you're no different.

Brador. Affiliated with Aldebaran Sea. [mobile link]

[danger]

asshai by  Edén Ochoa Iniesta

[churchassassin]

gentleembrace‌:

“I’m here. Today, I’m here.”

The sun burns overhead. Its rays pierce Laurence’s skull in a soft spray of bullets. The toll from his earlier exertion has begun to make itself present as numbness creeps through his limbs, through his nerves, a slight tremor in his hands becoming apparent. He has never been athletic, but lately he has begun to tire easily and often. Movement and speech is a great trial. His thoughts coagulate as soon as they form. The world is too bright, too loud, bearable only in small doses. In Yharnam, he could retire to the comfort of his room, curtains closed, door shut. Here exists only as a blurred pool of sand, sky, and sea. 

Laurence sighs and rests his forehead on Brador’s shoulder, buries his face in the matted, white fur. His fur, according to Brador. He supposes he should feel something about it. When he speaks his voice is flat and slow. 

“Brador…sentimental to the end. I didn’t mean to leave you behind. I try to do right by you, you know that,” he closes his eyes and tries to smile. “I know it does not come naturally to you, being candid. I know. I don’t mean to be difficult.” An apology without apologizing, words spoken before. He is too tired to tend to Brador properly. Inside his closed eyes, Laurence sees Caryll’s last rune gently glowing.

“It is really…very bright. Do you mind if I borrow this?” he says, tugging the pelt over his head without waiting for an answer, without looking at Brador. It is blessedly dark underneath. “I think I need to sit down.”

There is only the sand. His descent is more of a crumpling than sitting. Laurence lifts his head, but his blooming pupils can’t focus on Brador’s features. Just another face.

“Did you know that I can feel it? I can feel it moving through my veins, thickly, slowly, slowing. I can feel it moving. I can hear its song with each beat of my heart. I can feel it behind my eyes, pressing through. It is the only thing left within me, Brador. I need you to understand. I can’t stop now. I can’t give up hope. I can’t. I can’t.”

Brador struggles with himself, watching Laurence all folded up on the sand. He looks so frail. Brador thinks of an owl pellet he’d come across as a child, playing in the dirt, and how he’d picked it apart and found a delicate pile of bird bones within, all thin and white and dead. That’s what Laurence looks like. Tired, brittle. The sun beats down on his head. He wants to forgive Laurence; he wants to pretend it never happened and just start it all over, rewrite history, put in a happy ending. But that beast pelt draped over Laurence’s head won’t let him.

If he forgets, it’ll happen again. If he lets it happen, he’ll have failed himself and Laurence both.

He gets down on his knees, slowly, and puts his arms around Laurence. Holding him up, holding him together. A tenderness wells up in him that clogs up his throat and nose, and for a moment he can’t speak.

“I know, Laurence. I know... how important it is to you. But I also know it’s destroying you.” He takes in a deep breath to ground himself. And then another, to satisfy his racing heart. He’s afraid, he realizes with a start. Laurence was irritable towards the - towards the end, and singularly focused. Brador doesn’t know how he’ll react. “I don’t want to watch you turn again. There has to be another-- we’ll find another way. This time... let me pull you back from the edge before you go over.”

[churchassassin]

ruthlessdaughter‌:

“If you really must know,” she replies haughtily, “I do not need to eat, seeing as I am not technically alive.”

Heysel begins to undo the straps of her headpiece. “However, I have recently discovered the joy of cooking. I may not require the nutrition, but taste is something I can absolutely still experience. I certainly have little else to occupy my time, since illegal murder is out of the question.”

She leans in and speaks in a low conspiring tone. “You get vaporized if you kill someone, or if you break any other of the Ark’s rules. Poof!” She snaps her fingers to illustrate. “Just like that, you burn into nothing and you wake a few hours later in your bed.”

