Fantasy 𝐑𝐎𝐆𝐔𝐄 𝐖𝐀𝐕𝐄𝐒 — THE STORY

[qunqun]

THE CHIMERA.

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Dante

Fiocchi

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

I'm killing myself.

OUTFIT

Fancy drowned rat

LOCATION

Algol

MENTIONS

Tiberius, Ren, Bec

INTERACTS

Nifty Gao

Only Acting — Kero Kero Bonito

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Icarian Cloud.

To reach for silver lined impossibilities amongst thunderous perils

Chapter Three.

He had not been shot, but his eyes were wide and terrified with the broken open expression of someone who did not look this frightened and sad all of the time.

Dante looked at Ren and words just came tumbling out

“My mom wanted to meet you and we were having tea and then my dad told me to drink the tea and it was really salty and then I showed up on the beach and my entire life is a lie and I threw vomit at some grey manatee jellyfish things floating in the ocean and then-”

He realized what was happening

“Oh stars I’m losing like… negative aura with this.” Was the first thing out of his mouth which… priorities as always. The terrified expression wasn’t quite leaving his face, but more it seemed some part of him was getting better acclimated with all the returned or altered memories to his brain. Physical touch grounding him in a specific way.

“Are you hurt”

“What’s the best thing I can say to get you to both like me and not worry about anymore– I feel like shit but that’s mostly probably the screaming sobbing thing rather than the shot thing” Dante immediately responded with. The immediately raw look of wanting to die a little in mortification

And then the doctor passed out.

…

They were fucked.

“That doctor just passed out.” The whisper is harsh and obvious, his posture small and defeated, his voice a little wobbly despite himself and his horrified face the most painfully expressive feature twisted into expressions Ren most definitely wouldn’t have seen otherwise.

“Why do you have… that guy with you.”

…

“I'm not ready to be a father-”

TIBERIUS STOOD UP?????!!?!

The worries of an older brother constantly trying to keep his younger sibling out of fights, the immediate concern became plastered over his face as he let out a hurried “Maybe you should lay down again this doesn’t-”

“Dante, bud, I’m going to need you to breathe”
“I’m breathing. I’m fucking breathing. You need to-”

Lay down? Chill? NOT MAKE THE BULLET WOUND WORSE?!??!

“Uhm. Ren. Ren help-”

♡coded by uxie♡

 

[picklemouse]

THE BRIDE.

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Flora

CASSANDRA



FLORES

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

Oaty, Confused, and Devastated

OUTFIT

White shirt with full length sleeves; Brown bodice and skirt; Simple black shoes but make it covered in seawater and sand

LOCATION

The Shore of Algol, but also The Canals, but also The Leviathan, but also The Haven Inn, but also The Cascades and Quinlan's complex

MENTIONS

Adrius, Yasmine, Lucrezia, Anon, Ilya, Tibby, Dante, Ren, Bec

INTERACTS

CrimsonInk [/USER]

Deep End (slowed + reverb) - Ruelle

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I'M SLIPPING

Into the deep end
I'm in over my head
and I can't catch my breath
I'm lost in the deep end.

CHAPTER THREE PART THREE.

TW: Blood, Grief, Death, Brief mention of touching without consent

It was like everything was flashing, and Cassandra was just being held, forced to endure the kaleidoscope as her life blended together.

The Haven Inn.
Their cabin on the ship.
The storm.
Judge Quinlan grasping Adrius’ shoulder and smiling his loathsome smile.
Blood lust in a young woman’s watery eyes.

No. It all could not be real. There had to be a logical answer to it all. Yet, Cassandra had no desire for logic at this moment. Logic was gone, hardly even missed as she was released from Yasmine’s hold around her arms and legs. Carefully, she rolled away to get a better look at her friend.

“You’re not really here.”

She couldn’t be. Yasmine left Tortoise Rill when they were teenagers, on a day that looked like this. The chaos around them on the shores of Algool faded away, gone with her desire for logic. The skies were not dark, but a bright azure blue dotted with wispy clouds. The imposing grey figures along the waterline were great trees. The panicked and injured passengers around them were friendly faces from her memories.

As sure as the sky was blue, and the sun shone high and hot in the sky, Yasmine was laying on the beach beside her. She must have surprised her with a return visit. It was very much like her to sneak up, and it wasn’t the first time Cassandra had been playfully tackled to the ground.

“why look at ya….the same as ever.”
Her voice was sweet, as it always was when Yasmine spoke to her, and a strand of hair was wiped from her face. The feeling of fingertips on her face was undeniable proof and logic tip toed back into Cassandra’s mind.

“You are here.” Cassandra’s eyes grew wide as she regarded her best friend, hands reaching out to confirm the existence of her face. “Yasmine,” tears welled in her eyes. “I have missed you greatly. I can hardly describe how much.”

Quinlan was not here.
Adrius was not here.
Yasmine was here.

They were home in Tortoise Rill.
Not on a ship.
Not at an inn.
The tavern wasn’t real.
But Yasmine was real.

“You know what babes….isn’t it turtle season? How about we help the baby turtles?”

It was turtle season. An important time of the year, especially as the rivers and the banks grew rougher and rougher. It was always important for nature to take its course, but sometimes they needed to help. Predatory birds, unsavory terrain, and rogue footfalls were the biggest threats to turtle eggs and the babies who managed to hatch as they scuttled their way to the water.

Was the ship real?
Was Adrius real?

Yasmine helped her stand and they started towards a group up ahead, who were presumably already observing and assisting the baby turtles. Were she not still firmly under the effects of the mysterious tea, Cassandra might not be skipping gleefully towards the anxious group. She might have recognized the raven haired woman who looked exhausted and bruised around the neck as she spoke to a forlorn, sandy haired man. Perhaps, she might have hastened her approach upon the realization that Doctor Ilya was lying unconscious beside a bleeding man, or the distressed state of another man speaking to a dark haired figure who held an air of familiarity, or the young boy whose eyes kept being drawn to the water.

Was Judge Quinlan and the city of night and terror a nightmare she dreamed?
Had she been asleep this whole time?
Did she never leave Tortoise Rill?

As they walked, more memories flashed through Cassandra’s mind. Sailing on her fathers ship, heeding his warnings as they approached the docks of The Cascades.
How the sky was inky black, spattered with white stars. People milling about the streets near the docks, dressed in fine fabrics and fashions she had never seen before.

How clean the streets were.
How unclean the prison cells below Quinlan’s complex were.

Where was Adrius?

Cassandra stopped in her tracks, her palms finding her forehead, pressing against her flushing skin. Over her eyes, her cheeks, over her mouth. She was dizzy.

“Yasmine.” Ice filled her chest as the blue sky and bird song melted into grey night and the air filled with anguished cries. “Where are we?”

The executioner.
Blood streaming from the cut above his eye as she screamed from the stands.
Quinlan in her room at the inn.
The feeling of strange men - friends of Quinlan - touching her thighs and neck.
Punishment for embarrassing him.
Adrius’s arms around her on the ship.
Adrius slamming her against the wall in The Haven Inn.

High diving in the punchbowl.
Throwing herself through a window.

A wave of nausea weakened her knees and they met the cold sand.
“Where is Adrius?” Cassandra asked quietly, unsure as she fit her memories together like a puzzle.

Corset ties constricting her ribcage.
Gem laden silver tight around her neck.
The reflection of her eyes pleading through the looking glass.
‘Do not let me die here.’

Echoes of her uncomfortable, heeled shoes as she ran through to the gate out of Quinlan’s complex harmonizing with heavy footfalls of a man seeking the same freedom, and they collided. For a moment they did not speak, worried they were moments from being caught. He was gaunt and dirty with crusts of dark blood dried upon his forehead and a nasty cut which had yet to be attended to. Cassandra lifted the curved knife she held in her hand towards the man’s throat.

“We will help each other escape, or I will have to choose my own survival in favour of yours.”

His expression was serious, unwavering, but understanding as she allowed him a moment to consider his choice. They reached a silent agreement of trust as he nodded his head once and brought a finger to his lips to signal they were to move in silence.

The Good Ship Sylvia.
The Leviathan.
Adrius telling stories.
Adrius praying to the flames of the candles in their room.
‘My name is Flora Fitchner.
I am married to Ivan Fitchner.
We are from Zenith, and we are very happy together.'

Her hands clutched the cold sand and tears flowed down her face, dripping onto her shaking fists. Cassandra spoke again, louder, pushing through sobs. “Where is Adrius?” She forgot to uphold his disguise, his alias gone from her lips.

'My husband, Ivan, experienced a mountain lion attack before our wedding, and he is still recovering from this.
We did not want to wait any longer to be married, so we eloped.
We are enjoying the voyage on The Leviathan for our honeymoon.’

The infection was bad but it got better. He was able to leave the bed for short periods of time. They shared a laugh over breakfast one morning, eliciting twitters of congratulations from a lady at the table beside them. He remarked it had been a while since he laughed.

Was all that real?

The storm. The rain.
The thunderous crashes of waves against the wood of the ship.
The sharp rip as the haul tore open.

Elbows shoving them as they ascended to the deck of the ship.
They were evacuating onto small boats.
Adrius’ hand grasped hers as they approached the slick ladder to their life boat.
Carefully, she coached him as he climbed down.

“It is alright my darling. The Inn will be safe and warm, and the shore is not far.”

It could have happened to any of the small boats, and perhaps it did and Cassandra didn’t notice. She was preoccupied with flailing her arms out into the frigid water, nearly falling overboard herself as she tearfully cried out as Adrius gulped at the water’s surface before slipping under.
Cassandra’s sobs consumed her as she crumpled in the sand.

The Haven Inn.
Reuniting with Yasmine in the tavern.
Adrius brushing her hair from her face before he kissed her.

They never kissed.
They never will.

Adrius couldn’t swim.

It was always important for nature to take its course
But sometimes nature was cruel.
Not every baby turtle makes it to the river.

♡coded by uxie♡

 

[escapist]

THE OLD-TIMER

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Maltke

Cycek

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

Nostalgic, annoyed, amused, is never more determined than this

OUTFIT

His usual dirty coat of course

LOCATION

The shore of Algol

MENTIONS

Captain Lexi, Rosaline

INTERACTS

Lexis and the crew Gao

no music

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Enters Microphone Maltke

Chapter Three, Part iii

"That was a joke."

The clarification arrived just in time, preventing Maltke's arm to continue its limp trajectory and succeed in bringing together his firm fist and the Captain's equally stone-like face. "Ah a joke..." Verbalizing the strange statement may have helped a bit to the old pirate to realize that the menacing threat was an attempt to ease the weight of the situation. His shoulders relaxed, his hand returned to the monotone task of holding the torn fabric against the wound.

"...to share a drink with me." His messy head rose higher in surprise, eyebrows followed to motion as well when the old pirate, the wanted man who had gotten on the ship without a ticket was invited by Lexis Graves himself. For a drink!* "Maybe bein' shot was worth the pain if it means I will drink with Capt'n..." He thought and without him noticing it his face contorted into a grimace that was sharing distant similarities with a child's content smile when their father buys one of those overpriced, yet delicious goodies for them on the festival of the village. "He sure knows how to get on my good side, clever bastard..."

Last time he shared a drink with his Captain had been on the night before the bloody encounter between the Carmine Corsairs and the Bastards' Company. That night the important figures of the crew had all gathered in the Captain's cabin, they had opened - and in a few minutes emptied - the Captain's finest bottle of rum and had drunk either for the glorious victory or for the death side by side their comrades. Since the later had turned out to be correct prediction, one of his last memories about his mentor and friend had been fermented in Maltke's hippocampus into a bitter-sweet segment of his life, his last rum-flavoured supper. Or it had been until this very moment when the stinging, burning hole in his shoulders and Lexis' offer reminded Maltke Cycek yet again that he was still alive.

"Sure, let's drink sometime!" He nodded, answering finally, maybe a bit more eagerly than he had wanted to. He turned his head away from his assailant and caretaker, squinting annoyedly because his emotions had boiled over again.

"What will I talk with this guy about though?" Maltke was wondering silently, allowing his gaze to run along the line of the chipped black rocks of the shore. "He gotta like ships..."

His eye settled on the unsettling, slimy figures, swaying in the wave-tattered surface of the dark water. When the word 'Algol' slipped through Lexis' modest mouth, a chill ran through Maltke's spine. Still looking in their endless, ugly-yellow eyes, the non-existing, theoretical book of monstrosities in the old man's mind opened, dusty, yellowed pages were flipping in hurry to place the word and the sight to their well-deserve place in Maltke's private mythology. "Don't say that word too much, Capt'n!" He warned him thoughtfully. "Evil word, bad omen." He looked at Lexis face, never being more serious. Algol was one of those few places of the endless see where the adventurous soul had never wanted to travel. Looking back, he couldn't believe they had survived the illusion of the tempting sea-fiends of Algol.

The old pirate could hear as the Captain told him something about counting to three but whatever it was, a sudden and sharp shock of pain pulled him back from pondering on what could have happened with the crew on this accursed land.

"Aaaargh, motherfucker...!"

"I lied. I have used the element of surprise." He certainly have.

Even if he wasn't sure, Maltke rolled with what his instincts told to him - that Lexis Graves made another pathetic attempt to crack a joke. A painful one. However pirate this time was ready with his well-practiced, salty answer. "AHAHAHHAaa don't ye ever dare to do this again, gotcha?" The obnoxiously loud, fake laughter transitioned into a blank stare on an even blanker face. "With all respect, Capt'n!" He added with a smirk forming in the corner of his mouth.

With the dressing tightened, Maltke accepted the helping hand of the Captain and finally stood up and groaned in chorus with his weathered bones that were protesting against his will. "This be pretty fuckin' bad!" Now standing tall, Maltke could only agree with Lexis. Some were way too close to the water that was shining with oil-quality, some where sitting with a posure distorted by pain similar to how Maltke had been sitting on the sand - the wounded, some were trying to get closer to the dangerous range of sea-soaked sand, their movements were erratic, yet determined, mirroring their inner delusions. A woman was half-naked, strangely enough. "Blessing in disguise."

