XVI. THE TOWER

you are the universe, [ ... ] and all i am is a dying, dim star.

[seraphynm]

#SERAPHYNM:  A FRIENDS + MUTUALS ONLY, GRATUITOUSLY SELF INDULGENT MIXED MEDIA MULTIMUSE WRITING BLOG / CURRENTLY HIGHLY FEATURING ALLEN WALKER FROM KATSURA HOSHINO'S D.GRAY - MAN + RECEPTICLE : CAELUS FROM HOYOVERSE'S HONKAI STAR RAIL + DIMITRI ALEXANDRE BLAIDDYD FROM INTSYS' FIRE EMBLEM : THREE HOUSES. as penned by vega, thirty - two, gmt+1. est. july 2022.

[1] CARRD ; [2] PROMO ; [3] MEMES ; [4] WISHLIST.

with lores closely tied to : avaere ; apocryphis ; arkclipse ; ephemyrals ; niightwcves.

— CURRENTLY : pretty much operating under a permanent mid - low activity status and preferring a 'i log and do stuff when i feel most inspired' type of approach for my own mental health ! patience is always well appreciated ♥

[seraphynm]

taking today to do some good ol' farming on nikki because damn ,,, so much content ,,, this patch is scrumptious ,,,

[seraphynm]

OLRUGGIO ( @avaere ) asked to # QIFREY : " y've got that look on y'face again , qifrey ," the watchful eyes states as he , in the late night hours , has found it in him to break away from his own quarters and to the kitchen that now , in the beckoning night , has grown quiet and calm . no more scurrying students with their pots , pans and sigils , no more bickering over steaming potatoes and stew that they never quite seem to grow tired of . just them , and maybe that is more than enough in the gleam of the oil filled lanterns that crackle so quietly in their company . evening or morning , olruggio knows when to pry and when not to , and when his companion's gaze thickens the way it does in these moments , he steers clear. awaits a shift that allows him to ask and peel away at the hardened shell he has, slowly, started to get under . sleeves rustle as he leans against the counter , hands resting on its edge as he , in return , offers an almost concerned gaze." have y' eaten ? y'always feed the girls , but y're not as good as tending to y'erself as y'are with'em ; i'll make y' somethin' , hm ? y'got t' eat too. " —unprompted

what an horrible sight. he was.

under the caress of the flames whose warmth he so much loved, you couldn't help but see the imprints of where sigil hands had slithered and dug and taken, over and over —right where his brows would furrow and his forehead crease ever so slightly in his most limpid act of concern, barely visible through tufts of ebony but still so impossible for you not to notice. he would remain none the wiser, however. the specific cruelty of the memory spell is that only those who have cast it will see its traces upon their victim. it's a reminder of the sin committed, a violation so heartwrenching your hands will remain forever stained with it and seared deep into your brain, but it's good.

it's good, that it remains in your chest like that, uncomfortable, stirring and writhing like a root cut and struggling into growing because of how barren and uncomfortable its soil was. good, that even despite your sight was growing weaker and blurrier, you could still catch those traces as if they were vivid and fresh and pristine, freshly carved.

what an horrible sight, you must be.

spindly arms trying to make sense of themselves because they want to hold him —they want to choke you—they want to thrash and destroy—they want for everything to be let go and roots to take home where's most comfortable, but you can't let that happen. you can't let anything settle, because if everything settles, then it's all been burned down and scratched away and beseeched to the gods of old for nothing. you twist them in an uncomfortable vicegrip, elbows on the old oak table and lithe fingers entwined with one another, your chin resting onto the tensing knuckles, your lungs a forest in bloom that wishes to be hacked away in coughs of pretty blood and silver leaves, your smile trying to draw reassurance when it was all as brittle as overkilned clay, ready to crack and burst as soon as pressure would've doubled down in spades.

you want to die. you can't die. not before they've all been annihilated, the heretics of the old age —no, not before the one who made you hollow and incapable of indulging in the nectar of love would be hollowed out themselves, and their innards made yours out of parasitic spite.

