KINGDOM OF THE DEAD

[exorcieyes]

KINGDOM OF THE DEAD. This is a fandomless OC RP blog for Isagani Bacunawa, a demonic serpent-dragon spirit and a former gatekeeper of the spirit world. Now a resident of the mortal realm, he walks among men, using masks to draw out the souls of unsuspecting, grieving wearers so that his late lover, the shamaness Xiao Zhenyi, may possess their vacated bodies --- and once again know life.

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[exorcieyes]

Hiatus

[exorcieyes]

“ before you reprimand me , take a moment to consider your own failings ”

fire emblem: three houses starters (accepting)

She said it like she knew something. As though she had peered at Bacunawa, saw past the perpetual scowl and starched, white collar, and found everything of his life like sifting through the memories dumped in an old, tatty box: all his successes, his failures, the start, middle, and inevitable end.

She should not know enough about him to pinpoint any shortcomings. She should not know enough about him to even suggest it. 

Does he consider them?

Beneath him, the earth shakes. Bacunawa fixes his sight on her and a train rips through the rails, blurry fast. "What failings do you refer --- exactly." 

It’s like he’s waiting to see if she’ll try. She's stickered over his glasses, though. One on each lens. They couldn't get the woman they needed, and Bacunawa feels the talisman tucked inside his suit, cursed and humming. His heart stamps soft against it.

"If I fail, I accept the consequence," Bacunawa tells her. The words drag. If he succeeds, what does it matter if he’s too soft, not soft enough, or too rigid in his rules and in his need to execute orders, a thing with a singular purpose. The guard rails slide up and the tinny ringing dies. The train has passed. "I do not run from it,” he affirms, readily. “Do you."

[exorcieyes]

“ i can’t believe you put yourself at risk for my benefit ” (from jaehyun!)

fire emblem: three houses starters (accepting)

It's symbiotic.

Everyone knows it. When night comes and the sun is no longer there to chase their regrets, the demons follow. Sometimes in their shadows. Other times, the dark, unattended corners of a dead end. The vacated alley by a store.  

So when Jaehyun tells him, sleepy-eyed and bruised, that he can’t believe the gatekeeper’s put himself at risk for his benefit, it’s true. Partly. Bacunawa protects him to protect the ones Zhenyi needs, and if he has to drag this floppy-haired boy from the front of his shop so that whatever beast has been prowling the night for someone to snap and grind between his teeth, sticky purée, doesn’t get to him first, then okay.

Bacunawa looks him over like he’s a butterfly pinned to a board.

Protect him, she’d said. And now he’s here, wounds dressed, wrapped in salves and bandages and blankets.

"If you die, Mister Park --- I prefer you die elsewhere,” he says.

Jaehyun’s sword is perched against a wall. A pot of tea sits steaming nearby.

[exorcieyes]

"Well, feel free to say hi whenever you like," Rose says, genuine albeit wary, and the implication lifts into the watchful crease of her eyes.

fire emblem: three houses starters (accepting)

On the table is a magazine cover, a no-good with bleached hair, a tattoo, and one too many piercings. 

Bacunawa resembles a man unimpressed by his daughter's date. 

"I am told you have a book," he tells her. He puts a stopper on every word, and studies something else. "For my wife." 

That's why he's here. He wouldn't endure it otherwise --- the woozy-headed nausea, the stench of hair dye and three hundred shampoos. She had stayed up when nothing but stars and streetlamps lit the night, and stowed in a cozy cranny of the shop, she had flipped the wrinkled edges of the book like an album, like her memories were scrawled on each piece of paper, every sentence a photograph. 

She'd gotten the book here from this woman with the violet eyes. Rose.  

Bacunawa crosses the floor and considers her for a long, long second. An eternity. He extends his hand. "And also... this," he says. "You know Zhenyi."

In it is a bundled wrap of baby lemongrass for the garden. Will you deliver this to her? Zhenyi had asked earlier, cheek cracking, just the night before. 

He waits for the woman to take it.

Of course he would.

[exorcieyes]

"Naive and uptight is no way to live your life." - From Sophia !

fire emblem: three houses starters (accepting)

"She is very lucky to have you..."

He hears them like a whisper; like a voice when passing someone’s bedroom in the dead of night, one you aren’t supposed to hear. The room smells thickly of kare-kare. Green tea. Herbs. He's just looked up when she sticks her last golden pin into Isra's nest of infinite hair. 

