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giorno-plays-piano · 9 months

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Metamorph

Part I

Pairing: art teacher!Aemond Targaryen x reader (Horror AU)

Warnings: dark!Aemond, obsessive behavior, murder, horror, yandere, kidnapping, misanthropy, general creepy stuff.

Words: 1.5k

Summary: Drawn to the artworks of one of the most esteemed artists in the city, you wish to learn from him and find out what inspires him to create his masterpieces. You have no idea how much his secrets will cost you.

P.S. Unhinged Aemond, my dear Ewan nation! No physical harm done to the heroine, though.

___________

"Are you ready?" He asks you calmly, but you can see his impatience, the way he restlessly looks at you and back at the door leading to one of the smaller studios he always keeps locked at all times. Aemond can't wait to show you something, some other paintings of his he prefers to hide from others, and you feel both intrigued and disturbed by what you will find.

He is a genius, no doubt. One of the best artists of the century, the critics say, and while your city literally consists of art studios and galleries, people speak of Aemond Targaryen with a weird reverence, and his name is constantly on the ear.

His drawings caught your attention the moment you saw them online, mindlessly looking through your feed. It was hard to explain what exactly made you stop and look at them - even after months of attending his course you still couldn't quite put your finger on it - but you saved the pictures, printed them out, and then was staring at them hanging from the wall for days like you had been hypnotized. The ones you stumbled upon first depicted all sorts of buildings, always only in black and white, overgrown with... something. Flowers, vines, some greenery that looked like flesh and bones, painted in vivid red, of course. It was sort of scary... but also sort of not. It was a work of art, not some background picture from a cheap horror movie. The architecture he chose, they way he drew it as if he was recording his own perception onto the paper, each stroke written with his style, perhaps his very soul embedded in it... It was impossible to describe it with words. One had to see it to understand.

So, you had visited a gallery where his works had been exhibited, and since then you were fully supportive of city's infatuation with Aemond Targaryen. There was no way you could stay indifferent to his art, especially considering your own desperate attempts to get better at drawing.

How could he be so expressive while mostly using just black, white and red paint? Most of the time, he wasn't even painting but drawing, making sketches, that sort of thing. And yet you were obsessively saving and printing all of his artworks you were able to spot online. Some you hang on the walls of your apartment, some - the ones that made you held your breath - you kept in a drawer like you were a dragon guarding your treasure chest. One time when your mom accidentally spotted them you literally wanted to fall through the floor. It was... too intimate for sharing with anyone. Despite the paintings and drawings showcased openly in the galleries for everyone to see, they felt like they were your great secret, your own hoard, too precious to even talk about it, less let people see printed artworks you kept hidden in the bottom drawer of your cabinet.

Who was he, the man who brought these breathtaking paintings to life, you had often wondered. How had he done it? How did he make the red paint so vivid, so expressive and yet not vulgar? How could he lay strokes with such precision, but not the same way most artists did? How did he build his compositions that they felt real and surreal at the same time? What sort of magic was that? Everyone around joked he must have sold his soul to the Devil.

When you saw Aemond for the first time, you thought the same thing because he scared the Hell out of you. First, he wore an eyepatch and had a long, ugly scar crossing half of his face. An incident from his childhood, someone whispered to you. Someone had stabbed him in the eye.

This felt disturbing and surreal, too. Stabbed a child in the eye? What the Hell? Wasn't he from some wealthy, upper-class sort of family?

Perhaps, it was one of the reasons why Aemond seemed so sullen and chilly, his only presence making the temperature in the room drop a couple degrees. Despite his obvious attractiveness, it felt like he was an alligator waiting in front of a crowd of stupid bunnies who came to admire his teeth. Didn't help he was dressed in all black, and both his skin and hair were alarmingly white like he wasn't really a human being.

A stupid suggestion, really.

He'd been through some serious shit, someone kept murmuring you in the ear as you stared at the artist, open-mouthed and frozen in place. His dad was really wealthy, but rumors had it he didn't really care about him or his siblings, and his mother was constantly on antidepressants. Then the incident with the eye-stabbing happened, but it was still shrouded in mystery even with journalists trying to dig up the truth for years. After he grew up, Aemond went to study business and started working under his grandfather. Rumours had it he made some crazy money but started hating his life, ended up having serious issues with drinking, and at one point, he suddenly left everything and disappeared.

Whatever happened then was a mystery, too, and the artists never spoke about it in any of his interviews expect for saying that drawing has saved him. Although nothing suggests he is a former alcoholic and had once been homeless thanks to the immaculate way he dresses, you thought there was something in his face that made you wonder if he actually got better. Aemond seemed... very hostile.

But he'a an artist, too, and you've found all of them weird in one way or the other.

Of course, despite the fact that you've been drawing for years, you've never thought yourself an artist. No, no, you just enjoy it as a hobby, and you're nowhere near people like Aemond Targaryen.

But when you heard he opened a drawing course for the general public, you were so frantic about getting in you swore to yourself, regardless how much it costs, you would get in. Even if you wouldn't be eating for the next few years.

Seriously, it was Aemond freaking Targaryen you were talking about. A literal King! He had been the talk of a month even in the capital thanks to his recent dragon paintings collection that was sold in an auction for a ridiculous sum of money. So what if he's scary and had this chilling-to-the-bone stare? Most successful people you knew seemed at least a little frightening. Besides, if anything, you could just drop out of class.

But if you were brave enough to apply, you could have a chance to actually see him at work.

How did his studio look? What sort of routine did he have? What kind of paint and pencils did he use? How had he gotten that amazing crimson color you were trying to replicate for months without any success? What did he use for inspiration?

Clearly, you just couldn't let this opportunity slip away. You had to try to get in.

Surprisingly, the course wasn't even that expensive, sold at nearly the same price as most other art courses as if Aemond was just like any other artist in the city. The problem laid in his way of choosing the students: he requested to see the artworks of applicants to determine whether he'd take them or not.

It nearly put a stop to the whole thing because you were terrified of him seeing your drawings. What would he think about an amateur like you? How could you even dream about coming to him instead of improving your technique first with some other, way less known artists? He was Aemond Targaryen, for God's sake.

But you knew he might never take other students again. He might even move to the capital that would give him much more than your city ever could. What if he just disappeared? It could have been your only chance to see him work.

When he accepted you along with 9 other students out of more than two hundred participants, you thought you were dreaming. How? Why would he? You were far from professional. Goodness, you weren't even planning on becoming a true artist, and it felt like you were cheating on people who did. So, how could he take you, knowing that?

Not that you were going to drop out before the start of the course. Over your dead body. You literally spent the entire week shopping for new materials even though you knew he would give you suggestions later. But how could you show him your pencils and brushes that looked like your dog chewed, ate, and then threw them back up? You'd rather jump from the roof.

___________

Alas, on the first day of the course, you stood there among other students, holding your breath as you watched the door of the studio open. Aemond Targaryen was going to teach you his art.

Part II

Tags: @heavenly1927 @yazzzmints @devils-blackrose @lost-and-founds @kennafild

#aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen #aemond #aemond x reader #ewan nation #hotd #house of the dragon #the house of the dragon #yandere

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burningvelvet · 4 months

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So anyway I've been reading about Restoration era writers & also learned that in Jane Eyre, Mr. Rochester may have been partly inspired by the Restoration era poet John Wilmot Earl of Rochester, rambunctious sex legend & asshole extraordinaire. I totally support this theory & may include a reference to it in my Jane Eyre fic if I ever update it.

Interesting finds from John Wilmot and Mr. Rochester by Murray G. H. Pittock:

"Mr. Rochester is to an as yet unappreciated degree based upon the character and reputation of his namesake, John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, whose career as it was popularly recorded is the model for the rakehell and penitent phases underlying the development of Mr. Rochester's character." (P 462)

"the Earl's mother 'was a daughter of Sir John St. John, an ancient family of Wiltshire.' The coincidence of the name with that of the alter hero of Jane Eyre is of course striking. This tract also contains an extended passage concerning Wilmot's propensity for disguise, a common feature of the religious Lives." (P 464)

"In both the real man and the fictional character, cynicism and misanthropy turn to faith. As early as Etherege, then, John Wilmot had become a literary archetype, the "devil-angel" of the wicked rake. But he was also, in the alternative tradition of the religious tracts, an archetype of the repentant sinner. Wilmot's pious end made him respectable, and he was in every sense an ideal figure on which to model his fictional namesake." (P 469)

"It is Mr. Rochester who characteristically uses Christian imagery to describe erotic feelings [..]" (P 462)

"Mr. Rochester associates himself with the devil. Quoting from Paradise Lost, he asks Jane 'not to attribute to me any such bad eminence' (p. 166)." (P 463)

i didn't know this but i mention paradise lost in my fic! even tho in her novel shirley, charlotte disses milton's depiction of eve (which i 100% agree with; my last semester i took an english renaissance class wherein i wrote about paradise lost & eve's oppression lol). heathcliff is also miltonian as i acknowledged in a prior post!!!

"Such talk of heaven and hell in the interests of passion are echoes in fact of Mr. Rochester's famous namesake." (P 463)

"The material that Bronte would use in creating the hero of Jane Eyre from his namesake was freely available at the time, and not only through the means of pious hearsay. Burnet's own account is based on interviews with the dying Earl, and because Wilmot's death was finally a pious one, the less risqué of his poems were often found in print. So thoroughly was Wilmot's profligate life associated in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries with his deathbed conversion, that it comes as no surprise to find his poems published in 1821 alongside those of Dr. Spratt, the Bishop of Rochester, in a one-volume collection enticingly titled The Cabinet of Love? Moreover, Burnet's Life was long popular, as its several editions testify, even in the "best" literary circles. Both Horace Walpole and Samuel Johnson wrote critiques which were incorporated into the edition issued in 1820. Such widely disseminated tales of reformed rakes and deathbed conversions were an important part of the literary culture of Brontes youth, reinforced by the Methodism introduced into the family circle by Aunt Branwell. It was not at all unusual, then, that Bronte should turn to John Wilmot in creating her own Mr. Rochester." (P 464)

"Passion untamed by religion until the moment of crisis is a mark of Charlotte Brontes fiction, and to make that mark, who better than a famous rake and a famous convert, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester?" (P 469)

From John Wilmot, Mr Rochester and William Harrison Ainsworth by Robert Dingley:

"it is also possible that she drew hints from the Earl's depiction in William Harrison Ainsworth's bestselling novel Old St. Paul's (1841), where the Restoration rake displays a chameleon-like facility in disguise and twice attempts to entrap the woman by whom he is obsessed (and who in turn loves him) in spurious wedding ceremonies."