( you can't die. olruggio will be sad, if you die. olruggio will cry, if you die. the way it's so uncomfortable at your throat is a delight that gives illusion of salvation. you promised. )

" hm ? oh, it's nothing, truly. just thinking about how to prepare them for their next exam. they're all making such heartwarming progress, but i don't want to risk burning all the stops by rushing it. " you weave yourself in the mastery of lies the same way a spider prepares the silk for its next meal. each word is measured, each bat of your lashes, each curl your smile holds, pale as if coated in moonwater. you smile at him with the same unreadable mien carried by something that's too ancient to be unraveled and whose unraveling means a fate worse than death, and thusly it's best to be left to its own devices. he's warm. you hate the fact you can't seem to find an ounce of strength in vehemently attempt at hating that. " such a hen you are, sometimes. i may be thinking of saying no to your offer but you're already fussing in the kitchen to have me fed, so what's the point of giving you a response when you've made up your mind already, olly ? "

[seraphynm]

BLACK SWAN ( @vcnefiica ) asked to # SUSABI : ‘ graveyards aren’t where you find ghosts. look for them in places that feel like memories you shouldn’t have. ’ ( black swan @ susabi ) —meme

" you'll learn soon there's very little difference between a ghost and a memory. one is very much capable of talking on its own, while the other needs a medium in order to be unraveled. " so you speak, wise in mourning, as the presence of the junior is acknowledged barely by the way your gaze would hardly be perceived underneath the chiming canopy of weeping willows' afterimage —your step as light as fragments of fallen silver moon within the silver garden of your creation, where the false crescent's light would make crystalline leaves glimmer with the same unspoken, untouchable melancholia that comes along with the very special brand of grief within your own core ; the one that even after millennias aches and wails the same way, as if it was but the first day, and whatever you've given to the recollection's collective had been ripped from you so freshly, so brutally. you paid the price, once upon ten thousand amber eras ago. you're still paying it. you'll probably never end paying it, for it is your fate, long decided by the remembrance —no, by the end of all end that lingers amidst the specks of iridescence, deep within the cracks.

the order of the memokeepers is falling. it's an inevitability designed by time, by the hammering of an amber glaive, the cruel stride of the ravagers' pinions and the myth's cackle : it's something you couldn't stop, because even if you wanted to, it simply laid in a level of impossibility where third or fourth options simply could not exist. your hands were as tied as hers, if not even more —betrayal a price you could not afford because you know very well, the ramifications every step you'd take would cause across the vast, dark, unforgiving cosmos. what a suffocating realization, anasrava brought to the ichor within your crystalized veins. the price of hierarchy, you'd find yourself mentally sneering, silver shears still resting in your gloved grasp as you kneel down, reach forth for the weed of reddened rot to be severed away from where you could tell, lines would get blurry and memoir would mix itself with fiction.

( everything rots away, and sacrifices in the name of the imperfect tomorrow are useless. the sword at your left glimmers with the embers of a long gored sun, and you feel your eyes grow wet when you thought your tears were long terminated. )

" the answer you seek lies in the shadow where no aeon would dare look at, because peering in that well means being ready to be swallowed whole by it. you already have experience with such unfettered abysses —your gaze tells me such. you'll find a way to that threshold that will not have you shredded into specks of glitter ... not immediately, at the very least. differently from the others, you seem to be capable of putting your act where your mouth is. " instructions are meant to be clear, and under normal circumstances you would've been as painfully blunt as the cut of a sharp blade 'pon fleshy stems and leafy grass. but many ears certainly loved to listen what's not theirs to be privy to, even amidst the privacy of your own garden. a crown up above is growing restless and paranoid and hungered in their hunt for those shards of a whole, without caring at all if said shards held any desire of that legacy in the death and rebirth of the whole, whilst holding those like you already within their orbit in chains.

but you cared little for your creator, and even less of those who made maddened worship of THEIR paradoxical ways. what you long loved had become long lost, and never could return, so all you have is spite. " the silver rail will lead you where you must. remain with them —it's the only kindness i can offer. the other heads will not see such mercy in kind, if your paths are to cross with theirs. "

