Sometimes when i don't feel too good about my art, I go through all of yours and it inspires me so much. Your linework and colors are just so cool! Thank you for all the art you create! I'm gonna go back to my wips. Hope you have an amazing day!
ueueueusdfhksl thank you so much?? I also find a lot of inspiration in my favorite artists' works, and knowing that someone finds the same in my art... I absolutely can't NOT have an amazing day afetr such words! ❤❤
Draxum didn’t believe in introductions. He didn’t believe in emcees going ahead of you and announcing your presence. That way, when he walked down the halls of one of the few remaining Matriarch outposts without warning and watched each new guard that came into his line of vision look at him horrified and pressed themself against the wall with the stiffness of rigor mortis, Draxum knew it came from his presence and reputation.
That knowledge alone made it very hard to keep a stoic expression.
About the only thing that could ruin that for him was what felt like the tenth scoff of the day. Draxum breathes out a trickle of irritation before he gives a sidelong glance behind him. “If you can not hide your disdain for even a few hours, then you are even more spoiled than I initially thought. And that is saying something considering my impossibly low standards for you.”
Said Prince, who was gussied up in his finest traveling clothes (which looked like they had never seen an inch of travel in their entire lives), let out an even louder scoff. “Well, excuse me! Here I was thinking that your lovely invitation to tour one of Mummy’s outposts was purely out of a desire to spend time with your superiors.”
“On the contrary, your mother’s few military forces leave much to be desired.” Draxum looked again at one of the guards pressed against the wall. They were now trying even harder to stand at attention. A vine grows from the wall, grabs him by the chest plate, and drags him over. Despite the small shriek the guard lets out, Draxum pays the guard no heed. But instead, he looks to the small dent left by his vine in the armor. “What do you see, boy,” he asks without looking at Leonardo.
“Uh, a guard about to wet himself,” Leonardo says with no small amount of disgust.
“If you had any attention on anyone but yourself, you would know that the new armor handed out to your mothers fighting forces are, in fact, ceremonial armor pieces that have been repainted to look new. They are from more than a century ago and have no actual protective capabilities. These pieces will do nothing to protect the soldiers if there is an attack. Obviously your highness,“ Draxum emphasizes with enough disgust to rival Leonardos, “has been cutting expenses. Not to her own personal protection detail or to yours, but to the ones who are supposedly assigned to protect her citizens. Probably for her next frivolous venture, whatever that might be.” There's a sound of a snapping fan, and Draxum is not surprised to look and see Leonardo fanning himself off with a bored expression. ”As a supposed future ruler of this country, that should trouble you.”
“Why? There hasn’t been a real war in centuries. If anything, I’m upset we wasted time repainting them.”
“There has not been a conflict that reached your attention because I take care of them.” Out of his peripheral vision, Draxum watches the guard he had forced look down at his chest plate in surprise and fear. Clearly, he, and the other guards looking at each other in alarm, had been unaware of this fact.
Leo crosses his arms and shifts his weight to one leg, rolling his eyes so hard it gave Draxum the impression it was the only muscle he used daily. “Uh, yeah, cause you’re a nobody who thinks he’s way more important than he-”
The candles on the wall suddenly flicker and die. Before anyone present could realize what that meant, the guards and Leonardo suddenly gasped for air. The guards manage to collapse against the wall, but Leonardo fully drops his fan and falls to his knees, gripping his chest. He looks around and finally realizes Draxum is still standing. The man takes three steps closer and almost feels satisfied when Leonardo tries to scoot away from him. But not far enough as Draxum reaches down and grabs him by the front, yanking him back up to his feet and putting his face an inch from his. “I think you forget your place sometimes, dear prince. I saw all your potential when I first met you as a child: your innate magic abilities and the fact you were born with two gifts. I saw everything you could be. I offered you the chance to reach your full potential many times, but each time you threw it away in favor of desperate parlor tricks to keep your mother’s amusement a moment longer. Because you and I both know what will happen when she grows bored of you. You are nothing without your abilities, her to hide behind, and the false crown you wear. The only inheritance guaranteed to you is the fate that has fallen every prince, princess, and princeps after you. And if you are fortunate, you will only have a life of destitution to look forward to.” Draxum releases his grasp and sends Lenardo back to the ground.
Draxum released his spell, and with it, he heard the gasping of guards and prince alike as their magic returned to them, “Back to your feet, your highness. You can use your imagination to think of the repercussions should I hear another scoff from you.” And with that, Draxum turned to go.