Heysel straightens up and carefully pulls her headpiece off her head, setting it down beside her and revealing the array of bandages hiding her face, save for her eyes and mouth. “I haven’t an inkling of what constitutes legal murder, but sir Enforcement is not eager to provide me an answer. In the meantime, shall we sample the… ‘hot dogs’? It is a strange name, I know, and it contains not a smidgen of dog, but it is easily modified to suit one’s particular tastes.”

“Not technically alive,” Brador repeats flatly. For whatever reason, he doesn’t find her words shocking in the least. Perhaps all the indescribable things he’s seen in Yharnam and the nightmare have cured him of surprise. “I’m guessing that’s what you meant by undead. What exactly does that mean? You seem alive enough to me.”

If it’s true what Heysel says about murder, Brador will have to tread lightly. He’s not eager to be vaporized for picking a fight. Or defending himself. But something in her phrasing makes him raise his eyebrows. “If you had the choice, you would hunt the people here? For what, sport? ...Or does the reach of your goddess extend this far.”

From his tone, he doesn’t think so.

He watches Heysel remove her headpiece warily, gaze flicking over her bandaged face briefly. In Yharnam, there was only one reason to cover one’s face so, and it was to hide tell-tale marks of the plague. Brador recalls Heysel’s mention of a curse in Lothric. Maybe she’s hiding the signs of her own curse. He decides not to ask. He doubts it’ll be pretty.

He snorts at the mention of hot dogs. Yes, he knows what those are. Salty, processed mystery meats sold as street food -- in Yharnam, you learned not to ask what they were made of.

“Dog or not, as long as there’s meat in it I’m not opposed.” He looks past Heysel, scanning the signs until he sees one that declares, in big red letters, HOT DOGS. “Show me how to pay with the holophone.”

[churchassassin]

ruthlessdaughter‌:

Heysel nods. “Of course, Brador, of course.” If the sun has been provided for the comfort of the Ark’s residents, why must it be so horribly intense? The Mare Crisium may be dismal, but at the very least, it doesn’t cause one to broil within one’s own headpiece.

She selects a relatively isolated table in the food court’s corner and pulls out a chair for Brador. Seating herself on the chair opposite, she brushes aside the crumbs left behind by its previous occupants and maintains a pensive silence.

Yharnam seems to be in a very poor state. There are no undead, there is no curse, but there is something severe enough that Brador, a man of obviously vast and unparalleled skill, is called upon to exterminate impending cases of nondescript beasthood. He is not delving into details; is it hesitation holding him back, or an inability to properly describe the situation? It’s possible he just doesn’t know of the full picture. He is an assassin, after all, not a scholar.

“A scourge of blood—no, the blood, though the difference is lost on me,” Heysel recounts, “A threat of beasts. Lethal errands. Your life isn’t any more glamorous than mine is.”

She eyes the surrounding kiosks, all selling an assortment of foodstuffs. The accompanying smell drifting through the air could be considered appetizing, perhaps, if she had any inclination to eat. Does Brador eat food? Is nutritional sustenance something that anyone in Yharnam requires?

“Are you hungry, Brador? We have been provided with an allowance of currency on arrival for the exchange of goods, paid for using this, ah, holophone.” To illustrate, she pulls her own out of her bag, laying it on the table.

Brador stares at the holophone blankly. It’s the same as the odd device he found in his room when he woke up. He doesn’t understand how the little thing could be used to pay for services, but he goes along with Heysel and pulls out his own holophone from where he’s stashed it in his clothing.

When was the last time he ate? Before he entered the nightmare, he thinks. In that place concepts like time, hunger, thirst, they all ceased to be relevant. The Church hunters who came by from time to time never brought food, and Brador never became hungry. As if he was cursed the same way as those shambling, blood-drunk messes. (He supposes every hunter is cursed. Although he hasn’t been simply a beast hunter for quite some time.)

He remembers what it’s like to be hungry. He’s not hungry right now. But the thought of having food again is alluring.

“I don’t recognize most of this stuff.” His gaze slides over the various kiosks uncertainly, and then returns to settle on Heysel. “Tell me how to use this... holophone. I can tell you about the old blood, and you can tell me about Lothric over some food.”

