ᴀᴄᴛɪᴏɴ ɪꜱ ᴛʜᴇ ᴀɴᴛɪᴅᴏᴛᴇ

[apifacture]

APIFACTURE ☉ heavily headcanon-based & private interpretation of LORD’S BLADE CIARAN from DARK SOULS as written by Puffin ( sideblog to @swordluck ) .

themes ↠ absolute loyalty , the language of flowers , weapons do not weep , the wound and the blade, the torturer and the flayed , a love that transcends death , inescapable grief , duty as a mask , the fragility of heroes , an elegy for a fading world .

bio | verses | thread tracker | prompts | inbox : 03

rules beneath the cut :

01 . Puffin. 30s. Ireland. Slow-paced writer. she / her.

02 . l only engage with folks aged 21 and over. Don’t follow unless you plan to interact.

03 . OC and crossover friendly. Multiverse and multiship. Plotting heavy.

04 . Common roleplay courtesy applies. Be kind, be patient, it’s that simple.

05 . Mun ≠ muse. I curate my own online space and I expect you to do the same.

06 . Potentially upsetting and mature themes include but are not limited to : conquest, character death, profound grief.

[deejay]

[apifacture]

"you take me so well."

Moonlight spilled through the high lancet windows of Artorias’ chambers, washing argent light over stone and flesh.  His bed, beneath its heavy canopy, was vast enough to seem fashioned for some slumbering giant of old Lordran.

Ciaran had lived her life beneath discipline, beneath vows, beneath the immaculate weight of a duty that demanded every appetite be mastered.

There was only one which had proved impossible to master.

Artorias was immense, not merely in stature – although he towered over her with the impossible proportions of Gwyn’s greatest champion – but in heart, soul and presence.  He possessed the enormity of mountains and cathedrals, occupying the world with the unconscious certainty of a living legend.

Beside him, she was smoke, and smoke could find every seam.

Her hand rose to his face, fingertips following the line of his jaw.  She marvelled again at the paradox of him. That the same mouth capable of issuing commands across blood-drenched battlefields, of baring itself against dragons and abyssal things, could soften so profoundly when it sought only her.  Teeth made tender, ferocity transfigured into devotion.  She tilted her head back, while he hung his low, so she could kiss those lips as though she meant to erase every oath but this one.

Crescent impressions gleamed where her nails had found purchase against flesh hardened by a lifetime beneath armour.  Along the proud column of his throat lingered the fading bloom of her mouth.  They looked almost ceremonial, an assassin’s blessings.  

He was around her and before her and within every beat of her awareness.  He mantled her, carved into her, his great frame sheltering her until the world beyond the chamber ceased to exist.  Their bodies answered one another, fitting together, the moon casting them as one dark silhouette on the stone wall – less like two lovers than some forgotten heraldic beast, joined so completely that neither could be named without the other.

Her mouth found the broad plane of his chest, tongue trailing wet and slow over a pectoral, letting him feel the hot beat of her hitching breath:

“There can never be enough.”

[apifacture]

"you look like a winter's night. i could sleep inside the cold of you." - goodnight-goodknight

Without her mask, the air touched her differently.

Above, the city’s impossible spires burned beneath the lowering sun, each white arch washed with molten gold.  Somewhere, far beyond the quiet courtyard the pair claimed for themselves, came the distant cadence of mailed feet.

Ciaran had grown so accustomed to filtered breath, to speaking through porcelain, that the wind against her cheeks felt almost indecent.  It wandered over the faint latticework of scars crossing her mouth and brow, over the freckles the sun had strewn generously across her skin.  Her braid rested over one shoulder, heavy, a length of spun honey.

“You look like a winter’s night.  I could sleep inside the cold of you.”

A rare exposure – a perilous one.

Nothing about her belonged to winter.  She had always thought herself forged of late summers, of amber leaves and threads of copper resin bleeding from old trees. 

Artorias gazed at her with a grave wonder that belonged only to him.

“I have been called many things…” Ciaran began, tracing one fingertip across a pale scar that ran over the back of her opposite hand, remembering neither the blade nor the battle, only that there had once been blood enough to make the world disappear.

“Dangerous…”

Another scar, this one on her forearm.

“Faithful…”

A white crescent just beneath her collarbone, where steel had kissed too deeply.

“Merciless…”

She raised her eyes to meet his.

“But never a winter’s night.”

The silence that followed seemed to tighten.  There remained scarcely an arm’s length between them.  An absurd thing to notice, even as one who had spent a lifetime measuring distance before drawing a blade. Close enough that his breathing seemed to disturb the loose strands of hair against her temple.

Too close. Far too close for two of Gwyn’s Four Knights.