"I will need your assistance to move everyone away from the shoreline."

"HE?" Maltke raised his eyebrows confusedly, trying to look at Lexis despite his eyepatch made it a bit difficult. "But ain't ye the Captain? What could I...?" In the middle of the question the old man realized something: he had never heard that Lexis Graves raised his voice, not even once. Ignoring the topic, the Captain always talked on the same, polite, banal tone. "Maybe his throat be weak." If their position had been optional, the old man would surely hit Lexis on his back reassuringly. "Ye can count on me!" He smirked, looking forward what would come soon.

Standing confidently on the uneven sand, his nosetrils widened, giving space of the extreme amount of air to Maltke's lungs, gradually filling it to its limits. He straightened his posture as much as his conditions allowed. He knew after this his throat would be sore but everything for the crew. Maltke Cycek opened his mouth and the cannon went off.

"ACTION STATIONS!!! EVERYONE OF YE FUCKERS GET A GRIP AND LISTEN WELL! WE FELL FOR THE CHARMS OF THOSE WRETCHED SEA MONSTERS BUT NO TIME FOR PANIC! ALL WHO FEELS THEMSELVES CAPABLE, PULL THE IDIOTS AWAY FROM THE WATER! KNOCK'EM OUT IF NEEDED! THEN COME THE FAINTED AND WOUNDED, MOVE THEM AWAY AS WELL! GO, RAISE YER LAZY ASSES AND SAVE YER CREWMATES AS QUICK AS FUCKIN' POSSIBLE..."

The vocal rumbling stopped because of the lack of oxygen. The old man took another breath and his voice boomed above Algol again, now a bit less confident, his other arm was pointing at Lexis Graves. "THE CAPTAIN'S ORder, aight?"




*(suck it up Rosaline, Maltke was asked out by Lexy first!)

♡coded by uxie♡

 

[Gao]

THE KINGSLAYER.

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船井 蓮

FUNAI REN

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

IM-GOING-TO-KILL-YOU CORE.

OUTFIT

SNEEKY SLEEKY

LOCATION

ALGOL SHORE

MENTIONS

BEC, DANTE, TIBERIUS, ILYA, CALANTHE, DEVANA, CADENCE, MALTKE.

INTERACTS

qunqun Nifty

RUN BOY RUN — WOODKID.

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HERETIC BOY,

you should know: hate misshapes even the most woodland into something that would rather die in captivity than domesticate.

CHAPTER THREE PART III.

Whatever carefully curated control Dante often wears has been shrugged aside for a frenzy. It all begins with a six letter horror story:

“My mom wanted to meet you.”

Oh?

Oh.

OH?!

It’s the sort of comment that springs into Ren’s mind like a living thing, vivid and invasive and threatening and comforting all at once. His mind knows better than to indulge and entertain such a remark, but there is a genuine note of something warm to hear it all the same. If not for the crushing urgency of their circumstance, he would have liked to shuffle closer and interrogate.

“–And we were having tea and then my dad told me to drink the tea and it was really salty and then I showed up on the beach and my entire life is a lie and I threw vomit at some grey manatee jellyfish things floating in the ocean and then-”

It ribbons out of Dante and only when he mentions the beach does Ren realize this is the product of the inn. Floats in the interval of silence that engulfs him in both caution and marvel for whatever the fuck could possibly be going on in Dante’s mind right now. Stares blank-eyed as the man continues to unearth every notion of honesty or delusion or what have you seeping from mind to mouth.

“Oh stars I’m losing like… negative aura with this.”

Ren smiles and thumbs some sand from Dante’s jaw.

“Is that what you’re worried about?” He surprises himself at the lack of command to that question, gentle impassivity to what this man currently concerned himself with on a shore of gray sand and gray monsters. Dante’s most precious aura hangs in the balance and god forbid he sink it with talk of vomit. “At least you’ll have your smile to fall back on.”

Ironic when there is no levity to the man’s face, wide-eyed features of a catacomb. Harrowed as the lawyer is, their words feel saccharine sweet when admitting to wanting Ren to like him. Eyes narrow and something smug upturns the corners of his mouth. Mild amusement dissolves the original distress that had him scouring the man for injury like a dog on mutton. He has obtained an advantageous resource that he can harass Dante later with in a wii tennis conversation, but it would be unfair to poke about it now. Dante has suffered enough for the night.

His eyes drag to approaching figures, a woman who splits through the velvet dark and sends a nervous flicker through fleet-footed vein. Her face is lacerated with scar and Ren knows better than to focus on features like that. He then notices the blood of the rich woman in tow, copper to the sand from a mutilated leg. More injuries, no doctor, but at least the first woman seems to have a grasp on what needed to be done.

His hand eclipses Dante’s arm, pulling the lawyer to his feet and letting his hand hover in wary expectation for the man to collapse. If his footing was anything like his voice, shaky, then he does not hold much faith for Dante’s cooperation here. Ilya needs help and they are one of few who are not bleeding.

“Why do you have… that guy with you.” In all the bedlam of Algol and arrival of this newest pair, Ren had temporarily forgot about That Guy. “I'm not ready to be a father-”

Ren did not know what to say. Stands in silence (nature is healing) while the yap-centric nature of his personality scrambles for a footing. Loom of his organised thoughts sliced open and scattered to the wind, he struggles to reform the connective tissues to understand what Dante means by fatherhood. He cannot mean Ren and him because that would be. That would be.

That.

Hee hee hoo.

h.

Focus.

What did that imply?

“That’s not–” What did Ren want it to imply? “No I–” he swallows a wishbone in his throat and feels it snag on every wall. “We–”

WE?!

WOAH BUDDY.

GET DOWN BOY.

“That’s Bec.” The stray Ilya gave me to look after so I shoved him around and said mean things. That won’t sound good. That won’t impress Dante. “He likes the sea.” Okay. Now he’s describing Bec as if he were bringing a pet to Dante and trying to convince him to keep it. The thought gathers momentum even as he tries to tamp it, and maybe it is good fortune that Tiberius is back on his feet to distract Dante with panic and Ren with ire.

There is something crouched in him, he feels it stir the moment he notices the Doctor on Tibby’s shoulder and sees the ruby red arm reaching. He does not want blood on the lawyer and he does not want the doctor manhandled so carelessly, and given the rising apprehension and plea of help from Dante, he is inclined to do something about it.

Ren's lip curls back and it looks as if he’s ready to lunge for Tiberius. He almost shoves them when that wrath stirs, but must give allowance for the Doctor’s wellbeing; keeps him from reacting on every malignant impulse coveting for combat. Uncompromising as Ren often was, he takes a confrontational step to bar Tiberius and Dante with a solid stance. His jaw feels willing to rip meat straight from the bone and that yawning abyss of ire is a blackened thunderstorm tearing itself across features with violent conviction.

For an infinitesimal moment in time— just a small grain in this expanse of anaemic sand, Ren thinks this must be the impulse to kill. Would he be willing to take life for Ilya and Dante? Be rendered down to someone like Magnus? His blood is curdling and albeit how ridiculous his stature looks in comparison to the prizefighter, it is not a physical instrument of violence he uses to threaten them.

“You have done enough.” A reiteration of a warning: it is your fault, from a mouth filled with red teeth. Ren does not have anyone to blame and therefore it falls to the one who steps forward first; the kind martyr who has chosen to offer their neck for severance and placed five-fingered audacity onto Dante. He will apologise to Tiberius when his temper has ebbed, but currently two people he cares about are not okay— because of the gladiator and his little blonde wife, Ren had decided, and he is not eager for a third.

“Tend to Ilya,” he bites like a gavel, “make yourself useful.” Fix it, the consuming anger is souring and the salvia in his mouth tastes metallic, from reactionary spark to nocuous tempest and he looks now, hostile and impatient in the way many know him to be. Dormant till that targeted point of pressure fissures in the crust of the earth, it splits like a red flare and arcs with an oath of ash and extinction.

“Should the doctor die due to your incompetence,” a hiss as icy as the wind, “I’ll make sure this day is your last.”

Ren has never killed anyone, still brandishes the threat with the serrated weapon of his tongue and holds the scathing stare with no intention to back away first. All that unease, the cold and the shadows, the kind of gaze indecisive between clamping maw or passing by with indifference. If it were anyone shorter on the receiving end of Ren’s anger, he’d have driven them back with the push of his own forehead.

The yelling is like gunfire, Captain's orders through a loud mouthpiece, and only then does Ren redirect to matters outside of festering blame into Tiberius.

It is only the worry he has for Ilya and Dante that keeps him soft but not calm, and that care for others is starting to feel all too warm around him.

♡coded by uxie♡

 

[CrimsonInk]

THE DESCENDANT.

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DAHLIA

BLACKWATER

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

Worthless; Dante Coded

OUTFIT

These will do!

LOCATION

ALGOL BEACH

MENTIONS

TALULLAH | MILO

INTERACTS

@ComplexDragon
AnimeGenork

MY JOLLY SAILOR BOLD — THE HOUND + THE FOX.

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ANGER IS A POTENT SPICE

A pinch wakes you up; too much dulls your senses.

CHAPTER THREE.

WARNING: Themes of abandonment, hallucinations, and mentions of suicide are in the text (not the act).

Dahlia couldn’t put a name to the voice addressing her. With teary eyes the girl turned to face someone familiar and unfamiliar all at once. The Algol spell had replaced his face with another, and it undoubtedly made her upset. Angry. Wrathful.

“No…no…” she began to mutter, “you don’t get to say that to me. You left us….why…”

The woman didn’t understand. She couldn’t comprehend the hallucination and the reality. Her hand reached out to smack his arm, but it wasn’t to hurt him. It wasn’t aggressive. She too exhausted for aggression no matter how much she wanted to be.

“You….you left us! Why? Why did you leave!? I don’t know you….But you left her….you left me….wasn’t I enough!?” she started to cry, her tears rained down her face and the buried hurt began to feel like it created a physical effect, “why does it hurt!? Someone! Kill me! Sedate me! I don’t care! I-I don’t wanna! I’m tired! I’m sick and tired of this life! AHHHH!”

Dahlia wailed her heart at the sand allowing herself to hold onto the strangers she called her parents. The darkness heavily preyed on her fear of abandonment, taunting the girl who considered death to be a way out. All she could do was allow herself to feel the pain until it wears off. No longer wanting to fight she laid on sandy beach looking into the void. The will to fight is no longer in her spirit, for now. She allowed her final whispers to be heard by these two before going into a state of depression.

"I'm sorry Noelle.....Lora.....Malty....Gal....everyone....I should have wasted away like the rest of Antares....."

♡coded by uxie♡

 

[Gao]

font callfont callfont call

IN-CHARACTER

THE INTERLUDE

ROGUE WAVES

ONBOARD THE LEVIATHAN.

THE INTERLUDE

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐔𝐃𝐄.

The night of Algol is a funeral shroud, cloud-baked sands in a cosmos of hiemal gray and poppy-red spillage. The injuries littered throughout the cast are only warning signals, but are a sincerity of the Graymaw’s intentions.

The crew herds away from the breaking tide where tendrils of wave and limb wait with canary yellow eyes. The tide flows in and they come with it, calm step after calm step and from where the crew clusters, they can see it; the brief cuts of light that silver over wet shoulders, rippling despite the moored stance of their bodies.

Still, the cast remains and the heat of their flesh is testament to their survival. An anchor with the imagined surety of being alive and around the safety of touch, they gather flasks and fabrics and tend to the wounded with what they have.

Not a moment of consideration is needed to understand why trying to get past the Graymaws and back to The Leviathan would be a bad idea. Wounds are tributes to the bestial encounters and red scents the frigid air as it soaks like acrimony.

It is first glimpsed like opaque rays, the break of daylight splitting through the black gut of the sky. It lightens slowly, unveiling the flat swathe around them that is blurred like an ashen dream. With the arrival of daylight does the chain of graymaws recoil, and they sink below the water that barely churns to their immersion.

It is a measure of caution as the crew waits until the sun holds safe dominion, a measure of caution as only a select few volunteer to test the dinghies in the water. Once affirmed to be a vague notion of “probably safe”, the crew piles in and they make for the ship in silence.

Their pivot from dinghy to safety of the deck is steadied by reaching hands of those that stayed behind, and it is hard not to notice the thinned numbers blanketed with quiet, how comfort is scarce in slathered undereyes and how mouths are ready to eat blame. Somewhere abandoned in the sucking mud of Algol are unmarked graves that plump and soften, the bodies of Genevieve Kalten and Adrius Blackwood picked away to pale bone and ruby broth.

All the snarled wounds ground deep with sand, nails thick with copper and flies that make a mess of the blood. Many of the crew does not speak of it, that petrichor of anarchy on the shores of Algol, everywhere and all at once, and the glow of hungry eyes that refracted through lemon sclera are branded like a violent dream.

How to distill what they have encountered in words without sounding entirely deranged, only to permeate the superstitious whispers already diffusing through the vessel.

Perhaps the haunting quiet of the survivors is for the best. With throats soon to be tight with thirst and the events of Algol a struggle to speak about, a silent concordance has settled those onboard; maybe some things should remain unknown, and seeking logic in what happened would be a kind of undoing— maybe one that would not be entirely physical.

The ship still aches from mutilation through the storm. She is afloat but porcelain is broken and some people are, too. The future weighs upon rationing and scrounging water from passing vessels until they reach the closest landmass for repair and resupply:

Antares.

---

𝐖𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐓𝐒 𝐓𝐎 𝐁𝐄 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐕𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐃 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐎𝐎𝐂.