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aemondslefteyeball · 11 months

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In the Flat Field (1)

[Future!Aemond x Fem!Reader]

[Warnings: Spooky shit]

[Summary: The year is 2864, and mankind has spread to the stars. You and your partner are a part of the Exoarchaeologist's Guild, exploring the known universe on the USS Vhagar. When the two of you enter a new frontier you make a discovery that will either make or destroy both of your careers at the Guild. If you can make your way back to it, that is.]

Word Count: 4.3K

Chapter One

A gut pull drag on me

Into the chasm gaping, we.

Vhagar’s engines thrummed softly in the background while you set the plates down on the little table in the dining room. After they were arranged and the replicator was shut off, you expanded the hologram that sat confined in your watch. Pulling up the menu, you clicked on the ship’s comms and sent your best friend a ping that the food was ready. A few minutes later Aemond arrived in the kitchen, sweat coating his brow from where he had been overhauling the backup wiring in the lateral thrusters. “Hey, love.” A wide grin pulled across his face, his eyes widening at the Arrysian stir-fry before him. “This is why we’re partners.” His face softened for a second, and your heartbeat quickened in your chest. He went to the wash station, dipping his hands into the electrostatic fog before settling down at the table.

“The reports on the Milner vase came back, it’s from approximately 2146, sometime in the spring but the carbon atoms aren’t stable enough to tell precisely when it was made.” Aemond nodded as you briefed him. The two of you had been hoping it was made in the 2060s when the Carythian empire had been in its golden era. Nonetheless, the guild would want it when you two returned to Valyretos so into the storage lockers it would go. “I was thinking maybe we could push further into Juliet Quadrant, I looked through the Guild database and couldn’t find many records of archaeologists coming here.”

“I couldn’t agree more, Hotel Quadrant has been overrun since they found that temple.” Aemond had always leaned towards misanthropy, which was pretty funny considering he devoted his life to rummaging through dead peoples’ shit. As the two of you talked about your plans and input the vectors into Vhagar’s nav system, Aemond grabbed your plates and placed them back into the replicator, where it dematerialized them.

You two fell into a comfortable silence as you thinned out the scrubbers. The plants had been growing a bit too thick, and it posed a risk of clogging up the dioxide filters. The pair of you dictated the report on the Milner vase together, bickering like an old married couple as to whether it portrayed Nienna or Valeich. Despite your back-and-forths, you two had always been two peas in a pod. You remembered when you first met Aemond back at the Academy. Long, silver hair draped over a handsome face. On the left side of it, a cybernetic implant sat. Valyrian steel laced into his cheek, a crystalline transceiver sitting where an eye normally would. His demeanor intimidated you back then, and you had the same classes for months before Aemond finally approached you and asked if you would study for the preliminaries with him. The more you got to know him the more shocked you became, as you had assumed his family pulled strings to get him into the academy. You had friends at Telmar IV and none of them had any good stories about his older brother, and even less about his father. Studying his face for a moment, you reflected on how the years had changed it. The minuscule amount of baby fat that had clung to his face as a fifteen-year-old had faded, and you couldn’t deny he was quite the handsome man. But Aemond was… well, Aemond. You couldn’t think of any time he seemed more interested in any one person over his work. That being said, it seemed it was the reason you two fit so well together. Both of you refused to ever stop pushing, and it led to you being valedictorian, and Aemond the salutatorian. It was a miracle you beat him out, but the final exam tripped him up just enough that you edged in a victory. To your surprise, he didn’t seem jealous at all. When your final GPAs were announced he just pulled you into a hug and tentatively asked if you two could be partners after graduation. Eight years later, the two of you were sailing off into Juliet Quadrant on the USS Vhagar. It was Aemond’s pride and joy, a smile dancing across your face at the memory of the hours spent in his hangar. He had never grown out of tinkering with her, you supposed.

“Something on your mind?” Aemond’s right eyebrow was quirked, amusement glimmering in his violet eyes.

“Remember when you were building her?”

An easy grin pulled across Aemond’s face as he pulled another plant from the wall. You swore you saw a blush on his cheeks for a second before he turned towards the compost bin. “I remember warbling on about her engine schematics for hours.” He turned back to you, something unidentifiable in the back of his eye. “I don’t think anybody had ever really sat and listened to me like that before.” There was a comfort to the admission, an easiness that only came with eleven years of companionship. When the two of you finished, the plant matter was deconstructed by the bin before being spread over the mycelium racks in a fine mist.

Nebulas of magenta and sea-foam green spread out before your eyes, the viewscreen set to record the star system as you two settled into the cockpit. Aemond sunk into his crash couch with a groan, pausing for a moment before he followed your line of sight. “Gods that’s beautiful,” he muttered.

“You’re beautiful.” When Aemond turned to look at you, he was met with your raised middle finger.

He chuckled before shaking his head, looking down at the controls. “It remains a great mystery as to why you’re single.”

“A great tragedy.” You teased, clasping your hands for dramatic effect.

“Mmm,” Aemond replied, something shifting in his gaze as he leaned closer toward you. You smiled at him coyly, one leg crossed over the other.

Suddenly the proximity klaxon sounded, the view screen flashing red. Vhagar’s point defense cannons were locked onto an asteroid 437 kilometers in diameter. You looked to Aemond, engaging the railguns and cutting minor paths through it before Aemond finally launched a PDC round into the asteroid that sent it shattering out into the frontier. The two of you breathed a sigh of relief. No pieces of the asteroid were large enough to cause actual damage to Vhagar. As soon as the two of you started to relax, the ship was hit by a small rumble. You looked to Aemond in confusion, and he looked to you in worry. Whatever jostled Vhagar had to be something particularly nasty, and it would be better to get the hell out of dodge time now. Sensors were reading that a nearby star had started a coronal mass ejection registering off the Gerardys Scale. As you engaged the joysticks, the ship was hit by a wave that sent it tumbling through the vacuum. Aemond’s arm snapped across your chest as if he was going to hold you in, and you shot him a strange look. You were both literally strapped into your couches. Despite the futility of the gesture, your heart rate increased. Another wave wracked the ship, and it froze suddenly. The system had entirely changed. Literally. You and Aemond looked at each other in confusion for a moment, pulling up your vitals. Both of you were sober and all was were clear, which only left the impossible. You two were somewhere else, in a dimensional freefall before your surroundings shifted again.

The ship solidified in the goldilocks atmosphere of a thus unidentified planet. You braced yourself for another few minutes, expecting to find yourself in yet another strange new system. When no shift happened, you and Aemond stared at each other. “What the fuck?” You whispered as he let out an ‘Mmm’ of agreement. “Should we land?”

Aemond’s brow furrowed for a minute, and you saw the light on the side of his implant flicker. Another thing you loved about Aemond, he ran almost every major decision through that implant of his. “Yes.” He stated simply, as you nodded. While Aemond had always been able to destroy you in engineering, you were the pilot. Autopilot was engaged until the stratosphere was breached, from there you set the controls to manual and landed Vhagar in a vegetated field. The two of you opened the comms before sending out an emergency message to the guild. When the ping sounded your heart dropped into your stomach. For the first time ever, Vhagar was unable to transmit. Your wary gaze met Aemonds again, and you shot him a smile you hoped was comforting. He had designed Vhagar so she synchronized with his implant, and the expression on his face told you he was just as lost. Environmental sensors showed nothing of note, while cobalt-blue vines spread out as far as the eye could see. No signs of sentient life read from the field, but the two of you had another hope in mind. Two klicks off into the distance stood the only artificially constructed building you had seen in this hemisphere. You and Aemond took another glance at each other. Periwinkle stucco rippled into basalt before it shifted to plastic siding. Wherever the two of you had landed, it was a far cry from anything you ever had seen before. Really read, heard, or thought about even. In short summary, you guys were up shit creek with no paddle.

“Well,” Aemond said flatly, his voice revealing the slightest waver. “We’ve definitely found something new.” You nodded as your boots crunched into the vines beneath your feet.

You let the silence hang for a second longer before it dawned on you. “The asteroid.” When your gaze turned to Aemond, his brow was knit together with the steel implant. You stopped for a moment, Aemond following in tandem. Pulling up the hologram screen from your watch, you expanded it into view mode. Aemond’s hand came to rest on your waist as he stepped closer towards you, eyes fixed on the screen. Clicking on the recording of the flight data, you pull the asteroid’s hologram out, setting it into a field of its own before programming Vhagar to run a simulation of its flight path.

“What in the seven hells?” Aemond whispered, your mouth going dry as the two of you watched the path of the asteroid. It was moving as if on a track, with a constant velocity. The vector was straight, clear-cut, and too mathematically neat to be natural. Aemond reached into the hologram as well, overlaying the simulation onto the schematic of the system. When he pressed play, you brought your thumbnail to your mouth, resting it on your teeth for a moment. That was it, this was something nobody in the guild had ever discovered before. Your heart sank at the realization that the two of you had unknowingly destroyed a priceless artifact.

“It’s a…” Aemond looked at you for a second, his lilac eye narrowing at you as he tried to follow your train of thought. “Aem, I think it’s a cosmic-scale Rube Goldberg machine.”

“Who could have built it?” He murmured, talking more to himself than you. “And why?” His right fist clenched as the light flashed in Valyrian steel. “Implant’s got nothing.” He finally concluded. Nothing of this scale had ever been done before, though to be fair this was just a theory as of right now. Maybe there was some psychoactive chemical in the atmosphere that Vhagar’s sensors didn’t pick up. It would certainly make more sense than either a machine spanning an entire solar system or an asteroid that seemed to move in the weirdest orbit you had ever seen.

“After we destroyed it, the ion storm started.” You reflected out loud, your finger tracing over the light blue flashes of the hologram as the world shifted around the two of you. Cerulean skies melted into emerald and rose, but the two of you quickly found the bigger mystery. “After that is when things started getting… weird.” You said simply, wishing there was a word that more accurately described stumbling across a space oddity.