Brador eyes the misshapen headpiece dubiously. “If you eat.”

[starrover]

— Louise Glück, from “Otis,” Meadowlands (1996)

[kyoka-sui-get-su]

[02511213942]

Modern Gods, 36” x 48”, oil paint

i think this was the most time and care i’d ever put into a large painting haha

[redlipstickresurrected]

Magdalena Morey (Polish, b. 1974, Lublin, Poland, based Aranjuez, Madrid, Spain)Female Artists - First Light, 2018  Paintings: Acrylics, Watercolors, Pastels

[canisalbus]

Fiery Beacon

[churchassassin]

hunterkristoph‌:

No good answers out of him, then. If this place did have something to do with Yharnam, the man in front of him couldn’t explain it.

More important than where he is, though, is how he can leave–but Kristoph doesn’t feel like he’d be having this conversation at all if Brador knew the answer to that.

He glances down at his clothing, starting to fiddle with the edge of his coatsleeve. His circumstances seem worse and worse with every passing second. He twists the fabric between his thumb and forefinger and doesn’t raise his gaze back up to Brador when he speaks. His voice is little more than a contemplative mutter. “Yes… somewhere else.”

His eyes flit up briefly at the almost harsh tone of the man’s question.

“Well.” He pauses to clear his throat uncomfortably. “Not by choice. And I certainly don’t intend to continue the hunt.”

“Giving up the chase so easily? Some hunter you are,” Brador scoffs. “But wise of you. Better to be a coward than end up blood-drunk like the rest.”

“There are no beasts to hunt here anyhow.” He hasn’t learned much -- having barely ventured outside -- but he’s spoken to a few of the denizens (large talking birds, thoroughly unsettling). “They call this place the Sea of Nectar. From what I’ve gathered, it’s an entirely different world from where we come from... like a dream. Or a nightmare. I suppose you’re familiar with both kinds.”

[silly-string-1919-deactivated20]

[churchassassin]

gentleembrace‌:

“A beast?” Laurence’s head falls to one side, as if unbalanced. His eyes are wide and unfocused. His nails begin digging into the flesh of Brador’s palm. “Was it beautiful? Was it everything we dreamed? Tell me how it felt.”

Beasthood. Generally a death sentence, but there had been a beckoning power in the Embrace rune that told him it would be different. Based on the trials he had been running some degree of transformation was to be expected, even desired—experiments with diluted blood and an impermanent rune performed on his own self and assorted patients with a spread of results that baffled yet felt purposeful, a scattering of crumbs on the edge of enlightenment—but something in Brador’s words and demeanor leads Laurence to suspect that a full transformation had taken place. Something unexpected had happened that night.

Laurence feels like he is wading through shallow water, driven by a sense of urgency, blinded by the setting sun. There is a hollowness in Brador’s voice that turns his guts to ice. Is it good? Is it bad? Does it matter? The pelt draped over Brador’s head and shoulders blurs into the man’s skin and black antlers bisect the horizon. Laurence feels so close to understanding that it hurts. 

You turned into a beast, Brador said, Brador confessed. Brador stands before him now adorned with a bloody, beastly skin. Laurence waits for an answer and hears the ocean in his ears.

Does he have to say it? --In all other things clear-sighted, Laurence had never been able to see his own downfall. Or had he known all along? Brador had seen it in glimpses, in the bouts of strange hunger and his pupils that wouldn’t contract, but he had always hoped...

It was hope that had blinded them all, wasn’t it? Hah. From the scholars in their lofty Orphanage, all the way down to the poor bastards signing their bodies away to the hunt for a few blood transfusions. But in the darkness of the Nightmare, all hope was stripped away. Brador saw things now with new eyes.

He had wrestled with himself in the darkness for weeks, turning the subject of Laurence’s doom over and over in his mind. If he hadn’t let Laurence use the rune, if he had been more attentive to Laurence’s changes, if he had done this or that -- in the end it was all a waste of time, a cowardly misdirection. The truth was that Brador could never control Laurence. Only one person was responsible for Laurence’s fate, and that was himself.