{IN-CHARACTER}

night owl

 

[qunqun]

The Physician.

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Ilya

Jovanović

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

:3

OUTFIT

Clean Uniform

LOCATION

Med Bay

MENTIONS

Adrius, Genevieve, Cassandra

INTERACTS

Whoever is the people Ilya is treating.

Melancholia — St. Loreto

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Humanist's Folly.

Extend the self, till all that remains is scattered to the winds

Chapter Three Part Three.

Numb. Flush. Stitch. Stitch. Bandage.

He blinked back bloody scalps and waves from his eyes as he closed the wounds of whoever the fuck this was. His movements clean and robotic as he fought his own mind to not wander into grieving until the jobs in front of him were done. They belied none of his conflict.

Neat, orderly lines, wrapped with a pristine white bandage. A couple of soft mumbled words that he was certain weren’t going to be at all adhered to. “Take it easy for the next couple of days, try not to aggravate it and open the stitches once more. If you reopen them, just come back and I'll restitch them”

He was spread thin once more. He thought that this boat, this party for the rich and secure would be safe from the death that haunted his life, his every step.

Someone had told him once while he was an apprentice that to be a doctor was to stare in the eyes of death and suffering every day. Surely, Ilya had thought, it wouldn’t be that horrible. Every day.

Numb, flush, stitch.

Clean. Simple. Easy. He'd done a million of these, and had a million to go.

Genevieve. The amnesiac. Her gentleness, but the sense of mischief laying beneath. Ivan. His eyes had been hardened and kind at the same time. Wary, strangers seemed to unsettle him. As many had in his profession, there weren’t enough kindhearted doctors.

Stitch. Stitch.

His head was pounding, and his eyes screamed for rest, but he could not rest when he saw their eyes in his head. All of theirs. How much blood was on his hands?

Bandage.

Another one complete.

“Take it easy for the next couple of days, try not to aggravate the wound or open the stitches. If you happen to reopen them, just come back and I’ll restitch them.”
Like he wasn’t already spreading his resources so thin so that everyone got a little bit of medicine to make the pain go away.

Numb, flush, stitch.

Would Ivan had left the boat if he’d been on such an upswing with his infection?

Stitch, stitch

Had Ilya doomed him to an early grave by being competent in his work?

Bandage.

“Take it easy for the next couple of days, try not to aggravate the wound or open the stitches. If that happens, come back and I’ll restitch them once more.”

Did anybody even hear his warnings? Tiberius had almost immediately done the exact opposite of what Ilya recommended and made his wound that much worse by carrying around his sorry ass.

Numb, flush, stitch.

What a fucking joke, taking a nap in the sand while people needed him.

Stitch, stitch, stitch.

Maybe they didn’t even need him. They seemed to at least have stopped fucking dying once he’d collapsed.

Bandage.

“Take it easy for the next couple of days, try not to aggravate the wound-” Would this ship be even able to run if Ilya got his way and every single one of these people took it easy? Probably not. This was a lesson in futility and madness. “-I’ll restitch them once more.”

Even though it was your mistake costing us our precious few resources available, I will keep fixing you.

Numb, flush.

There had been a child with doe like eyes that Ilya could so clearly see in his memory. Broken his arm. Ilya had reset it and created a cast.

The child was able to climb trees a couple months later, but fell and hit his head, dying on his table as Ilya tried to dam the flow of blood.

Would that child have died had Ilya not fixed his arm with such competency?

Stitch. Stitch.

He’d gotten into medicine because he wanted to be helpful, and these were the only skills he had. He was too weak for hunting or fishing. Much better at scavenging herbs for medicinal poultices out in the Umbrian wastes.

He missed home, but so many dead infants and dead adults dotted that village. Perhaps he was cursed to be a grim reaper.

Bandage.

“Take it easy for the next couple of days-” No you won’t. Whatever. "Try not to reaggravate the wound"

He half expected them to do jumping jacks the second they walked outside of the clinic.

Numb, flush.

He wanted to go to sleep, maybe forever. Maybe if he did nobody else would die and everyone would be at peace and nobody would need his shitty cursed help ever again.

Stitch stitch stitch. Dark brown eyes rimmed with shadow were beginning to droop and his steady hands stilled for a moment.

He saw wary steel eyes once more, like a jolt. Something heavy burned in the pit of his stomach and he forced himself into the present day once more, passing off the pause as if he was inspecting his handiwork. He shouldn't falter. He'd already stumbled earlier. He can't make a single mistake here again.

Bandage.

“Take it easy for the next couple of days-” A purgatorial wasteland of pain and herbal antibacterial. His head was throbbing, really. But the heavy stone eating away at his insides was telling him he had to continue.

Numb… flush… Stitch… Bandage.

It was almost like he could feel the apparitions of the dead patients with him, following him. Haunting him. The mistakes of the past boring into his soul. Did they even have loved ones that would grieve them? The retrograde amnesia probably made it difficult to know in the case of Genevieve, but Ivan had been survived by his fiancee.

“Take it easy.”

♡coded by uxie♡

 

[eebeevee]

The Shaman.

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Rivi

Kolt

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

hehe...sigh

OUTFIT

Winter Attire

LOCATION

Umbra's Woods

MENTIONS

n/a

INTERACTS

N/a

no one noticed — the marias

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Love to Lose.

Now I will have to remember you longer than I've known you.

The Interlude

With the crisp sound of the Umbra’s icy winds feeling like an invitation to the surrounding echoes of what hid deep within the reaches of the dark, hidden mysteries of the forest and roaring mountain peaks. From the howls of a distant lone wolf that seem to only ring through every branch and bark of the snow powdered trees to the almost silent whispers of the elementals that roamed these very lands, all of this and more that Nerrivik could feel flowing through her blood and soul. This only seemed to grow the already strong connection she had with Hri, knowing what she was doing at this very moment was what she was meant to do since the incident.

Regardless of what her leaders have advised her not to do, reminding Nerrivik that the shadowed parts of her book were forbidden and would only end with one outcome, her permanent exile from her tribe. From her people. But she couldn’t continue carrying this pain in her spirit, weighing her down every day. Her mother. Nerrivik had to see her again, hold her close, speak to her, simply to have her again was all she wanted. It didn’t matter if she had to abandon her true identity with the Firja, she would give it up every time if it meant her mother would be back in her arms, telling her what mistakes she had while creating the rosemary and lavender ointment.

“Aakka Vikie! You don’t ground the rosemary then the lavender together like that. First the lavender after you have soaked it under lukewarm water, grounding the two separately then combining them once you have the animal fat into its liquid form.”

The sweet stream of her mother’s lectures washed over Nerrivik just as the early morning dew of the first spring gust. A tear splashed onto the heavily dug lines beneath her, snapping her back to her reality. The one she didn’t want. The one she couldn’t bear to believe was her own. Her vision begins to fog with pitiful tears, keeping her behind from the task at hand.

“No. No more crying. Once I’m done with this, there will be no need for that.”

Nerrivik murmured under her breather and stared at her creation as she stood up, wiping the fallen tears with the back of her hand, soaking her caribou mittens. Taking a moment to admire the hide it was made from, her father and brothers had taken ages to hunt this particular bull, with the exact words of her father:

“You should have seen it, Riv. Even with the distance we were at, all I could think was ‘How lovely its fur looked, the warmest I had ever seen.’ We just had to have it. Didn’t matter how long it would take, we just had to.”

Her stare shifted between her tear soaked mitten and the dirt between her. Nerrivik had perfected the scriptures down the exaggerative curves and sharp indentations, as if she had placed the exact page from her mother’s pages onto the ground.

What did she have to lose? ‘Everything’ Doing this would make her lose the only bit of family she had left. Was the cost of this too high for her if failure were to come as the result? Was she even strong enough to do such rituals? Sure, she was convinced by her leader that she was one of the strongest shamans that the Firja have had in many decades but what if it wasn’t enough? What if… Shutting her eyes and keeping her breathing steady, letting the nature around her consume her, advise her, control her. A soft whisper creeped into her left ear, her eyebrow frowned as she tried to focus on what the voice was trying to say.

“Maaktuyuq.”

Nerrivik finally heard it as the wind dragged it up to the branches of the trees that circled her. It was all she needed to know. With a single nod, she rushed over to her beaded bag, taking an armful of human bones and placing them carefully on the indicated circle scriptures. With her mother’s skull now resting at the top of the ritual, staring off to the snowing horizon behind Nerrivik.

She tried her best to ignore the growing sadness in the pit of her stomach, knowing that her beauty, her wisdom, her love, her entire being were now forever to be locked away within these very bones. After arranging the last remaining essentials for this to work the way she needed it to go, an entire antler of a freshly hunted caribou, jarred sand from Sirocco (quite an expensive purchase but worth every coin), charcoal from a burned bark of the sacred tree, dried ‘life’ plants and lastly and the most important ingredient for this to all come together correctly. Nerrivik took a strand from the lower part of her head and cut it clean off with her copper arrowhead and placed it down to complete it, only to cut her palm. Pressing it hard, observing her droplets of blood drip over top her recently cut strand of jet black hair.

“That should be it.”

Her voice shaken, taking in her creation. This was it. This would bring her back. Surely this would be all it would take, it said so in the book. In her book. Her mother’s book. Nerrivik looked up at the pitch black night sky adorned with the sparkling twinkles of the stars above her, the full moon shining down into the opening of the forest and engulfing the surroundings below including Nerrivik.

“Perfect.”

This was the night. Her imagination now painted the moments she would have once she had completed the ritual. Nerrivik bit her bottom lip nervously, taking once more a deep breath and closing her eyes.

“Oh dear Hri. Light to all that has come to live and breathe on this earth, Open your arms and welcome my offerings. Ikajunga! Anaana! Aunaaqtunga! Ikajunga! Anaana! Aunaaqtunga! Ikajunga! Anaana! Aunaaqtunga! Hear my prayers! Hear my plea!”

♡coded by uxie♡

 

[qunqun]

TW: Suicidal thoughts and actions throughout... That sounds scary. It's a lot more lighthearted than you'd think​

PROLOGUE.

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Graham

The Bereaved

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

Idek man.

OUTFIT

Bisexual Whore

LOCATION

Zenith -> Antares

MENTIONS

N/A

INTERACTS

N/A

Let's Fall in Love — FINNEAS.

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Aster's Eulogy.

A star has died, the brightest burn the fastest, and all that remains is silence

PROLOGUE.

Stars, with their gravitational pulls, create their own systems of the universe. More commonly found, however, are binary star systems — those which have two stars slowly revolving around each other in the emptiness of space. Bound together.

Forever.

What am I talking about?

This is a Graham post.

You’re here for really shitty poetry and dick jokes.

Ahem.

Roses are red
Violets are blue
In the moonlight
Your eyes take on the most beautiful hue

KACHOW ROMANCE.

Graham’s lips twitched upwards in bemusement as he read off the poem to his latest paramour, seated upon a bench placed within a beautiful gazebo. The moon was full, and it reflected off the small pond in the gardens. Lovely lass, married too young and for politics, produced an heir young and promptly forgotten about by her husband. Like a lot of the women that were recommended to him. Beautiful mind for mathematics. A part of him felt a little bad that he may have been the first to actually see her, and that he was getting paid by her husband to do so in his place.

She laughed “Didn’t you study poetry in university?”
“Doesn’t mean I can write it” He responded with another small laugh.
“Fair enough, can we kiss?”
“Of course, love. You can do whatever your heart desires.”

She grabbed him by the collar when they kissed.

Sometimes, being a himbo had its perks, after all.

But with all of the soft gazes, soft touches, warm beds, and the fanciest wine-ing and dine-ing a guy could ever ask for, there was some sort of adventure to be had, yeah? Some itch under his skin he couldn’t quite grab.

When his contract was up, he chose to not go to the next duchess, but instead disappear.

He hooked a ride with some travelers in the night. Initiation into their exclusive club had a single feat of daring, after a little too much whiskey, Graham found himself staring down a massive cliffside into waters down below.

Well, if he was going to die… It was nice knowing ya. His regards to his mother, tell his father that he could suck Jesus’s dick for all he cared.

He took a running start, reaching for the setting sun like Icarus did before he fell. Maybe fifth time cliff jumping was the charm.

What were the statistics on this again? A little late to consider them as gravity took a hold.

He hit the darkened water below. The shock of the icy water sent the breath out of his lungs, and for a moment he realized that he may actually drown if he didn’t push himself upwards.

Huh.

Maybe this was actually the way that he died. It would’ve been peaceful, even as his lungs burned for air. Maybe… Maybe this wouldn’t be a bad way to go.

And then he remembered the people waiting for him up on the cliff. Dashed against the craggy rocks and drowned would be traumatic… wouldn’t it. For them.

He began to kick.

He broke the surface and gave the group a thumbs up.

“How’s the water” There was nervousness to the tone behind the bravado of self-assurance.
“Fecking gorgeous” He shouted back up and then swam to safety.

Wrapped in a blanket to keep the shivers at bay, the fire was warm and painted the group’s faces in orange hues. A couple of them were musical, had brought out little instruments to entertain with. The stars were out in all of their glory up above, but Graham was pointedly ignoring them tonight as he sidled next to a lithe man with beautiful blue eyes.

The bereaved grinned. “So you come here often?”
“Do you tell all the boys that?” His build said gymnast, his accent said runaway, and the little quirk upwards of his lips said amused
“Not all of them, just the ones I find cute.” Graham’s eyes flickered down to the Runaway Gymnast’s lips and then back into staring into his eyes.
“He’s a smooth talker isn’t he?” Their leader said, mostly to save her companion from the furious blush spreading across his cheeks.
“If you’re not interested-” The now former courtesan said, pulling back for just a moment.
“Well… now who said I wasn’t interested”

A grin spread across Graham’s face.

Stars have to continually burn fuel in order to continue to survive. The ones that burn the brightest are usually the ones that die the fastest.