“Before we were thrown into the singularity…” Aemond picked up. You nodded, fidgeting with your hands. Aemond’s thumb rubbed little circles into your waist before he gently massaged the spot that always bothered you. Worry dissipated, as your gaze shifted to your best friend. If nothing else, you were relieved he was here. You leaned into him, inhaling the scent of leather and pine. Aemond pressed a kiss to the top of your head. “It’s going to be alright, love.” He murmured. As he said that, your boots sank into bubblegum-colored sand. You pulled away and shot each other a look of mutual understanding. The environment was changing rapidly, but a building still stood. A queer patina shimmered over the roof tiles as they morphed into thatch, less than half a kilometer away now. You pulled your boot out of the sand, going to place it before you until a patch of ice rippled beneath your foot and you lost your balance. Aemond, thankfully, had quicker reflexes than most humans due to his implant. His arm snaked out to grab you before steadying you on your feet.

“Thanks.” You prayed that you weren’t blushing. Aemond just wasn’t interested in you like that. Aemond wasn’t really interested in anybody like that.

After a quarter-kilometer trek that thrust you into six different biomes, the two of you finally came to the ever-changing sight of the house before you. Grand French doors were adorned with stained glass that seemed to produce its own light. The images danced across the panes, but when Aemond scanned it he found no power source. Glass figurines revelled, read, and leaped as the glass changed colors. “I know this is probably a stupid question,” Aemond furrowed his brow, a gentle look in his eye as he glanced toward you. “But you’re recording all of this, right?”

Aemond smiled at you, ruffling your hair suddenly as you batted his hands away. “You don’t ask stupid questions, that’s why we’ve been together for so long.” Been together. Sometimes you wondered if he did it on purpose. If he knew and was just rubbing salt into the wound. But his eye held no indication of mockery, and an easy look rested across his chiseled features. Like when you two first met. The years had hardened his face, but the remnants of the dorky teenager reemerged. Your dork. After a moment, he reached to open the door, the knob shifting to a beautiful ivory as he opened it. While the house seemed to be more fixed than the outside was, a foyer flashed in and out of existence, staircases moving throughout the belly of the beast. Hair raised on your neck, animal instincts screaming at the uncanny nature of the morphing environment. The two of you stepped through doorways into rooms that flashed in and out of existence, often finding yourself in new parts of the house. Decor flashed in and out of different cultures, times, and places. One minute Veltruvian lamps cast their plum glow across the walls. Others, class candles burned into your retinas. Walls of ebony stretched out across the basement the two of you had stepped into, and you traced your fingers along it, taking in the sight. Aemond beelined towards a desk, his gaze focused. Picking up the piece of metal, he turned it over in his hands before his gaze panned over to you. Holding it up, he laughed. “A sextant!” Blue light flickered out of the implant as he ran his fingers over the bronze. “18th century Earth.” A happy grin overtook his features as he unzipped his backpack, placing it in. Technically it was supposed to go to the guild, but you could pretend you didn’t see it in his room. Ebony walls shifted into cherry as you two stepped into a bedroom. A large, soft bed took up most of the space, but your gaze flickered to the closet.

“Jackpot.” You said, throwing the doors open before tutting disappointedly. All men’s clothes, and way too large for you from the looks of it. You flipped through the hangers, finding a long black trench coat. Pulling it off the rack, you held it up to Aemond’s shoulders, giving him a look. Aemond humored you, shrugging off his coat and tossing it onto the bed before pulling the trench coat over himself. The sleeves were a touch too short, but Aemond cut quite the strapping figure in it. You pulled your fingers up to your mouth and let out a wolf whistle. Raising your finger to spin it, Aemond shook his head as he chuckled. “C’mon CoverGirl.” You cheered. He pulled the coat off before tossing it over his shoulder and strutting across the room. When he reached you, he paused for a second, his face twisting as if he was thinking. When it continued on for another second, a nervous smile flashed across your face. “I’m starting to smell smoke.” You teased, taking the coat and putting it back on the hanger. You paused for a second after placing it back on the rack, shoving the coats off to one side and dropping to your knees. Before you, a small door stayed in place, the trim melting between shades of eggshell. You turned back to Aemond, and the blue light flickered before he nodded. Taking a deep breath, you opened the latch to Pandora’s door. The tiny door opened up to a full-length hallway and you started to poke your head in before Aemond lunged to grab you.

His leather jacket was back on him, expression serious as he turned the light in his implant on. Brick and stone flashed across the walls, an oil spill of different materials swirling before your eyes. Stepping into it, he gestured for you to follow before putting an arm out in front of you protectively. While his arm unfortunately was not singularity-proof, the sweetness of the gesture was appreciated. Exposed pipes of different metals lined the ceiling, the ripples easing the further along you traveled. The two of you came to a halt before the large iron door and you swallowed harshly. There was no sign of a spindle on the door, but it was cracked. A glimpse of light peeked out. You wracked your brain trying to remember any time that you had seen a safe that didn’t close from the outside. “Stay behind me,” Aemond muttered, with you nodding and moving to the opposite side of the frame. Aemond pressed the door open, ancient hinges creaking in protest. You peeked in to see Aemond staring at the room in shock. Light shone in through a bowed window, dust floating through the sunbeams as it bounced off one of the mirrors and right into your eyes. Flinching and holding a hand up, you came to Aemond’s side. “There can’t be a window here.” He muttered. “There’s solid brick around the entire room.” His head shook in disbelief, staring out into the yellow sky. “We’re in the basement.”

“Aemond.” He was pulled out of his train of thought before you gestured to the rest of the room. Dust stirred in the air, tickling at the back of your nostrils. Sunlight shone onto a neatly made, though clearly neglected bed. The walls were a solid beige color, with an armoire and a little kitchenette stacked into the small space.

“Did you hear me? There cannot be a window here.”

“I heard you.” You snapped. On the table, an old journal disappeared, and a radio appeared in its place. Aside from that, the room was still. The walls remained as they were, and whatever plagued the rest of the house seemed mitigated here. The eye of the singularity. Realization dawned on Aemond as he shot you a look. The emotion was unreadable for a second before you finally recognized it. Fear. You couldn’t remember the last time you had seen Aemond truly scared. You wondered if you ever had. Aemond paced around the room, stalking about with an anxious expression on his face. “I’m going to get a reading on that door.” Pulling at the straps of your backpack, you stepped out of the iron door, and into the largest room you had ever seen.

Columns of shelves reached as high as you could see, the musk of the ancient room pervasive. Stepping down a row, you pressed yourself against a shelf and took a deep breath in. Okay. You and Aemond had been separated. It would be alright, you told yourself. Thus far you returned back to the same general area within the singularity itself. Your position in spacetime seemed fixed, but it shifted around you like a kaleidoscope. After you regained your head, you continued to creep down the rows. Strange bottles lined the walls, filled with different colored mists. You couldn’t articulate what it was, but every instinct screamed at you.

In the presence of something that was ancient when man was still fish, something stirred off in the distance. That’s when it sounded again. Heavy footfalls grew closer while you skirted around the wooden shelves, taking advantage of every blind spot around the bottles. A myriad of swirling colors spun within the glass, hypnotizing. You edged along the row slowly, checking your surroundings before making a dash to the next one. Upon getting there, you pinched your nose and exhaled through your mouth silently. When your heart rate slowed and your mind cleared, you snapped back to the task at hand. Escape. That’s when you caught sight of it through the reflection on the bottle. Ducking back behind the panel of wood, you looked at the bottles on the opposite shelf through the corner of your eye. Whatever it was, it was large. Stretched abnormally tall, the creature was broad, visual static flickering through the body. Ink seemed to stretch over the skin in a shifting calico pattern, blinking in and out as the creature let out a low wheeze. Two massive, gray pits swirling in what you could only assume were its eyes. A clicking rang out through the silent rows, and you took extra care to maintain your cover. Thuds fell onto stone floors at an uneasy tempo. Inhuman. An uncharacteristically long pause between one footfall and the next. Purples and greens spilled into the shifting skin pattern, your eyes intermittently flicking to the bottles. Something between a gurgle and a click emerged as the creature stalked about, dragging its spindly fingers along the dusty shelves. Suddenly it came to a pause, the colors in it shifting as it stopped to examine the shelf. The spot where you had braced yourself after first seeing the thing. Fuck. The speed of the clicking increased, and you felt a strange sort of joy radiating off of the being. It canvassed the room carefully, prowling towards the row you had previously been at. Your heart pounded in your chest as you pressed yourself against a new row, eyes trained on the bottles. Keeping your hands at your side so as to not leave another breadcrumb for whatever the fuck that thing was, you continued down the row. The creature ambled around as if it had all the time in the world, happy gurgles emerging from its abdomen. A soft peach glow shone around it, your eyes drawn in. It was strangely beautiful in contrast to the grotesque nature of the being. Something pure and celestial, mesmerizing. A dreamy smile passed across your face as you stumbled onto the shelf closest to you. Fuck. If the thud from your contact wasn’t enough, a bottle fell off the shelf and shattered before you had the chance to grab it. A flat voice emerged from the shattered glass as an ancient recitation sounded in a language you couldn’t identify. You slapped your watch, having it record a sample of the language to analyze later. A much, much bigger fish to fry had clambered over to the end of the row. The ecstatic clicking picked up in tempo, and your eyes widened in horror before you scrambled onto your feet to sprint as fast as humanly possible. The eerie gurgling emerged as the creature stalked behind you. You didn’t spare a look behind you, propelling your legs under you as quickly as you could. The dank room seemed to expand ever larger around you, but you weren’t sure if it was moving or whether it had always been this large. Rows tall as skyscrapers flickered in your field of vision for a second before bricks flashed through. Clicking sounded behind you until you were stumbling over smooth concrete on the outside of the bedroom. You fell to your knees and vomited on the cement. Your vision blurred and your head pounded. Each individual cell of your body felt as if it had been individually beaten, and you dry heaved after everything was out of your stomach.