[tarnishedposting]

tears of the tarnished blood

[seraphynm]

with a crest as unforgiving as his own, as well as the dehumanizing abuse he's been target of —physical, verbal and emotional to the point of severe and permanent damage to his own self perception— and his status as the ruler of faerghus, it's only obvious dimitri has been majorly starved for physical contact for a good chunk of his life, and this deeply affects him and how he relates and engages with others. it's hard to be of comfort to someone when he can risk hurting them in the process. it's hard to be thoughtful, when the things he holds in his hands break, regardless if he's carefully approaching, or he's been focused in minding his grasp and strength all the time. it's hard when his attempts at being there for those he loves are purposefully ignored or avoided or reprimanded with a reminder of his status and how it acts as a barrier between himself and his loved ones —and it's especially hard for him, because he's known the warmth of being held and hugged before. he knows it, he misses it, he yearns for it even if he knows he does not deserve any of it. he tries anyways, even if he knows he'll be pushed away or dismissed, or it's not enough. so when it does happen for him to be touched, may it be a hand on his own or a caress on his face —to him it'll feel like he's burning, right where he was just touched. he'll gasp and make such pathetic noises and hold his breath and wait for mockery to kick or the harshness of a slap to hit, he'll look like he's waiting for it to either dissipate in front of his eye or just outright wake and realize it was all a dream. he's so used to his immense, almost infinite love to get nothing in return —he expects nothing in return always, who would want to ever get this close and gentle with a monstrosity like himself anyways— that when it does happen for him to be held and cherished, it sends him into a shock.

[seraphynm]

this heat is cooking me crispy scooberts,,, we've had 43°C all day and i kinda feel like hugging a shark rn because i'm p sure a chomp will be much more tolerable.

[seraphynm]

zenless pulling out free jane doe, 5*selector AND adding caesar to the standard pool ,,, it is indeed big vegabait.

[seraphynm]

PHAINON ( @apocryphis ) asked to # ALLEN WALKER : you don't need to say anything. just sit with me. (phainon to allen) —meme

and so you sit.

you do it carefully, silently, because indeed there was nothing else to say besides apologies and prayers and feeble hopes for nothing to fall apart as fast and overwhelmingly as it already was. you do it with your fists clenched so tight you could feel nails digging into your mismatched palms, your shoulders tensing, your throat desiring so much to scream even if you knew so well you couldn't. there was no point in screaming. screaming didn't fix your mistakes, nor absolved you of your sins. screaming didn't bring mana back. even if your throat hurt to the point you had no voice, even if your sight was blurred with whatever had remained of your last reservoir of tears —there was no point at all.

you wish to sigh and yet it doesn't happen. your shoulders do not drop, your muscles do not distend, your heart won't stop bleeding and crying and wishing oh so very much to be smitten on the spot, if that meant for this place to live another day of sweet, idyllic peace signed by the scent of wheat brought by the west wind and a gentle promise.

so you sit —right next to him, light as a feather yet carrying yourself like a walking funeral, for you have died and died and died again and yet cruel is the universe in bringing you back—, arm brushing against arm, uniform fabrics so different as they frush across the noise, failing to cut through the overwhelming droning that killed even the silence. the dawn device was no more. the sky cried red, painted meteors on its facetious surface and brought forth in the air an uncannily accurate imitation of the stench of burned flesh and blood, called for your aurora blues to look up and you do, for a moment. but you return to look at him. to study his face and search for something, anything that would betray a faltering you knew very well was not even remotely woven in his programming.

( he's taken his decision, and so you have. a digtal womb for the ravager and an altar for the angel —the egg shall break and the bird soar to the embrace of abraxas. )

your hand distends, then. but it's just one, and it's timid, as it reaches for his, palm distended upwards, a silent offering as the sand of their time before the plan would be set in motion would grow thinner and thinner at the upper layer's bottom —soon everything will restart one last time. soon, you'll be shoved somewhere within the simulation, and you pray whatever aeon or god or higher being of unknown substance may be staring right now that the geniuses' calculations are indeed correct and at your wake you'll be met by that control room in which you'll have to sit and play to soothe and delay the inevitable a little bit more, just enough for the nameless to seize the servers and twist the cores.

you allow your fingers to weave themselves with his, a gentle grasp, your head canting aside enough to be met with his shoulder.

and finally, that sigh leaves.