The only one who hadn’t completely fallen over and started gasping like a fish was the guard he had pulled over, who, other than looking a little dizzy, managed to stay on his feet. Draxum stops by him (barely giving the soldier time to snap back to attention) and, without looking at him, says, “Name.”
“Ra-Ravencrest. Of the Soothing South.”
“Tell your commanding officer you are receiving new orders. I expect you at The Baron’s Crest by noon tomorrow. If you prove yourself, you will find that you can actually use your potential as something more than a figurehead.”
The soldier's eyes widened before filling with the gratitude he had seen a hundred times over. But he also catches the water dripping on the wall (even the building itself was as ill-decrepit as the guards' armor). The light reflection on it gives the barest of trembles Draxum doubts anyone else can see. He moves on, ignoring one of the guards reaching to help the Prince to his feet only to have his hand swatted away. Leonardo scrambles to his feet while desperately trying to brush off his clothes as he hurries after Draxum. The Baron doesn’t hear a sound from the prince for the rest of the trip, but he can feel the self-righteousness and anger burning behind him. Not that it mattered. He would be gone before long.
And Draxum had a kingdom to save.
(#)(#)\/(#)(#)
(Present)
Draxum doesn’t find there are many benefits to his role as Baron. At least not socially.
He hadn’t made an appearance at any public function in ages. Much less one that expected its guests to wear fine gilded clothes. Draxum didn’t understand how armor was not required at a function full of spoiled social piranha. Thankfully, he still had his contacts that he made in secret and in the dark corners of inns. Some were older even than his title as Baron and more valuable than most of the resources that title gave him. They were unrestrained by the borders of the Gilded West. A blend of other alchemists, wizards, mysticians, and those who dedicated their lives to the craft rather than monetary gain. And though he did have a few political contacts who held titles before the union of the Kingdom and who retained a public standing afterward, Draxum was little more than a puppet to them.
To those who had claimed loyalty to the Matriarch but knew who they could depend on in a crisis.
Reports that were now lying across his already messy desk. His hands are braced on either side of the surface to understand the gathered information better. Draxum takes his hand to run across the words, often the only way he can slow down his data consumption as he takes the words in. His free hand goes to pick up his coffee when he sees the long cold liquid give off a slight, barely noticeable tremble. Any other eye would have missed it, but Draxum could tell it was stronger than the last. He closes his eyes in an angry growl before taking the coffee up and draining it. “Speak,” he says before the soldier at his door can say anything. After a moment, the soldier does as he’s told. “How long ago did he escape,” Draxum asks without looking behind him.
The one known as Dernhelm jumps in place. “I-I’ll never know how you do that, Captain,” he says in a voice of admiration before he clears his throat, “Tw-twelve minutes ago. As soon as we got free, we came to tell you.”
“How,” Draxum asks without aggression. He’s already gathering up the reports into three separate piles. He was mentally categorizing them into ‘read,’ ‘to be read,’ and ‘why the hell did they send this to me, this is why I don’t send thank you notes when you send me birthday presents, and I swear if you send me another ‘update’ on the family, I will flatten your homestead.’
“I-I wasn’t sure. I took Oaken with me to heal his wounds, as you instructed. And he was less recuperative of the idea than other patients. So-So, Oaken said he was going to pin him down, but before I could talk him out of it, the child managed to use the table to knock him over, and next thing I know, there was a stabbing pain down my side, and- and it felt like I had been stabbed. Oaken hurried to check on me, but it must have just been a nerve pinch. But the child had already grabbed my key and got out. Locking us inside until someone heard our shouting, and we came straight here.”
“Hm.” Draxum reaches into one of his pockets and draws a silver pocket watch. Unlike most of the metal he owned, this one was polished beyond necessary for maintaining its quality. Painstakingly small vines and flowers flocked by dark tiny birds and dots. A passerby with barely a glance might only appreciate details, but with his eye, he sees the differences between the tulips and roses. He sees the ravens through the crows. He sees the effort and care put into such a small item. Every time Draxum pulls it out, he takes a moment for the details before he clicks it open long enough to check the time. “That was sooner than I expected. Return and wait outside the thief's cell with Oaken.”
“Y-yes, Commander,” Dernhelm says with a half bow of his head and ducking out. Draxum knew Dernhelm’s respect came from a genuine sense of reverence and not an attempt to further his ranking. It was the reason he kept him around (and the fact he was a talented healer, considering it hadn’t been his innate gift), lest he be surrounded by a bunch of ‘yes men’ like the Matriarch was.