He stared at the hand, fingers intertwined with his hookup as the man slept on his chest in the aftermath. The stars were calling to him as usual, and even this hadn’t drowned out their siren song.

He had to keep moving.

He gave the clasped hand a small kiss before getting up and pulling his clothes on.

Antares. Practically lawless, full of seedy underbelly.

Graham stepped into a bar currently in the middle of a massive brawl, chairs being flung everywhere.

Well well well. Looks like it was his lucky day.

A drunken man approached him with a broken bottle and swung it at him. Graham did not move out of the way, but the man tripped over another brawler and impaled himself. A stool getting flung at his head wouldn’t kill him, but it would sting like a motherfucker so Graham dodged out of the way of that one.

In the throes of frustration, one of the servers let out a cry “I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE I QUIT.”

She threw down a tray which ricocheted and hit another man currently in the massive brawl in the crotch. That man let out a roar of anger, grabbed a person not at all involved in the fight, and tried to smash their head through the table.

Graham weaseled his way to where the tavernkeep had her head in her hands. “Does this happen often?”
“Not as much as you'd think, but rent’s due soon.” She said “So much property damage.”
“I can round up some lads and have them get thrown out, if you want?” Graham offered, his voice as soft and kind as he could make it as a bottle was thrown and shattered somewhere behind the tavernkeep’s head.

“... You do that. Anything in return?”
“I’d like to take that new position as a server and a permanent room, if that’s alright with you.”
“You’ve got it. And I’ll give you free drinks on the house. Just make them all stop.”

Side quest achieved, Graham managed to sneak his way out once more.

Now… How to get a bunch of guys to follow him to break up a tavern brawl…

Get a bunch of meaner looking guys to break the fight up! Genius!

It didn’t take too long to find some guys that looked like they might shoot someone if they so looked at them wrong. This would take some excellent persuasion methods of a high caliber courtesan who spent his life politicking in the high courts and-

Graham punched one of them in the face. “OI, I FUCKED YOUR MUM LAST NIGHT, MATE. WHAT’RE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT.”

And then he fucking booked it. He flew through the streets of Antares, eventually finding the tavern once more and slipping his way through the fight for a third time.

He was clipped in the ear, his hearing going all ringy. Once in the stomach, and he felt himself drop to his knees. He crawled out the backdoor, and continued his dead sprint away from the fight.

Leaned up against a wall, Graham sucked in air to calm his rapidly beating heart. He heard a bunch of guns go off, bodies hit the ground.

Graham came back like a slightly bloodied god of destruction amidst shattered furniture and glass. Men groaning in pain at his feet, blood soaking into the wooden floors. It looked like the mean fuckers that he’d punched had gotten killed in the shootout, lucky him he supposed. Nobody to hunt him down for revenge.

But! The fighting had ceased!

“... I wish your methods weren’t quite so… chaotic.” The tavernkeep said. While she was acclimated to Antares, a shootout was still a shootout and she seemed a little shaken by the whole ordeal.
“Well. It stopped though, didn’t it?”

She shook her head, but came out from behind the bar, pocketing the men’s purses and wallets from the bodies of the injured and the dead.

“You’re hired.”

♡coded by uxie♡

 

[Pepsionne]

THE BEASTMASTER.

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JINARA

AHN

MOOD

CALM

OUTFIT

silk suave

LOCATION

ANTARES

MENTIONS

MENTIONS !!

INTERACTS

TAGS!!

IN UNISON — SORRY.

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I SUBMIT TO THE WOLVES

And feed them my heart.

CHAPTER THREE PRELUDE.

Black ink bled onto tan skin like a virus eager to eat away the golden glow of healthy flesh. Jinara pinched the King's invitation between his fingers, eyes blank while they drank in the elaborate scrawl.

He had been awake for quite some time now, but lacked the constitution to pull himself out of bed and start the day. The air had grown stagnant in the small inn room he had checked himself into the night prior. Sweat pasted strands of his hair across his forehead, curling tendrils of shadow dividing space as if painted by a delicate hand.

Antares was loud at night, much different from the soft harmony of the jungle as it settled into itself for the night. Human noise was something he was still struggling to reacclimate to. In the soft hours of early morning, Antares had become a picture of business. Port workers yelled over the loud sounds of street vendors and incoming ships. Seagull cries filled in the empty spaces of noise where they found room.

Jinara let the paper fall to his chest. The thin, delicate constitution of it buckled under the dampness of his chest. Ink bloomed in hazy clouds across the surface, damaging the eloquent letter into a smudged mess.

Let it dissolve, for all he cared. The King had mentioned Zephyr, briefly, in his request for Jinara’s employment aboard The Leviathan. A promise to aid in his family’s search for the missing panther. The man swung his feet down to the floor, bare skin kissing the ground as he stood.

Pulled as if by the force of a magnet, Jinara found himself drinking in the fresh sea breeze that rolled in through his window. The morning air was still crisp, despite the heat that enveloped his room. The King’s promise to send aid would do nothing to locate a panther who had already slipped from this world. They had long since missed their window of ever regaining Jinara’s bondmate.

He had felt the exact moment when it happened. It was a breathless thing, unplaceable yet all encompassing as he felt the absence of it wash over him. One moment he was tethered to this world, the next--not. And he was still falling weightlessly.

Jinara crumpled the invitation within his palm. Stiff paper crackled with his force, like the tearing of skin. The only beast that would need taming aboard The Leviathan would be the ever growing pit of nihility that he paced around day by day.


Peeking through the early morning haze, a large ship began its approach to Antares. A ship that size, it could only be one. Jinara shuffled through his belongings to look for a cigarette to smoke while he waited for the ship to approach. He smoked soundlessly, watching as the silhouette greedily swallowed space along the horizon.

“You up for an adventure at sea, Zephyr?” Jinara muttered to himself. “I’ll save a spot for you below deck.”

He scoffed an amused laugh before snuffing the remaining stub of his cigarette on the windowsill. Right. Time to get packing.

♡coded by uxie♡

 

[lyn.]

THE ONLOOKER.

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WILLOW

FARCHILL

MOOD

SCARED

OUTFIT

the simpler the better

LOCATION

ZENITH

MENTIONS

N/A

INTERACTS

N/A

NOCTURNE — LAUFEY

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LADY JANE

sits on the side, watching life go by.

PROLOGUE.

Gold, silver, diamond, pearls, all material things that were useless to those in the upper class, yet flaunted around nonetheless. What else could compliment the array of laces and silk fabrics on the nobles in front of her other than shiny jewels and perfect shoes? They did it on purpose, she knew. Waved their hands around to show off their new gifts, just waiting for someone to ask, and Willow did, because that’s what you’re supposed to do.

“It was a gift, from Lord Harrell.” She wiggled her fingers to the circle of women, showing off the ring on her finger. A daughter to one of the kings advisors, Tracy Finch, Willow noted. “I mentioned to him my love of rubies once and it arrived at my manor the next day!”

“I expect a diamond will show up on your finger in the near future,” another one smiled, and the circle erupted into giggles.

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s all still so new!” Another round of laughs, Willow, whose inability to fake her emotions constantly failed her, forced a small smile.

Tracy had been engaged to Lord Harrell since they were born, but no one bothered to point that out.

A servant arrived with a plate of hors d'oeuvres, some cheese and meat on a stick that Willow gladly accepted, thankful for the opportunity to both stuff her face and not speak. That is, until she turned back and all eyes were on her.

Her stomach turned at the predatory gazes before her, an empty shell surrounded by ones full of shiny new pearls.

“Is that necklace new, Miss Farchill?” One asked. Concubines were not very common in Zenith, and when they did exist, they were usually referred to by their first name or maiden name and nothing more. When you’re the daughter of a Count, however, things become more difficult. It took more than a few years for those at court to figure out how to adress her. Eventually they settled with Miss, not as respectable as Lady, yet not as low as a commoner.

She’d be fine with the title if she didn’t always hear the arrogance behind the words. They enjoyed calling her that, enjoyed letting her know that she was the lowest gues there, even if her last name was Farchill.

She’d much prefer the shame that came with just being called Willow. A name that means resilience, or so her mother claims, is not that shameful at all.

Willow brought a hand up to her necklace, a simple gold box chain with an amaranth cameo pendant.

“It was a gift from my father when I was born. An amaranth as a symbol for everlasting love.” A gift resembling his love for her mother. She thought it sweet when she was younger, now all that remains is bitterness.

“Oh, how lovely!” One chimed, “Your birthday is coming up, isn’t it?” another added, “You will be seventeen, surely Count Farchill has been searching for potential prospects?”

Only a fool could miss the bite in her words, like all the other unmarried women at this event weren’t the same age as Willow. They were probably gearing up to call her a spinster the moment she turned eighteen.

She let her hand drop, “Well, I-”

“Pardon me!” Luella Farchill’s voice rang loud as she approached the group, and Willow’s hackles immediately rose. Navigating the conversation of noblewomen were easy, you only had to know your place. Her mother, however, did not care for her place, only her wants.

Her hands snaked onto Willows shoulders, “Excuse me ladies, I must speak to my daughter for a moment.” She was dragged away before the other women could respond, an action that worsened the feeling in Willows stomach.

In one fluid movement her mother had pulled Willow across the room, plucked the cheese in her hand, threw it in the trash, and pulled out her fan. A sure sign that whatever exchange the two were about to have, it would not be good.

“Mother we are at a palace event, we cannot just-”

“Quiet, you were about to make a fool of yourself!” Her mother sighed, dramatically waving her fan on her face before turning it to cover her mouth. “You were about to mention your fathers talkings with the Vaugns, weren’t you? Oh! Such a boring family, you cannot speak it so or it will come true!”

Willow hesitated, something she found herself doing solely with her mother.

“Father has already said-”

“Oh, who cares what he’s said! You’re the daughter of a Count!” She exclaimed, waving her free hand in the air. “You are to marry even better than I did, love. You will live a life with no struggles, a life better than even mine!” Willow knew better than to know it would end there, whatever life she gained for herself, her Luella would want a cut.

She put her hand on Willow’s shoulder and turned her around until her target was in sight.

“You will marry Wesley Peyton.”

Willow blinked, her stomach hurt.

“The son of a Duke?”

“Not just the son of a Duke, my love. The Duke Peyton is old, I hear rumors he’s sick. He won’t last long.” She leaned in closer, a smirk on her lips. “You are to become a duchess, Willow. Duchess Peyton.” She whispered, words slow and full of pride, as if she’d already succeeded.

Willow swallowed, “He’s- I’m the Count’s illegitimate daughter, the Duke would never consider me a prospect.”

Her mothers smirk turned into a smile full of teeth, and for a moment, Willow found it difficult to stand.

“Don’t worry, love. I have a plan.” She let the fan drop, “It’s unfortunate you are not as gifted an actress as I, but no worry, we can work around that. Your face is plain, but with the right look, you could be quite pretty.”

She hooked her arm through Willows limp one.

“Now come, lets go meet your new husband.”

Her mother stepped ahead, and like a puppet on a string Willow followed.

♡coded by uxie♡

 

[erzulie]

mood :

calmer

location :

the leviathan

outfit :

mentions :

n/a

interactions :

n/a

Acindius

Devana

As silent as a spectre, Lady Devana had slipped into her room unnoticed. She had been quick to leave the injured woman in her arms to a group of other injured passengers in order to make her escape. The proper thing to have been done would have been to stay and make sure that the woman she'd saved had been okay, but she had no time for pleasantries – she never did, in fact. The need to remake herself was far more pressing than social obligation.


For days, she remained within the sanctuary of her cabin, the silence broken only by the occasional creak of floorboards and unsettling whispering. The other passengers might have wondered at her absence, might have whispered about the wild-haired warrior who had fought off creatures from the deep, but none dared approach her door. This suited her perfectly – isolation was an old friend, far more comfortable than the weight of others' curiosity or concern.


Within the sanctuary of her cabin, familiar rituals had taken over. Each movement was precise, practiced, born of years of necessity. Her blood-stained hands, steady even then, worked swiftly to restore order to chaos. The wild waves of her hair were tamed methodically, section by section, woven into a tight braid that spoke of control regained. The beaded hairnet captured each strand with military precision, no hint remaining of the untamed mane that had whipped in the sea breeze before.


But it was the mask that truly transformed her. Cool porcelain settled against scarred skin like a homecoming, each strap secured with the reverence of a priestess donning sacred vestments. The familiar weight of it centered her, grounded her, turned her back into Lady Devana rather than the raw creature who had fought at the water's edge. When she finally emerged from her cabin again, it was as if the incident had never happened – as if the woman who had torn her own shirt for bandages and fought off water-dwelling horrors was nothing more than a fever dream.

The mask's smooth surface revealed nothing of the night's violence, just as it concealed the map of scars beneath. She had rebuilt her walls, stone by stone, porcelain piece by porcelain piece. The woman who stepped back into the world was once again the dignified Lady, untouchable and unknowable, her previous vulnerability locked away as securely as a secret in a tomb. Only the faint scent of salt water lingering in her hair suggested that anything unusual had occurred at all.

coded by reveriee.

 

[Daddy Dream]

THE DUCHESS

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공작부인

VIOLETTA

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

Tired and Annoyed

LOCATION

ZENITH

MENTIONS

N/A

INTERACTS

N/A

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Be Yourself,

you don't make history by being liked.

THE PROLOGUE.

Violetta was sitting at her desk, looking over some documents regarding the upcoming winter weather preparations needed for her duchy. Lately the winters have been quite harsh, dumping several inches of snow on the region and slowing the trade route to the surrounding towns. Violetta has been working diligently in raising fund and supplies to combat these harsh winters, and with the support of the other lords, she has been able to get several teams together. These teams would help with distributing supplies, shoveling snow off the main roads, and providing meals for the less fortunate that takes up residence in the local churches. Reports state that it helps a bit, but there are always improvements.