That was the first time Brador was angry at Laurence, truly angry. It brought him shame.

The anger returns now, seeping into the love, and Brador -- doesn’t know what he wants -- wants to sink his teeth into Laurence to make it all real. To reach him, somehow, and make him see what he’s done.

“Beauty; was that all you saw in the rune?” The words spill out, harsh, too harsh. Brador is splitting at the seams. “Beasts are scrabbling, desperate creatures. That’s all Caryll had to offer you.”

Deep breath. In and out. (Control yourself.) Brador wishes Laurence would draw blood with those nails of his.

“The rune failed, Laurence. You were twenty feet tall, at least, I can still see it clearly... the arch of your spine brushing against the ceiling. The first of the cleric beasts.”

“You want to know how it felt. I split your skull open with my Bloodletter... I don’t want to,” Brador breathes in, “dwell on it. I cut the skin from your head and neck as proof that you’d turned, ha, you should have seen the look on the priests’ faces...”

Brador doesn’t look at Laurence’s face. What would be worse: if Laurence was horrified, or if he was delighted?

“They let me keep the skin. I’m still wearing it, as you can see... It was all I had left of you. But you’re here now.”

[redlipstickresurrected]

Euan Macleod (New Zealander, b. 1956, Christchurch, New Zealand) - Seated Figure Beneath Rocks, 2012   Paintings: Oil on Linen

[fleurdulys]

Rough Waters - Lionel Walden

[churchassassin]

ruthlessdaughter‌:

Heysel nods and stows the pipe on her belt. Starting at a meandering pace along the beach, she moves in the general direction of the Mare Nectaris’s more populated hub.

“There is hardly need to make boasts, Brador,” she giggles, “I’m sure you’re adept enough at your craft.”

She lets silence hang for a while, navigating around some driftwood and seaweed. Was she really an assassin? Were any of the Fingers?

“Assassin… is a rather glamorous term,” she finally says, “Some undead are better at hunting than others, and many of them did not have the skill or patience to slay a mark among its host of allies.”

Heysel nearly steps on a jellyfish washed up by the tide, and she picks it up and gently tosses it into the ocean. Satisfied, she brushes off her hands and continues. “For my part, my covenant was informal and unfocused. Prey were found quite by chance, as the fabric of Lothric’s time and space was fragile. In order to hunt, we would unsettle that fabric, and whoever’s world we found ourselves crossing into would be our mark. In that regard, Rosaria’s Fingers were not assassins.”

An obscured smile widens on her lips. “But oh, we were very good at what we did. If I get the opportunity, I would be happy to introduce you. They always do appreciate a talented hunter.”

“Enough about me.” She stops and turns to Brador. “I’m interested in this, er, Yharnam, did you call it? In the absence of the curse, what circumstances would necessitate the services of a self-styled assassin like yourself?”

Brador stays quiet as Heysel speaks. There’s a certain pride in the way she carries herself and the way she talks, despite the informality of her order and its bandit-like practices. He thinks he understands. Even the beast hunters, losing their minds and names to the blood, held fast to their pride. After all, what artisan does not take pride in doing their work, and doing their work well?

There is an art even in violence. Perhaps especially in violence. No matter what else Brador thought of Gehrman, he could not deny the man understood the beauty of a hunt. That selfsame beauty was what shone from his last and most breathtaking weapon designs. The burial blade and the blades of mercy. Heavenly blades to hunt hellish beasts and forsaken men; the symbolism was not lost on Brador.

And yet. Brador was no artisan. The deaths he meted out were brutish, bloody. He couldn’t forget what it was all for. (Laurence. Always Laurence. Killing itself was not the art, it was what his work allowed Laurence to paint on Yharnam’s canvas.)

He looks at Heysel when she stops, settling his gaze on where he supposes her eyes must be.