Draxum turns and waves his hand in the air. Like a dealer spreading out cards, a line of mystic mirrors appears in front of him, outlined in purple mystic energy. Through their lenses, he saw several different parts of the castle. He waved through the images as his free hand picked up his cold coffee again before he saw the east wing. A guard was walking past the bottom of a set of stairs when something jumped down from the top of the stairs. It used the momentum to slam the guard into the opposite wall, and they crumbled to the ground, unmoving. The Twilight Thief looks around to inspect his surroundings defensively. Judging by the way his shoulders are heaving, he has been running nonstop for some time. The Twilight Thief looks around once more before dropping to a knee and searching the guard's unconscious body. He picks up the guard’s now broken weapon and tosses it to the side. Judging by the frown on his face, he doesn’t find what he’s looking for but manages to take a piece of paper and pencil from him before he does one more inspection of his environment and hurries down the left hall opposite where the guard had been heading.
Draxum leans back on his desk, and with a small surge of energy, his coffee is reheated. Draxum gives his first grin of the day and walks out of the office.
(#)(#)\/(#)(#)
“What do you think they have in the Cantina today?”
Luke Gout, who had just finished lookout duty, thought for a moment (this being the first question that required his opinion of the day). One of the upsides to working at the Baron’s Keep was the inherent safety (no one was foolish enough to attack anything with the Baron's name on it), and it was kept to a much higher standard of upkeep than the other fortress and barracks of the Matriarch. It wasn’t as though the Baron didn’t have high standards for those under his leadership, but he did have his priorities in order. And one of those priorities was making sure there was quality food in the cantinas every day. You were pretty well set as long as you kept up with training, sought to improve yourself, didn’t slack in your duties, and held your role respectfully. “I dunno, it’s cold out. I kinda hope it's stew.”
Luke thought for a moment like it was an interesting question or at least the most interesting one he had received all day. “I think I like beef stew, carrot stew, seafood stew, chicken stew, chicken cacciatore-”
“Ain't that the same thing as a chicken stew?”
Luke knew the difference between chicken cacciatore and chicken stew. It was one of the few things he actually knew. But as Luke opens the fact to regale his companion on the differences in one of his few fields of expertise, they pass by a window when something flies past him and hits his companion square in the snout. He hits the wall hard. Luke barely has time to turn halfway before his halberd is yanked out of his hand, and the end is pressed to his throat on the receiving end of his own weapon. It was held in a practiced stance by a softshell turtle in tattered clothes. The turtle couldn’t be older than seventeen, but his dark pink eyes bore at him, ''Say a word, and you’ll wear this halberd as a necktie. Understand?”
Luke nods quickly with his hands in the air. He’s too scared to look at his companion, whose name Luke suddenly realized he didn't know, but he does know he’s knocked out cold. Without taking his eyes off him, the turtle takes out a pencil from his pocket, “Bite this,” the soft shell demands, shoving the eraser end against his mouth. With some difficulty (in no small part due to the turtle's aggressiveness), Luke manages to hold it between his teeth. “Show me three paths to the nearest low exit,” the attacker says.
The guard, through trembling lips, shifts his teeth to make a somewhat decent path. When he’s done, he drops the pencil from his teeth. The turtle looks over the path. How he could read it without a map, he didn’t know. But thankfully, he seems to understand and puts it in his pocket. “Thanks. And good night.” Before Luke Gout could comprehend what was about to happen, the turtle flipped the weapon around to the blunt end and slammed it against his face.
(#)(#)\/(#)(#)
Not being the most robust turtle, it takes Donnie some difficulty to shove the unconscious form into the nearest closet. It was only a matter of time before they discovered his escape, but this would at least throw him off his path. He does one more inspection to make sure no one is present before he leans against the wall and slumps down to the ground. He needed to rest before he ran out of energy at the most inopportune moment.
He took out the discarded torn shirt he had found (stolen) and was using as a makeshift bag. He dumped out all the stuff he had managed to take off the guards he had knocked out. There were several weapon parts (he wasn’t strong enough to use the heavy weapons favored by the guards), some fabric, some broken arrows, and a piece of crumbled bread (I mean, he was hungry. No one could blame him for that). He rolls up his pant leg, though a far cry from the leg brace he had lovingly crafted and updated with Mikey over the years. The one he had cobbled from weapons, and every scrap he could find was effective enough to run without too much pain. It was basically melded together with the broken pieces of a staff, mismatched fabric, and a small wheel he had broken off a cart. Even with his skill, he didn’t have the time to make any substantial changes he needed. With an irritated growl, he packs everything back up (he’d find a use for them later). Donnie uses the wall to climb to his feet and looks at the paper, trying to make sense of the squiggly lines and streaks. But to be honest, he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to expect when he said, ‘Hey guy, can you show me three paths out of this giant castle with just your mouth?’
