#eldritch gems

[valeriapryanikova]

under the surface

[rosenbergamot]

“You’re annoying me.” Gem says to the mysterious shape in the water that’s been watching her fish for the past… oh, I don’t know, five days. Usually the thing will swim away quickly, or sometimes it will disregard her ire and continue to sit there as if it relished in her annoyance. Today it slaps its tail against the water, sending waves towards her.

“That was childish.” She blows a raspberry at it because she herself is the pinnacle of maturity.

It slaps the water again, splashing her and giving her a mouthful of briny seawater. She spits it out, unamused. Its tail is large, with deep blue scales that sparkle in the morning sun. Whatever this thing is, it's big and it loves to watch her talk to herself.

“You know we’re on the same side here, right?” This is a lie and they both know it. Fisherman and fish could never be on the same side. “Hey, how about if I catch anything I’ll give you some of it. But you have to promise to stop scaring the fish away!”

The tail slowly raises out of the water. It does not slap down like it did before. Instead, slowly, so slowly, a head raises out as well. She sees two deep eyes stare back at her, a head of messy brown hair, a smile sharp and intelligent.

“What?!” She gawks.

“You promise, mate?” It has a playful voice, melodic and feminine, and when it speaks its gills flare at its neck. “I don’t take too kindly to people breaking their promises.”

“You’re a person?”

It purses its lips. “Not really? What, you think a person looks like this?” She unearths her fingers from the water. The sea drips off of her long sharp claws. “Couldn’t do much with these if I was a person.”

“Uh… yeah!” She recasts her line, her eyes wandering across the pale skin until she reaches the chest and— oh! The… person? Creature? Whatever it is, it’s shirtless, and Gem doesn’t want to be caught staring. That’s so rude! She fixes her gaze on her rod.

It swims closer to her. It gets so close she’d be able to touch if she wanted. It rests its head on the dock, stares up at her with vertical pupils. She’s got silvery patchings of scales on her face.

This is… only a little bit different from what they’d been doing before. She can still handle it. It’s just… right there instead of in the water. And instead of just being a fish it is a very pretty woman with very sharp teeth. That’s okay! Gem’s okay!

She goes back to fishing, those eyes still on her. Eventually she hooks a salmon and cheers. The creature blinks at her as she puts it in her bucket.

“None for me?” She pouts.

“Oh, no! You’ll just have to wait!” She grabs more bait. “I need to feed myself, after all. I’m a busy woman, can’t have some fish lady taking all my food!”

A miserable sigh. It bonks its head back down on the dock. “You’re lucky I think you’re pretty.”

That catches her off guard. She accidentally hooks a bit of her thumb as she’s trying to hook the worm. She curses and shakes the blood off. The creature’s eyes follow it.

“Uh-huh… and why’s that?”

When she responds, she’s not looking at Gem. She’s staring at her bleeding thumb. Her long tongue comes out to lick at her lips. She grins at her.

“‘Cause I’d have just eaten you already if I didn’t.”

When she swallows, it watches the way her throat moves with attentive eyes. They sit there in silence for the rest of the day.

It ends up swimming away with five whole fish in her grasp. As she’s disappearing, she yells back to Gem:

“See ya tomorrow, pretty fisher lady!” Her teeth reflect the sun. “I hope ya catch lots of stuff tomorrow! For both our sakes!”

Then it’s gone, tail the last thing to leave, and Gem is left to wonder if she’s just invited something horrible into her life…

And if so, why is she excited about it?

[enby-art-creations]

Trans Resilience 🏳️‍⚧️💛🤍💜🖤🏳️‍⚧️

[redwinterroses]

There’s a cherry tree in the middle of the redwood forest.

False isn’t sure what to make of that. She shifts her grip on the staff in her hand, its pale glow reflecting faintly off the fresh snow. She’s come out here for resources—the vault altar is demanding logs, and these giant trees are an easy source—but the incongruous sight of an enormous, blossoming cherry tree sending pink petals wafting on the frozen wind…

She wonders if this is what fish feel like, when they see a lure.

“Hello?” she calls, her voice echoing off the trees. The world stands in permanent semi-twilight here, and the deeper shadows hide the mobs that will venture out come nightfall. A sneak of creepers is bedded down in a sweetberry bramble just on the other side of the clearing, and False tenses when the lead boar lifts his head, but he apparently doesn’t deem her worth stalking so early in the day. 

There is no other reaction to her call.