"Open your eyes," she coaxes, then. 

In the tender darkness, he sees their smiles. Isra's jewelry, her painted lips, her cheeks, orange-pink, blushed soft with candlelight. 

Isra is… happy. Zhenyi murmurs something unknowable, holding a mirror for her like a mother would…

"Naive and uptight is no way to live your life," Sophia continues. 

Bacunawa blinks slowly. On the other side of the coffee table, this woman with her choppy purple hair and half-lidded eye has knocked on the door of his attention when she should be focused, he thinks, on a new sketch. A tattoo design. Their lovers, perhaps. He half-expects her to be spinning a pen over her fingers, and Bacunawa, watching the clock tick to ten and feeling it, turns his head like an owl.

Zhenyi fastens a necklace. They hum.

“Tell me," he wonders, "who do you call… 'naive?'"

[exorcieyes]

hc: name. Bacunawa is not his real name. Or, rather, it is not his original name. When pinned to the earth and later discovered then freed by the shamaness Xiao Zhenyi, the days following his recovery were tense, and he himself? Difficult to approach. 

She’d asked what to call him. He never gave his name. Familiar with the tale of bakunawa, a serpent that devoured six of the seven moons in ancient Filipino mythology, and in some versions of the tale, banished from his home, Zhenyi thought it apt. He was a serpent demon. He wasn’t of this world, but was pinned to it, maybe ousted from his home.

She called him bakunawa and it stuck.

[exorcieyes]

“ yesterday’s enemy is today’s ally ” // Jeje!! <33

fire emblem: three houses starters (accepting)

The low hubbub of the market around them nudges his thoughts as the hour winds towards three. Shreds of noise ripple in and out of distinction, and Bacunawa is part listening, not conscious, really, that he’s picking up on them: a cart with one squeaky wheel, the faraway moan of an old song through the speakers, the sad, gurgling fish tanks. He smells it, too: lakewater. Incense. 

He takes a crackly bag of sesame sheets and frowns. It’s one month expired.

“Tomorrow, what will you be.”

A man bustles by in oversized white gloves and a trolley stacked with tins of egg roll cookies and rice noodles. His shoes shluck over the floors that are, unfathomably, always muddy wet. 

Bacunawa was waiting, quiet. Suddenly, he laughs.

“I do not test you, Dorje. I am... grateful,” he says at last, mulling, “for your devotion... and for your friendship.” In his basket: a fresher bag. Who knows when he’d tossed it in. Bacunawa’s glasses shimmer under the buzzing white lights, and there is no doubt behind them. “You would not abandon, and nor will I.”

[exorcieyes]

“ you actually look more handsome to me with honesty on your face ” // Isra :3

fire emblem: three houses starters (accepting)

“You love her.” Sudden words. They are talking in another room, Zhenyi and Sophia. You cannot hear them. “She… is for you to protect --- and you have what others do not,” he says. “For her, you will do everything.”

Bacunawa’s eyes are fixed on them but he’s elsewhere. Something in his head, then, and unshareable; the bedroom of his own private thoughts. 

A bowl of lomi sits in front of Isra. It billows.

“You actually look more handsome to me with honesty on your face.”

His hand stops. Slowly, Bacunawa’s head turns to her and nothing --- not the steam from her bowl, the blurry mumbling of a TV, or her curtain of long, braided hair --- could take away from the incomprehensible look on his face. How long has he stared? Two seconds. Three? Sophia laughs, and he looks over her mask.

"I would not wear this,” he says.

She would know he means finish. Bacunawa continues carving, and if Isra is smiling beside him, proud or happy, maybe, of having seen through him, then let her.