Aemond came to pull your hair back, worry pulled across his face as one arm patted you gently on the back. When you finally finished, you turned your bloodshot gaze to meet his. The fear was still palpable in Aemond’s eyes, but you could see relief dawning in them too as he pulled you in for a hug. “Nice to see you too, Y/N.” He teased. Your arms shook as you wrapped them around his midsection, inhaling the scent of leather and soap.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ahh! Second series starting!!!! Let me know what you all think, this one will probably be a bit sparser in updates than STGM but shouldn't be less frequent than every other week. Love y'all have a good weekend drink water

#aemond x reader #hotd x reader #aemond x you #hotd imagine #aemond fic #aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen x you #aemond targaryen #aemond targaryen imagine #aemond fanfiction #prince aemond #house of the dragon aemond #aemond x y/n #prince aemond targaryen

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ampd · 8 months

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<1995.10> Ved Buens Ende... - Written in Waters

2002 CD, Candlelight Records USA - CANUS0038CD | Misanthropy Records

Photography, artwork & design by Kim Solve

#1995 #1990s #Ved Buens Ende #album #prog metal #avant garde metal #Candlelight Records USA #Misanthropy Records #Kim Solve

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triste-guillotine · 2 years

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IN THE WOODS... “Heart of the ages” LP 1995 (The Haunting Epic Majestic Pagan Metal masterpiece from the heart of the deep eternal forests of Norge)

1. Yearning the Seeds of a New Dimension 2. Heart of the Ages 3. ...in the Woods (Prologue / Moments of... / Epilogue) 4. Mourning the Death of Aase 5. Wotan's Return 6. Pigeon 7. The Divinity of Wisdom

“Among the hills I have wandered, Through the forests so cold, Over the mountains of raging thunder, Followed the ways foretold. A request, a "leave me be" Through the shape that I longed for... Withering visions... Bleeding to search for the more... Behold the memories within, A questful battle to win, Towards which he is carrying, The burden named destiny. It is pounding proud on his shoulders. Creating and dreaming Is it all the same As I touch this flame... of mine I await your call, Through body, spirit and mind, I shine - I shine... The forces of Prima Mater. Unite us this heathen night, Yearning your unknown mysterious beauty. Forever in you I am a Knight (Pride and Might !) Among hills, we do wander, Through the forests so cold. Crossing mountains of raging thunder, Followed our ways untold...”

https://soulsellerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/heart-of-the-ages

#In The Woods...#Heathen Metal #Black-Pagan Metal #Norge #Misanthropy Records #Soulseller Records

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hostilemuppet · 3 months

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Seeing the Floyd perspective on the relationship makes me want to see the Creek perspective, especially the period where they were divorced. But also: Goddamn. This relationship really is the happiest either could get huh. I mean, Floyd could and CAN do better if he wanted, but I think it’s sweet how they chose each other.

okay heres my thoughts on creeks side of the situation, again keep in mind its just MY thoughts and not "canon" to the au

After Trolls 1 (a brief summary for the non-trolls fans following along at home: he was almost eaten by King Gristle so he sold (what he thought was) his entire species to save himself. He gets eaten by a BIGGER monster but he makes it out, somehow. Don’t think about it too hard) he lives alone in the woods for several months, before returning to Troll Village. People do NOT want him around, because, you know. Do I need to explain it? But Poppy let him back in, because she “feels bad for him” or whatever, and also they used to date so she thinks she has to. So he has a home, he’s back in his old pod, he even has his old job back! But no one wants to be around him, and he’s got only himself to blame.

Creek does NOT blame himself. He’s NEVER at fault, it’s always someone else’s. He devolves further into misanthropy, while still keeping up his at peace, Zen facade. He hates everyone. He hates Poppy. He hates Branch.

He tries to get back to how he was, establish himself as a musician, on top of teaching yoga. He gets a lot of fans, but he’s still pretty... controversial, to say the least. How could he not be? He was almost responsible for hundreds of deaths. But worse things haven’t stopped people from stanning. Look at your real life Twitter trending tab if you don’t believe me!

After all tribes are at peace, he makes an off colour comment about how rowdy and loud Rock trolls are when someone stops by his yoga class and disrupts it for his much more well behaved Pop students. Obviously, canon typical racism is a pretty big no-no, so he gets a lot of flack. Hence, the collab with Riff, which doesn’t actually help his reputation at all because Riff immediately took to Twitter to call Creek an asshole.

Then, Creek decides he’s been going at this all wrong. he doesn’t need to bend over backwards to make himself look better; he just needs to make the people he HATES look WORSE! As much as he hates to admit it, Branch is actually pretty spotless (and is, you know, dating the Queen, so...). But, he has FOUR brothers, two of which are single and one of which is infamous for whoring himself out. The adoring public are more willing to crucify their idols for victimless sex scandals than they are for genuine atrocities. This is when Creek pays someone (several someones, actually, but only one of them was successful) to seduce Floyd, record it without his knowledge, and send Creek the footage so he can leak it and tank Brozone’s reputation. We’ve been over how this didn’t work out for him in the way he wanted, but that doesn’t mean it was entirely a waste of time. He broke Floyd a little more.

A couple months pass. Creek continues to get in controversies that he could easily avoid if he simply stepped out of the spotlight, but he can’t, because he is addicted to clout and still believes he is never at fault. He finds out Riff has collabed with Floyd, and since Riff is one of the many, many trolls who are dead to Creek, he throws his little adult man tantrum and decides it’s personal, and he needs to take matters into his own hands. If you want it done right, you should just do it yourself. He starts frequenting Floyd’s favourite gay bar until by some miracle they’re in the same place at the same time. You know how things go.

Creek wakes up the next morning sore. Y'know, because of the drugs. Mostly. He’s alone. He’s mad, that his plan didn’t work. But he can still save it, and next time they run into each other he asks for Floyd’s number, saying how he really wants this to go further, he felt a connection. He did not feel a connection. Creek is not attracted to other men. They start dating, and he couldn’t be happier; not because he likes Floyd, obviously, but because he’s sure Branch is dying inside. I mean, yeah, Branch barely reacts any more past the first week, but he’s probably just really good at faking tranquillity. Creek knows how to fake tranquillity, too.

The relationship lasts, a lot longer than he thought it would, honestly. He thought it’d last a couple weeks at most, before Branch tried to kill him. But no such luck, instead, he’s stuck being couple-y, doing couple-y things, with a man he feels nothing for. They engage in a lot of PDA, and Creek buys Floyd a lot of gifts (that he insists were HIS ideas, NOT Floyd’s), they’re basically attached at the hip! And Creek genuinely thinks he’s on top of the situation. Poor, sweet, innocent Floyd, or whatever. He’s The Sensitive One! There’s no way Floyd knows what’s going on. He's be inconsolable if he did.

So when Floyd pushes him to prove how much Creek loves him, when he doesn’t, the only thing he can think of is to propose. He wasn’t sure what he was thinking. Honestly, he was pretty sure Floyd would say no, since they’d only been going out about half a year, and if that’s the end of the relationship, at least he could peddle it for sympathy points from the public. Unfortunately, Floyd is fucking crazy, and said yes.

Now Creek has a husband. He is still not into men, but he has a husband. He moves out of his pod and into Floyd’s mansion. This is it, he thinks. This is the rest of his life. He still keeps up the act, of course. He can’t have Floyd catching on. But he’s kinda bummed about his fate as a trophy husband for someone he feels nothing for.

He gets his first egg a month or two later, and is surprised to find that Floyd had a matching one. Creek might not care for Floyd, but he never thought he’d be a dad, and he gets. Emotional? He didn’t think he was CAPABLE of crying happy tears any more! Not that he’d let Floyd know, of course. The eggs hatch a month later (Floyd insisted on their names) and Creek is actually, genuinely happy. For a bit.

A month after that, four months into their marriage, everything falls into the open. Creek finds out that Floyd knew he never loved him, but he was playing Creek like 3D chess. And he’s mad, of course, but what is he gonna do, divorce Floyd? They have kids! Plus, you know, Floyd’s blackmailing him. “Tricking a man into marrying you and having kids with him” wouldn’t exactly be good for Creek’s reputation, not to mention how Floyd knows a lot of his personal embarrassing secrets now. From that point, things ramp up a couple notches.

No longer having to pretend everything is hunky dory in the privacy of their own homes, things escalate into all out warfare. And Creek can’t lie, it’s kind of an adrenaline rush, having to sleep next to the guy who you hate more than anything. Which is another thing that freaks Creek out! He actually hates Floyd more than Poppy, or even Branch! Don’t get him wrong, thinking about either of them for too long still fills him with white hot rage, but he doesn’t get the opportunity when Floyd’s wrapping his arms around him and acting all sappy in public, knowing they’re gonna go home and choke each other. Non sexually. Okay, maybe a little sexually. He’s still not into boys.

Then, they get comfortable. And things become too “real” for Floyd, who leaves, and divorces him, and doesn’t even try to get PARTIAL custody. Creek is shocked, at first, but then decides this is the best possible outcome. They’re no longer together, it’s NOT Creek’s fault, and he has sole custody of the kids he loves so dearly! Plus, he’s back on the market, baby! He can get back to cruising for fit GIRLS. He doesn’t have much luck. Partly because most Pop trolls still hate him (even if at this point it has dialled back to levels of the Azealia Banks Chicken Fiasco), partly because, at this point? He has no idea how to form genuine romantic relationships with other trolls that aren’t built on psychological warfare. He doesn’t even realise he’s doing it! Several relationships end in him getting dumped, with her friends and family encouraging her to leave him for “emotional abuse”, or whatever. He didn’t even mean it this time, honest! He just wanted to win, you know? He forgot the point of a romantic relationship is not actually to seek victory. But it’s so hard not to! He spent 18 months doing exactly that! Even when he “lost”, which was most of the time, he still got a sick thrill out of the hunt. A sick thrill he is now missing. He understands why Floyd couldn’t quit the coke, now. He tries not to think about Floyd any more.

Meanwhile, their fraternal twins, Brad and Angelina, wait patiently for their parents to get back together. Even though Brad was only 8 months old at the time of divorce, that’s like, 6 years for a troll, and he knew there’s no way in Hell they could stay apart. He just has to wait a bit for his Pops to come back home. Angelina, while having no opinions on whether they will or even should get back together, has already started reaping the benefits of having recently divorced parents at school. She’d be looking forward to having two Giftmases and two birthdays, if she knew what either of those were yet.

Then comes the reunion. We know what happens. They run into each other at a charity event for orphans, not that Floyd remembers what it’s for, since he’s been violently depressed for several months and is only there because Brozone (not specifically Floyd) were asked to make an appearance. They reminisce on their whirlwind romance, they get drunk, Floyd forces JD to remarry them. Creek wakes up the next morning with a brand new ring on his finger.