As she was filing through the reports and budget books, a knock came to her door before a maid entered. In her hands was a silver tray with a small stack of letters and a look of worry on her face. When Violetta looked up, a frown immediately crossed her lips and she set down the papers, tilting her head and narrowing her eyes.

"What is it? You look troubled."

Violetta questioned, taking the letters the maid handed her and grabbing one of her letter openers. The maid informed her that the courier that dropped off the letters stated that there was trouble in the east and some of our mail might be arriving late. Violetta paused a bit, thinking of what could possibly be delayed from the east that would affect her. As she opened the first letter, she got her answer immediately, as it stated that an order she placed for her winter preparation supplies have come up missing and the supplies that are gathered might not be enough. The letter asks for Violetta to travel across the sea to inspect the goods and see if it will be enough. Violetta sighed heavily, setting the letter down and looking over at the maid.

"Fetch Monte, and prepare a carriage and a suitcase of clothing. We are going overseas."

♡coded by uxie♡

 

[Daddy Dream]

THE KNIGHT

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Knight

MONTE

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

Tired and Annoyed

LOCATION

ZENITH

MENTIONS

N/A

INTERACTS

N/A

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DO BETTER

I find your lack of logic disturbing.

THE PROLOGUE.

Early morning training warm-ups consisted of a two hour run around the castle grounds, upper body and lower body stretching, and breathing exercises. Then practicing sparring against the duchies guards both armed and unarmed, independent sword training against a dummy, and more breathing exercises. Monte then rounds out his early morning with a bath and breakfast. Afterwards, Monte then makes his way around the castle grounds before arriving at Violetta's bedroom with enough time to greet her in the morning. Today, he was assigned to go around the duchy castle and collect the reports from the officials working today. With them being in the duchy and the day being quite peaceful, he followed her orders without much discussion.

He was about to head back to Violetta's office when he was stopped by a few maids stopped him to talk about some tea they found out in the local town. Monte listened politely and commented a few times before the group dispersed and he went on his way. He use to enjoy talking with the maids and socializing about the happenings of the town below, and he missed the days when he could freely do so. However, now he had much more important things to focus on, and his interactions with the staff of the castle have dwindled to small, fleeting moments in the halls or out on the training grounds in the early hours. He was just about to walk down the hall towards the office when Violetta's personal maid met him at the corner and brightened up. She instructed that the Duchess asked for his presence and excused herself, quickly scurrying down the hall.

"Pardon me Madame. I have brought the reports from the officials." Monte asked, entering the room and walking over to the desk. Violetta was standing at the window when he entered, which usually meant there was something on her mind. "Is something on your mind? The head maid said you needed me for something?

He watched his master turn and face him, a look of irritation on her face as she sighed heavily and walked to her desk. Monte knew something was wrong, and just decided to watch as Violetta grabbed a letter and handed it to Monte in silence. He took it cautiously, watching her sit before his eyes went over to read the letter. His jaw clenched and his grip on the letter tightened before he looked at Violetta.

"This sounds like a trap. No good can come of an over seas trip." He grumbled his protest, but the sharp gaze from his master made him understand that she had already went over the possibilities. Monte sighed once more and ran a hand through his hair, tossing the letter on the desk. "Very well, so when do we depart?"

♡coded by uxie♡

 

[qunqun]

MOOD: Well fuck.

OUTFIT:


LOCATION: Aurelian's room

basics

MENTIONS:



INT:

tags

TL;DR Ahahahaha okay you can ignore this one

tl;dr

Dante/Aurelian

Icarian Sin - Woe to those that reach too high, as they plummet back to whence they came

Aurelian watched this creature before him, picking at his thumb. The self-assured confidence gone, wiped from tired hazel eyes. A stranger to him.

He forced eye contact, and tried to remove imagery of kicked dogs out of his mind.

His brother’s eyebrows twitched together in an expression he wasn't aware of yet when Dante opened his mouth to explain…

… everything. The acting. The lies.

“And the worst part is… I… I needed to feel… loved and respected and… you… my parents bought you as a gift… for me… you were supposed to…”

… provide… affection and support.

Aurelian knew, in some manner, that Dante had to be getting something out of his kindness.

Oh.

He'd been bought as… a gift… to make Dante feel better about… his parents murdering his former lover... and Dante had gone along with it... because seeing Aurelian rely on him made him feel control over his own life.

“... oh.” Aurelian’s voice sounded very far away at that moment as something raw was getting torn open inside of him.

Dante had been acting… the supportive older brother… to gain Aurelian’s trust and affection.

Acting…

Well of course it wasn't real, did you think you were worth it?

The little nagging voice that had solidified into Helga’s approximation of his mother whispered to him. And… no. Not really. If he was being honest with himself, he'd spent the last couple of years proving to Dante that he was the best investment the chimera could've ever made. If he stayed on the correct schedule, worked every moment he was awake, took care of himself with spartan efficiency, won, then he could prove to everyone that he was worthy of love and compassion.

Would normal people feel kind of dirty and used after someone admits… that… it had started as a pity project to fuel his own ego and turned… into love?

Was his trust won for some game? Some feeling of superiority?

What was love, after all, than this series of transactions. You do and say the right things and the person loves you in return, gives you affection and praise.

Right?

Then why did Aurelian feel a thin layer of grime settle over his soul

Complicated emotions were not Aurelian’s forte. Unraveling the complexities of the mind were best suited for someone of a more contemplative manner like Dante. He never bothered, because things were always so simple for him. He forced it that way.

Dante noticed the change in Aurelian’s breathing before he did himself.

“Ari.” Aurelian flinched at the nickname as his breathing hitched and got even faster. “You need to calm down.”

Calm down????? How was he supposed to calm down????? Love was transactional and fixed and all he was good for was being used for his body and his mind and his emotions and nobody actually cared about him nobody wanted him around he could've been anybody and Dante would've been kind to him which he supposed at any given other moment would've been a good thing but it had felt different when he'd thought that maybe Dante saw something in him that was worth preserving and if all love was was this exchange of pleasant falsehoods than why did nobody in this goddamn fucking world ever even look his way love as a concept was never even his to understand so why would he-

“Ari. Take a deep breath-” A hand touched his shoulder

“ILL TELL YOU TO FUCKING CALM DOWN” Cane the roar back as Aurelian immediately grabbed the hand touching him and punched Dante in his stupid fucking face. “YOU USED ME TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT YOURSELF? WHAT THE FUCK. WHAT WERE YOU EVEN TRYING TO GET OUT OF THIS. HOW AM I EVEN SUPPOSED TO FUCKING RESPOND TO SOMETHING LIKE THIS YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE”

Dante stumbled back and recovered, checking himself for blood.

“Y'know for a guy that spent most of his childhood getting kicked around, you're awfully fast to resort to physical violence.”

And then Aurelian tackled Dante to the ground with a fist already formed.

Not to mistake this for a cool fight with interesting dynamics, at one point Aurelian was fairly certain Dante bit him. That was fine because he was pretty sure he was just smacking him in the head with his wrists. At some point, between the two of them grappling, Dante managed to wedge a knee between his legs and bore his entire weight downwards. Aurelian responded by making a noise that sounded like a slaughtered pig and flailing about, eventually succeeding in throwing Dante off of him, curled up in the fetal position on the ground.

“Ari-?”
“FUCK YOU I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOUR STUPID FACE AGAIN” Which was an incredibly mature and well thought out thing to say as the rage burning through his entire body. He was NOT CRYING. His voice did NOT CRACK. He heard the footsteps of a quickly retreating ex-brother and the door close behind him. The object of his current anger leaving swept all the fire with him... And the void opened in return.

A crushing sense of loneliness that pressed into him as he dragged himself upwards into a less pathetic looking posture. He stared at the door that Dante had disappeared behind. Nobody… nobody knocked. Why would they?

Why would anyone?

He pushed away anyone that would ever love him. Or… well… pushed away anyone that could fake it.

He deserved to be alone.

It was better this way.

Aurelian got onto his bed in a seated position, staring at the floor. The static in his brain getting louder as his eyes slowly pulled towards a clock.

It was almost time for his shift.

Tick. Tick.

He needed to go to work.

He didn’t move.

Tick. Tick.

He needed to go to work.

…

He didn't want to think about it. To think about how shit his life was and how terrible he was and the pressing weight of destiny and his place in it and how he was doomed to live a terrible life of lonely destitution with nobody to rely on and nothing permanent to latch onto.

…

He needed to meal prep, but it seemed so daunting. So exhausting to get up. And he felt a trickle of blood where Dante had bit him in the shoulder in their scuffle.

…

Aurelian laid back down in bed, trying to not feel too guilty about missing work. But a lazy, disgusting, terrible person like him would be the type to miss work anyways.

code by valen t.

 

[Naomiii_]

THE HANDMAIDEN.

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ARANYANI

MOOD

RESOLVED

OUTFIT

handmaiden slay

LOCATION

EMPYRA/ANTARES

MENTIONS

MENTIONS !!

INTERACTS

TAGS!!

LUCY GANBARU — FAIRY TAIL.

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FLOWERS GROW BACK

And so will I.

PRELUDE.

It had been one month since Aranyani was dismissed from her job as a maid. Without so much of an explanation, Lord Aston Heisig left her with close to nothing— only a single bag of clothes, notebooks, and the weight of unanswered questions. Years of hard work, endless scrubbing and dusting, had meant nothing. Heisig had turned his back on her, just like that. For a while, she didn’t know what to do. Her skillset was limited. All she knew was cleaning and serving, all while dreaming of something more. But now those dreams felt foolish. A girl like her had no right to want more, had no way of making a living outside the walls of another’s home. The once familiar streets of Empyra now felt daunting and vast, filled with people she didn’t know and places locked away from people of her status.

As the days passed, her pain and fear began to fade, replaced by a quiet but stubborn determination. She had nothing left to lose, after all. What good would it do for her to stay cooped up at home, wallowing in self pity? Then and there she decided she had to keep moving, to try, to search for something else— something better. Aranyani emptied her meager savings into her bag and made her decision.

The next morning, Aranyani traveled to the bridge of Empyra where traveling merchants and tourists came and went, where the familiar sound of carriage wheels echoed along the cobblestones. Without a word, she boarded the first ride headed out of town. She didn’t know where it would take her, only that she had to go to find what she was searching for. New work. New people. A fresh start. As her ride rolled away, Aranyani looked back, watching her old life fade into the distance. She didn’t know where she would end up, but for the first time in weeks, she felt hopeful and determined to face any challenge that came her way.

Her restful carriage ride came to an abrupt end as the streets under the carriage wheels became rougher, making it impossible to sleep. She was hit with the scent of salt and rum, heavy and pungent, as the carriage pulled into the port district of Antares. The buildings here were grimy, the alleys narrow and dim. The sounds of laughter, shouting, and clinking of glasses echoed from the taverns and brothels that lined the waterfront. There was no hint of the proper and polished world she left behind. Aranyani clutched her bag to her chest, feeling the sudden wave of fear rise in her throat. The idea of finding work here seemed laughable. She lingered for a moment, unsure of where to go as the carriage parted from her, leaving her alone with her thoughts. The streets felt darker with each passing second, the air thick with the scent of alcohol and desperation. Groups of men called out to women, while others were stumbling in and out of taverns with loud, drunken laughs. The familiar sound of dainty heels on cobblestones were replaced by the harsh scrape of boots, the kind worn by those who had long left any notion of nobility behind.

This was no place for someone like her- sheltered, innocent, and used to the quiet hum of the Empyra gardens. Still, she took a deep breath, trying to steady the flutter of nerves in her chest. She couldn’t afford to be afraid. Maybe it wasn’t the type of city she had imagined, but there had to be someone who needed her skills, someone who could offer her a job. Her mind spun with possibilities: cleaning one of the bustling taverns, perhaps, or even joining one of the ships docked and becoming a handmaiden. She was naive, of course, and didn’t realize just how dangerous and corrupt the port district could be, but all she could see were the possibilities. She straightened her shoulders, telling herself she had the guts to make it. This was a new opportunity and she would make the most of it— no matter how different or difficult this new life might be. As she walked along the docks she spotted a beautiful ship, large and robust. This was as good a place as any to ask for work.

♡coded by uxie♡

 

[AnimeGenork]

ARATA FUKUDA.

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Arata

Cupid

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

Rum is Love, Rum is Life

OUTFIT

Drunkie (+ Red Sash)

LOCATION

Antares

MENTIONS

Milo & Strawhats

INTERACTS

N/A

TAGS

AnimeGenork

STILL REMEMBERING — AS IT IS.

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MAN

being reasonable, must get drunk. The best of life is but intoxication.

THE INTERLUDE - PROLOGUE.

The man known as the Eros of Solas was only purposely sober when he visited the land of dreams. Even still, he felt the biting cruelty of reality during these hours, as it was when he was asleep that he saw the deceased whose lives he had borne the weight of these last twenty years.

A light breeze brushed his face as he gazed upon the barn of his undoing, watching his friends laugh and play in the hay. Bruno, wearing the straw hat he’d been given as a gift and declared his official captain’s hat; Gabriel, swinging from the second floor railing and boasting of his amazing feats as the sharpshooter; Abigail, navigating with a map she had crudely drawn at home; and Milo, the heart of them all, running around making sure everyone else was having as much fun as he was.

If there had ever been a time Arata had known love, it was when he had known these four.

“A-ra-ta!” Bruno called out, enunciating each syllable with a precision that he rarely had. “Come on! I need my first mate!”

Though he had always had a blank expression, even as a child, when Bruno and the others called for him, Arata smiled. A tiny slip of a thing, barely anything, really, but they all knew how much he contained in the muscle tic. They had always known him better than he even knew himself. And then they died.