[exorcieyes]

shadowtongued​:

                      𝑻𝑯𝑰𝑺 𝑰𝑺 𝑵𝑶𝑻 𝑾𝑶𝑹𝑲𝑰𝑵𝑮 𝑶𝑼𝑻 the way he wanted it to and the corner of his mouth twitches a little into a forced smile, forced politeness. This one sounds like someone he once knew, too logical, too blunt, STIFF. Fine, fine, fine. Be nice, adapt. Sliske brings his hands together, fingers clasping one another like someone praying, and he rests a set of gloved knuckles onto where his lips are behind the veil, thinking. He really does look like a MOURNER now. “You sound tired. I only ask as I know some are territorial in their spaces. I do not belong.” His latter statement is lax but honest, as travelling was always a spontaneous choice for him and where he plants his feet is random. Exploration is something he is keen on, always has been. Sliske gracefully drops his hands down to the table and his brow furrows, not feeling the need to comment on the ways of the SPURNAL and unnatural. The footholds of survival and habit are well worn for him on that volcano he left two planes back. His kind were well versed in ‘for the good of the people’; wet blanket thrown over the truth that Mahjarrat really had just gotten used to that white lie as a homicidal pecking order. He’ll never go back to Freneskæ, not even on a nostalgia trip, not even if he could. Gielinor gone, Earth is nice. Bright, comfortable, and not on the verge of blowing up or global conflict. Well — to a lesser degree. But, hey, he’ll take it.

                “You sound like me when I was an officer,” Sliske smoothly says, finally acknowledging the tea in all it’s sad bitterness just to roll the container in his hands as a way to keep his hands busy while admiring the lights and decor. Charming, soft, and exciting. “I was exiled because I wanted free will and that didn’t sit with my ‘Lord’. People lie, I lie a lot more than most, but the way my master lied to me — us, my people in his empire, and used us like disposable tools for his own goals? Then yes, I’ll take my EXILE. It was justified. I was indeed a liability.” He slides his boot closer to him, shoulders lifting as Sliske shrugs and sends the veil under his hat dancing. “The things I did were heinous, yes, but it was my way out. It’s hypocritical I complain of my kind being tools when I too do the same to humans. Lack of morals and raised on dog eat dog, I suppose.”

                Lurid, SULFUR eyes look up to Bacunawa, lacking any kind of remorse and boldly so. “So yes, I was the tail amputated off the system I built. I’m fine with that. Being cast off here was an IMPROVEMENT for me. I abhor boredom and stagnancy. I thrive in change and action. — So that’s that, an abridged vague primer on me,” splaying his hands gentle on his chest, he grins a little too cheshire. “I did not realize my trip overlayed a holiday and I am more pleased. I like culture. I suppose I never had any of my own other than a ritual for life, and one for death. Neither happy celebrations. — I am a Mahjarrat, an esteemed Child of Mah. None are familiar with my kind here and I am grateful none are. We became extremely solitary individualists. I just like to ROAM, sir.”

I do not belong. 

“And yet you are here.”

Across the street, a Dean Martin number, “Marshmallow World.” It’s never once snowed in Manila. 

Someone rheumy-eyed and cotton-mouthed could take a guess, eeny, meeny, miny, moe stab at the truth: this creature doesn’t care that he doesn’t belong. This place isn’t his. Isn’t Bacunawa’s. They are both intruders, invaders, and the only place the latter has is within the hands and legs that wrap around him when the duvets are no longer enough for her. Unthinkingly. When she needs him. 

This creature is much too open for his liking, and it strikes Bacunawa as self-satisfied. 

"I wonder... 'Mahjarrat'” ---the word rolls foreign on this tongue. He lifts his chin--- “was it freedom for your people? Or is it freedom for yourself." Bacunawa cannot assume, but it taps at the back of his head the way the blinking red light on an answering machine doesn’t leave you.

This esteemed Child with the streetlamp eyes... He probably has never done anything for anyone other than himself. He says he lies. He feels like one; a promise from a stranger in a poorly lit room, the words ‘trust me’ with a smile that doesn’t reach the eyes. Bacunawa takes a shot, assumes for once because, at his core, he is judgmental, and comes to this conclusion: this creature is a thing of half-truths. Slicked slippery, tricky.

This creature could also smack you with his car in a busy intersection and feel more inconvenienced for running late. 

“You... are an insurgent,” he says, deliberate and slow. “It was necessary.”

The exile, necessary. Bacunawa said it like a fact. Something immutable and unresisted. Everyone abides by rules. There are always rules, always an order, always a consequence, whether you like it or not. In the spirit world. Here. “We do not ask.”

But this beast did, a subversive and uncontrolled. 

This Mahjarrat looks every bit a widower, only Bacunawa doubts the thing’s ever married. His hands spread no warmth onto his thighs, and the gatekeeper’s lips twist like he’s confused or hates the taste of something. Maybe the question he’s about to ask. “What is your purpose?”