Creek’s first thought is that the rings look cheap, like they were the only ones they could get on such short notice, and he’s glad he never sold their original rings that he still has back in the mansion. Then, it sinks in that he has Floyd back. He means, that he’s back with Floyd. Which he feels totally neutral on. Negative, even. He’s definitely NOT thrilled that he’s got his perfect match back, and can stop trying to pretend to be someone he’s not. He hates Floyd. Grr! He gives up the act the second Floyd wakes up, and he sees Creek, and starts crying.

At first Creek thinks, aw shit, this was a mistake, we’re getting divorced again. He’s gonna be twice divorced before he’s 30, which is NOT a good look for him. Then they talk, for a while, until they’re on the same page. This IS what they both want. They want to be together. They want to constantly be at each others’ throats, sometimes literally. They want to always have to think, and plan, and make sure the other won’t come out on top. It’s more enriching for them than any other relationship could ever be. This is the first and probably only time they have ever been fully 100% honest with each other.

Except for the sex tape thing, obviously. Creek’s taking that to the grave.

They return to the mansion and Brad greets Floyd casually, as if it hadn’t been 3 1/2 months since they’ve seen each other. Angelina asks if this means they get to eat junk food again. Floyd arranges for a moving van to bring all his stuff back to the mansion that week, and Creek arranges for Brangelina to visit friends for the day.

Things settle down and after a week or two and you’d never even guess they divorced, if not for how they’re back in their honeymoon phase, and Creek has gone from insisting he feels nothing for Floyd to admitting he is psychosexually obsessed with him. He still says he’s straight, though. And Floyd is more than happy to live with that.

#ask #tdau

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cyarskj1899 · 6 months

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25 Essential Black-Metal Albums

From Venom and Bathory to Behemoth and Deafheaven

From its origins in England, Sweden, and Switzerland to its murderous Norwegian prime and its U.S. resurgence, black-metal has proven harder to extinguish than a fire consuming a church. And while sensational violence and a flirtation with the occult have often threatened to eclipse the genre's artistic merits, it is ultimately the music that has given this dark practice its longevity. Here, Revolver picks 25 albums that define the malefic movement.

(Black Mark, 1984) This cult Swedish studio band took the lo-fi shittiness of Venom and added icy Norse paganism to the garbled mix. Written and coproduced by vocalist-guitarist Quorthon (who died in 2004), Bathory's homonymous debut also features drummer Jonas Åkerlund, who went on to direct videos for both Madonna and U2 (plus the 2002 crystal meth flick Spun), not to mention the forthcoming controversial Lords of Chaos movie.

(Noise, 1984) Before vocalist-guitarist Tom G. Warrior formed Celtic Frost with bassist Martin Ain, he was the leader of another Swiss metal trio called Hellhammer. Though the band existed for less than two years, the harsh cacophony of the Apocalyptic Raids demo perfectly expressed black metal's caustic furor.

(Peaceville, 1991) This Norwegian duo's second album marks drummer-lyricist Fenriz and vocalist-guitarist Nocturno Culto's defection from the traditional death-metal territory of Soulside Journey to the chilling realm of "unholy black metal."

(Misanthropy, 1992) The debut by Burzum, the one-man studio project of J.R.R. Tolkien aficionado Varg Vikernes (a.k.a. Count Grishnackh), was originally released on Mayhem guitarist Euronymous' Deathlike Silence Productions. Remarkable for its militaristic severity and creepy synth ambience, Burzum remains one of black metal's earliest masterpieces.

(Century Black, 1993) Also originally released on Deathlike Silence, De Mysteriis was Mayhem's scorching full-length follow-up to the seminal Deathcrush mini-LP. The album features longtime drummer Hellhammer, current vocalist Attila Csihar (ex-Tormentor, ex-Aborym), and Burzum's Varg Vikernes (on session bass), who would stab guitarist Euronymous to death shortly after the album's release.

(Cacophonous, 1994) Back when vocalist Dani Filth was still known as Daniel Davey, British goth ghouls Cradle of Filth unveiled their full-length debut — complete with elaborate keyboard intros, female backing vocals, and naked vampire chicks. Taking said formula to its baroque breaking point over following releases, CoF rose to be possibly the most well-known band in black metal (if you considered them "black metal" at all), not to mention a onetime personal favorite of Bam Margera.

(Candlelight, 1995) Emperor's full-length debut — and final recording with drummer/convicted murderer Bård "Faust" Eithun, In the Nightside Eclipsemarked the beginning of symphonic black metal, a style later spit-polished and propelled into the mainstream by Cradle of Filth and Dimmu Borgir.

(Nuclear Blast, 1995) Led by guitarist-vocalist Jon Nödtveidt, Gothenburg's Dissection blurred the line between black metal and the melodic death metal their Swedish city made famous. The band's second album was their last (and finest) riff blizzard before Nödtveidt was imprisoned for murder.

(Nuclear Blast, 1996) Long before they dragged their chain-mail-encased tits onto Ozzfest's main stage, Dimmu Borgir announced made their symphonic bid to dominate Norwegian underground with Stormblåst. The native-tongued LP was rerecorded in 2005, only increasing its original frostbitten grimness.

(Osmose, 1996) Although they have suffered chronic touring setbacks due to vocalist-guitarist Morgan Håkansson's felonious history (which allegedly includes assaulting a police officer and grave robbery), black-metal berserkers Marduk know how to throw down in the studio. On Heaven Shall Burn, the Swedes unleash a blast of unapologetic blasphemy captured devilishly by producer (and Hypocrisy main man) Peter Tägtgren.

(Century Media, 1997) Although the band would take a severe turn into proggy histrionics (see 2005's Blood Inside), Ulver's third full-length — a savagely shrill concept album about werewolves (subtitle: Eight Hymns to the Wolf in Man) that was supposedly recorded outdoors in an ancient Norwegian forest — could turn any mere man into a murderous beast

(Nuclear Blast, 1998) Four years in the making, Gorgoroth's fourth effort borrows the title of Kiss' 1976 album, boasts four different vocalists (sensing a pattern here?) — including their particularly notorious former frontman, Gaahl — and features guest drumming from Satyricon's Frost. Unrelenting from front to back, Destroyer closes with a cover of Darkthrone's "Slottet I Det Fjerne."

(Nuclear Blast, 1999) Widely discounted by apparently deaf journalists as some sort of goth/industrial crossover release, Rebel Extravaganza sounds more like a black-metal version of Voivod than anything else. Satyricon's fourth album is not just another underappreciated sonic blitzkrieg, it's actually Phil Anselmo-approved: Pantera tapped the band to open their 2000 European tour.

(tUMULt, 2000) In 2000, Weakling created a world all their own with Dead as Dreams, following in the footsteps of early Emperor, Ulver and Burzum to create moving, beautiful black metal that crossed over into ambient and post-rock. Hands down one of the most important USBM (U.S. black metal) LPs of all time, highly influential to the likes of Wolves in the Throne Room and Deafheaven, the group's lone full-length is also a crucial release for black metal at large.

(Century Media, 2001) On their fifth album, this Japanese trio (now a quartet) shed their corpse paint but not their insatiable appetite for increasingly progressive black-metal. Imaginary Sonicscape revels in the pleasures of magic mushrooms, evil moog keyboards, and dizzying arrangements; plus, the lyrics to "Nietzschean Conspiracy" were written by then-imprisoned Emperor drummer Faust.

(Nuclear Blast, 2002) Since reissued with a bonus live DVD, the seventh album from Norwegian power triad Immortal is practically unstoppable. Produced by Peter Tägtgren, Sons of Northern Darkness combines fierce riffery with a Maiden-esque sense of epic dynamism. (Fun fact: One of the band's promotional photos for this release mistakenly caught guitarist-vocalist Abbath with his fly down.)

(Moribund, 2004) The one-man plague of professional tattoo artist Jef Whitehead (a.k.a. Wrest), Leviathan are the vanguard of the American isolationist black-metal phenomenon. Whitehead's second full-length under the Leviathan moniker, Tentacles is a vicious display of lo-fi pyrokinesis that takes its cues from the Burzum back catalog.

(Moribund, 2004) Another one-man outfit, L.A.'s Xasthur is the brainchild of Scott Conner, a.k.a. Malefic, also known for his live guest "vo-kills" with sub-harmonic drone overlords Sunn O))). The bleak psychedelic hellscapes that bleed black through each of his many LPs, EPs, and splits are at their most unsettling on this, Xasthur's fourth full-length.

(Ajna Offensive, 2005) Little is known about this reclusive French posse; the band refuses almost all interview requests. But Kénôse is one of the most powerful, ideologically intriguing black-metal releases in the history of forever. Ominous and brooding, the hypnotic fury of the album's three epic tracks is matched only by its enigmatic artwork.

(Candlelight, 2005) Along with Darkthrone, the reunited Emperor, Varg Vikernes and the surviving members of Mayhem, Enslaved are the last of Norway's living black-metal O.G.s. Their Grammy-winning eighth album is a rousing Viking feast that makes you wanna burn and pillage all the way to Valhalla — and proof that these originators are still well ahead of most of the pack.

(Total Holocaust, 2005) Much like Varg Vikernes did through Burzum's experimentation with keyboards, Leviathan's Jef Whitehead (re)established black metal as not just a sound, but a feeling and approach, with his project Lurker of Chalice and its sole, self-titled offering. Wildly inventive, employing everything from electronic samples to wind chimes and chorus vocals, the album proves that all the chilling darkness of the subgenre can be conjured without a lo-fi tremolo riff.

(Season of Mist, 2007) Despite their infamous penchant for literal mid-set bloodbaths, the Swedish pyromaniacs Watain have always been a band defined by sharp songcraft, not just provocative showmanship. Case in point: Sworn to the Dark, which saw the Satanic firebrands culling from thrash, hard rock, prog and dark ambient to deliver one of the most stylistically diverse black-metal albums of the 2000s.

(Metal Blade, 2013) While their music arguably leans more death metal, these Polish blasphemers' explicitly Satanic philosophical stance and corpse-paint-and-hellfire onstage presentation clearly place them within the black-metal movement. Behemoth's comeback album after frontman Nergal's near-fatal battle with Leukemia, The Satanist stands as a majestic and vital (re)statement of intent.

