#allmonster

[daylighter-gone]

“i hope i'm not interrupting.” / elden ring ! elden ring ! elden ring ! … with ira.

his resounding hiss was unfriendly and savage, the words half-barking out but interrupted by his dry throat, the queasy injury rendering him momentarily breathless. ❛ you are. get out. ❜  the tarnished felt his hand out until he had gotten a hold of the candle lamp by his bedside, and promptly hurled it at the door. were it gideon, he might have struck him the bedside instead. yet, there looming by the door of the roundtable hold's chambers, was ira. his mouth cut into an unforgiving line as his companion stepped inside. ❛ i said piss off. ❜  the suddenness of the movement earned him a bout of dizzy confusion. restless were the limbs that had never known rest, both by circumstance and wilful refusal of it. to be incapacitated this way was unseemly, but it was the boredom he feared only a little more than his vulnerability.

ira strode in warily, and with good reason. companionship had brought about an uneasy trust that was louder in quiet places of rest like this and less an obstacle when they were out razing the fields of limgrave. fighting was first nature, but gentler conversation? company and care? this he beheld with gritted teeth.

❛ if you've come here to fuss, i'm fine— ❜  his spine slid back against the bed, thoughts swaying as he touched his fingertips experimentally to his cheek. a loud gnash of red was bandaged close to his neck where he'd been clawed, and blood had dried down the side of his temple where he had taken a hit. instinctively his body tensed as a weight sank into the bed near his side, his eyes swerving from a look that appeared faint to a scowl that was more characteristic. after a second, it dawned on him that the patched up state of him meant somebody's hands had been on him. his eyes widened a fraction before he looked to ira.  ❛ did he—? ❜

[doomdays]

@allmonster 💬 “what’s the one thing you want out of your life?”

if cole had been asked this years ago,   he’d have no real answer,   other than something empty, sarcastic, entirely passionless,   because it always felt impossible to really dream in kettle springs,  especially when the people there had always put him in some kind of box. 

after what his father did to him,  what he tried to take,   cole knows that’s something he’s going to spend the rest of his life fighting against.   he’s not just arthur hill’s victim,   he’s not just the kid who should’ve died in place of his sister,   he’s not just one of ‘the three’ of the baypen hoax   (a murderer to them, one who’d never actually killed anyone.)   that doesn’t necessarily mean he knows who he is and what he wants now —  he just knows he wants to keep moving forward,  not dwell on the fact that his father’s body was never recovered,  not live in fear that any of it could happen again.

but cole is still pissing people off,  still enjoying the attention from the media no matter which way they lean towards him and his friends,   and he’s showing no sign of stopping,  no attempt to be too careful.

“i’d say a cool car,  but— check.”   he grins,  playing around before he tries to offer a serious answer — because he’s never really been good at that,  taking himself too seriously,  especially lately.   cole takes a deep breath,  pushing his hair back as he tries to give a more proper answer,   even if the one he has doesn’t feel so simple.   “i want to do something good.  do something better with my father’s money than he did.”   and he’s trying,   trying to make something new of the hill legacy,  not get stuck in a cycle that cole never believed in—  it’s at least a start.

cole may usually enjoy the attention,  but it’s harder when he’s trying to think about the future that he’s still trying to comprehend even having,  so he turns it around on jack.  “what about you?   big dreams for your life?   better than mine, i’m sure.”

[starlyht]

“sounds like more your problem than mine.” / @ kyran from olrox listen to me it’s gonna be so fun

AS SAID BY KARLACH

kyran was rendered almost breathless in the flux of wrath and indignation that followed close once the crash of numbness subsided.  almost.  such would have been the case had he not been gripped partly by death,  its cold talons sinking into him just enough that the aspirations of life were beyond him. 

oh,  could he not smite the wretched creature?  and would it not be so easy,  reaching for the vast well of divine radiance that came to him in his wrath,  violent and unforgiving and effulgent as lathander's sun?  had worse things not fallen to the unforgiving edge of his sword?

and yet he stood there,  agape,  lost to waves of anger and dread and despair.  “won't at least humor me?”   why he could walk in the sun despite the predatory sharpening of his teeth,  despite the keening hunger for blood,  despite the weak deathlessness of his pallor.   “went to all this trouble to track y   ---  one of you down.”  not the right vampire,  but a vampire.  it would be good enough,  right?  “thought somethin' like you'd love that.”