He’s banished in the human world. Does he even have one?

[exorcieyes]

what type of romanticism are you?

deep romanticism. mindlessly shared space, automatic glances, overwhelming warmth: you're deep romanticism. deep romanticism consists of pure comfort and belonging; the complete intertwining of two souls. it's growing into a shape that fits perfectly in the arms of another. it's asking questions you already know the answer to just to hear the way they pronounce those words again. it's admiring their face as they sleep pressed against you, admiring the same face you study as they talk about whatever they're fond of that week, yet finding new things to love, even after years of doing so. you're most likely an old and pure soul, and anyone would be so incredibly lucky to have you. just remember that emotional and romantic depth is not the end goal. enjoy your journey rather than focusing on a certain point of achievement along the way. love in uncertainty. sit in unfamiliarity. "we'll survive, you and i" - f. scott fitzgerald

tagged by: @autumnswordsman​. thanks! tagging: @monstriiss​, @bellecosebabe​, @lapeirla​, @shadowtongued​, @synthes​ (Baozhu), @arzhur​, @dojiryu​, and anyone else who’s interested

[exorcieyes]

jyargal​:

[Abhyasa] A moment of quietude when the one assurance left sustaining it—a belief in something greater than oneself—itself collapses could be a gift in disguise, but at this time, with the seconds ticking by to remind him of how the fire licked the skies and ashen-embers fell around, it all only felt like a great burden on his heart.

He continues staring blankly at the shattered remnants of the bowl, and—

And after a minute, Dorje gathers up his robes and kneels to collect the pieces one by one. Careful not to cut open his skin; to gently place each jagged part into his palm as he meditates over how it broke.

“If you are content then I have nothing more to say on the matter,” he says, cadence low and controlled as if he were reciting prayers. “Please, my friend. Let us lay this night to rest.” It was, perhaps, not his place to lose his composure so. This was not a personal matter his guidance was requested of. Yet, he cannot help but wish things hadn’t unfolded this way; destructive.

Regret sits thick on his tongue.

“You ask me of love.” Ceramic clicks together, the only sound interrupting this thick silence. “People do not need to understand how someone thinks in order to love them. Or to simply be a friend. She loved you. Loves. She spoke of you often, and I too, in a way, came to care about you as well.” In each of his prayers, he thought of them and entreated the world to be kinder, to give them the happiness they deserved.

However, prayers did very little in the face of the world’s cruelties.

He sighs, the flickering lights of the butter lamps casting long shadows over his fur; features drawn with exhaustion and time, something he could not escape. “Please, I am tired. We can speak again at another time.”

Cradling the ceramic pieces in both hands, Dorje decides that will try to repair it. This.

The thought hits him uninvited. Dorje is standing under the low, dusty ceiling of the shop, the hour late... In the kitchen, a kettle whistles, water spilling out a hiss. They have not moved an inch nor muscle nor one batting eye, and the monk, horns wedged between the walls of the barren hallway, the lights half-dying, stands a paralyzed victim to his own disbelief. 

Zhenyi would stand unburned at the other side of the room. Alive and solid; there if you just reached out.

Her face would be hers, but not her body. 

What would happen, then. No yelling. There would be no top-of-lungs, chest-burning argument or accidental sentences, the both of them face-to-face where no secret or lie could ever hide. Dorje would not yell at her. But in the space of his eyes where she could see her own reflection, she might see disappointment. 

Her heart would wilt away, and Bacunawa could not bear that.

“Then you will understand,” the gatekeeper surmises. He stands by Dorje as he picks up the shards, and he holds out his hand. “When the time comes.” 

In it, a piece of the bowl, one that’d skipped and slid further away. Maybe his friend, the fur around his face dulled, will repair it a sunset or a year later. Bacunawa draws back his hand and, unexpectedly, is not sure what to do with it. “I would not ask your approval, Dorje --- only that you are aware... But perhaps you are not ready.” He half-curls it by his side. His fingers feel rigid. “Or it is I.” 

Zhenyi, heartbroken but not crying, never crying. He almost feels sorry that his tea is still there, hardly touched and cold. Sorry for Dorje. ”I will let her know you are alive,” he says, stern. It underlied something softer, but he won’t admit it. “It will make her... happy.”

