hail to the king
kneel to the crown

royal flames will carve a path to chaos
bringing daylight to the night
let the water flow with shades of red
arrows black out the light

Thread TW: drug use, hallucinations, morbidity - descriptions of gore

It begins after dusk as the stars climb the sky, a thin veil of clouds passed over the face of a beaming moon. Full, bright, the tundra comes alive beneath the silvery glow - shadows dance along the distance, flit in the desolate stretch of wintry wastes. At first the auroric shimmer is subtle, fleeting sprites of cavorting color that chase the nuance of madness: waking their soft coils, that serpentine vastness. Before long it will cast the dark of the night in radiant, ephemeral touches of brilliance, a winding, whipping viper of transient iridescence.

Tempered, a sentry among the pines at the foot of the mountain pass, Gauthier stead before the gnarled paths that carried on into distant mists, and on then into grander pastures. Beyond mountain, beyond snow, beyond sea - that space gathered in its infinitesmal void, hot with starshine, brim with grandeur. The awe of death is one kissed with the promise of immortality: that which is earned, desired, deserved. He returns to the tundra not a hound, not a boy, but a king, a Tsar of violence, hunger, the unspooling carnality of a soul's own ever-reaching cravings.

Cezara had shown him the way of the uprooted mind - that fleeing heart as wild as a stag in a thicket of thorns. That thrill, that euphoric chain of artful wonder, a myriad mystique of loosed, unchecked ravening. He had found the poultice she created - though its smell (just as before) told of a tang far unsavory, the pleasure would far outlive the taste. It waited on the smooth, cold surface of granite between his paws, waiting as if on a silver platter.

And what tastes waited for him in those fields of bounty.

@Ludivine

Art © Ryuu

He perches on the landscape like a lonely gargoyle, a stark statue against the myriad of colours painting the sky like a beautiful canvas. She observes him as though he were nothing more than a wayward phantom, coat dappled with the brilliance of the light above. What little snow remains glitters, trapped in the dancing lights — the appearance of him floating in the ocean, waiting for someone to come close. And her — a siren drifting in the same ocean, watching from afar. Lurking, patiently — hunger.

She does not know what draws him here; perhaps the same as her, the lights in the sky above dancing in her eyes in a wonderful cascade of beauty. She's transfixed by it, a calling that is not hers to answer, even if she does not know it yet.

Instead her gaze returns to that of @Gauthier, haunting the world with his presence. From nearby undergrowth she finally emerges, a serpentine saunter to her pace as she grows ever closer to her king, her tsar. Something coils deep in her gut, a burning white flame that hungers for something, even if she does not know yet what it is. Perchance, he can offer something to quell the flame? Her mind flickers back to days previous, the taste of lion still on her tongue, thought it does not sate the burning deep within. She wants... More. The blood of her various lineages struggles to free itself from the contains of a much more placid monster.

“Found something that's captured your interest?” she questions as she draws near; approaches from the back, maw parting as hot breath tangles with the chill of the air around her. “Or still looking?” She draws to his front, a wry grin on her charming features; serpentine wiles twisted with something dark—

Something deadly.

Erudite Experience
+5 Study the natural world

hail to the king
kneel to the crown

royal flames will carve a path to chaos
bringing daylight to the night
let the water flow with shades of red
arrows black out the light

TW: drug use

The tomb-chill of his gaze sweep over desolation, decadence, endless kingdom of eternal wretch sleeping mountain to mountain. Its rolling fields of hoar-toothed frost laced by sprouts of weathered, dull flora; a touched death, a rooted revival persistent. Poisons all, despite medicines of the mind, careful caricatures of patience. The Wastes held their own beauty by the hand of death, perhaps not as beautiful as that of Amaryllis - red blossoms had grown where the lichen were stained with blood, and ere instead were withered violets, coastal blues shredded by wind, strung clusters of white star-heads cropping where snow peeled for the break of undergrowth.