Arata awoke naked on the floor of the room he’d rented for the night. There was a perfectly nice bed beside him, but it was currently occupied by a woman he didn’t know. He wasn’t sure if she was a sex worker or not, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer. (Not because he didn’t respect how hard those ladies worked, but because he didn’t understand why he of all people would have paid for that.)

The woman stirred and raised herself up onto her elbows. Arata expected to feel some sort of recognition, maybe remember at name at least, but—nothing. And he continued to feel nothing as she rose gracefully out of bed, revealing a complete lack of clothes.

Dear God, he’d slept with a woman he wasn’t even attracted to. Figures.

He said nothing as he rose from the floor and collected his clothes and pulled them on, tying his red Eros sash around his waist. “Sorry about… whatever I did.” Man, he needed to stop getting shitfaced and having anonymous sex. Well, maybe not the first part. Getting shitfaced was his entire thing.

When he got downstairs, the innkeeper blew out a puff of smoke and grinned at him with at least a few gaps in his teeth. “Enjoy your night, sir?”

Arata grunted, leaving a small pouch of coins on the counter. His head hurt like a bitch. He needed rum, stat.

Antares was loud, even in the mornings, and it probably made his headache worse. Arata tried his best to block all of the nonsense out and stumbled his way to the nearest tavern. Slamming the door opened, he called, “RUM.”

Apparently, this was the tavern where he’d been drinking the previous night, because the barkeep recognized him instantly. “So you came back! I got a tankard with your name on it, mate.” And a huge tankard of rum was set onto the bar for him.

In his twenty-six years of living and twenty years of being an irredeemable alcoholic, he had never seen a more beautiful sight.

“You, my good man, are the best Antares has to offer.” A voice completely devoid of any tone, and yet he meant every word. As to whether the barkeep knew the depth of his non-feelings was not up to him, but something must have come across, because the rum kept coming even after he’d downed the tankard in approximately thirty seconds. (It might have been more like three minutes, but Arata had never been very good at keeping track of time.)

Across the room, he glimpsed a waitress talking with a customer. To the untrained eye, they looked normal, but to drunk Arata, there was clearly something going on. “Those two banging?” he asked in what he thought was a whisper. (It was a loud one.)

“How did you know that?”

“Part of my job.” He didn’t mention how he could sense sexual tension whether he liked it or not, and most all of the time he did not. Some couples were more obvious than this one, but the way the customer gazed at the waitress’s bosom rather than her eyes said it all. Not that he was completely at fault, with the way the waitress was touching his knee. “Get a room.” Nobody needed to seem them publicly go at it.

Thank God he’d lost the ability to love, fall in love, or be attracted to anyone unless he was blackout drunk. Emotions were too complicated. Witnessing them was gross. Being the one to predict such things was a burden, because it meant always doing for others what he had always been unable to do for himself.

…which was probably why all of his matches always went up in flames. Not that anybody who hired him ever mentioned that part. A matchmaker who hadn’t known love since he was six years old. What kind of cruel joke was that?

He took another sip of his rum. He was thinking far too much for this early in the morning. No wonder he was going on vacation. Even if this voyage was just another excuse to run away from anything and everything. Including the fact that deep down, he wanted to know what love felt like again.

♡coded by uxie♡

 

[CrimsonInk]

THE DESCENDANT.

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DAHLIA

BLACKWATER

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

Numb | Lost

OUTFIT

Back to old rags

LOCATION

THE SHIP

MENTIONS

TALULLAH | MILO

INTERACTS

N/A — OPEN

SURVIVOR — 2WEI.

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Everyone is a monster to someone

Since you are so convinced that I am yours. I will be it.

THE INTERLUDE.

The child who lied on the sand doesn’t recall the journey back to the ship. Her world around her shattered leaving her disconnected from the reality she lived. Eyes that once had a glimpse of light were taken by the graymaws who deluded her for their own gluttonous pleasure.

Seeing the ghosts who abandoned her left her feeling hopeful in their presence once more, but to have childish dreams about them was her own fault. To reach out to strangers who had their faces left her foolish and ashamed by her actions. Tears that tore her heart were spilled for nothing.

Walking along the docks Dahlia moved slowly with facial features resting to their default position. Locking to shield her from experiencing the pain she felt on that beach.

Burning the memory into embers so that it can never come up again. That numbness expanded all along her body but her heart. Frustration gripped her with the danger of her anger beginning to creep from the grounded pain. She needed to punch something. She needed to yell, scream, or do something to keep herself from drowning.

The woman could feel that rise of untaught human behavior started to discourse reason from her cognition. Maybe a drink could help. A drink sounded fucking fantastic. Captain, where’s your hardest fucking liquor you plain breadstick.

♡coded by uxie♡

 

[AnimeGenork]

ROSALINE TOUCHARD.

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ROSA

Enamored

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

Worthless Harlot

OUTFIT

Muted, Not Naked

LOCATION

A Room

MENTIONS

Tiberius, Lexis, Dahlia

INTERACTS

N/A

TAGS

Nifty Gao CrimsonInk

PUT YOUR RECORDS ON — RITT MOMNEY.

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THINKING OF YOU

keeps me awake. Dreaming of you keeps me asleep. Being with you keeps me alive.

THE INTERLUDE.

Being in her line of work, Rosaline had years ago come to terms with the fact that scores of people knew what her breasts looked like. But that was all part of her business, part of the transaction, and, lately, part of her freedom to sleep around as she pleased. She had not expected that she would drink a hallucinogenic that would, effectively, cause her to strip in front of half of the Leviathan’s passengers, including the Captain.

The worst part was that the Captain hadn’t even looked.

Though, to be fair, it had been a traumatic night for all involved, and there were injuries all over the place. Thanks to the man who called himself Rat, Rosaline had managed to completely avoid such a fate, and she fully intended on thanking him the next time their paths crossed. But as morning dawned over the shores of Algol, as she would later learn it was called, she had finally come to her senses to realize she was half-naked in front of too many people at once. It was one thing if she had been drunk at some sort of party (that was an acceptable place for mass-nakedness), but on a beach? It was truly dreadful. And all who saw her simply looked at her with pity, an emotion she abhorred being on the receiving end of. (Unless, of course, it got her laid. This was not such a time.)

Thankfully, a gentle giant she recognized from her days in Siroc had given her something to cover up with, even as he carried her unfortunate sort-of-roommate, the doctor. Tiberius, she remembered his name being, and she thanked him with an embarrassed smile as she covered herself. The morning had brought a chill with it, and unfortunately everyone was too distracted to bother with schemes of needing warmth and arms around her.

And yet this was the first time in a very long time that she actually needed arms around her to ease the pain of living.

Having changed into a dress that was a much more muted color than the one in which she’d embarrassed herself, she has shut herself away in an unoccupied room, leaving it dark. Door locked, her shame hidden away so none may witness the non-smile upon her face.

She couldn’t tell what was worse: the nightmare that witch had wrought upon her, or the tea she had drunk to escape it. After all, how likely was it that the Captain would go swimming with her. Rosaline had made absolutely no progress in that area since she’d boarded the ship. For him. And for what? It was like nothing she did was ever good enough for him. No amount of love would ever make him see just how wonderful she could be, if given the chance.

Maybe she was entirely worthless as she’d always feared. Nothing but an object for others’ use.

The darkness surrounding her seemed to become heavier at the thought, and Rosaline felt a tightening in her chest. What was the point of being this beautiful, this alluring, this good in bed if no one valued her? If the one person she wanted to look at her simply… wouldn’t?

Maybe she should… give up… on the—

No. That was too hasty. Far too rash. There was still a chance. After all, the storm had been a bit of a distraction, as had everything that had happened on that accursed beach. Rosaline couldn’t truly blame the handsome Captain for not looking at her during all that time. He’d had other matters to attend to. For now, she would simply have to distract and amuse herself with the others on board. And my, weren’t there many a fine lady to lavish her attentions upon. It did her heart good to make beautiful women smile. Or more, if they desired it.

Some light made its way back into her chest as she lifted her head from her folded arms. Yes, this had been quite the traumatic experience, but she would find. She had endured worse before. Resilience was one of the many traits a harlot gained during the years of flagrant sexuality. And Rosaline was nothing if not flagrantly sexual. She would be alright. Somehow. Someway.

Rising to her feet, Rosaline put her hand on the doorknob, intent on finding solace not in a sexual partner, but in the closest person to a sister she had. Dear Dahlia, the one who made her feel like a real person. Moreso than any woman she could woo, Dahlia would always make her feel human. Like she was worth something.

If there was a reason to stay on the ship besides the Captain, it was Dahlia.

♡coded by uxie♡

 

[yokai.]

the heretic.

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Melchior

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

not evil anymore -> evil again

OUTFIT

disheveled

LOCATION

zenith

MENTIONS

n/a

INTERACTS

nemo

CRUDE DRAWING OF AN ANGEL — caroline polachek.

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eternal return

yes, i gave you fire in your veins, but what will you do with it?

PROLOGUE.

tw: suicidal ideation, alcohol abuse, manipulation

Languid smoke filled the air, turning the night into the right kind of hazy numbing chasm for Melchior to jump head first into several bottles of liquor. He’d hardly ever done this before until then, and if he had, he had never drank to such a degree that he’d mistaken a bathroom mirror for the devil, a bridge’s ledge for salvation. The buoyant rush that had once lifted his chest and purged his mind had long since dissipated, replaced now with a persisting dread that refused to leave.

Was there something he was missing? What was he doing wrong? The blood he had on his hands, it was like he could almost see it then, slick and dark, clinging stubbornly to the undersides of his nail beds. How many corpses had he cut up in search of truth? How much more of a debt did he wish to owe? Who was he, if not his theories, his science? And if they were all invalid, then what purpose was there to keep going?

Small fists knocking persistently on a locked study door, a boy’s strained sobbing, ‘Did I do something? Father…? Why won’t you answer…?!’

In an alarming amount of time, his thoughts had somehow completely spiralled from his failures as a scientist to agonized mumblings about childhood, tongue loosened and shields down. He hadn’t even realized he’d started thinking out loud until the barmaid looked at him with something like pity when she served him his seventh glass of absinthe, to which his response was a miffed, muttered, ”Oh, fuck this,” before tossing a few coins on the counter, standing precariously up from his seat only to walk out and never look back.

Sometime, somewhere, he found himself in an alleyway, his vision eclipsed by spinning shadows of brick and stone, their lamp-lit edges swaying enough for him to stumble almost face-first into a wall. With only a hand out in front of him to hold the bulk of himself up, Melchior collapsed onto cobblestone within seconds, arm haphazardly lain over his eyes as he silently wondered if this was going to be the hill he died on. He was unable to tell where he’d come from, and where else to venture forth. He only knew he was on his way to something final, the dreaded abandonment of his pursuit. An unshakeable faith in himself, broken.

He would’ve started praying, then, if only he knew how to believe in something other than his mind. And even that, had failed him.

Then— a blur of movement, along with a hard clang of something hitting the dumpster lid beside him had Melchior jolting up to blink blearily at honeyed eyes, fixated so singularly on him. They’d come hurtling down from above, like some kind of winged creature from old wives’ tales, only to stare openly at his liquor-addled state as if he were some kind of circus oddity. Sluggish confusion, then a sense of unbearable dread at the hyper-scrutiny filled Melchior’s chest in an instant. He was done making bargains, through with trying to make sense of things that refused to be understood. Strangers who approached him in alleyways during the dead of night? They either sought a deal or vengeance. He averted his eyes, hoping they’d simply take their leave if he pretended they didn’t exist.

They, unfortunately, did not.

”Are you Dr. Vlisseghem?”

Melchior couldn’t help a small twitch of his mouth at the unearned title, bitter humour colouring his mind. His reputation preceded him, indeed. Hardly anyone called him that in these parts of the city. A foreigner, then. A fever-bright look in their eyes made him pause as they continued speaking, some but not all of their words reaching his drunken ears.

”Spit it out, who are you and what do you want?” He said impatiently. His neck was starting to ache from looking up for too long, and he was beginning to feel small. Unacceptable. ”...And get down from there, you look ridiculous. If your intention was to threaten me, you’re not doing a very good job at it.”

A bit of hesitance, then, to Melchior’s surprise, immediate obedience.

”I want to be fixed. Need. Need to be fixed. I’m…sick,” came their barely uttered admission, tentative like a newborn fawn trying to stand on trembling hooves. Yet desperate hope tinged their next words, and Melchior had no choice but to listen as they held his gaze with self-conscious conviction. This was no ailment to be treated with ordinary medicine, or else they wouldn’t have turned to him, of all practitioners, for help. ”Can you fix me?”

The beginnings of yet another bargain. And though he knew he should turn away, he asked heedlessly, ”What exactly am I fixing?”

The explanation was nervously offered with acute detail: a runaway saint from the Cascades, forsaken by their stars and cursed to never hear them again. An unassuming false prophet, come to the underbelly of Zenith for a chance at absolution, and willing to cross any line to obtain it, including going against the very will of the stars. And most interesting of all, a deep sense of humility and tolerance for extremities, content with an existence steeped in suffering for the sake of divinity, and never wanting for anything more fiercely than that.

It was an offering, more than a bargain, really. One that he couldn’t refuse, not when his inebriated mind slowly realized at once the opportunity presented to him. And it was like basking in the sun after being held in the dark for so long, a fickle joyous revelation. Finally, a beating heart readily lain on the altar for him to sink his teeth into, a shiny new piece for his grand design. This. This was what he was missing, all along. Of course, this was it. It had to be.

Melchior laughed, an unrestrained bark of wonder, fervent and delirious. ”Perhaps something in the blood? Bone marrow? No—ear canals?” he speculated out loud to himelf, the gears of his mind turning ceaselessly in spite of the absinthe. At some point, he’d gotten up from his place on the ground to pace in unsteady circles, nodding giddily to himself in thought. A live specimen. An exploration of divinity. The complications of rigor mortis, eliminated. His lips moved in incoherent mutterings in an attempt to capture the wild animal of his mind. ”Alive. Of course. Of course!”

