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

This content might touch on topics that are sensitive or triggering for some readers. Trigger Warning for mentions of gore, graphic violence, vampirism, violent npc death, general Gauthier shenanigans.

How foolish, how bold, to arrive in the night –

– For one to presume that those of Firnen were tucked quietly away in their dark hovels, steeped in a myriad of ever-shifting dreams as the world beyond their border slept beneath a shimmering night sky. In the quiet, the solitude of sanctuary slipping away into the vast ether, the streak of jade luminescence whipped its coils woven between the fabric of constellations. Its jaws widened around Canis, its tail wrapped through the semblance of heavenly foes. Cloudless, the waxing moon bore its glow over the frost-laden jewels of the emerald forest, and silent wonder fell over the warbling nightbirds in their nests.

The male who entered the night-wood was not naive. Their borders were clearly marked, the paths well trodden, and the scent of blood, though stale, still hung in the air. It was audacity, pure and simple that compelled him to infringe, and the miserable downfall of curiosity. Whether its pith was hunger or mischief was indiscernible. His entry was deliberate, however stealthy, biding his breath and taking time to choose the softer grounds so as not to disturb the quietude, not to leave a single stone upturned in his passage.

It was arrogance perhaps, or desperation, that moved the young man so carefully through the overgrown corridors of the forest, arriving from the southern reaches of the jungle and arcing the moonwashed glades. He’d spent no time dawdling among the gardens, though he had trampled some of their wilted bodies underfoot, and bore swiftly north.

He was intercepted long before he found the cache or dens just as his leg became tangled in a coil of thorns. Like a helpless insect tugging the silvery string of a spider’s web – he’d twisted, yanked, blundering into the mud and writhing as indiscreetly, though anxiously, as he could.

Gauthier entertained himself with the sight for a time upon discovery, waiting in the shadow of the thicket as he watched the man grapple with the thorned vines. They had dug their gnarled teeth into his flesh, tugging and grinding at the hardness of muscle and the chew of sinew, and with it the Czar breathed deep the perfume of its bubbling ichor. The stranger had just dragged himself free from the wire when Gauthier descended upon him ravenously, though not before his cry resounded deeply through the mesh of the groves, its echo drank lovingly by the distant crash of the ocean waves and lapped by the roar of the river.

The intruder put up his own fight, having been thrust hard into the ground on his spine, urgently wielding tooth and claw to tear at his attacker by every means necessary. It had done little but to incite the temper of his foe further, having sliced a hind claw across Gauthier’s ribs, bloodying a cheek, pulling tufts of mane and shredding across a knee. The wanderer had defended his throat for as long as he could, still winded from his struggle with the thicket, and with all his might shoved his hind feet sharply into the belly of his captor. Gauthier wheezed as the air was kicked from his lungs, releasing the beast’s shoulder from the grasp of his jaws – and retaliated by curling his claws deep into the stranger’s eye-socket.

The cat screamed again as he writhed in the dirt like a festering worm, shoving the firnen king aside in a blinded panic. Gauthier’s laughter rolled throatily as he watched him squirm and slip, the encroacher’s face bathed in flourishes of delicious red while he paced languidly aside, dodging a desperate swipe of claws. "Why have you come?" he implored, a hint of impatience sinking heavily beneath the air of his dark humor; a growing, growling timbre. The fool groaned and babbled senseless curses, his voice mangled by agony, and swung another blind paw. A claw snagged in the thistle-burred mane of the king and broke to cold air. Between them the pungent perfume of rust clung to the chill, and Gauthier drank its scent deep into his core. Hunger tread through the line of his silhouette, sending his skin to shudders of enthralling needles – his every cut burned, his ever bruise pulsed, alive.

Unto him, the open veins of the wanderer sung: a lull of want, of fulfillment. His mouth watered, fangs knit tight against his peeling lips.