(Deathwish, 2013) Deafheaven's sophomore LP Sunbatherrepresented a true paradigm shift in black metal both in its aesthetics and attitudes, from its pink album cover to its sunny riffage. Indeed, the first notes of "Dream House" evoke something not often heard in the genre: a feeling of optimism. Sunbather leaned on the creativity of bands past, but took it next level, embracing elements of shoegaze, post-rock and screamo in the way that hadn't been done before. But its greatest innovation may be the way the album rides on the belief that black metal doesn't have to be antisocial in spirit; indeed, it can come with open arms.

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tobiasdrake · 1 year

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Revisiting Ichijouji Ken

Revisiting Ken, I stand by what I said earlier regarding his reformation being janky. The transition from Digimon Kaiser to Good Guy Ken happens overnight as the product of an epiphany Ken has about the Digital World, and that doesn't really mesh with his previously established characterization.

But I do want to note that the decision to reform Ken is nonetheless a good one. I don't think they executed it very well, but he was a good choice of character for a reformation arc.

I've often gone on record as being sour on redemption stories in general. I have beefs with a lot of the ways redemption is written in media, and one of the most common pitfalls of redemption is often just, "Really? This guy? This is the one you want to rehabilitate? Whatever, show."

But in Ken's case? Yeah. Yeah, this guy. This is the guy. Rehabilitate this one.

The things Ken does are monstrous, but come from a genuine misunderstanding. He thinks this is a video game. He legitimately does not comprehend that he's hurting real people. He's trying to play the Digital World like it's Pokemon - A fact that gets slyly referenced in an early episode, when he makes two Elecmon, Digimon's closest approximation of a Pikachu, duel in a gladiator arena for his amusement. Ken's gotta catch 'em all.

But that shallow explanation for his behavior masks a deeper cruelty and misanthropy. Because, as I noted in my first observation on Ken, his behavior extends to real people and animals too. Dude literally kicks a puppy. That's not a misunderstanding. He's just mean.

This is an interesting topic for the show to address. The way we treat NPCs is, on some level, a reflection of ourselves. Ken smiles nice and says polite things in public, and then he goes home to play his fantasy game where he gets to enslave and dominate other living beings while building giant monuments to himself and his ego.

And, prior to his character development, that Ken? The Digimon Kaiser? That's his truest self. It's who he is when the lights are out and nobody's watching. It's who he most enjoys being.

And I think that's something that would be interesting to see Ken reckon with in the events that follow his epiphany. It's not enough to just clear up the misunderstanding. Ken should have to follow through by recognizing the problematic behavior that accompanied the misunderstanding, and learning how to change the lens through which he views other people, NPC or not.

This, unfortunately, gets skipped over. Ken gets what I like to call a lightswitch redemption. He has a moment that triggers a change in him, and then is instantly changed by it. He makes a complete journey from realizing that his behavior is a problem to being a better person overnight.

Ken freaks out in the desert, throws off his Kaiser garb, and cries over Wormmon's death. And that's it. That is his complete journey. When next we see him, he's already a better person, and his story from there is merely about whether he can be forgiven for his crimes - With Ken as his own harshest critic, and Daisuke as his strongest defender.

And I love what they do with Ken and Daisuke's friendship. It's fantastic. A+. Honestly, Daisuke in general is a way better character than I remember him being, but I digress. Point is. It would have been nice to see Ken undergo a character journey, and not just have a single moment of character development solve everything.

Oh, and yes, I know he had a Dark Spore influencing him, but that honestly just makes the lack of a journey worse. Ken's cruelty is literally the product of an external influence forcing him to be evil. He can't help himself.

But that should make it harder for Ken to change, not easier. It adds to the reasons why Ken's lightswitch moment and complete overnight turnaround of behavior should have been a longer and harder process.

Ken's reformation from the Digimon Kaiser is a great idea. I just wish there was more of it.

#digimon #digimon adventure #digimon adventure 02 #digimon kaiser #ichijouji ken #ken ichijouji

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helico-prion · 10 months

Text

Rating: E

Pairing: Amaia/Specter

Mind the tags and Warnings! Cursed Sharkbird is cursed! This is the erotic cannibalism fic I posted previews of just before Specter's birthday.

I didn't know I would like Amaia this much as a character until very recently. Her misanthropy, self-awareness (and willing self-ignorance), and the resulting self-hatred she has is extremely engaging to write.

It's rare that you get a character who would attribute her ugliest traits to her humanity rather than inhumanity. It's her obsession, lust, jealousy, and sense of artistry and beauty that keep her human and bar her from reaching the blissful purity she admires so much in the seaborn without feeding herself to one in an act of self-annihilation (which may be an ultimate act of obsession, remorse, or both!).

Basically, if you see any contradictions in Amaia's thought or behavior, it is most likely an intentional decision.

(end note)

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Amaia sits beside a bed with a notebook in her lap. Her pen tip sinks into the cover of her notebook as she ponders what to write underneath its title.

How many times has her name gone unnoticed on the covers of her works? Perhaps, it’s more pertinent to ask how many times her readers have taken note of her name. Alas, translation is such a thankless profession. Thankfully, her previous works hold no importance to her beyond being an insurance of security, financial and otherwise.

But this time, she refuses to remain anonymous. She will not allow her claim on her current subject to be disputed.

Amaia lays her hand on her subject, the one supine in bed and then the one written across her book cover.

Laurentina.

Amaia etches her own name below that name. Being of common birth in Iberia, Amaia does not have the privilege or the baggage of a family name. Yet, “Amaia of Iberia” does not convey what she wishes to imprint on her book. The meaning of Iberia pales to Amaia in comparison to what drives her to write this book.

“Lau. Ren. Ti. Na.”

Amaia whispers the name, carefully enunciates it, first with a crisp trill on that second syllable in her native Iberian tongue, then again with the postalveolar attack of standard Victorian. She cycles through Ursine, Gaullic, Leithanien, Kazimierzian accents. Finally, Amaia speaks the name as its owner once did before she succumbed to the Church’s machinations.

Amaia writes her own name once more in succession.

The author of Laurentina is Amaia Amaia. She is at once Amaia the Devout and Amaia the Depraved. She is twice-named like the insidious pentapod monster who prowled for the nymphet of his personal mythology and left nothing in his wake but ruin and a memoir of his transgressions. Like him, she too will chronicle the story of herself and the mermaid of her personal mythology.

Amaia places her pen and notebook down on the bed and walks away to retrieve a ruler and a measuring tape before returning to Laurentina’s side. Laurentina will need new garments to suit the life she will wake up to and Amaia needs her measurements in order to produce those.

Amaia straightens Laurentina’s body on her bed and measures her height, quite possibly the most ordinary aspect of her. She records it in her notebook, and then moves on.

She coils the measuring tape around Laurentina’s neck. It is precariously thin, so much so that there is no telling whether it will hold up if she tilts it—and she does, lifting that finely tapered chin up to read the measurement. Her neck endures, as it has through all the trials Amaia has conducted before. Amaia releases the measuring tape and records her measurement again.

An errant thought occurs to her as she reviews the measurement. How will her hands fit around that neck?

As she does with all hypotheses when she can, Amaia tests it.

Her fingers meet and cross easily behind Laurentina’s neck. The lesions from her spinal injections have only begun to heal, still warm and somewhat swollen against her fingers. Amaia curls her fingers and digs her nails in. Warm, sticky fluid pools underneath her nails and oozes down the crevices of her fingertips. Her thumbs home in on Laurentina’s carotid arteries. Like her neck, her pulse is thin, wispy like her breathing.

Amaia tightens her grip, and those breaths coarsen into sharp wheezing. Laurentina’s jaw slackens and her lips part, revealing rows of serrated teeth as she groans against Amaia’s thumbs. Amaia waits for Laurentina to stir, to break her grip, to sink those teeth into her flesh and tear her apart, but she remains disappointingly passive.

Thus, Amaia lets go and after a quick glance at her nails to examine the discharge glued onto them, jots down her findings.

Amaia opts to measure from the back first and rolls Laurentina onto her side and again until she lies prone in bed. She wants to examine the injection sites and collect samples in case any unexpected developments occur.

Besides, she has plans for what is to come after frontal measurements—plans that are unbecoming to interrupt with something as dry as measurements.

She runs her hand down Laurentina’s spine. The wounds are remarkably well approximated. The slits that once encased thick needles pumping molten Originium into her look like mere bug bites.

Amaia takes a quick set of back and shoulder measurements—and again, and then once more, when the numbers read far higher than she anticipates. Laurentina’s shoulders and back, designed for swimming and built by a lifetime of swimming and combat, are deceptively broad—an impression that her lean waist further augments upon this discovery. Her hips have simply eclipsed them with their own bulk, her posterior tapering from them to form firm but rounded mounds—where Amaia’s hand happens to be resting upon as she contemplates the flow of Laurentina’s physique.

To be so enthralled by beauty, ensnared by it, she is still too woefully human .

Amaia sighs, writes down her measurements, and repositions Laurentina to supine position once more. This time, with newfound awareness, Amaia finds herself searching for dormant power inside Laurentina’s body.

Laurentina’s arms, while withered from underuse, retain a stringy quality that Amaia can feel in her hands as she measures them, especially at sites where the muscles and tendons connect. Amaia finds the same dense swells and grooves hidden underneath soft flesh when she moves on to measure Laurentina’s torso, when she presses her fingers in and drags them along her body as though reading braille. Above all, the fact that she survives being filled with so much Originium in the first place—

All Laurentina needs is the flesh and blood of her kin, and to accept herself as such, to reach her zenith, to push the Seaborn collective to new heights.

Amaia will feed Laurentina her flesh and blood. She will rid Laurentina of the self-destructive indoctrination and self-loathing filth that Aegir drills into its Hunters, dispel the old lie of dulce et decorum est pro patria mori that every single nation hammers into the minds of their soldiers.

Amaia will awaken Laurentina, physically and spiritually.

After writing down her final set of measurements, Amaia eyes the means with which she intends to awaken Laurentina. A pair of phalli lie dormant like serpents in the valley between Laurentina’s thighs, one slouching over the other in a pastiche of copulation.

In truth, Amaia has had her eyes on them ever since the day they met, when she first undressed Laurentina under the pretext of dressing her wounds, but the timing was never right. When Laurentina became comatose under the stress of experimentation, Amaia had to share her time with Laurentina with the other bishops until this very moment. Admittedly, she has many unorthodox proclivities, but being caught in flagrante delicto with their test subject by her colleagues has never been one of them.