As he puts the paper away, he uses the wall to stand up, but before Donnie pulls his hand away, he feels the wall vibrate with a rush of energy. He considers it might be a minor earthquake, but the overhanging torches flare, and the natural orange starts flashing to a bright red coupled with a deep horn that, as a thief, Donnie recognizes easily as a siren.
He runs.
As Donnie turns the corner opposite where he had come, he sees a bunch of Baron Guards heading in his direction. As he tries to stop, his feet slide out from underneath him. But he grabs at the ground and uses the momentum to swing his body in the opposite direction and run back the way he came, putting the halberd (the lightest weapon he had been able to carry with him) in the makeshift cloth sheath he had put together on his back.
Had it been Matriarch Guards, Donnie would have easily gone undetected. But the Baron Guards were much better organized. There was a reason he avoided stealing from places with a strong Baron presence. Donnie mentally recounts the mental map he had before he takes a hard left down another corridor. The turtle sees the giant mezzanine balcony he had passed earlier and the hall it opened up to. And, most importantly, he sees a large banner dragged across two pillars with the Barons Keep golden four-point crown sewn onto it. Finally, he notes the location of the descending stairs just off to its right and sets off a burst of speed.
Donnie runs just close enough to the balcony to grab the edge of the banner and run for the stairs. Just as he reaches the top, his levitation kicks in, and he swings out over the hall and back the way he came, just as the soldiers appear at the foot of the stairs. The guard in front of him was throwing his arms up to keep the rest from falling, but not in time to see Donnie swinging behind them and giving the one in the back a hard kick. The force of sudden kinetic energy sends the guards all screaming down the stairs in an almost domino-like manner. The banner swings his body out close enough to the wall, and he manages to kick off and back over the hall. He releases the banner and starts to fall again with the aid of levitation. He feels the magic swell again and forces himself to drop it before it gets out of hand. Gravity returns, but Donnie does a quick, trained fall to avoid hurting his leg. He rolls for a few moments before he manages to stop and get back to his feet. He recounts the makeshift paper map and runs for the hall under the stairs. Ignoring the sound of guards growing at the foot of the stairs.
Now he can follow the map. That, mixed with what he already knew, might be his best chance at getting out. He can swing back around and throw them off his tracks. That was the plan. Get out, get as far as he can. Lay low, find some new clothes and head back to the last spot he saw his brothers. Where are they, alright? He didn’t want to think about Raph laying unmoving, seeing Mikey’s eyes roll into the back of his head, or Leo screaming in pain as his leg was crushed. He forces the thought back with a single tear. He’d find them. It'd be ok. It’d be ok-
Donnie is so wrapped up in his thoughts the only thing that brings him out of it is something catching him by his good ankle and sending him to the ground, knocking the wind and logic out of him. For a moment, his senses are wrecked asunder, the sound fades, and all he’s left with is the blaring lights. He rolls over onto his shell to see down the hall.
At first, it is dark, but the blaring lights illuminate a familiar tall form with a four-point crown and pointed armor before the light fades again. Each time the light flares up, the figure is closer. All until it's standing directly in front of him, speaking just in time for his hearing to come back, “I’ll admit, I did expect an escape attempt. But I didn’t expect you to get so far. So I’ll be sure to take that into consideration.”
Donnie grabs the halberd, but before he can throw it, a vine snaps over his hand viciously and causes it to crash across the ground out of his reach. He reflexively pulls his hand to his chest and glares at the figure with all the venom a cornered beast can muster. But all it does is bring a smirk to the Baron’s face, “Good. Keep that anger. Keep that fire. I’ll get used to it.” Donnie looks at the Baron’s shoulders. There’s a flash and twist as the two gargoyles Donnie had seen earlier pop back into existence, “Go and find any uninjured guards and take them to any injured person to the infirmary.”
“Got it, Boss Baron,” exclaimed the one with the rounder jaw. He saluted as he took off with the other. Before Donnie can take advantage of the Baron's lack of attention and grab something from the bag, vines grow out of the wall and wrap around his torso. Draxum walks closer, and he hides the object in his balled fists. The Baron grabs him by the front of the vines and quickly lifts him off the ground, wrapping his arm around Donnie’s torso laterally and starting to carry him back the way they came despite Donnie's squirms. When they reached the landing of the stairs, they saw the guards that Donnie had shoved down the stairs. They were moaning in a twisted pile, and Draxum paused, “Raise your hand if you’re dead. Moan if you’re alive.” The group lets out another collective moan, “Good. Get back to work when the healers are done with you,” and he walks on.