He turned to—Nemo, was it?—and smiled, a wolfish, prying thing. He did not know the language of the Covenant, never cared for their teachings to study it in detail, but knew enough how to cut through to the raw sinews of dogma, twisting them around to get what he wanted. It didn’t matter if there was very little sanctity in his words, only that they yielded results; such was the way of prayer, and at the same time science, after all.

”The stars have abandoned you, have they? You poor thing. All that devotion, to be wasted on deaf ears,” Melchior murmured, imitating sympathy he simply did not, could not, feel. ”I can certainly try to fix you, and more. Dissolve your brokenness into your basest parts, for you to be reborn whole. You are not pure as you are now, no, but if you are willing to endure what's necessary to become pure, I guarantee the stars will have no choice but to return just to watch.” He extended an open palm to be taken and shook by a tentative, then readily given, hand. A promise. A pact.

”So let's give them a good show, shall we?”

♡coded by uxie♡

 

[Gao]

THE KINGSLAYER.

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船井 蓮

FUNAI REN

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

HATEFUL

OUTFIT

SNEEKY SLEEKY

LOCATION

MED BAY

MENTIONS

ILYA, ROSALINE, DANTE, TIBERIUS, DOLORES.

INTERACTS

NADA.

BLUE AS INDIGO — TIGERCUB.

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THE RED SEA IS

named for the dead algae within it
maybe I too am red for all the
slaughter carried within me

THE INTERLUDE.

The crew had begun to speculate the motives behind loss of sense and unprovoked attacks— the tea, but hosted like a sun-hot kernel in a distrustful shell is someone who had every reason to believe one of them must have been intentional.

Magnus.

Feels the name like an echo, tastes it like a mouthful of ice. Wants to spit it out in bones and sheaves of skin.

Of course the bounty-hunter would attack someone he cared for, there is no harm he can bring to Ren without endangering the precious information that currently keeps his nape free of laceration, but there remains no governance for those in his close circles.

So he’d shadowed Ilya since their return to the ship, how bittersweet for a threadbare man to spare himself thin with another offer of intentioned comfort. It makes Ren want to drown when given the blanket and tea, this is not how it is meant to go. Ilya is someone who always gives and only takes a blade in the gut in return, and Ren cares for little except to wipe the shadows from their face.

Their hand clasps his shoulder and he feels part of the world fall silent, subdues the dread that stirs somewhere; this, always, the distant worry that he is to blame for all of it, a lingering burden fated to make everything worse. They drift away to their medical duty and Ren settles out of the way with the blanket across his lap and tea left untouched at his side. Just some stray that seeks only to encroach on the sideline like a vision of ash, left alone but enough to skim the waters of their minds that he is still there.

Ren watches the doctor and his work, both distracted and focussed in a chiaroscuro of time and thought. Does not explain why he lingers, he is grateful that Ilya does not ask. To share what shadow haunts his periphery would be a death sentence, summoning a bad omen into existence to finish what they could not complete on the sand. Cannot tell anyone, same as he cannot do anything about it. Feels flayed as he always does when helpless, the soft and ripe grief of mourning that he has been nothing but useless. Inhabits a space with the assumption his presence is a dangerous one, reconsiders if staying in anyone’s bed at night is a good idea anymore.

He should have checked Ilya back on the shores of Algol. Maybe he would have noticed the wound if he wasn’t so preoccupied with Dolores. He should have looked for Ilya or Dante or Rosaline first, he should not have snapped at Tiberius, he should not have left Dolores, he should have fled the inn the moment Magnus left the room, should not have been stupid enough to board in the first fucking place—

Teeth impale the side of his tongue, sinking little moon arcs of blood to slice through the silt of oblivion that held his attention hostage. Casts warm saffron to a thousand different shades of molten red and dovetails the certitude that he needs to stop licking at his wounds.

He stays in the med-bay like a warden of ink, facing the door as he dares death to arrive and fully take the man. He has placed bets with the reaper only hours ago and thinks the crude knife he hides beneath the blanket is enough to level their dispute. Silent and distanced, things are much easier when young and the only monsters that needed to be vanquished were imaginary things beneath the bed.

He lingers for hours, watching the door. Iodine black eyes monitor each newcomer who enters and leaves, yet otherwise he makes no movement. The underlying fear that permeates through what he sees and touches, a little-death of each stupid decision that has led him from beginning to end and will do it all again.

The tea is empty when Ren finally stands, folds the blanket and leaves it in the chair. The door to the med-bay is pulled to a snapped shut behind him.

Magnus probably knows where he sleeps most nights.

It would be only fair for Ren to know the same in return.

♡coded by uxie♡

 

[parhelion]

THE MARIONETTE.

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NEMO

THE
MARIONETTE

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

oh u know . cascadolic guilt.

LOCATION

ZENITH [4 yrs ago]

MENTIONS

none.

INTERACTS

Melchior

SOMETHING WICKED— STARSET.

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HOW CAN I TELL-

-if I am not well!
I've lost myself!
I've come undone!

PROLOGUE.

Zenith is not quiet. It is brighter, more fluid in motion, and so utterly different from the Cascades. There are no origami lanterns to light their way when it gets dark. There is no star-shine, no cold white light: it’s all gold, gold, gold here. Like a feeble imitation of warmth, but warmth has never reached them quite right. No surprise then, that they have quietly removed themselves from it as best they can, slinking out of the lowliness of twisting streets and on to the much more familiar height of rooftops, chasing a singular trail through the city. Words and words and words. What power such things have. Hope.

A sign swung in light breeze below, creaking and rattling. Faded and worn signage engraved into wood hint of alcohol, hint of a den of impiety that has drawn patrons in throughout the night. They settled at the edge of the roof to wait. Again.

Nemo cannot keep themselves still. Fidgety, shaky thing that they are. Shaky with the exertion of waiting, or low blood pressure from no real substantial meal in a couple of days, or just shaky in general. Trembling child, wayward boy, lost in constant motion, constant sound. There is a persistent buzzing around them. Is it the flies circling the trash in the dumpsters below, or a product of their own restless mind?

They have wondered occasionally how they would be received if they were to return back. Child in the tower, forsaking his wandering ways. And yet, every time the door below opens, spilling a crack of bright light contrast in the shoddy darkness of the dingy alleyway, Nemo found themselves expectantly tensing at the roof-gutter’s edge.

Once, twice, thrice. Not him. Definitely not her. Not that one, either, and they wished that one wouldn't sing so loudly and off-key as he stumbled home.

The door opened again after a short interlude, and quiet observation (or instinct, or their own desperation) said maybe that one. The stranger matched the descriptions they’d pieced together by hovering at the edges of various rumor-mills: dark hair and pointed features, an angel fallen from grace. Nemo studied him, this odd scientist with a hundred-and-one rumors following his name, as he staggered down the alleyway.

He was shorter than them–that, Nemo could not have expected. To be larger than life in their mind should also translate to larger than them in life. But the celestials work in mysterious ways and anyway, if he’s shorter than them, it isn’t by much.

As the stranger staggered down the alleyway and came to rest on the floor, propped against the grit of the wall, Nemo slipped from the edge of the roof onto the dumpster lid below. The clang of their feet on it took them a second to register; the sound arrived belatedly to their ears, making them flinch. Their mind caught up, reminded them to breathe, that of course they’d make noise here. Why would they not?

What to say?

Nemo tugged in a breath first, as if that could stop their shaking. Hiss-hiss-buzz in their head and the faint taste of nausea under their tongue. But they have to say something. Because this Doctor has to appraise them and find them worthy. If he doesn’t, there is no one else left who will.

“…Are you Dr. Vlisseghem? I heard about… whatever his name was. I forget. I’m not good with…the names of Zenith’s nobility.” Or talking, really, there’s odd little pauses scattered through his words, and he’s suddenly hyper-consciously aware of it, regretting every word that comes out of his mouth. He tried a different approach, but the small-talk didn’t settle any better with them, didn’t feel quite right. “You… took so long in there. I thought that you weren’t going to come out.”

The reply they earned was impatient, scathing, slightly slurred by the weight of alcohol. ‘Get down from there, you look ridiculous. If you’re trying to threaten me, you’re not doing a good job.’

Nemo flinched back a step from the unexpectedness of the tone, the lid clanging beneath their feet. Nemo quietly regained their composure (as much as they could, at least) and dropped down to the ground. Cobblestones. Solid ground beneath their feet. Lamp-light, catching them in sharp, uncomfortable golden shards.

“I’m not… trying to threaten you. Or… I didn’t mean to.” Their tone indicated their immense discomfort—and maybe even their hurt—with the implication. They dared a few timid steps further in his direction, like a stray cat creeping closer despite the threat of a boot.

“I want to be fixed,” Nemo stubbornly announced, tilting his chin just slightly, as if doing so can help him pretend he’s not wholly uncomfortable with the dark eyes on him; the attention that he drew to himself. He corrected himself with a mumble. “Need. Need to be fixed.”

How does one quantify a need into something so simple as words, when words are one of the most difficult things to spit out? How do they explain, cohesively, the itch in their skin and the rot in their bones and the need to cut it all out, out, out?

There is want, which aches something fierce, and then there is need which is some deeper and more insidious thing. Nemo drew back into themselves on reflex, trembling limbs retreating to hug around their chest. Hands on their arms, digging in with their nails through the fabric of the shirt, but the material is a natural buffer against any urges to claw into their own skin. Briefly, the thought crossed their mind to wonder what they looked like to him. Some pale, wide-eyed thing no doubt, standing unsettled in the home of his own bones.

“I’m… sick,” Nemo’s voice is barely a whisper, but it echoed in his ears, like blasphemy, like signing their name along a dotted line of some sacrilegious contract. The Oracles and the Order and the Stars do not speak gracefully of intervention against their celestial wills. But the Stars do not speak to Nemo at all anymore, nor can the others more holy than he reach him here to stop him from asking. “…Can you fix me?”

And what exactly am I fixing?

What, indeed.

“…Me,” Nemo offered vaguely again. What an apprehensive, tired thing they are; nervous of the act of baring their creased soul like white-fabric on a washing board, and yet knowing the necessity of such an act. Wide eyes begged do not judge me and find me unworthy, I have nothing left—as their quiet voice told the story of who they were and who they’d been. How close to the sky they’ve been, and how distant from it they have become.

About prophecies and premonitions-which, they think, are curses and promises both in themselves, because belief can so often be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Though this they did not tell him, because men of science need to believe in the impossible to be able to succeed where none have before. Instead, they moved on, telling him of the tinnitus static in their ears and the way their heart always beat too fast and too unsteadily in their chest, and how sometimes they couldn’t stay present as themselves.

All the things that they needed to fix, all the sin they needed to cut out like the tumor that it was. None of it was words that they wanted to say—who wants to admit their own transgressions, let alone to some paper bag drunk in an alleyway—but did a doctor not need to know his potential patient?

Nemo shifted on their feet as their quiet voice tapered out and they struggled to find anything more to say, doing their best to ignore their own little continuing trembles. As if pretending that they weren’t trembling meant that Melchior couldn’t see it either.

Nemo wasn’t even quite sure what it was that was causing it. Sickness. Cold. Hope. Apprehension. One of the four, probably. It was undoubtedly dangerous, a run-away putting their life in a stranger’s hands. The Covenant would not appreciate their transgressions. Running away was one thing, offering themselves up in a deliberate act of blasphemy against the celestial was another. Neither would be received well.

Melchior laughed—he laughed!—and they dared to hope. Hope was the thing with feathers, beating tintamarre in their chest, a flying bird with land forever in mind. At some point during their explanation, the other man had climbed to his feet. Instinctively, Nemo adapted to make themselves smaller again, drawing away to give him the space for his frenzied pacing, tracking every single motion. Every twist and turn, until the moment when he turned back to face them head-on.

The Doctor smiled, a bright and welcoming thing. All of his words swirled in their mind, repeated, overlapped. A new constant stream of sound drowning out the buzzing in their ears, matched with the backing of their own beating heart, executioner's drumbeat that that was.

Endure what’s necessary. (This, they could do.)

You are not pure as you are now.

Endure what’s necessary. (Couldn't they?)

The stars have abandoned you, have they?

Endure what's necessary. (They had to try.)

I can certainly try to fix you, and more.

They swayed, somewhat unsteadily, under the sudden crushing weight of warring relief and terror. Hazy eyes found the offered hand and instinctively took a step back. They glanced up, searched for the stars in the dark sky overhanging. Wondered if the celestial galaxy above missed Nemo as much as he missed their words. Knew the answer: after all, if the stars were capable of missing him, why would they have turned away from him?

He swallowed hard.

Stars, hide your fire. Let light not see my black and deep desires. They were, as ever, an abomination; born weak and born wanting for things that they knew they should not. Nemo reached to take the outstretched hand quickly, before he had any opportunity to draw it back. Before he had any time to think through the haze of alcohol that clouded his judgement, any time to abandon them. Before they had any time to question the sympathetic words or recognize any sort of darkness lurking in the appraising gaze that held them to such worth.

“Thank you,” they whispered, because they didn’t know what else to say.

♡coded by uxie♡

 

[Gao]

THE CAPTAIN.

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LEXIS

THE CAPTAIN

ㅎㅎ

MOOD

[ TWITCHY EYE ]

OUTFIT

THE ZESTY VESTY

LOCATION

CAPTAIN'S QUARTERS.

MENTIONS

MALTY!

INTERACTS

NADA

FUNERAL — TIGERCUB.

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WHEN GOD TOOK

the rib out of man
he left him missing one bar
a deliberate half-closure

THE INTERLUDE.