The few times they had been alone together while Laurentina was awake, Laurentina made it clear that she had no intention of allowing Amaia to touch her in such ways. Amaia will never forget the way her bones creaked when Laurentina wrung her wrist after Amaia let her hand stray off-course, the same hand that Laurentina had kissed with gratitude once upon a time.

Even more unforgettable was the look on Laurentina’s face long before then, when she found out the true intentions of her so-called saviors—when her “dearest ministering angel” ceased to be so to her.

(Amaia was never an angel, in multiple senses, but neither Laurentina nor herself cared until then.)

She leans over Laurentina and reaches once more. Laurentina sleeps soundly as Amaia handles and examines her nethers.

Hefty yet sleek, both of them are as finely built as any other part of her is. And, the fact that they come as twins—

—How poignant it is that one can harbor two voids to fill and yet, most possess only one fount with which to fill those voids. Barring so-called human ingenuity, one will always be in some state of unfulfillment during coitus. In their natural states, humans are doomed to confront their innate inadequacy as lovers.

Except Laurentina.

A perfect organism. A perfect lover. A perfect woman. Her perfect woman.

Amaia licks her lips. Then, she rolls those lips around Laurentina’s cock.

Laurentina tastes as Amaia imagines—the sea condensed into flesh.

Salt nips Amaia’s tongue as it passes along Laurentina’s shaft, reconstituting into seawater as it dissolves in her saliva. Each breath Amaia takes in is drenched with the scent of algae, brine, and the subtle sweet ferment of decay—of absolute union with the sea. Laurentina’s pores exude the scent of her home and of their kin. It beckons Amaia to go further down, to engulf Laurentina, but she refuses. She prefers to drown in Laurentina’s scent rather than to choke on her flesh.

It ultimately matters not, for Laurentina’s other cock has twitched to life, rising half-mast.

Amaia curls her fingers around it, caressing and stroking it with her hand like she does with her mouth to its twin. They grow more firm, more robust under her touch, unable to do anything else under her relentless attention but drool like hungry hounds.

Until a sharp pain rips through her palm and tongue.

Amaia finds her palm impaled upon a spike. She can only conclude that her tongue has suffered the same fate.

Rebellion, like the sea, permeates Laurentina’s entire being. Not even a coma can stifle her will to defy.

Amaia pulls her hand away—or rather, drags it off from the bloody spur that has erupted from Laurentina’s cock. Extracting her tongue from the spur on the other cock proves to be far more of an ordeal, however.

No matter how far open Amaia tries to pry her jaw, the spur remains buried in the tip of her tongue. As Amaia struggles, a thick mixture of blood and saliva pours down Laurentina’s cock and pools between her thighs like the nuptial baptism of a former maiden. Her head grows lighter with each passing second. It is clear that she too will fall unconscious if she does not take drastic measures.

So she does.

Amaia grabs Laurentina’s cock by the base and sinks her upper teeth deep into its shaft. A raspy wail comes out of Laurentina’s parched throat as Amaia pivots against the shaft and slides her tongue off the spur.

She has never heard such a sound from Laurentina before—not even in the heat of experimentation and torture. Her heart quickens in exhilaration, to think that only she has managed such a feat, that she alone is there to witness it.

Moist heat gathers between Amaia’s thighs as she wipes her lips and staunches her bleeding tongue against the back of her hand.

Amaia stares at Laurentina’s cocks, at the bloody hooks protruding from them. It’s ill-advised, she knows, but—

—Even in silence, Laurentina calls to her like a siren.

Piece by piece, Amaia’s clothes fall onto the floor as she makes short work of undressing herself. After, she climbs over Laurentina’s still unconscious form in bed. She brings her nethers over Laurentina’s erections, her cunt mouthing at and slavering over one of the tips and her anus nudging demurely over the other precum-drenched tip.

A pause, and then Amaia moves further up the bed until her lips hover over Laurentina’s lips. As eager as Laurentina’s body proves to be, it feels unbecoming to use her without certain…formalities. After all, custom has it that the king only moved ahead and ‘ gathered the first fruits of love ’ after his attempts at waking up his Sleeping Beauty had failed.

Amaia leans in to kiss Laurentina, a chaste peck on the lips to start. Laurentina’s chapped lips scratches Amaia’s lips like a tangle of thorns.

“How dry and cracked your lips are, Laurentina. I’ll have to apply balm to them later. Alas, for now, we must make do with what we have.” Amaia sighs, then paints Laurentina’s lips with her tongue, smearing them with the red glossy sheen of blood. Eventually, her tongue slips in the crevice between Laurentina’s lips, and then—

Amaia nearly gags as Laurentina sucks her tongue into her mouth. Blood, flesh, saliva, air—nothing escapes Laurentina.

Driven by the innate air hunger of a land-dweller, Amaia swings her head back only to throw herself right into Laurentina’s hand. Fingers twist into her hair, nails card into her scalp, and Amaia finds herself buried even deeper into Laurentina’s kiss. Her sight dims and shrinks as Laurentina worms her tongue through her slackened lips, as Laurentina sucks her dry and hollows her mouth out like a ripe piece of fruit in her grasp.

Mercifully, Laurentina breaks the kiss and drags Amaia’s head off from her face before her vision closes to completion. Though numb, Amaia finds her tongue dangling from the safety of her own mouth. Absurd, given the myriad of jagged teeth that Amaia remembers digging in and raking against her tongue. Miraculous, given the voracity that Laurentina has just demonstrated.

As the haze of hypoxia clears from her eyes, Amaia sees the newly awakened Laurentina for the first time.

A smile, full of blood and devoid of venom, full of teeth and devoid of bite.

It is not the face of a vengeful victim lusting for the blood of her tormentor. It is simply the face of a starving beast who tastes blood once more at last.

It is the face of a pure being, ruled by its appetites and untainted by thought—a true daughter of the sea.

A prick of envy stings Amaia’s heart, then a spark of desire sets it ablaze.

“Laurentina,” Amaia implores, caressing Laurentina’s cheek, “purify me, mortify me, enlighten me—”

Laurentina meets Amaia’s gaze with a glassy look. Amaia curses her own foolishness in silence, that she allows herself to indulge in such banal grandiloquence in the face of perfection.

“—Make me yours .”

Laurentina’s fingers scurry up along Amaia’s ribs and onto her back. Her nails dig in and carve down along her back, leaving red streaks in their wake—the first mark of her claim, of many more to come. Those fingers weave through the thicket of tail feathers decorating Amaia’s rear and sink into her buttocks, splitting them apart and exposing her fuckholes. Her clit, slickened by her drooling cunt, stiffens and throbs in the cold that Laurentina has subjected her to.

A nudge from Laurentina’s hands compels Amaia to follow along. Amaia shifts her hips back with Laurentina’s guidance until she feels one of Laurentina’s tips prodding against her aching clit. She tries to angle her pussy towards that cock, but Laurentina pushes Amaia’s hips further back until her other cock touches her clit instead. The dick that grazed her cunt before now rests against her groin, coating it in a musky mess. A wet slap, and then the sloppy smacks and squelches of pussy and cock grinding against one another flood the room.

The scents of their mutual arousal thicken in the air and congeal in Amaia’s throat as Laurentina slides her pussy against her dick, slathering a generous amount of cum along her shaft. Thrust after thrust, Amaia finds herself closer and closer to her peak. Trying to hold herself together is an ordeal from top to bottom. Each stumble of her clit against Laurentina’s cock spur, each glance of her fuckholes against the tip of Laurentina’s cock, each time Laurentina’s other cock slides over her navel, each time she bottoms out in the valley between those cocks—each of those things chip away at Amaia nerve by nerve.

Before long, her exhausted nerves surrender all control, drenching Laurentina’s cock in a deluge of cum as Amaia succumbs to the release that her body has demanded.

Amaia slumps over Laurentina, having been drained of her strength, but Laurentina bristles with vitality. Laurentina sits up together with Amaia leaning against her and then lifts her up over her lap. So loose is Amaia’s body and so slick are Laurentina’s dicks that Amaia scarcely feels the spurs burrowing into her innards when, at last, Laurentina sheathes her cocks inside her.

Amaia perches her hands upon Laurentina’s shoulders, bracing herself to be bounced on Laurentina’s lap immediately after being impaled. However, Laurentina turns out to have more refined sensibilities that befit her elegant appearance.

Laurentina leans in, her breath hot against Amaia’s neck as she splays her lips against it. A suck, then a pop, again and again, Laurentina leaves a trail of bruises in her wake as she lavishes Amaia with kisses. As Laurentina continues, her kisses bear more and more bite, first little dimples along the neck, then little punctures that she caresses with her tongue, delighting herself in the drops of blood that seep from them.

Finally, she buries her teeth into Amaia’s shoulder, rows and rows of teeth.

Amaia hisses as her entire body tenses in pain—and then moans as her holes convulse around Laurentina’s cocks and impale themselves upon Laurentina’s spurs. Her nails dig into Laurentina’s shoulders, a pale imitation of Laurentina’s bite.

When Laurentina pulls away, pearly white shark teeth jut out of Amaia’s bloody and mangled flesh like tombstones standing over freshly turned soil.

Laurentina’s eyes follow the flow of blood from those wounds, transfixed, until blood tumbles around and over Amaia’s nipple, dyeing it an even deeper shade of red.

Though tacit ever since her awakening, Amaia hears Laurentina’s desire loud and clear.

“Would you like to have a taste?”

Amaia proposes as if she is offering a bite of her meal rather than a bite of her own body. She sees no point in fretting over an inevitability.

An inevitability it may well have been. The moment Amaia finishes speaking, the nipple that Amaia offered disappears in a mist of blood between Laurentina’s teeth. Any further words Amaia may have harbored give way to incoherent groaning and panting as the stinging of teeth and the squirming of tongue deep inside her breast attack her senses, before they too become engulfed in the fire of pain.

The squelching and slurping sounds of devouring persist beyond the burning of pain, as Laurentina works her way through innervated flesh and as constant pain deadens what little flesh Laurentina has left for Amaia to keep. A slurry of blood, flesh, and glandular tissue slides down her stomach and pools in the crevices where their nethers join, cooling against her body and warming between their bodies.

Within this storm of carnality, an odd sense of warmth washes over Amaia, some sort of inner peace that differs from the cold apathy that she is accustomed to. Amaia tilts her lips to the crown of Laurentina’s head and presses a kiss upon it—a fleeting one, as a sudden and nauseating jolt of pain rocks her.

