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- One post per day
- 1-3 posts per week
- One post per week
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- Primarily Prefer Male
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- Fantasy, GrimDark, ModFan, Horror, Historical, D&D, Lovecraft
☾☾☾ EARLY EVENING ☽☽☽
The song was loud, echoing in the Binnesman's ears. He lifted his glass upward, and gestured it slightly in the direction of the singing drunks. His fingers were trembling on the glass. His dark, narrow eyes continued to stare blankly at the signing drunks. His pupils traced that long scar that crossed down from the older of the Blennighamms. He traced it from his ear, down to his lips. The scar was positioned such, that when the Blennighamm opened his mouth to sing, some of his teeth showed, from where the scar had torn his lip. His teeth were yellow, sharp, and had bits of charred asparagus and grilled beans stuck in-between the yellow and the gum. The drunken lot did not look at him. Their song was dying down, as they began to forget the words. They mumbled something, in their own language, about how they could not remember what happened next. They slapped at one another, with weak drunken fists, and complained that it was the other's job to remember the words. But they didn't see the Binnseman toasting them. Regardless, Aatu raised the glass towards his lips. The dill smell was almost suffocating, from so close. It dissipated through the tavern, lost in the hazy smells of smoke, greasy meat, and wheat.
Aatu could hear Vaniela snorting next to him, and then the click of her tongue in her throat. When her tankard hit the table-top, it made his spoon make a resounding "ding" against his plate. He set the glass down without drinking from it. The liquid inside of it sloshed. Aatu turned towards her, with his narrow eyes staring at her mouth. He mimicked her mouth's movements alongside her words. His mouth made the "oh" of "oath", and the hard "effs" of half-slurred swear words, with all of their jagged movements, and jutting syllables. But he did not mimic her sigh. He could hear it, though, and when she sighed, he shut his mouth, and stared down at his cup of the strong smelling alcohol. He saw his reflected in the rippling, slippery liquid. The alcohol within had the consistency of quicksilver, thicker than water, but not meaty like broth, or chalky like milk. It was clear, clear enough that Aatu could see the splintering base of the cup through it. His face looked tired, drawn. The bruise on his cheek had swollen into a pink lump, making his cheekbone seem broader and larger than it was. The yellowing had not subsided, but the purple was dying down. It was a sickly sunset on his skin. The distortion in the cup made his skin wrinkle up and down in the reflection. The Binnesman's nose wrinkled, and he reached for the alcohol, and drank it down, quickly.
It was so bitter that tears sprung to his eyes, but the Binnesman blinked them back. His whites went pink though, from those unexpressed tears. He looked towards his side - towards the Drokk. The boy's sickly skin looked clammy in the limited light, with a strange glow to it in the red-torch light and blue smoke of extinguished candles. His eyes were bright though, orange bouncing off of the blue. Aatu leaned back on the bench, body posture twisted towards the Drokk. His eyes narrowed, the pupils in his eyes as small as pinpricks. His fingers curled tightly on the cup, but his fingertips were still trembling. His index finger, on his left hand, jittered and jabbed at the side of the cup - making a quiet drumming sound. It was perfectly in tempo with a heart beat. Ba-dum, ba-dum. The Binnesman's ears were pounding too, but it wasn't the alcohol. His grip on the cup tightened, and the sound of tense leather creaking quietly underscored the tapping of his fingers. Aatu gave the Drokk one long look without blinking, and then, leaned over the table again. He set the cup on the table. It was entirely empty, whatever liquor was left was seeping in-between the splintered wood, onto the table top.
Aatu cleared his throat, and looked back towards the lancer - and then, again to the Drokk. Ash. That was his name. When the Drokk gave it, Aatu had said it alongside him, a quiet echo of the name, where it didn't quite sit right in his mouth. He had added a hard "er" sound to the end of the name, making his name not Ash - but Asher. Aatu's eyebrows lifted somewhat, dark eyes suddenly round and placid in his face. He listened to Ash-er sigh. The sigh that had escaped his lips was different than Vaniela's sigh. It was not a sigh of sorrow - but it seemed to be one of relief. There wasn't a misery in it, a hung head. There was quick looks around the room, a rabbit looking for the trap. The Binnesman smiled thinly. It suited him better, giving his features their best possible order - rather than the scrunched up scowl, that made him look for all the world as if he had just bit into a lemon. But the smile faded, and the lemon crept back in.
The Binnesman answered one of the Lancer's questions tardily, but he did answer it. Her tone had conveyed that it was not a question meant to be answered, but Aatu answered nonetheless. His voice was quiet, but could be clearly heard by both the Ash-er and Vaniela ; but any farther away and the words would become lost, like the Blennighamms' song. There was no slur in his voice from the alcohol, just the tell-tale lilts and falls of his strange accent; "No. Not a soldier." He shook his head slowly - from side to side. "A knight." Although his mouth, as he finished speaking, returned to the firm line, and his eyebrows were heavy over his eyes, those same eyes were still soft and rounded. He cleared his throat, and stared at the Drokk. Vaniela's other question hung in the air, How did things go for you guys? The Binnesman said nothing in response, but stared at Ash-er. The pump of blood in his ears was so loud that it had drowned out all of the chatter of the mess-hall. The Blennghams ' song was nothing, tavern brawls were nothing, the crash of cups and the burps of career soldiers were nothing. Aatu's head was ringing.