All glistens beneath a new light, a luster owed to the scalded heavens above: a beast's gullet blazing wild with raging starfire. In his veins, too, blazed the hum of some ancient dirge, a calling rooted into the deep of the earth. Heat burrowed into the swell of his lungs, expelled like smoke poured into the vibrancy of the night - wisp in the frost-laced chill. His eyes closed, given to the dark of the opening void untouched by that unearthly light, relented only to the distant howl of the mountain-whipping gales and the echoes of some leviathan's faint bellow.

The crunch of snow and brush dismissed the mind's wandering, dispelled the closeness of his heart to the winter's thread. Brought to earth with slamming clarity, his gaze snapped to the source as it unfurled from the shuddering darkness. From the haze of rime and pine-clotted shade, @Ludivine slipped to heel. Though not unwelcome, his expression would not slack from its hardened feralty, his eyes as cruel and scrupulous as their frigid vista.

Found something that's captured your interest? Slunk into the borealic passes of gilded light, her musculature unraveled piece by piece, shivering into new existence like slipping skins. Or still looking? He mused the rhetoric - as if it couldn't be obvious, one monster to another. As if hunger could be sated, rage coerced into softness.

Traditionally, this was a collective insanity shared only blood to blood. But Gauthier is not conservative to outdated ideals. There was enough for her, enough for him, and to section it would not lessen the delights to be had. "Always looking." pushed between his fangs, humor only sprited over the stone meld of his severe facets: the chisel-cut of his hard cheekbones, the slope of his broad skull, those sharp shadows teethed on any ounce of soft. "Will you look as well?" he asked, portioning his share and downing it in a swoop and hard swallow. The spices had given the flavor a flourish, but the aftertaste was still an unpalatable loiter even in slight.

He fought the wince, gesturing to her half.

It wouldn't take long. And then, "We will hunt." The cold would provide as it always had to those hungry enough to take. His features darkened with a gallows knowing, the blissful hollow of his eyes sparking with a devilish thrill.

Art © Ryuu

He is a divine devil pulled straight from hell, still carved by his master's wicked whims. Gnarled teeth sat betwixt withered lips, worn from battle and bloodshed. Her gaze lingers over the feature that never fails to capture her attention, transfixed by the novelty of it. Eventually her pink gaze slips to his own, cold and detached — but it does not frighten her away. She stays taut with resolve, a curious look given to him as he finally speaks. Deep, baritone — twisted with dark wonder. As he speaks, as she questions, Ludivine's attention is finally brought down to the herb mixture between @Gauthier's paws.

They're portioned — both equal, and as he downs his share of the mixture, curiosity gnaws at the French babe. She stares at the brute with bewilderment, a diet consisting of blood and lion's flesh crying at the idea of gnawing on that which nourishes their prey.

Perhaps it's the lights dancing in the sky, bathing the world beneath them with kaleidoscope mystic — turning and twisting and making the world feel more ethereal than normal. Perhaps it is this displacement from normal, that pushes Ludivine forward, barely a hesitation as she reaches down to swallow the mixture whole. Earthy spice coats her tongue and she nearly gags at the taste, but pushes it all down like a loyal dog. She barely need the encouragement.

Her body heats, a warmth unlike anything else — a swirl of the colours dancing across the landscape blur at the edges of her vision, and her eyes narrow at his words. His desires — his command.

“Hunt,” she confirms, the words cool on her tongue, whispering from a hypnotic state. “It must be a feast,” she confirms with a nod of her head, a wicked gleam in her eye — a feast that they can indulge their carnal desires upon. It was just the two of them now, no others to get in their way. Perhaps... Perhaps it would not be usual prey that meets their end that night.

hail to the king
kneel to the crown

royal flames will carve a path to chaos
bringing daylight to the night
let the water flow with shades of red
arrows black out the light

TW: Drug use.

The potion is sensation deliberate, the fever-dreamed waltz of color and sound, the silvery ring of every drop of snow, every echoed crack of timber. It comes with time but only riding the wave of such mesmerizing consciousness - a prickling at the back of his neck, dripping tine by tine down the length of his vertebrae. A branching heat, the soothing possession of otherness that unwinds his shoulders, his legs, the tightness of his core chased in strings of electricity down to his toes.