Bone grinds against bone. Her stomach squeezes and heaves as profound, bitter pain knocks the air out of her.

Laurentina’s teeth strike Amaia’s rib as they pierce the flimsy pieces of muscle that cover it. A few more bites and she will bare Amaia’s heart.

“No!”

The urgency in Amaia’s voice stuns both Laurentina and herself. Her heart trembles in her chest and under her throat as Laurentina stares at her with a blank, vaguely confounded expression.

“Hah, no…not yet.”

Amaia does not fear death. She does not fear pain or annihilation. She does not even fear having her heart devoured and exposing to Laurentina the full expanse of her soul—that is a simple fact of life among the Seaborn.

She fears becoming nothing but sustenance to Laurentina, a meal to be forgotten once Laurentina becomes hungry once more. Once again, human sentiment rears its ugly head inside Amaia.

“Here,” Amaia entreats—bargains as she cups her intact breast in her hand and coaxes Laurentina with the other, “have this instead.”

Laurentina accepts without complaint (Amaia starts to wonder if she is capable of complaining at all) and takes Amaia’s remaining nipple into her mouth. Having eaten already, Laurentina samples Amaia with a more languid approach.

Amaia closes her eyes. Soon she will bid farewell to her breast. Never again will she feel Laurentina’s mouth upon it. Never again will her nipple prickle with pleasure as it drags against teeth and tongue. Never again will her nethers ache and water from such a sensation like it does this very moment.

Perhaps, as she savors and toys with Amaia’s breast so languorously, the finality of the act also weighs upon Laurentina. Perhaps, the urge to immortalize this moment has seized Laurentina as well.

When Laurentina bites down and feasts upon her breast once more, Amaia opens her eyes and fights to control her breathing. She wills herself to remain present, to process the sight of her flesh disappearing, to absorb the sounds of her body transfiguring, and to commit to memory the pain and pleasure of being eaten—should she ever need to call upon it to strengthen her resolve.

Greedy as she is, Laurentina leaves Amaia no room to watch as she devours her. Amaia feels and hears, between strident gasps, Laurentina’s tongue lash and scrape her ruined breast as one may a piece of candy. The sounds grow louder, more vulgar, until a sultry moan escapes Laurentina’s lips and flutters against Amaia’s chest.

When Laurentina raises her head, her eyes shine upon Amaia with the pellucid clarity of the full moon veiled in wisps of clouds, cleansed of the scars and blemishes that marred its celestial body, leaving behind only pure radiance for Amaia to bask in. Her teeth gleam too as her lips stretch and part, their brightness augmented by a mask of blood and gore.

Amaia stretches her hands out to cup Laurentina’s face. Only one makes it to Laurentina’s cheek. Her other arm, shredded at the shoulder by Laurentina’s teeth, sags pathetically as a jolt of pain shoots it down.

Laurentina catches Amaia’s hand in hers and lifts it to her lips. As Laurentina mouths at her fingertips, Amaia wonders which one she will take first.

“Poor, pretty bird…” Laurentina props Amaia’s arms over her shoulders and leans in, plucking loose teeth out of Amaia’s shoulder as she nuzzles against the downy plumage mixed within Amaia’s hair. “How will you fly with a clipped wing?”

“There’s no need—” Amaia hisses as Laurentina’s fingers stumble over a deeply embedded tooth. “I couldn’t anyway—”

“You will. Birds are born with wings for a purpose. Birds are meant to fly, to merge with seabreeze, to scatter their feathers across the waves. Lovely ones such as yourself have a duty to fly, to soar over the vast ocean, to share your beauty with all its scions, to let them imbibe you as I have.” Laurentina’s words blow past Amaia like a gust. “If you cannot, then I will make you fly.”

Before Amaia can question her, Laurentina has already seized her hips. Her grip tightens, her nails rake into her like talons, and then—

She soars, then plummets, over and over as Laurentina pumps her on her cocks.

Amaia digs her feet into the bed and pushes herself up. She knows not what she intends to do, whether she intends to help or to fight Laurentina as she uses her like a toy. What she does know is complete, utter helplessness as her legs crumple under her own weight.

A pang of soreness deep within her stomach robs Amaia of any strength she may have had the moment her thighs leave Laurentina’s lap of her own accord. Her holes clench reflexively, and a worse wave of pain penetrates through her body.

A renewed sense of awareness seizes Amaia. The same penile spurs that pierced through her hand and tongue are now buried deep inside her body. Each bounce of her body leaves new wounds inside her holes, in their walls, walls that will eventually fall apart should this go on. It should disturb her, it should terrify her, yet—

—The thought of being transformed so starkly by their union excites her. The thought of her cunt and asshole disintegrating and integrating into a singular mangled mess of a fuckhole exhilarates her.

The thought of being ruined by the woman she ruined drives her to ecstasy .

Amaia quakes. An overwhelming sensation that transcends vocabulary rips through her as Laurentina’s warmth fills her in every conceivable way.

A moan brims in her throat, then overflows—the name of God spills from her lips.

Not the vast creation’s master, not Ishar-mla, but the God that Amaia has renounced—the God of the Inquisition.

The force of her orgasm sends Amaia reeling back, but Laurentina catches her by the back before she falls. Amaia looks up and meets Laurentina’s gaze. The gaping black maws of Laurentina’s pupils have swallowed up much of the brilliant scarlet that has once adorned her eyes. Amaia feels heat pouring into her from Laurentina’s hands and from the cocks deep inside her. Her womb weighs upon her hips and her abdomen aches as it swells with flesh and semen.

Amaia licks her hand and scrubs off the blood sticking onto Laurentina’s face, allowing her exquisite features and glowing cheeks to show once more. She presses her other hand to her stomach.

Will their offspring inherit Laurentina’s overwhelming beauty? Or will they take after herself and possess the sort of beauty that soothes rather than attacks the senses? Or perhaps, as children of the sea, will they evolve and transcend beauty?

As Amaia ponders idly, Laurentina attacks her senses once more.

“How splendidly you flew, my sweet songbird. Tell me, how do the stars feel against your wings when you fly?” Laurentina’s voice sparkles with a manic giddiness as she rambles on. “Do they burn and singe your feathers with their light? Or perhaps, do they cool you with their touches as raindrops do?”

Amaia taps her nails on Laurentina’s jaw, and then drags them along it to her chin.

“Mm, in that case, why don’t you tell me about the glowing spires and domes of Aegir?” Amaia cracks a faint smile as she scratches Laurentina’s chin. “Do they glitter with the joy of your people or do your people simply burn their lives away to make them shine?”

“My…people?”

“Your people, the ones who made you, in many senses. The people who taught you to hunt your kin like vermin. The people who kept you caged like a rabid beast when you returned from hunting. The people who won’t hesitate to put you down once you become too… monstrous for their tastes, too much for their cage to hold.”

Amaia’s voice shakes more than she intends or expects. She tastes the bitterness of empathetic indignation, a taste that once plagued her before she joined the Church of the Deep, a taste she might once have called righteous anger when she was less aware of the hypocrisy of humanity and its inclination to place value where there is none.

“Why would they be my people?”

“Why indeed, Laurentina.”

Laurentina falls silent. Amaia takes refuge in this silence, a creation of Laurentina’s consideration for her words, or so she hopes.

“...Why do you call me Laurentina?”

“Is that not who you are?”

Amaia asks and answers at once. What Amaia has thought to be Laurentina’s acceptance of her own nature, of Amaia, of their union, what she has thought to be Laurentina’s awakening—have they all been a mirage?

“The spirits have not named me.” The mirage says. “But if you wish for me to do so, I will gladly be your Laurentina.”

Laurentina will never surrender herself to anyone. Amaia cannot indulge herself in this kind of delusion.

“No need. There is no point in being someone you are not.” Amaia’s eyes swell and burn. She closes them, smothering the fire in her eyes before they become molten. “Tell me, do the spirits count you among their ranks?”

“They are my dearest comrades, and I am theirs. They whisper to me the truths of this world and beyond. They tell me that you are Amaia, a poet, a novelist, a playwright, a biographer, a historian, and a bishop. Above all, they tell me that you have given your body and soul to me, that you have dedicated your womb to our scions.”

Amaia may have blushed if she hadn’t known Laurentina to be the kind of woman who finds poetry in driftwood and weathered rocks. No, she may have blushed if it had been Laurentina finding poetry in her rather than this pale shadow in the throes of mania…

…Yes, that is what she is. A revenant of Laurentina born from the death of her ego, a congregation of ghosts puppeteering the corpse of Laurentina. The primus inter pares among these spirits being—

“Specter,” Amaia says with the decorum befitting of her titles, “as a bishop of the Church of the Deep, I welcome you as a sister of the Church.”

“Specter…? I see.” Specter mumbles to herself for some time. Then, she tightens her hold on Amaia into a full-blown embrace. “Yes…the spirits also agree. I, Specter, shall dedicate myself to our faith and to your excellency.”

“No, no need to refer to me in such a way, Specter.” Amaia corrects Specter with breathless urgency. A deeply unpleasant sensation aches in her chest when she thinks of them in terms of their stations in the Church. “Let me simply be Amaia to you.”

“I understand. The spirits and I shall call you Amaia.”

“The spirits, hm? Might Laurentina happen to be among those spirits?”

“Perhaps.”

“Then, if you are listening, Laurentina,” Amaia rests her cheek against Specter’s shoulder and sighs into her neck. The gory remains of her breasts slough off against Specter’s chest as she wallows in Specter’s embrace. “Know that you make me feel…”

“What…?”

Reflexively, Specter speaks on Laurentina’s behalf. Blood and drool drips onto Amaia’s nape from Specter’s mouth as it hangs agape.

“...How?”

Blood-tinged saliva seeps down along Amaia’s back, cold and viscous. Time creeps at a glacial pace as Amaia ponders upon Specter’s inquiry, her heart ticking away like a clock through their touching bosoms.

Agony, ecstasy, trepidation, fascination, adoration, and perhaps—

—The fleeting, transient, ephemeral specter of regret.

Almost everything and almost nothing.

“...At all.”

The second word comes out with gravity that belies the airy resignation of Amaia’s words. Then, she sinks under the gravity of her wounds into Specter’s arms.

#arknights #specter (arknights)#amaia (arknights)#nsft #cannibalism #gore #noncon somnophilia #my writing

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