[seraphynm]

COLOMBINA HYPOSELENIA ( @sanctaria ) asked to # SCARAMOUCHE : ❛ to tell a story is in part to tell a lie, isn’t it? ❜ / for scaramouche! —meme

a lesson in semantics was not part of today's quota in forced socialization, for sure —but you suppose you could allow for it to pass this once, while you're still felt in such merciful moods and it was still possible for you to draw some of your remaining time before making haste return within the safe asylum and gratuitous migraines of surasthana.

you know best, after all, that any further second beyond your very due departure spent in such pallid lands remained a hazard of diplomatic proportions neither you, the pipsqueak or that mahamatra's penchant at atrocious jokes didn't need in the slightest. diplomacy was a farce most of the times, but there were indeed moments in which it was oh so convenient for it to become cause of much more than war and disasters —calamities are calamities, after all. they come and go uncaringly of all that exists above and below them and their aftermath are at the very least a grim but constant certainty. diplomacy was as sleazy and shady as those who laced themselves with the term simply to be a little more palatable whilst committing atrocities for their own gain, and righteousness was still the most unfunny of japes.

nod - krai may cry independence in the name of moons, stars or whatever else slumbers deep underneath, but still under gelid gaze of the blizzard - woven crown it remained, and no so - called power of friendship and soft little fleshsack hearts can mellow the fact you still remain a diplomatic criminal.

( the chip on your shoulder remained. annoying, unnerving, tethering at the tip of silicon tongue and yet not enough to truly be named. it blared alarm bells through ancient systems, stirred and burned like the skies before the arrival of billowing ires. )

" an interpretation like many other. words are words. the meaning they get in of itself is given by context, and context itself varies depending on who's speaking, when they're speaking, how they're speaking. even a piece from the quack's hideous notes can become a cute little song if one like you is to read it, for example. " your hand is guided in ball jointed sequence into tapping its porcelain carved nails into old wood —somehow standing, crooked and one step close to decommissioning, with one too many dents given by one too many knives—, your glass amethysts following along the lunar tiptoeing of the little bird who still was not used to screech and perhaps never really will. beseeching outrage and divine offense in a flurry of crying lightning and singing thunderblade remained your specialty, anyways. you'll leave the pretty singing and twinkling around to her. " those who listen are as part of the process of a story's existence as those who speak it into existence themselves. there's no point in telling something if there's no ear to catch it. or else it would be like it never existed. "

[salvatix]

how i play a canon character:

i play a canon character the way I want to play them, not how the show plays them, not how the actor plays them, hell not even how others want me to play them. I play the canon character for me. I play them so I can have an outlet away from stress, not to gain stress from the pressures of following canon. I don’t follow canon. and i’m proud of that.

[seraphynm]

LAVI BOOKMAN JR. ( @avaere ) asked to # ALLEN WALKER : " i'm terrified of losing you. " lavi to allen ,,, —meme

but it will happen.

it's why you're there. it's why there's so much stalling, and every plan feels like having you hit a wall over and over and not budge just as much as you don't budge, in which a war meant to be of annihilation had long become something woven in endurance —waiting between yourself and the devil whose pact had been engraved in your badly pieced together soul with seemingly no way to have it scratched away. it's why every second passed within those walls and those fields, and under that old petrified tree, felt more and more like a long, slow, inevitable walk towards an end with no feasible detours, not even death.

and what aches the most is not the idea of death. you've grown accustomed to death the moment you saw where hunger and thirst would erode away amidst war, poverty, hopelessness. you've seen countless lines of graves with no one to mourn them because mourning meant giving fuel to the noah behind the curtain. the path you've chosen to walk was never a bloodless one —and as much as you've got quite the talent at weaving lies and pretending so starkly in tulpafying them into truths that remained untouchable, this specific note amidst your scripts and farces remained as nude and crude and unedited as a pristine idea could be.

you don't want to die, just as much as you want to die, as much as you believe you deserve to be hanging onto gallows with a rope made of angelic gold. but your agency had long been attached to strings and the knots were already slipping, and the cracks on your surface expanding, losing pieces here and there, unraveling in something that's meant to be beautiful and yet it was also undeniably, unapologetically ugly.

