cap on my head,” I confessed, “while she wears another. Afterward, I have new thoughts. Memories that aren’t mine. She tests to see how long I retain it.”

Swarm seemed to nod. “Consciousness transfer. When she’s satisfied that you retain information permanently, she’ll transfer her mind into your body. Wiping you out.” Swarm sighed. “She kills all her children, eventually. Why should you be any different?”

The insects seethed, never entirely outlining the form with perfect resolution, but I could interpolate the shape of a human female.

I licked my lips. “I don’t want to be her.”

“You don’t want to die.”

“That, either.”

Swarm pointed at the key. “Your life’s your own now.” A pause. “So’s hers.” She poured back toward the skylight, carrying the sack.

I could bypass security. Get to Mother, kill her. Keep her from making more creatures like us. Or I could put the caps on both of us, and steal all Mother’s knowledge. Become a better version of her.

Or I could leave Mother to the certain doom of her own mortality. And become the best version of myself I could be.

“Swarm! Take me with you!”

My sister boiled back down. Surrounded me. And carried me back out into the night sky, where our brothers awaited.

Experiment 105 believes that she’s probably about ten to twelve years old, though rapid-maturation technology gives her the appearance of an adult human female. She didn’t grab her mother’s lab notes on her existence, however, so it’s hard to tell precisely when she was decanted from her artificial womb. At some point in the future, she thinks that she might like to pick a name for herself. In the meantime, her siblings have taken to calling her Peri, which she thinks sounds like a chip from a paint store, but it’s hard to argue with them, when they’re the only family she’s got.

Deborah L. Davitt was raised in Nevada, but currently lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband and son.  Her poetry has received Rhysling, Dwarf Star, and Pushcart nominations; her short fiction has appeared in InterGalactic Medicine Show, Compelling Science Fiction, and Pseudopod. For more about her work, including her Edda-Earth novels and her poetry collection, The Gates of Never, please see www.edda-earth.com.

Luke Spooner, a.k.a. ‘Carrion House,’ currently lives and works in the South of England. Having recently graduated from the University of Portsmouth with a first class degree, he is now a full time illustrator for just about any project that piques his interest. Despite regular forays into children’s books and fairy tales, his true love lies in anything macabre, melancholy, or dark in nature and essence. He believes that the job of putting someone else’s words into a visual form, to accompany and support their text, is a massive responsibility, as well as being something he truly treasures. You can visit his web site at www.carrionhouse.com.

“The Experiment Meets Certain Doom” is © 2019 Deborah L. Davitt Art accompanying story is © 2019 Luke Spooner

Fiction: The Experiment Meets Certain Doom was originally published on Mad Scientist Journal