She ought to reclaim her mask.  She ought to offer some courtly farewell before duty remembered them both.  Instead, she remained.  Instead, at last, she felt she understood:

Winter was hidden.  Forests appeared lifeless while roots drank deeply beneath frozen ground.  Rivers slept beneath their glass.  Seeds surrendered themselves to darkness not because they despaired, but because they trusted spring to come.  Perhaps he had seen a place where weary things could finally lay down their burdens.

She wanted to stitch closed the space between them but – even as desire flared, burning for Artorias in perpetuity – duty held her where she stood.

[adalheidis]

Knight of flowers

[goodnight-goodknight]

You're gone, gone, gone away I watched you disappear All that's left is a ghost of you Now we're torn, torn, torn apart There's nothing we can do Just let me go, we'll meet again soon Now wait, wait, wait for me Please hang around I'll see you when I fall asleep

--"little talks," of monsters and men

[20thcenturywomen2016]

I’m a lover by nature except for when I’m a wretched hater cunt bitch which I also am by nature

[leneemusing]

devoted, yearning & obsessive

❝ you occupy my thoughts. day and night, even in dreams you're there. i want you to never stop haunting me. ❞

❝ i am eternally yours. until the stars go out. and maybe, even after that. ❞

❝ my heart bleeds the color of your soul. i would cut it out and put it in your palms if i could. ❞

❝ it's like you have knit yourself around my ribs. i could no more cut you out than i could remove my own lungs. ❞

❝ you are woven into my soul and i dare not cut a single thread. ❞

❝ i am yours, body and soul, to do with as you wish. ❞

❝ i don't require you to love me back, or to care for me as i do you. only let me be here, let me devote myself to you. that would be enough. ❞

❝ i want to trap your smile in a bottle and take it out when no one else can see. ❞

❝ you belong to me and i to you. ❞

❝ do not look away from me. i cannot bear it when i do not occupy your vision. ❞

❝ i will follow you. to the ends of the earth, to the very gates of hades and whatever might lay beyond. ❞

❝ i will always be here. no matter how far you go you can always come home to me. ❞

❝ tell me all the places you have been hurt, every rejection, every scar. let me love you in all the places where you have burned. ❞

❝ i will not ever let you go. ❞

❝ you cannot escape this. you cannot run away from the love we share. ❞

❝ what we have is deeper than words could capture. ❞

❝ i will be anything you desire. i pluck out the parts of me you find distasteful and stuff your love in the craters left behind. ❞

❝ tell me what you wish of me and i will do it. ❞

❝ i could spend all day merely watching the air in your lung. i would count every blink. i would cherish every sigh from your lips. i could watch you merely exist for the rest of my life. ❞

❝ don't let go of me. i think if you lost me i would die. ❞

❝ i will cut out the tongues of every man who has wronged you. ❞

❝ i wish i could crawl inside you and make a home out of the hollows of your bones. ❞

ACTIONS:

WATCH: for sender to watch receiver sleep.

WATCHED: for sender to wake up and find receiver watching over them.

DISCOVER: for sender to find a journal full of sketches receiver made of them and sender finds them looking at it.

DISCOVERED: for receiver to find a journal full of sketches receiver made of them.

FOLLOW: for sender to stalk receiver, claiming they're doing it to protect them.

FOLLOWED: for receiver to stalk sender and claim they're protecting them.

GOING: for sender to take receiver to a secluded cabin for a romantic getaway.

GONE: for receiver to take sender to a secluded cabin for a romantic getaway.

SACRIFICE: for sender to kill someone who wronged receiver as a grand gesture.

SACRIFICED: for receiver to kill someone who wrong sender as a grand gesture.

CAUGHT: for sender to catch receiver staring at them.

CATCHING: for receiver to catch sender staring at them.

REVEAL: for sender to slowly undress themselves while receiver watches, but doesn't touch.

REVEALED: for receiver to slowly undress themselves while sender watches, but doesn't touch.

BATHE: for sender to bathe receiver, meticulously and tenderly as if serving them.

BATHED: for receiver to bathe sender, meticulously and tenderly as if serving them.

[satlun]

[fishing-princess]

Whatever. *Apathetically does a backflip and throws three daggers diagonally down at different angles*

[geryone]

The Fireman's Daughter, Jonathan Kinsman

[dommehour]

pull HIM in closer by his waist

[dommehour]

especially if he's taller than you

[lacedswisher]

[anitapallenberg]

Crash (1996) | Dir. David Cronenberg

[arkham-scarecrow]

[childrenofdestiny]

[not-withoutyou]

battle couples has gotta be one of my favorite tropes though. The “you got me?” “Yeah, I got you.” The kiss for good luck. Fighting alongside each other for so long they know every strength and weakness. The dichotomy of being fucking terrifying to their enemies, but so soft with each other. When one is in danger and the other goes feral, protects them at any cost. When everything is over and done, it’s all “let me see where you’re hurt,” and washing off the dirt and blood.