( you've died once. you've died again. you'll die now, and they'll pull you out of the doorsteps to hell only to have you die again. )

" lavi, i ... " words die in your mouth and you mourn them, sweetly and gently. it's your nature, even when you were so hurt and wished for the world to burn into a crisp and leave nothing behind, because being hurt and scared and alone meant not that kindness could not still exist, deep and hidden, within your fragmented core. your mismatched hands find home onto the now - head of the bookman clan's cheeks. thumbs caress ever so carefully at the apples, lowering at the hollows, feeling where skin had healed from scabs and scraps and hurt and yet remained tense, unable to let go, may it be for recording purposes or something far more visceral and human and not meant to be. yet you can't say anything to console him, because you know and he knows all too well, that it is going to happen. may it be at the altar at the end of the world or in the overwhelming wave of the fourteenth's struggle, you are meant to die, to disappear from the spires of the helix like angels in stardust and mermaids in seafoam.

it's you, or nea, or both. you'd rather be the latter, so that the world may never fear the fourteenth —so that the world may never need the return of the angels.

[seraphynm]

WRIOTHESLEY ( @apocryphis ) asked to # TRAFALGAR D. WATER LAW : smile. you're ruining the mood. (wriothesley to law) —meme

the slap wasn't hard.

it's given to the warden with a swift, quick flick of wrist, back of upper digits hitting at back of the neck where it would bother but not hurt, because he knew well you could do far worse if hurting was indeed within the scope of your intentions that day and it would require you less than a needle and a bandage to have all hell and beyond break loose with not a single bubble escaping the deep prison's premises. a warning shot —wriothesley surely loved to be at the tail end of those, considering how many times he's been dancing with that very specific jumprope, teasing but never tethering the edge of breaking, making you wonder if perhaps he had only aged in body but in soul he remained the same listless, aimless brat you've met decades before at the bottom of a pankration ring whose stability relied probably in a few overcooked noodles and a dream, fully convinced that licking his own scabs would make them pass faster when it only made him filthier.

and maybe he still was even when he also wasn't anymore. becoming old and wise didn't necessarily mean holding onto the false boorishness of an equally false court of law. you knew well he would never push things that far when the cons of your permanent leave would far outweigh the nigh nonexistent pros. compared to many others, he knew better, which made those antics a little more bearable for your liking ; the warning shot remains, thusly, a warning shot and nothing more.

( you could safely bet he still does the scab - licking thing. but not in front of you or sigewinne, for he knows oh so well he'd never escape earfuls and pourings of peroxide on his tongue if he were to be truly caught. )

" that's what you get for toying with my patience. " you scold, gruff and curt and without beating around the bush, your signature scowl not even trying to hide your relatively high levels of annoyance behind some sort of mask of amiability. it has never been your thing, nor you were going to start donning such hypocrisies anytime soon. tattoos would hurt much less and be much more appealing to your eyes.

you scold, but not in a way that makes your voice raise in volume and your patience truly grow thin and brittle and ready to explode as soon as more weight would be carelessly added where pressure had already been building and coveting release. you've never been a fan of testing your luck by thanking for such an occasion to have happened yet, because knowing your abysmal relationship with anything related to the cheating hands of fortune, it'd end up happening just as he'd conceive the silhouette of that specific thought —your hand fishing a lollipop from a section of your leather bag and shoving it straight into the other's mouth without much of a flinch or hesitation to be perceived. " and this is to keep you silent as i finish the rest of your checkup, since you're being a big baby. "

and perhaps, you'll allow yourself to be smirking a little, just this once.

[seraphynm]

i think that's it for today, my brain can't compute writing right now, so i'm going to lay down, yap a bit on discord while trying to finish genshin's silly fishing event !