Aatu nodded slowly towards the Drokk. His words were clear, and practiced. It was as if he was reading words in front of him, words he had read many times before. It did not sound like speech. "We didn't have the chance to get acquainted either." He reached over heads, around bodies, and offered the Drokk a gloved hand. It was shaking slightly, the fingers reflexively bending and curving. Whether Ash-er took the hand or not, the Binnesman spoke again. "My name is Aatu of Binnes." The words were the same as when they had met with Captain Ardus. It was the same, stiff introduction. But his tone changed abruptly, as the heaviness of his accent crept back into his voice; "I did not see your duel either." There was an unexpressed question in the words; a lilt at the end of the phrase. The fingers on his other hand had closed into a fist.
☾☾☾ IN DREAMS ☽☽☽
In dreams, Argr - who is also called Ergi - watches his father die. He knows why his father is dying, and he knows that it is because of him. His father has largely dissolved within his bed, leaving behind a thick black residue ; a mold that stains the sheets. But the head is still there, the skin clinging to the skull with a blubbery, unstoppable hand. His father is still alive, still holding onto life. His eyes are burning with the tears that only come from a fever, the sweat that has collected in his tearducts, only to leak out the corners of his eyes. They roll down his cheeks, and where they land on Regin's face, sprouts new pustules. When they burst with thin strings of yellow and white pus, gummy, partially transcluesent beads pour down his cheeks and onto the sweat soaked pillows. The blankets are woven from spider-silk, and the horse hair has been gnawed away by Argr's father's blunted yellow teeth. Regin knows that when he dies, he will not make it towards Valhöll. That is what Argr's mother tells him, as she holds her son in her arms.
Argr pulls himself away from his mother's arms to approach his father's bed. He reached out to touch his father's face, and where his fingers touch, bits of Regin's skin sluice onto his nails. Whenever the Raven-Starver touches, bits of dying flesh crawls up, up onto his own hands. Argr opens his mouth, as if to say something; but no sounds escape his lips. He watches his father change and die. The eyes roll themselves slowly open. The pupils and irises roll away until there is only white, lined with red, overly engorged veins. Whatever muscle or tension had been left in Regin's head goes out - out like a candle encountering breath. Regin's upper lip crawls away, a red worm peeling itself away from those yellow teeth. There is a snap. His lower jaw falls out, and the teeth along with it. Those yellow teeth scatter across the pillow, lines of tissue staining the fabric. It was once white, but it is gone now. The white has been replaced with black and red and yellow. His father's mouth hangs widely open, horribly distended. The tongue in what was left of the mouth was swollen. It is covered in black lumps, from where the flies had laid their eggs. Argr can see their wings beating beneath the fleshy surface.
The Raven Starver takes a few steps towards that bed. The broken, rotted body did not breathe anymore, it simply laid there. The smell of feces and dill rose up from the stained linens. But Argr, who is a coward, walks towards the bed, and reached out a hand to clasp his father's. It is mostly skeleton now, but it is his father's - and the Raven-Starver has to remind himself that he does not love him. The hand is dead and does not move. Behind his shoulder, his mother smiles, and when she smiles, the room seems to fill with the harshest, brightest light. It hurts his eyes. But what hurts more is the way that dead hand is now gripping Argr's, what hurts more are those brittle bones tearing at his palm and wrist. He tries to tug himself away, away from the dead father. But he cannot. That skeleton arm holds him too tightly. Argr lets the scream die in his mouth. His mother laughs at him. She speaks words that can never be taken back; Ek er ragr, ergi, ok Argr." You are coward, you are not-worthy, you are Raven-Starver.
Argr looks back at her. She holds in her hands a child. The child looks like her - white haired, blue-eyed, skin as pale as his father's eyes. The baby does not cry. It is covered in blood, and so is she - dripping with it from head to toe. It makes her look beautiful. His mother smiles, and the room is engulfed in a white so bright it steals the colour from everything else, bleaching the bed, the dying man, Argr's face and hands and clothes, and the mother and child. It touches everything in that small room. His father's hand is not longer hurting him, so the Raven-Starver looks back to the hand. It is tanned and fleshy, not rotted away. His eyes trace his arm. It is not his father's arm. It does not lead to his father's shoulders, his father's eyes, his father's face. It leads to a distortion in a cup, a reflection that wavers and curves, the eyes becoming too big, too small, the mouth fading away, only to return. It looks exactly not like him.
Tears slip down the cheeks of the distorted face, as it comes into focus. it is Argr's seiðr - an act of sorcery, an act of something that has gone wrong, a replacement. The seiðr can taste blood in his mouth, but he does not know why. As he drags his son before him, his own seiðr, he feels happy. He imagines that this is what it must be like to be in love. He is hungry, and lustful, and wrathful. He drags his son into the bed with him, and leans over his throat. he digs his teeth into it. The blood sprays across him and it feels like flower-stalks brushing against his face. He imagines that this is what it must be like to be in love. His wife, his mother, the father of only remaining child speaks of heroes. It does not matter what giant she came from. He carries his son's, his father's blood too. Blood speaks the truth, when dreams do not. This is the final dream. The dream he will have until he dies.