“I don’t know what curse Lothric has, but some might say Yharnam is cursed as well. The city is--” Brador cuts himself off abruptly. Falling to pieces, is what he wants to say, but that’s not quite true. It’s continuing as it ever was; Laurence had always been a meticulous crafter, and his invention continues to turn and turn in his absence. “A scourge of the blood lies in the city. It causes people to transform into... beasts. I would pre-emptively kill those about to turn, or sometimes take care of -- other threats.”

He’s being vague. He doesn’t know how to explain Laurence. Brador thinks, like the sun and the wind and the moon, Laurence simply is.

Tiredly (and he realizes he is tired, the adrenaline from his awakening rapidly fading from his veins) Brador inclines his head toward a food court with shaded seating and says, “I’d rather get out of the sun, if you don’t mind.”

[churchassassin]

hunterkristoph‌:

When Kristoph swivels his head towards the startling little bell of the elevator doors opening, he’s already reacted too slow. It’s definitely not the first time his habit of letting his eyes wander has gotten the best of him.

The weight of the shove makes him think at first that he is being tackled, but as he realizes that he isn’t hitting the ground (being able to withstand a blow still felt new to him somehow), he manages to steady himself enough to get a look at what ever he’d just collided with. He adjusts his glasses and his nose wrinkles in disaste at the familiar face before him.

Walking face first into a stranger would have been more reassuring. It’d been a mistake to think for even a minute that he was free from the grasp of Yharnam’s annoying, ever-present claws.

The man doesn’t seem to recognize him, though–that’s fine. His name isn’t coming to mind, though Kristoph knows him by his face and clothing. And he isn’t someone Kristoph would particularly care to be recognized by.

(Though very few people are.)

Rubbing his shoulder in a passive-aggressive response to having been so ruthlessly attacked, he gives the man another once-over glance and decides not to ask what this place has to do with the nightmare he’d apparently not actually escaped.

“Do you?” he asks, ignoring the passionless apology. “I don’t know where I am.”

“That makes two of us, then.” Brador fidgets, feeling exposed in this unfamiliar space. “I was... somewhere else, and woke up here. I assume it was much the same for you.”

As he speaks, Brador notices a smell. Not the briny scent of the ocean, or the clean new smell of the apartment, but something intensely familiar. Some lingering scent. Faint, but still there. Like a moonlit night...

Ah. So the stranger is a dreamer. But not one that Brador knows. He appraises the stranger again. He certainly is a rather frail-looking fellow (Gehrman really knows how to pick them, he thinks with dark sarcasm; Laurence would chide him for the barb -- if he were here), but Brador hadn’t knocked him over with that shove, so the blood must be doing its work. Notably, the stranger doesn’t seem to be carrying any weapons. It’s a comfort to know that he wasn’t the only one whose weapons were taken away.

Sharply, he asks: “Are you a hunter? I don’t recognize your face.”

[churchassassin]

notaheretic‌:

While keeping an eye on the monster, Fray slowly shakes their head. “No, I don’t”, they say. “But I can handle myself.” 

Recalling the message relayed to them upon their arrival in Aldebaran, they attempt to channel their aetheric energy, picking up a head-sized piece of rubble off the ground and lifting it into the air. As if on cue, the wolf snarls and takes a leap forward, giving Fray the opportunity to magically hurl the rock at it.

The stone impacts on the back of it and only seems to break its concentration for a second. Or make it even angrier. But well, at least they got a reaction out of it. And didn’t miss. 

Brador recoils when he sees the stone suddenly fly up in the air. Arcane tricks...? Is the stranger in possession of a powerful artifact that allows them to do this?

There’s no time for questions though. The beast is momentarily distracted, but still dangerous. Brador rushes forward while the thing is focused on Fray, swinging the candle stand down hard on the beast’s skull. It connects with a resounding crash that mixes with the beast’s pained howls as the intricate decorations on the candle holders tear open skin on its head and face. 

Brador grits his teeth and swings again, hitting it hard on the side, trying to knock it off its feet. If he’d had a bit more time, maybe he could have broken off the end of the stand -- jagged broken edges of metal would have been far more effective. He’ll have to bludgeon the beast to death, rather inelegantly.