False is of half a mind just to head back home and farm her own dang trees. It’s not like the vaultar is picky about the kinds of logs—she could just as easily grow up a bunch of birch and throw those in there. But that will take so much longer… not to mention she’s not sure if there are even enough saplings in her storage.

She unhooks her enchantment-glittered axe from her belt and pauses to mentally poke at her mana reserves. Plenty high. Whatever’s lingering near this tree, it can hardly be worse than what she deals with on the daily in the vaults. Overworld dangers are barely a challenge anymore.

The logic of that doesn’t change the uneasy feeling that buzzes over her skin though. 

Venturing further into the clearing. False’s gaze traces up the trunk of the cherry tree, following its branches to where they terminate in lush bursts of pink and white blooms. A sweet smell drifts on the wind. She wrinkles her nose, reminded of compost piles and fermented spiders’ eyes. 

The tree’s branches stretch long and low—a canopy of their own, heavy with flowers and dark, glossy leaves. The space underneath is filled with falling flowers and a fog of pollen, the air moisture-thick like a lush cave.

Lifting one hand, False catches a falling petal on her fingertip.

It sizzles as it touches her skin, stinging and buzzing like live redstone.

She hisses through her teeth, shaking her hand and letting the petal fall to the forest floor. “What the heck?”

Another petal tumbles past her face, and she watches it with narrowed eyes—right until it fizzles out of existence a few pixels above the forest floor.

“Glitch,” she mutters. “That’s… not good.”

Iskall needs to know about this—it could be a bug from one of the new updates, or it could be something deeper in the code, but either way: this glitched tree is a problem. She’s probably lucky it just stung her.

She reaches for her communicator, raising it to take a pic of the cherry tree.

“Oh, hi there, False!”

False yelps, spinning around with her axe ready to swing.

Gem is standing behind her, a wreath of cherry blossoms tangled in her hair and antlers, leaning casually on a tall staff of blooming cherry wood. Her smile is wide, and sap flows over her fingers, pale golden, dripping down her arms to leave dark spots on the faded denim of her overalls.

“Gem!” False lowers her axe. “Oh my gosh, you scared me. I didn’t know you were doing Vault Hunters.”

“Hm?” Gem raises one eyebrow, and for a moment her eyes flicker to red and then purple before settling back on green. “Oh—I’m not doing Vault Hunters, False.” Her voice is amused, almost chiding.

“Oh.” False feels unexpectedly small—which is impressive, considering she’s nearly half a block taller than Gem. 

More of the glitched petals fall, resting on Gem’s hair and slowly melting into it like snowflakes. The brief moment of relief when False had seen Gem’s familiar grin is fading into something like the sensation of freefall. 

“What’cha up to?” Gem asks, and her face blinks from one expression to the next like a bad video message. Her clothes are blue—no, green—no, bloodstained and grey—no, blue. They’ve always been blue.

False takes a step back.

“Uh, not much…” she glances up at the redwoods. “Just doing some… resource gathering. You know.”

“Cool!” Gem giggles, and stands up straight. False tenses, but Gem only spins around her staff and waves a hand at the glitched tree. “I didn’t realize this was an occupied server—are there many people here?”

There’s a buzzing in False’s skull, and she blinks rapidly. A muscle twitches under her eye. 

“Um…”

“I guess it doesn’t really matter.” Gem lifts one hand and grabs one of the lowest branches of the cherry tree. She really should not have been able to reach that.

Swinging herself up with the lithe, effortless strength of a cat, she perches on the limb and stares down at False. The grin is gone from her face now, and she looks down at False with bright eyes.

“Etho’s not here, is he?”

False opens her mouth to answer, the words yes, of course he is, I can take you to him heavy on her lips… And with effort, she swallows them back. 

They taste of sweet rot.

“Why... why doesn’t what matter?” she asks instead.

Gem stares at her for a long moment, expressionless. The flowers woven through her antlers are growing of their own accord, twining up to caress their brethren in the branches overhead. 

Then she smiles broadly, flashing teeth that nearly glow white in the dappled shadows. “Oh!” she exclaims. “No reason! I’m only passing through, is all.”

“You’re not… you’re not sticking around?” False tries—and mostly fails—to sound disappointed.

“Naaaaah…” Gem stands and walks along the branch, as secure and balanced as if it were a stone floor. The flowers in her hair flow along behind her, sliding from the branches and falling like a cape down her back. “Worldhopping is easy. Staying in one spot is way harder.” 