[godfreygifs]

[exorcieyes]

monstriiss​:

Bones, bleached white from weathering and roped together by flesh turned leather, clacked like grotesque wind chimes from the branches where they hang. Flies had long since abandoned the corpses. The fresh ones were at the border. A mirthless laugh shook her frame, despite the chill of the air no vapour condensed on her breath. 

“ I do not make threats, my dear, only promises, ” She assured, but there was nothing comforting about her words. 

Persistent, or stubborn. It seemed neither were going to budge. Chest swelled with a long drawn breath, shoulders tensed. Frustrated. She could just… kill him now and save herself the trouble. Although, if she did then she would not know what brought him to her territory. She could be patient. Gather information now and kill him later. Tension dispelled, she released a hissing sigh through her teeth as crimson lips curved into a well measured smile of feigned cordiality. 

“ Your business is my business within the bounds of this forest, ” Drathenia spoke, there was a change her course, rather than advance she began to circle Bacunawa. She held him under her keen gaze, scrutinizing and scanning for any tell tale signs or weakness. Anything useful. 

“ Tell me, what is your purpose here? Answer truthfully, ” warning touched her tone, for if she detected even the slightest scrap of deceit, his corpse would join the others in the trees. 

His face went sour. “Do you.”

He had no doubt. When the sun died out and night was an unending black, he was certain this monster prowled through her forest until someone’s bones snapped in her mouth like twigs and popped pulpy red, sticky marmalade down her chin. Maybe she would smear it with the back of her wrist and excuse herself even if no one was there. 

He thought, too, if she wished she could do that now. To him. Invariably, Bacunawa would understand her sense of duty.

But that didn’t make him dislike her any less. 

“I am here... For my wife,” he allowed at last, each word isolated. "And to pray.” He sounded like a man smiling through being insulted, and his not-quite smile looked just the same way. As a matter of principal, Bacunawa hated exposing anything of himself, but this beast with her sharpened teeth, her too-long nails, held dominion over this land, and he would comply even if unhappy in his unhappiness. He was not a liar. 

Bacunawa, really, was a dog trained to sic on command. But he was still a dog, and he still followed orders.

Answer truthfully, she’d demanded. His half-frown deepened like he’d been snubbed and she circled around him like he used to do, long ago, searching for something, waiting... “There is a woman,” he continued, “whom we will pay respect. Your cooperation in this matter would be appreciated.”

The fog thickened. He kept track of her, unmoving, with his eyes and ears.

[exorcieyes]

"Ha! I hope you are not too busy from a visit, my friend," Dorje says, voice booming and full of gentle familiarity as he enters the shop. A basket in hand, he sets it down on the counter before pulling out a small box full of fresh figs. "The market had these today, and I must share them with you. Come, take a break. It is a beautiful day outside."

He heard Dorje before he saw him. Had it been anyone else, Bacunawa would have been inclined to say, go away, as if the shop isn’t emptier than a backwater cemetery, his head never lifting, his attention fixated on anything else his ever-dwindling patience allowed of him. Instead, he looks to a sheepish-faced woman who’s lingered beside them for the past five seconds, and tells her, “I am busy.”

He smiles, forced, as an afterthought. She wilts, apologizing for the interruption, and slinks away.

A record nearby continues to warble. Bacunawa mulls about looking at the figs and Dorje’s unparalleled smile, and his chest slowly sinks. You can hear the puff. “...I will consider it,” he says, as though he hasn’t already decided, preordained. He watches the woman slip past the door. There’s already a coat in his hand. “Do you like wine.”

[exorcieyes]

autumnswordsman​:

The lack of a common language does not stop men from finding a common humanity, the natural urge to live harmoniously, no matter how brief and rare, and he thinks of this odd urge to connect he’s seen in countless mortals while observing Bacunawa carefully—the outline of him deepened by dusk, their shadows and reflections changing color on the still waters.

They have little in common save for the dubious nature of their origin. Yet, as he holds the cool gaze, he knows there is a merciful finitude in their capacity to sustain grief even with their near-infinite lifespans.