They attempted to run again, blundering into more bramble, and Gauthier was quick upon him to drive his teeth with crippling force into their spine. Another gurgling cry and they curled to counter, snapping frightfully for his face, a pinching irritant. The draconian wretch forced his weight to pin them and dug his jaws deeper, deeper, until a muffled crack answered his prising clasp. The well of ichor sprayed warmly into the curl of his tongue, dampening the dark line of his blood-soaked grin; the latter half of the cretin’s body slacked behind him.

More nonsense riddled the creature’s tongue, his sandy coat lushed in grand red, red – and while another Why trickled at the bottom of Gauthier’s throat, it relented in a puff of ash. It may have been logical to keep him alive long enough for answers in the calm that could be found, to discern the matter of whether it was poor choice or insidious motive, but the likes of reason charred in the overwhelming drag of thirst. Incensed by the passion of it, the art of it, the moonlit pool of carmine that spilled before him like an offering; the wafting aroma of sweetness that rose from the man’s chasmal wounds.

He ended their suffering with nothing less than the brutality they had already endured, prising their throat-bound artery with the mercy of release! Silencing the mumbling, wailing cacophony of excuses that had erupted from that blubbering mouth. Glazing the final terrible roll of that unpaired eye. The fiend drank deep of his final strength as it abandoned the body to the cold, warm and luscious and richest of all cabernets, blackened in the caress of moonlight.

@LudivineArt © Ryuu

This content might touch on topics that are sensitive or triggering for some readers. Trigger Warning for mentions of descriptive gore, cannibalism

Hell sings with the needless bloodshed, its thirsty maw gaping wide and swallowing whole the sanguine liquor that drips from the deceased corpse. With a wanton cry it alerts the devil's bride to the succulent dinner placed upon a bloodied altar, inviting her forth from the depths she'd succumbed to during the night. Through the dense foliage she tracks the monster and his prey. The screams of terror — the thick cologne of death. She savours it all, slowing only so that she might further bathe her senses in the delight of her mate, the butcher. How he makes the intruder s c r e a m.

But it is not only the victim's blood that hangs heavy on the air now — it is also that of @Gauthier's, pried from his veins by the agony of an animal clinging to a false sense of hope. That he may escape his killer — that he may live another day. But it is not to be so. The cannibal pride have proven time and again that death is the only thing that awaits those that enter uninvited.

Only once the death rattle sounds does the Queen in all her glory emerge from the depths of the forest, her gaze feasting upon the loving display presented before her. The gore is thick and ever present and oh! There he stands above his kill, a murderer and a protector all in one. How she thirsts to lick the crimson ichor from his maw, to bathe his body with her tongue so that she might devour everything before it goes to waste — but something stops her. Like a chain heavy around her neck, she finds herself held back from showing her true appreciation to her king, to her czar.

Her heartbeat pulses in her ears like a warning.

Gaze falls to the fallen — the corpse, still warm.

Without warning she throws herself upon Gauthier's rightful prize, a sickening warning rumbling in her throat to tell him to back off! The tender undersides of the lion is ripped apart by her voracious fangs and claws, digging deep into the hot belly of the trespasser. Deeper and deeper she rips, not knowing what it is she craves — but leaving nothing to chance all the same. Intestines are pulled and thrown aside, bones broken and tossed so that she may be swallowed whole by the corpse. Only once her jowls wrap themselves around his once-beating heart does she finally pull back from flesh and gore, her prize situated fully in her glutenous maw. Fangs pierce unprotected flesh, salivating.

Her nostrils flare as she pulls her head back and looks to Gauthier — what a sight she must make, her thick and heavy fur the colour of a bleeding sun, blood heavy upon the front end of her body. She holds her prize greedily in her mouth, but all at once, her satisfaction drains from her body.

She throws the heart aside — leaves it to rot.

And then she howls in rage as she tears up the ground underfoot, angry with her own wanton desire to do something that she knows she cannot. It's not until she focuses on the face of the beast that she realizes what it is she needs — as the face slowly morphs within her mind's eyes to something more... Familiar. More familial.

“They play me for a fool,” she finally speaks to her mate, words hollow and filled with the rage of a scorned woman.