It’s easy business, grasping the extended hand to pull himself back onto the Leviathan. Back to the comfort of the deck beneath his boots and lapping of foam and tenacity of their situation.

It is all a rush, hurried shoes and carried bodies, orders and movement where Lexis can fall into a secure but not comfortable rote. Structured mechanics of things that finally make sense; he is a man who likes foresight, likes strategy, likes to organise the next ten, twenty steps to remain ahead of catastrophe. Now the momentum accelerates and he goes with it because he has no choice and the common tautness in his jaw finds belonging here, the frowning lines that shape his face finally align with the dour mood that haunts the crew, the assumed malignancy of his flat voice and supine expression now harmonize and this is one of few circumstances he feels and looks at ease.

A place where small-talk does not exist, where action is more important than words, where there is no time to agonize on eye-contact or verbal etiquette because it pales in comparison to the cardinal necessities.

Start for Antares. The first command passed throughout crew.

Ration water. The second command passed. Gather what drink you can find.

Still, for some, namely wealthy guests that idled behind on the ship and bathed callow in their decision, turn accusing and impatient to the aborted notion that indulgence is promised to run rampant aboard a grand ship such as this. Some part of him wants to apologize, offer to make amends in the future when supplies are in excess. Another part of him wants to tell them to jump overboard and quench their thirst with a drink of the sea.

He does neither, walks on and keeps responses curt and direct in a manner that in these plights appears focused rather than the usual rude. The burlaps of questions hurled at his feet like a warpath of traps, he does not have all the answers but he understands what they must do in the present— think not the past.

The ship is brighter and louder than Algol, so much that when the door and latch close behind him, reality slams back in from all sides with its quiet static. Without the noise to keep him moving and everything settling inert around him, unwelcome thoughts sweep in like a draft to slather disquiet. He is left burning alight with that urgency to be doing something; the unrelenting weight of it.

Alone in the Captain’s quarters like a surge of haste, a recluse he often recoiled to for solitude now feels stagnant, stale and dead. His hands, his body, both are better served for doing something, and he is quick to round the desk and drag out a carton of wine from beneath it, a dozen or so rattling bottles he’d purchased not for their contents, but the amber glass encasing it. The receptacles for his model ships, now a valuable supply for their voyage to Antares.

Were it not for the quiet of the room, for the cold conviction he finds himself in, Lexis might not have noticed how it all feels too much. He recognises it as he has before, he’d been getting better but the constant apprehension for dying crew only serves to undo all that progress. Something that impales his throat like an iron wrought palisade; of course he did not mean to take them through a storm, take them off board and into the maws of Algol and cast haunt and murder and blood and bullet to their feet like scattered seeds.

And what does it mean to live with regret, hauling that string of bodies like a wreath of wild flowers, spliced forget-me-nots because he forgets not a single one. A sliver comes loose like a flake of gold leaf, a gap of veil to connect both the here and then, back across the water onto that isle where gunfire is still audible in his ears and he can still hear the sound of Maltke’s body when it hits the sand. That death-knell, that bloodless plunge of his lungs when he realized—

He breathes out before he is consumed and sets a bottle back beside the others, a mindless inspection where he considered keeping just one. It would restore his sleeping pattern that is sure will grow ruinous for the next month or so, but the crew, bruised and battered bodies, bruised and battered souls, are the victims of his choices and need this more than him.

To separate a captain from his guilt would need more than a white valley wine, would need the crescent of some godly knife. It's what he thinks, this is the reward and punishment for his position: heroism and loss. No more is he able to give up the ship is he able to quell that blame, salt away the ache in his side and chest. He must go about his daily rituals the same way as if he had saved them, plead indifference because if he does not—

If he does not—

Another exhale, shakier this time. He clenches the muscle in his jaw until his teeth ache like cavities, stands to his full height and tightens the grip on the crate until his knuckles bleach themselves bone-white.

Only when his hands steady themselves does he dare leave the room.

♡coded by uxie♡

 

[Pepsionne]

THE ACROBAT.

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PERCY

GRIFFIN

MOOD

HAUNTED

OUTFIT

Velvet King

LOCATION

THE LEVIATHAN

MENTIONS

KADER

INTERACTS

TAGS!!

YOUR FACE — WISP.

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WHO AM I WHEN I FEEL?

What dies in me when I am me?

CHAPTER THREE PRELUDE.

Percy disembarked from the shores of Algol in a much quieter fashion than having arrived. Guilt weighed heavy on his psyche. He had nearly attacked the stranger who had eventually introduced themselves as Kader. Percy was nothing but a wild animal attempting to bite the hand extended in an offer of peace.

His hunger for stardom had opened up the pit of unhealed wounds within him. They dripped with swollen infection in the husk of who he thought he was.

The breeze of salt water that clipped the side of the dinghy was a cool touch against his flushed cheeks. The tea was finally beginning to ooze its way out of his system, worse than any hangover he’d had before. Unlike alcohol, which obscured his haunting thoughts with blurry shapes and smoke, this drink had given him the opportunity to peer within himself clearly. And Percy did not like what he saw.

The main deck was a flurry of movement. Injured passengers sought out more comprehensive medical care, shock weary survivors paced absently upon reboarding.

Truthfully, Percy had missed much of the horror that had taken place along the shores. His memory gapped large holes of black, the fabric of it drooping wearily like a blanket on its last leg. Images were what stuck out to him the most, namely the look of barely contained fear on Kader’s face when Percy’s emotions had been allowed to run unchecked.

The young acrobat began a pitiful stride to his quarters below deck. Clothing torn, face smeared with dirt and sand--he was a far cry from the zippered up performer most knew him to be.

A silent fear devoured the vacuum of space in his stomach the longer he waded through his memory of the horror filled events along the shore. Seeing Kader shrink back from his demanding presence, however briefly, it reminded him of the awe filled looks that painted the crowd during a performance. He had clawed for so long to regain that feeling again, and like a dog tasting blood, he was now insatiable for it.

How long could he go, he wondered, before his appetite for adoration sunk its teeth into the far more vulnerable flesh of fear, instead? Percy paused outside his room, hand frozen on the cold metal of his doorknob. It was an answer he would rather not know.

♡coded by uxie♡

 

[picklemouse]

THE ARCHER.

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Knox
Hood

------------

➵ ➵

MOOD

Dreamy boy, dreaming away

OUTFIT

Classic Knox

LOCATION

Like a bird up on the main mast; Moored off the shore of Algol

MENTIONS

Captain Lexis, Delores, Cosette, Lara, & Maltke

INTERACTS

None

Workers Songs - Dropkick Murphys.

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Yeah, this one's for the

workers who toil night and day
By hand and by brain to earn your pay

Interlude [Knox's Prologue].

The moon hung high in the sky, which was clear of all clouds, and scattered with twinkling stars. Stars, whose distance didn’t seem so far, as if one could reach out and touch the brightest, fattest, shiniest one of all. Midway up the main mast, sitting aloft with the top sail on the platform, sat one Knox Hood. A young man halfway through his twenties with ruddy brown hair and eyes full of stars much like the ones above his head. One leg was crooked up to balance his posture against the mast, while the other stretched straight ahead of him. A gentle breeze swayed the vessel in a calming way. So calm in fact, you’d be surprised to know they had made it through a storm not 20 hours ago.

A treacherous time to be sure. He didn’t know what was going on when his deep sleep was interrupted by Delores pounding on his cabin door. The air wasn’t right when he finally came to his senses, the pandemonium of crew and passenger alike in the hallway. One great rock took him to one wall of his small room, followed by a lurch to the left which knocked him off his feet. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” A declaration which he found turned heads, and yet, to him, were as natural as “Please”, “Thank you”, and “What can I do for yeh?” It drove his mother right out of her mind. “Don’t you be calling out to those three for nothing.” One could argue being tossed around your room on a ship was very much not nothing. A thought which prompted a worry that in order to see her again, he’d have to survive whatever hell Gaothulu, Solas God of the Sea was gifting them this fateful night.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph indeed.

The following hours were spent assuring the guests of The Leviathan were safe and organized, while also assessing the damage to their store and ship. Captain Lexis steered the ship onto a safer course, into an alcove of calmer waters, determining they were safe enough to drop their anchor and moor. An expedition was formed, and the lifeboats were filled with crewmates and passengers alike. Some with damaged rooms, or a sense of adventure, crewmates who were tasked with seeking help and freshwater, many with fear dancing in their irises. Knox couldn’t blame them. He had been given quite a fright himself.

The boy wasn’t what you’d call “sea ready”, but when is anyone truly ready for the greatest adventure of their life? Life as The King’s favourite archer was not a life he had ever wanted for himself. Admittedly, there was a part of him that thought life in the castle would be exciting. Full of epic battles, and round table plotting, sexy secrets and romance. In reality, he spent most of his four years of service high in a tower along the castle wall, tucked away with just a sliver of a window to observe and aim his arrows in the case of an attack.
Attacks never came. He spent most of his time leaning against the stone and practicing his bird calls, or scribbling down bits of poems and stories. The truth was the grand populace of Zenith were too enamoured with the crumbs they got from the crown, or concerned with avoiding petty sentencing for trivial offences, such as missing taxes or resorting to theft to feed their families. The people worked hard, and the court and crown did their best to take their majority share.

That being said, Knox never forgot what they took from him and his family.

Despite his years in service, as agreed upon by The King himself, Knox still received letters from his parents detailing their financial struggles despite his salary (which he sent home every week). Taxes were always rising, and the slow foreclosure of the Knox family farmland. Citing various reasons, which if all were to be believed, he should expect to see a mess of royal highways cutting through where they used to herd sheep and grow potatoes.

Having been aboard The Leviathan for around three months now, Knox could say with full confidence that he preferred the view from the mast greatly over the view from the castle’s arrow slit. He had endured a particularly dull day growing older and underutilized at his post when he heard one of his captains mention the opportunity to work on King Rowan’s newest ship.

They needed someone organized.
“Oh, I’m very organized, and I enjoy helping people.”
Well good, because they needed someone good with people.
“I love people, and not to break, they love me.”
Of course, they required someone to represent the King well.
“Oh, you can count on me, captain.”
We need someone with naval experience.
“Definitely. Yeah I’ve sailed a bit.”

Lying. Through. His. Teeth.

Anything to get the hell out of this stoney prison, maybe see the world a bit. The slight pay increase wasn’t bad either. A little help from a friendly conversation and a little sleight of hand, Knox Hood ended up at the top of a now slightly smaller stack of applicants. The role of Quartermaster was very logistical. A lot to do with managing storage, and he was thankful to have not been called upon to navigate the ship along its journey, Captain Lexis had that covered. In ways, Knox liked to consider his position much like Guest Services. He delighted in getting to know all the passengers. Easier to scope them out, find some like minded friends, or better yet, some of the wealthier clientele who wouldn’t miss a trinket or doo-dad he could trade out for some more wares to sell or gifts to give.

Either way, he elected to remain on the ship while most of the crew departed on their search. He didn’t mind, even though the scuppers were flooded, and it took him the better part of the afternoon with a set of buckets to bail out all the water. Generally speaking, it was a quiet day. Most took the day to nap after the ruckus of the storm, some were visibly shaken and taking comfort in a hot meal prepared by Lara. Personally, he had no answers about the state of the ship or when the rest would be back, nor when they would resume their trip to Sirocco. What he lacked in information, he made up with in stories and conversation to lift people’s spirits.

That was perhaps his favourite part of his job on The Leviathan - An impressive name for such a moment in his life - He got to talk to people, learn about their lives, and dreams. They listened to his stories, which he loved, and he no longer went days without speaking to a soul. There was more to be scribbled down in his little brown notebook than his anarchist thoughts. Beauty and nature was his preference to politics and stone walls. Beauty surrounded them, even here in the grayest place he might ever see in his life.

At this moment, he wondered if she was resting peacefully, and if she had found the book of poetry he left by her door, hoping there was no nosy passenger sifting through the pages to find the poem he tucked within. Words for Cosette Martel, and Cosette Martel only.

Knox grinned up at the stars, folding his arms behind his head. Was it love? He didn’t know, he’d never been able to get someone off his mind like this. There have been a few flings in his life, and an unfortunate heartbreak, but what he felt for this Goddess with a sharp mind and an even sharper tongue was like nothing else he’d ever felt. Time will tell, he supposed.

A loud bang in the distance jolted him out of his daydream.
Was that a gunshot?
Did that come from the ship or the shore?

The ship moored close enough to the shore to see small outlines of his colleagues and guests milling about on the gray shore. Were they having a bonfire? He didn’t see any fire. Whatever they were all doing, they seemed to be having fun. The energy of this area was strange to him. Everything was gray. Everything felt muted or muffled, but that could have been due to the mouthful of mist he inhaled while assisting people onto the lifeboats.

There were tales of a land where the water took men’s memory, though he always assumed them to be exaggerations, maybe even an excuse for excessive drink adleing the mind. Perhaps there was some truth to the stories. He would have to ask Captain Lexis, or maybe Maltke when they return. Two men Knox respected for their time and skill on the sea, and were sure to tell him what he couldn’t find in a book.

With a yawn, he decided it was finally time to retire, lest he fall asleep up on the mast. He had done that once, and awoke with a nasty sunburn on his face. Can’t be having that when he’s trying to pull the prettiest and classiest lady he’s ever known. Deftly, as he had done many times before, Knox looped a rope through buckle he fashioned at his waist with strong leather [imagine a fantasy world carabiner ouuu], gliding smoothly down the main mast.

There really was no difference between this and climbing down the massive redwoods at home. Well, no leaves or branches, but you understand his thought process. His boots hit the deck with a thunk and his hands worked to detach himself from the rope. Everything was quiet, save for the soft creaking as the ship swayed in the night. Tomorrow will be a better day, with good news from the expedition party. He hoped at least.

Was that another gunshot from the shore?

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph.”

♡coded by uxie♡