False watches the flowers move and swirl, their smooth, strange motion ensnaring her attention. The buzzing is back, too. Like bees, drunk on honey and sleepy in their hive.

“World hopping…?” she manages. “With admin commands?”

Gem’s laugh is as brilliant as a knife and as sharp as a spark. “False!” she crows. “You say the funniest things.”

False laughs. It seems appropriate. She isn’t sure why.

“Anyway,” Gem continues, fading into one patch of blossoms and reappearing on the other side of it. Her eyes are sprays of cherry flowers now. Her antlers are branches. “Anyway, cherry trees are all the same. They make it easy to get around.”

“That…” doesn’t make sense, False wants to say. But her lips are heavy, and coated in sticky sap. Maybe it doesn’t really matter.

“Oops! Behind you, False!” 

Gem’s chirped warning is flaked in glee, and False turns around, as slow as if her feet are buried in soul sand.

The creepers she had seen—the entire sneak—are standing behind her, pink flowers blooming from their eyes. 

“Oh no.”

The boar’s blinded head snaps toward her voice, hissing. He starts to aggro, bioluminescent streaks flashing from his snout to flanks in increasingly-swift pulses of light.

“See ya in season ten, False!” Gem cries out cheerfully.

The axe drops from False’s nerveless fingers, trailing strings of sap. She smells the inescapable stench of burning gunpowder, overlaid with rot.

“...Dangit.”

[FalseSymmetry was blown up by a creeper]

~*~

Jerking upright in her own bed, False swipes wildly at her face, trying to smear away tree sap that isn’t there. 

“What the heck, Gem?” she exclaims at her empty base. Her voice falls flat, swallowed up by the sky that surrounds her builds. The clock above her head ticks impatiently, and she huffs in frustration, pushing up out of her bed. All her tools, gone—her levels, gone... and after all that she still needs those logs for the vault. 

Grumbling, she starts pulling backup gear from various chests, trying to cobble together something that can get her back to the redwood grove before her items despawn—assuming they hadn’t all been obliterated by a second or third creeper explosion. She glances at the vaulter, and freezes.

It’s been completed. The crystal floats gently atop the stone pedestal, gleaming with an inner light. 

And, tumbled at the base of the vaulter—abandoned, more than was needed to fill the crystal’s requirements:

Half a stack of cherry logs.

[gingermaple]

fish gem!

[monerelluvia]

Sketching Petra about to blast you into tomorrow

[were-changing-cake-vaults]

Look. Gem can’t build the ship from dredge without me imagining her as eldritch horror. She can’t start building the lighthouse without me going Ok So She’s Going All In. I see pirate gem. I see fish gem. All good. However please play or watch someone Dredge and understand that she is cosplaying at least The Fisherman or in my dreams The Collector. Gem should be the horror. As a treat.

[welcometohomeworld]

I hope you are alright!! If you ever get back I can't wait to see Garnet' design!!

Sorry for the long wait!! Here it is

Her eyes change place so they might disappear or not. No blinking either . Can use She/her or It .

Fused gems are considered closer to ascension than most gems, which is why it's prohibited and seen as blasphemy

[quadroople-a-battery]

How are people not immediately obsessed with her. She’s literally a swarm of bees in a trench coat

(alt version beneath the readmore)

(Had to make the background solid black because I couldn’t figure out how to get transparent pngs to work on tumblr)

[ty-bayonet-betteridge]

whys everybody a goddamn warlock this season

[jelfish-aether]

ok the new update. the flipping the dragons

do they. stay flipped in the coliseum?

because i have the funniest opportunity to make my coli trainers be backwards from their opponents.

[jettyfisher]

Coloured version of The Rook. Their necrotic breath weapon is slowly killing them, even with resistance. Nothing lives forever.

[enby-art-creations]

Trans wrath

[sunnibits]

being a romantic with arfid is honestly kind of funny bc like. on one hand I’m the type of person to be reblogging one million posts about soup or whatever and being like “yes!! yes!! soup!!! warmth!! living!!!! we were put on this earth to enjoy things!!!!” but meanwhile the arfid part of me is actually like “I would not consume a single meal in this post if there was a fucking gun to my head”

[undeath1245]

Here's my first Steven Universe fanart, a picture of an eldritch Lapis Lazuli. This was inspired from a-flyleaf's spooky Lapis art, and I wanted to take a crack at eldritch gem art.

Steven Universe © Cartoon Network

[eldritchdyke]

I've gotta get into making some shitty zines