Part vampire Part warrior
Carnivore and voyeur

every night he dreams of blood;
he hears phantom screams, and the whispers of the dead.

darkness saturates the heavens, the clouds looming in the makings of a storm - a storm brews along the horizon, a hideous thing full of grotesque teeth and grey, withering phantom flesh. still, it does not rain, it does not shed grief despite the weight of the world resting upon vagrant shoulders; despite the heat of the flame scalding too close against delicate skin. thus, the air feels thick, moist and riveting - weighed down by a twisted melancholy. a shroud would cover the beast's eyes, one he yearns to lift with reaching fingertips; to pry back the metaphoric flesh and seek out the unforeseeable future, the inevitable end. could he do it, however? could he read the future? read the storms? could he guide his family to safety? more than ever, harou needs guidance now, but he finds himself alone in this, alone in everything. yes, he has family, but he shares the entirety of the burden with no one but himself. a frustrated hiss would leave the leviathan's jaws. the void within him grows.

he feels wrathful, seething. he cannot even begin to express his rage and hunger for vengeance. he cannot even begin to understand all these emotions - terrible and new - filling him to the core. the lands of amaryllis would mirror the turmoil burning in harou's heart. and it's a terrible thing, all this wrathful ache, all this unspoken grief. he needs to find peace within himself first. but could he ever?

the winter leviathan treks alone, finding the isolated path, his chosen path to salvation - or is it curse? it is hell? his path had always been one of heathenistic means, one of careless war-mongering abandon, but with age comes wisdom, and harou is starting to see to whole world come to fruition and the weight of his choices made. now, he is no longer alone. half of him regrets the decisions he's made, while the other half must see it through to the end. he has always claimed himself to be a warrior first, before a king. standing upon the rockly cliffside, his heavy-set paws would move over the carmine debris, scanning the scene ahead of him with his smouldering vermillion stare. his brows crease into a furrow, lips peeling back into a silent scowl. lately, he has been staring off into the distance, studying the shape of the hiding sun, the shape and cycles of the moon; tuning in to the whispers of nature. it is all he has, in this moment. his intuition, his love for the wilderness. he breathes in the cool, clammy air, a dark breath expelled from his obsidian lips.

this is his moment to breathe -

the calm before the storm.

table by ryuu

Scorpius

 

It’s a nasty, dirty little trick, but since his dear sister had told him who ruled alongside the usurper, it felt right. As if his claws, dripping with the sap of a desert rose, are a vehicle of karma and justice. Revenge. It is all one and the same, and he cares little who has to bleed for his pound of flesh.

All he needs is the opportunity to take it.

It comes when the usurper slinks away from the kingdom, and Scorpius finds the barely-there trail of his scent leading from the border. Alone? Perfect. The Miroslav follows the trail silently, using those skills he’s honed to disgusting perfection to go unseen, unnoticed. He was trained by the best, after all. It’s no small feat with a body built for brawl and battle, rather than stealth. If nothing else, the muscle under the scarred, striped fur makes it easier to heave and pull himself up the rocky cliffs, arriving on a short plateau with hardly any effort.

And there, crested in shadow, overlooking the kingdom below - him. The usurper.

It would be easy to end this now. A few steps and he would be in Scorpius’s claws and fangs, perhaps so taken off guard by the surprise attack that he’d succumb quickly. The Miroslav can picture it, almost feel it. The tear of flesh and skin and the breaking of bone. Andal would be his again in just a second.

Scorpius’s poisoned claws click against the warm, smooth stone.

How far will he bend his honour before it breaks?

"Tell me," Black lips part into a half-snarl, a poor reflection of the turmoil inside, the storm building a brewing. "Is it everything you thought it would be?"