Zoro is not the type to leave room for doubt in his existence. All things fall into patterns and roles to maintain balance, but there are instances, fleeting and insistent as the ripple of the sea, about whether it was truly the fault of malevolent spirits that drove mortals to bear such wicked hearts. Was it always in their nature to be so cruel to each other? The winds must come from somewhere when they blow, there must be reasons why the leaves decay each season, and was it always so inevitable for sentience to lead to conflict?

He sighs, an otherworldly exhaustion bearing down its weight like an anchor around his core. “It is as you say, you do not need me to remind you of the price of duty,” he says, unkindly. The timbre of his voice edged with ice, jagged around each word.

“Would it be a kinder fate if each of us faded from existence? We’ve both failed to uphold what our nature dictated in us since the beginning of time.”

What is the point of existence without purpose?

Worms crawl around the bleached bones laid out for vultures before their arrival, and he can imagine the growth that this place might hold like a secret amidst the mountains many years from now. How the tender first sprouts of flowers might push out of worn-down ribcages, vines and tall grass wrapping around shattered femurs and delicate phalanges. A garden-graveyard growing around a shrine once dedicated to purity.

A graveyard-garden of his making.

Anger flashes in his expression. “Cast blame if it makes you feel righteous. Do you also blame those who exiled you for your current predicament?” 

They would be at odds. He, a demon hunter. Bacunawa, a demon. When Zoro thinks of him, perhaps inexplicably and only in the spiteful hours of the night, what does he think of? Maybe a dog. Spit-stained, gangly. Let loose with no option than to be put down. 

She had wanted him to come here to pay his respects, and he had. He’d lit the incense and changed the fruit. He’d prayed. 

She’s cracking apart like eggshells and couldn’t come herself.

"Not kind," Bacunawa corrects, then, sharp as a papercut. There’s a sliver of his teeth, blank white, behind his lips. “Life is earned.”

It is not about kindness. Those who fail their purpose have no place. It is an indisputable law. It shines so clear behind his eyes: Isagani Bacunawa believes it the way people know that night is dark, an irrefutable equation whereby if a = b and b = c, then a = c. Ultimate failure is rectified only by punishment. Fire burns. Nobody lives forever. All facts, unquestionable. 

Zoro, maybe, might abide by that, too... Perhaps he is also tied to his duty and his responsibility. Maybe he's defined by it, and that’s why, even when nearly wiped out and irreprehensibly alone, he is still here, hunting.

Maybe there’s something honorable about it, too. Maybe, even, the gatekeeper can see that.

“I accept fully what I have done,” Bacunawa denies back, firmer and too soon. What does Zoro know? What he’s heard; just the official tale or maybe muddled, alleyway rumors. He sees the hunter’s eyes flash angry the way a sword does, and wonders how quickly he can draw one out. “What of you? Do you accuse what happened to your kind on the ningen? Or yourself for your weakness.”

It could be both. 

Zoro can come for him at any moment. Bacunawa's hands have curled hard behind his back, and he’s not even aware of it.

[exorcieyes]

bacunawa’s opinion on your muse (accepting) // @bellecosebabe  

“She is hungry.”

The casino’s lights flash on his glasses. She sees them blink. “The young woman.” 

"It is control. She will not stop until she has had her fill --- And we do not know when.”

“Neither will she,” Zhenyi says. He has finally slipped his eyes from the tall tower to her, and it’s so curious a thing to never see a cold breath leave his mouth, always so severe except when it’s not; her own best-kept secret. “So young... What has she done to sit so high, and where none can touch her." Everything. Anything. “You know her kind.”

"I am familiar,” he answers at last. “Before, where I am from. And now, here.”

Not just here, but the human realm. Isagani looks out of place; a cutout in the dizzying casino glow and smudging tail lights; a blackhole that light cannot escape. She feels his presence beside her the way a whisper runs down the back of your neck, only it is safe, and he is cold. Absolute zero.

"You do not trust her.”

“I trust she will do what is necessary,” he says, mouth coiling. “For her benefit.”

“Are we not the same.”

She watches. Isagani goes quiet. Looks away. “She would have you do what is… troubling.” Creating curses, he means. Something she would have never done. What she hates. Zhenyi thinks of the young woman, Verin, but from a previous life, an animal on all fours, mangy, crooked-legged and fighting.

“She has lost herself long ago,” she says, then, and Isagani tucks her hair behind her ear. His eyes are black.

“We will not find her.”

They will not try, but she knows Verin won’t, either.