They diverge from the path that Donnie knows will take him back to his cell and instead down a separate path entirely. Down the way he came, Donnie could still hear the guards groaning from the landing. He tries to peer around to get as much layout as possible, but as soon as he tries, the torches down opposite tunnels flicker off. For all but the path, they were on. He suddenly hears the sound of running footsteps,
“Baron, you found him,” yells an annoyingly familiar voice. Donnie squirms enough to see the Albatross who had tried to heal him earlier (Dernhelm, was it?) with relief on his face, “Thank the Moon. I was worried he had injured himself further.” Behind him, Donnie can see his companion also came with him. He had already assumed that Dernhelm the Albatross was a healer of sorts. His dad had taught him how to discern guards apart. He pointed out that healers under the Baron’s employ sported soft lavender robes with hoods outlined with black stitching of a meaning he didn’t understand. His companion, who gave Donnie a more than venomous look from behind the shorter Albatross, sported the darker robes outlined in a much heavier armor set and a square nose. Donnie recognized them as a guard of higher ranking.
(Oaken? Right? What kind of name was Oaken.)
Rather than answer him, Draxum goes to a door that is only distinct by the carved symbols cured around the top of the door as he pushes it open. Being a Baron of only name, it was often rumored that the Baron had a political power that was only second to Big Mama, but you’d know it by his space. Sure it was impressive. While its radius was big enough for a modest one-family home, it also housed a second story. Both were wrapped with books and a few sparse chalkboards, and a small ladder led to the open second story with even more books. There were charts on any available surface that marked stars and other phenomena. There was nothing an untrained passerby would think was worth stealing, and in fact, it looked like this had formerly been a private library that he decided would serve more use as an office. Again, an untrained eye would think nothing was of value here (even the desk under the large window in the back was well kept but very simple. Other than the books and letters strewn about it and a tiny succulent-looking plant on the corner). But with a trained thief's eye, Donnie can see the rough edges and coloring that mark papyrus ( a book-making technique that hadn’t been seen in a few centuries, and even then, only rarely. With writing in a language that he can only imagine went extinct even before the Descent. A collection of books older that were probably older than the Kingdom itself.
He sees what’s not there.
As Donnie dropped onto the floor, he could see a set of two sets of four-legged drag marks. One by the window near Draxums' desk and the other at a more crooked angle by one of the pillars that marked they had been done wavy from the space for one reason or another.
His thoughts are interrupted as Draxum drops him from his arm and onto the ground, “Heal him.”
“Y-Yes, Commander.” The healer steps back into the office. Donnie instantly bares his teeth at him and growls slowly in a way that would make his dad proud. The healer raises his hands, ‘It's alright, it’s alright, little one. I promise not to hurt you,” the healer says softly before he starts to move closer.
Donnie squirms to get out of reach when he bumps into the Baron's legs. His knee presses on Donnie’s shell and pins him to the ground with considerable strength. “Hold,” he says. But before Donnie can figure out what's going on, he feels Draxum grab his fist and, despite Donnie’s best thrashing, peels his fingers back and pulls out the piece of broken metal he had tried to hide. “Clever.”
The Baron must have given Dernhelm some sort of signal since the Albatross kneels, and soft green energy spreads from his hands even as Donnie tries to turn his head away. He can feel the numerous bruises and gashes he had received from his fight with Draxum, and his escape attempt recedes from his skin.
He feels the makeshift bag he had stolen get pulled free from his side. “Let’s see what you managed to get,” Draxum says. Donnie twists up to look at the Baron as the Baron starts poking around inside. “Mostly broken pieces. I assume you used the best stuff to make that thing,” He says, gesturing to his new brace. “Honestly, not sure what I expect-” A frown forms on Draxum’s face as he reaches into the bag again and pulls out the now half-crumpled piece of moldy bread. He looks at it for a moment before he tosses it to Oaken, who seems to understand what to do with it. The healing green energy fades as Dernhelm stands back up and takes his place by Oaken's side. “Leave us,” Draxum says.
The two do as they are told, and the door closes after them. The pressure not only disappears from his shell but as do the vines from his body. Donnie rolls away and gets into a crouched position with his arms raised when a circle of purple energy forms around him. A moment later, a secondary circle forms in front of him, and a plate of fresh bread, water, and a bowl of some sort of chicken-based cream appear. He looks back at the Baron in confusion, who is leaning against his desk.
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