@Harou ♔

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Part vampire Part warrior
Carnivore and voyeur

the leviathan is without joy, without pleasure, without happiness; the tension shifts along his broad shoulders, tightening his muscles with the lack of release. every night, the army's wolf lies in wake before his stolen kingdom - the once-fortress of the miroslavs - overtaken by his sheer force and male brutality. he remembers their silver-haired queen, his ferocity that she had bravely endured, and the visions of her blood would quietly haunt him. it had been hunger then - a wrathful, seething hunger - a thirst to see the folds of their peaceful society come undone, when in his mind's eye, he saw no other queen but helah. now, however, in the wake of everything, harou inwardly recoils at the decisions he's made, and the lands he'd taken without thought or mercy, leaving in his wake a path of utter devastation. and a future - a future that would hold no meaning, if it weren't for the closeness of family.

he's now come to realize that the political fields of amaryllis would be as turbulent as the storms - full of hunger and unrest - and the weight of his decisions would sit pointedly at his chest, pinned by the curve - like silver gleam of an impending knife. it would be easier to surrender, easier to give everything up and claim defeat. it would be easier to run, when nothing but the dunes and the silence of the whispering, red desert stood at his back. but harou is no such man, and defeat was not an option, not when the rest of his family looked towards him for answers. thus, the winter titan wanders alone - nights, days - spent in sheer, mindless solitude. roaming the dunes of the desert, trekking the expanse of her vast wilderness in search for answers. the sun would bake across his wintry flesh while his mind churned into overdrive, beating his fists against those invisible walls, his soul-searching quests driven into those reckless oceans of paranoia, passion and hunger.

the pain would lurch beneath every metaphorical blade. the emotional pain, the mental pain, the physical pain - all of it blooms within his heart like a new wound, the wounds of a father who had family to protect, women and children to care for, sons to raise, and a kingdom to govern, inheriting all the beautiful and the ugly that the universe would have to offer. it would demand everything from him in the end, he's now realized this. his blood runs cold, now, almost devoid of life as the light is slowly bled from his frame. he has given everything - and he would continue to give everything - until the last of his blood would drip unto the red sands of andal, mingling with the echoes of the desert storms and their forgotten ghosts -

the clouds continue to toss and turn, gunmetal grey churning across the violent skies. darkness creeps forth, senerading with siren whispers as a stillness envelopes the scarred lands of the scarab. the leviathan's own scars would glisten beneath the low-lights - barely healed - coupled by his numerous freshly-earned wounds. scars criss-cross the army wolf's frame, rigid and vermillion; there are a hundred little webs of scars, each one a story, each one holding meaning like one holds unto religion. but harou is a godless man, a fiend, a heathen. he believes in no god, no church, no redemption, and he believes now that his life (just one of his many, many past lives) is nothing but a curse. he is deathless. cursed. enduring. he will see that his family surives this. but would he survive? surive all of this?

a sound, dark and morbid, snarls itself into existence. the hot, misty breath is expelled from the lips of @Scorpius, as harou slowly turns towards the source, leaning forward to incline his bearish skull to one side as he takes in the frame of the hulking stranger. the beast can almost smell the lingering scent of poison coating the other's claws, or perhaps, harou thinks he's imagining it. imagining the feral image of judgement materializing in the form of the colossal man before him - one whose likeness would bring recollections of their past encounter in the andal challenge. harou's winter wrath lays poised beneath his icy exterior - the low reverberations escapes his throat, emitting a low and rugged hiss. he is without outward fury, as the crown sits crookedly above his skull, its golden curve etched into his flesh like another scar, another memory, another wound.

"there is nothing lonelier than holding a kingdom by one's self," breathes harou, atlast, his wolfish lips pulling upward in a show of fangs. his disheveled fur lay in tangled whisps, tendrils of merle floating against his skull as he prowls forward to slowly close the distance between him and the other lion.

have you come then?

come to kill me?

table by ryuu

Scorpius

 

The scent of Andal clings to the usurper, mixed with his own, and as he turns it invades Scorpius’s nose, twisting memories of the smell into something bitter and disgusting. The once clean sands now, the fresh water, all tainted by those who have no right to the Oasis kingdom. How many have stood upon its beauty and decreed it lacking? How many have been blind to the paradise within it, the security the rocky cliffs offer, the freedom of the entirety of the desert.

If Harou is surprised by the company he finds himself in, it doesn’t show on the skull-like facade of his face. He regards Scorpius with very little recognition - and why should he? He’d been no more than a spectator at the challenge, throwing himself at the false queen with no regard to his family or sister, who fought in his place. Because of his weakness Leonie was hurt, brutalised by the beast before him.