[seraphynm]

it's no secret that linhardt has never hesitated with using herself as a subject of both hanneman's crest research and her own —especially after the old teacher died and she basically took over his research and used it as the starting point to truly revolutionize the understanding of blood practices in relation to crest transmission, the development of crests from blood anomaly to active organ petrification, and the various auguments and detriments crests and crest related arts ( surgeries AND magic ) bring to the table. a lot of her scars are self inflicted, as she's openly drawn her own blood, removed layers of skin / used her own flesh as samples for experiments and her own body as test subject, as well as all the typical scars that come with tinkering and inventing all sorts of thingmabobs with no real 'safety measure' outside a good ol fuck around and find out. the tip of her fingers are laced in magerot, but to an untrained eye they'll just look like she's always stained with ink. in of itself, it's not that much of a reach considering the sheer amount of time linhardt herself passes writing ( when she's not napping ). being an excellent mage with a quite expert gasp on healing magic ( and more, of course, she's quite versatile in talents and tricks ) has always been what has helped her keeping herself alive, more often than not —both because of her chronic ailments making her peculiarly attentive to when medical intervention is needed, and because burst healing so far has been the best remedy to curb the spread of her magerot. the only scar in linhardt's body that is not self inflicted is the one she has at her lower abdomen, right inbetween her belly button and where she has the mark of the crest of cethleann —a horrid, purpureal gash that does not fully heal and looks like it's festering like the magerot at her fingers, yet not rotting completely. it was inflicted to her by hubert moments before she beheaded him during the siege of enbarr.

[enkxateia]

[ x ] doodle req ! for @seraphynm

YOU GET OLD MAN ZANDIK AND SANDRONE. ♡ ♡ ♡ ♡

[seraphynm]

IL DOTTORE ( @fatedevour ) asked to # SCARAMOUCHE : " I wouldn't go that way if I were you. " Dottore snorts, lifting his head up from the reports he was reading to see Scaramouche walking through the palace walls of glittering ice and marble. " Pantalone and Pulcinella are fighting again in that POMPOUS, PETTY WAY of theirs. It's quite the earache. " He lifts his chin, gesturing with a subtle movement to the other seating arrangements near him. " If you want, you can wait here. I shouldn't think it would be much longer. " He pauses, grimacing slightly. " Hopefully. " —unprompted

" oh, joy. " and when where those two fighting for one reason or another ? they'd find reason to bite and scratch at each other's necks even in the mildest of days over the silliest of reasons —may it be a chip on some unknown wall in passing or the very hue of droll gray with a chance of imminent snowstorm snezhnaya's skies always seemed to have during most of its 'decent' days—, you were quite certain of that. it was, after all, undeniable consequence and wiring of minds whom found in the cruel and cold coin a way to materialize value within anything and anyone, living and dead.

they couldn't help themselves. mortal flesh was just meant to beseech arrogation and superiority over the other, and those two would never hesitate in searching for one too many ways to vehemently express all the existing abhorrence and contempt coveted towards one another, regardless if anyone were to attempt at be mediator and reason. cold wars were made with venomous pleasantries and tight smiles and tones that never would betray offense so that no one could ever be accused of being the very hand throwing the first snow and thusly to blame. even the cobwebs amidst old chandeliers knew it was just a waste of effort and time to put peace amidst the sleazy, but undeniably it remained a quite amusing spectacle to watch from afar.

( if it's not the so - called holy lady that will throw them out of her pearly snowy gates, they surely will drag each other out by the neck in a verbal vicegrip and make rabid dogs look oh so properly socialized in comparison. )

" well ? " you take your seat. your steps barely a clack of wooden geta against marbled floor as one floaty leap would lead you right next to second of the fools, amidst pillows in velvet and overly ornate gold that surely would be able to feed a family for ten days straight if sold at the right place through the downthrodden's markets, his grimace such a funny little thing to observe. it would draw lines to forehead and brows, bring nose to a slight twisted scrunch, lips thinning away even when they were already oh so thin and so pale they might as well not be there at all ; a denial of humanity, when human he couldn't help but being, what a glorious farce he was. you'll leave in a few days for depths of the infinite black scourge to map and scour, might as well indulge in a little impromptu entertainment. " what is it this time ? feofan getting an earful from the esteemed mayor because sandrone snitched on his quite blatant acts of favoritism ? wouldn't be the first time, and i'm pretty positive it won't be the last either. "