What comes back is a rush, the frenzy, the innate wholeness of being crawling skin for skin. The night sky is shattered to a million pieces of shifting light, those unraveling coils of serpentine celestial, their opalescent starfire touched upon their brows, the rolling tundra stretched out before them like a map. A feast. A venture. He grinned, feeling the heat of his breath pull along the lines of his face like smoke, release. A nod, and his eyes dared a moment's glimpse of the auroric display above them - near blinding, scalding, a herald to the unseen world. This is their fleeting grip on that terra, as close as they will ever be.

"If we are worthy, a feast it'll be." a voice plucked from his lips with the low rumble of thunder, pleasure, yearning. He looked back to her, seeing those lights play over her feral beauty, curling in the reaching depths of her eyes.

There one moment, and away the next - his veins are fire, bones steel, lungs filled with the incensed fervor of the unraveling night. Flighted, keen sharp as a blade, everything is crystal and dancing moonlight, the ground rising to meet every certain step. Somewhere in the wastes of the desolate tundra their prize waited, materialized in the shadow of pines, cedar, hot-blooded and eager as they, connected to them the way fortune finds tragedy.

It manifests in a trail of prints pressed into the frothing sea of snows, undulating like eternity beneath the wash of borealic color. Not hooved, taloned, rabbit-footed: Gauthier pressed his paw in the give of its own indentation, digit for digit, the cold of the frost burning beneath his touch. It boiled, darkened; a lion's prints, winding their way through the snow-laden roll of spruce-dotted knolls. His grin deepened as he turned back to @Ludivine, his teeth sharp and tight against his lips. That voice sprung again from the fire-licked tunnel of his throat, hushed with the crisp chorus of hoar-grains sieged against the hard shell of the icy ground: "Un cadou!" Motioning to the prints as he pulled his paw from its depression.

The hearth of him writhed like a pit of hungry vipers, black coils sheened in the rove of want. On her face played feralty and teething starlight, some deity of venomous rancor. Delightful! Repeating strings of lethality played over a hundred glass eyes, a thousand grinning teeth, fires roiled in fuchsia-blooming poppy-cores - shreds of green, citrus, sweltering ice-blues. Two machinations of roving cruelty they; he stared and hungered, hungered and stared, the huff of thrill leaping meteoric.

Tongue split on dialect as he rolled his words in his mouth, an anticipation, conjuring meat. "A feast waits. We will drink him of his power - nothing wasted. Caturix smiles on us." The Naesarpe slept yet; tongueless slumber, dreaming of the violence they would enact. But Caturix the Eater would delight in their rendering of flesh, their butchery, his eyes swollen with starlight, teeth cutting the moon.

Romanian: A gift!
+5 Study and track footprints

Art © Ryuu

The world feels... Different.

Like it's somehow more alive than before. Tilted on its axis — wither brighter colours and stronger scents. A swirl of mesmerizing shapes and silhouettes that blend into one, before evening out again into something thrilling. Ludivine blinks as she casts her gaze around her, a huff of breath brought into her lungs as she feels every nerve practically burn with the need. Oh, the colours— She realizes, belatedly, that the lights dancing in the sky appear to have fallen from the heavens, dappled against the powerful frame of the monster before her, bathing him in the riches of a true tsar.

Laughter bubbles from her lips and spills into the air before she even realizes she's doing it — laughter at his words of a feast only for the worthy, for she sees them as nothing but worthy. They are devils with crooked crowns, the bloodline of cannibal crusaders flowing through their veins. Evil, incarnate.

Then he's off, a hound on the trail, and she's bounding behind him like the dutiful beast she is. The planes of his shoulders roll with a smooth rhythm as he prowls into the night — hunger, a companion for the two of them. But he is the tracker, not her, and she does not question his lead, even as the world continues to sway and churn before them. Like a living creature, trying to throw off the bloodthirsty creatures scorching it. @Gauthier stops and she almost runs into him, standing shock still as she watches him press a paw into the indent in the snow — fresh meat.