Scorpius scoffs, hot air billowing from his nose as his lips curl, widening the snarl along his muzzle. "I wouldn’t know," he coos as he steps forward - a single step - and the long, thick claw-scars in his foreleg stretch and ache, a phantom pain from the poisoned talons that ripped his flesh to shreds. The beginning of the end, the start of his loss. The blame has to be placed somewhere, so why not at the feet of the bitch who poisoned him? Why not extend that blame to the man who crowned her afresh, the blood of his sister still fresh on his lips?

Does he expect pity or sympathy now?

"I could fix it for you." The offer comes smoothly, between hanging jaws, as he takes another slow, predatory step forward.

This is it. This is it.

@Harou ♔

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Part vampire Part warrior
Carnivore and voyeur

hunger.

it is his curse, his punishment, his sins to bear. the other responds with cruelty, and the leviathan leans into its gaping maw, hungry for the release that it may bring. an emptiness gnaws at the army's wolf core, every seething, wrathful thing blooming through fruition - it scalds like the tips of a brazen flame, burning harou's heart until he can barely feel any outward sensation and all he can taste is the dry bitterness of ash clouding his mouth. numb, dead inside, hollow - the emotions lay frozen within the titan, a winter's hunger that would ravage the earth in complete destruction and bitter recklessness. here, beneath the stormy skies, harou feels home at last before the first few glimpses of ugliness and rage - before the haunting image of this red-eyed man, this vehement creature who would beckon forth with whispers of death, whispers of an end;

the temptation is all too much, as the winter wolf watches with absolute, silent frenzy. harou is seething with it, boiling with it, a shudder slipping down his spine with the realization that this could be his last day alive among the mortal plane. he can feel the violence surging beneath his icy flesh, the heat spiralling with animalistic mindlessness, to taste the rage mirroring off the other's visage and have them both drowning in a sea of blood and sorrow. pain - pain would be only physical then, only skin and bone, flesh and hair, and his heart would be freed of its mortal sins, freed off it's burdens and silent anguish. free to leave its hollow, animated cadaver and escape to the moonlight as the haunted heart. thus, every step forward the stranger makes only curls harou's lips further upward, and while the rage would snarl white-hot within the winter titan, in his being he knew that is deserving of this punishment, deserving of this karma. he has commited sins, he has killed - and only in death will he find salvation. only in death. only in blood.

only by the vengeful hand of the miroslav king.

"come, then, death." beckons harou, as he shifts his weight evenly upon all fours, prowling forward with feline tensity, his tail lashing out behind his muscular haunch like the balanced swing of a silver guillotine. "find me in the afterlife." and without another warning, harou would attempt to surge forward in a rush of snarling fury; jutting out his right shoulder in an attempt to hit scorpius squarely in the chest. simultaneously, harou would attempt to open his jaws wide, aiming to bite down upon the other's neck with a hungering brutality.

bleed me dry.

be my end.

Harou vs. @Scorpius
for Death
1 of 7

Hits:

Rolling 8d20: 5 + 17 + 11 + 3 + 6 + 1 + 2 + 13

Dodges:

Rolling 5d20: 18 + 4 + 2 + 3 + 17

Luck:

Rolling 5d20: 14 + 18 + 20 + 4 + 1

*Note: the death match gives harou his full dice.

table by ryuu

Scorpius

 

The storm grows, builds. Lighting flashes across the sky behind Harou, silhouetting him a dark reaper. Scorpius doesn’t expect the first move to come from the other male, but he lunges, answering Scorpius’s question with a firm, resounding yes. So be it.

They collide with a clash of thunder.

Braced for the impact of the (slightly) smaller male, the Miroslav’s body is shoved back perhaps an inch; claws scrape on the hard rock under them, and immediately he lifts the left one and attempts to wrap it around the lion’s neck. Harou’s salivating jaws grip the side of his neck, digging into mane and flesh, and Scorpius’s own teeth attempt to bite and lock onto the throat before him. There is pain, sharp and throbbing, but it all feels distant. He is promised flesh, and he wants the taste of blood.

Scorpius vs @Harou ♔
For Death
I of VII
Hits:

Rolling 10d20: 7 + 16 + 5 + 17 + 18 + 20 + 14 + 13 + 4 + 2

Dodges:

Rolling 3d20: 16 + 7 + 11

Luck:

Rolling 5d20: 3 + 10 + 16 + 19 + 20

artwork • coding