One that may churn the stomach of many, but for her, only causes her tongue to lap at her jowls in hunger.

He looks at her and her gaze immediately snaps to him — it is the promise land that he leads her to, and though she does not understand the guttural words that crease his devilish tongue, they send a shiver through her body. She does not need to understand to know — this, is their grand feast. Her muscles shiver as she craves to be on the prowl once more and languid lips lift to reveal incisors ready for the killing — she hungers, in a bone-throbbing way that she'd never felt before.

“The most taboo of meals,” she murmurs in a haunted tone as she sets off once more, dragging her body along the length of his, a hiss of wanton desire at the feel of scalding body heat against her own. Everything sense was on fire, and she wastes no time pushing ahead.

“Ours for the taking.” Ours for the slaughtering.

hail to the king
kneel to the crown

royal flames will carve a path to chaos
bringing daylight to the night
let the water flow with shades of red
arrows black out the light

They are lost to an ocean of snow, the taste of moonlight, the sound of the distant howling mountains stooped in their dread peaks; the tundra quickens its pulse to bear their wilderness, chaining spirals of hoarfrost chime. Everything dances with static flash, the caress of eerie smooth light, the mirror-laden flat of virginal snows lit green, blue, violet, burying them in its fire. They are both given to the wooly cotton-brained madness of delights, the echoing tremors of their laughter rattling dust from the swaying pines, the bright blinking eyes of alders, the scuttling hiss of sage out of the way of their lumbered steps that feel too much like flight.

Taboo he does not care for - there is no sin he has not tasted and wanted for without the lurch of holiness to burn him; no fever alive that stills him to a crypt. Hunger is the only sacrament, the only highest of divinities, that which moves the heat through his veins and rides the roll of its tongue as it presses nook and crag. But desire is fickle, ephemeral traces of thrill, and as the warmth and rush of her body passes against his there is want.

The heat of his breath lathed in the draconic vesper of moonlit smog, possessed of spirit, a phantom lust — a sea, his heart, to wrack against the rocky face of his ribs, to rile its sparking madness down the length of his spine. To move then as she cast herself into the night, forgetting the trail of lion's prints, predatory, wolfish, swallowing the distance between them with fire brimmed in his throat. Dreaming her red, violent and caught in the undertow, what impish fanged smile greeted him then - ours she says and he is conjured by its venerable ills, courted by the taking.

Jolting sense of spiraling heat, spark, sputter ran the length of him touched by her audacity. It drags the wave, it rips the fibers of reality, until each rib and each string of muscle is bared and thrummed with the longing pull - Gauthier prowled up the ridge, too ignorant of the pocked footprints @Ludivine followed, the rove of his eyes crawling waist and spine and neck. Their gaze razed, ravaged, pooling in the shadows that tucked her ribs, that accentuated curve and muscle, strode ruggedly up a heat-seeking route of rolling hips, lithe shoulders——

His claws dug into the snow crested ridge as he steeled to a stop behind her, his attention snapping to a pulsing mound of shadow in the basin beyond. It turned to them as they turned to it, its eyes lit with an amber glow, its tawny form washed by borealic traces of starlight. Marked, their hallowed kill, gifted on a dinner plate of stark. It beamed the twilight of a sharpened glow, a mouth full of white-hot malice, jeering, taunting.

The wind throated its hollow howl, and Gauthier's ears perked to the feverish delirium of a pulse.

A full-toothed smirk was cast to Ludivine before he threw himself to action, barreling headfirst for the lion ahead of him. It sneered and hissed and snarled, meeting Gauthier with bared claws, tumbling under the Caladanian's weight. Gauthier tore tirelessly at his mane, bore his claws deep into his flesh, snapping and pulling and wrenching for the fool's throat as pain surged and passed in waves, blood coating him in sanguinary warmth. Its bouquet is aphrodisial revelation, painting the sheet of snow beneath them black.

Art © Ryuu