[baroviana-moved]

she didn't mean to shut eivor out all day. she's used to waking up alone when the nightmares hit. to slinking further into herself on days when certain dates come and go. she's always had to deal with this alone, the burden of what she witnessed and survived. it's unnerving to know there's someone else to think of now. she doesn't know what's worse — bearing this burden alone or sharing it with another. and she knows eivor well enough to know that no matter how she says it, no matter how hard she plays at nonchalance, it will break their heart to know there's nothing to be done.

the air in the keep feels cold and clammy on her skin when she finally, finally, wanders into their shared room. the morning lord's abbey is warm, perhaps in imitation of the first rays of dawn breaking the sky. all oriana feels today is cold and far removed from the god's embrace.

“ beloved, ” she says by way of greeting, her voice raw and raspy from the weight of today's significance and her own emotions. “ today was long. i'm sorry for disappearing. ” her lover is no fool — the bells of the abbey have been ringing at every hour, the services long and solemn. instinctively her fingers reach up to trace the jagged scar just barely visible underneath her night dress. the remnants of volenta's claws and the end of a nightmare. she's prepared to retreat into herself again. to dodge any question she's sure he must have but she resists. she has to, if only for eivor's sake.

“ i missed you. i'm sorry. ”

starter , eivor varinsdóttir : @allmonster

[sigrvif]

dialogue starters | accepting | @allmonster (eivor) “i do not have time for distractions right now.”

Sigyn exhales and closes her eyes, relaxing into her seat further. The mood around them is jovial; people gathered around, sharing food and drink. Laughing, relaxing, enjoying themselves — all things Eivor ought to be doing as well. All things she seems almost opposed to. Surprising, given Magni’s infectious personality.

Regardless, there is nothing pressing that needs attending to, nothing that cannot wait until tomorrow. Even if Eivor cannot see that just yet.

“I disagree.” Sigyn quietly refills Eivor’s cup with golden mead, then her own. “I believe a distraction is what you may need most. And I have been told that I am delightful company by most, if not all.” She snickers, then takes a sip, letting the drink warm through her chest. “So tonight, we are going to distract ourselves from what ailes you, yes?” The looks Sigyn levels Eivor with leaves no room for disagreement; a look Sigyn had perfected through years of marriage and motherhood.

[saltuary]

“i never wanted to see half the things i have seen, and i have never seen half the things i wanted to.” / eivorrrrr

Night lay heavy, draped in a mantle of shadow where the moon strove to burn silver through a net of clouds. Beneath that canopy walked Faramir, and beside him Eivor, the pair carving through the silence of the ruined woods, where the fragrance of damp earth rose like the perfume of graves long-sealed.

Faramir’s mind weighed the figure at his side. They bore themselves with a warrior’s austerity, but in their eyes flickered a weariness so profound it seemed to reach beyond mortality itself, as though they had traversed not only seas and kingdoms but the uncharted corridors of despair. The torchlight in Faramir’s hand threw their features into shifting chiaroscuro. One instant all severity, the next softened to something almost childlike in its candour.

At last Eivor spoke, their voice low, carrying truth unvarnished:

“I never wanted to see half the things I have seen, and I have never seen half the things I wanted to.”

The words fell into the night like a stone cast into a well without bottom. Faramir halted, his breath arrested, for it seemed to him that all his years of vigilance on the marches, all his long nights listening to the wind that whispered of death from Mordor, had prepared him to understand this lament.

“A bitter arithmetic,” he murmured, lifting his gaze to the strangled heavens. “The reckoning of the soul that has survived much, and yet has been starved of what it longed for most.”

His voice carried a cadence both priestly and fraternal, the sound of one who has studied sorrow as a scholar studies scripture.

“I, too, have dwelt in that wilderness. My eyes have drunk deep of ruin, though my heart ever thirsted for beauty, for peace – and feared they were but illusions crafted to torment me.”

He turned to them then, cradled them in the dove-grey of his gaze, his torch held high.

“To see even a fraction of what the heart desires is a grace. And though the half unseen may gnaw like wolves at the door, still the half beheld may keep us from despair entire.”

Faramir thought of all the unseen joys of Gondor’s fields, of gardens unlived in, of children unborn. Still, standing in the company of this stranger with sorrow in their gaze, he felt the faint and perilous glimmer of hope – that their burdens, though great, were not unshared.

At length he spoke again, his tone softened:

“I would hear that you might wish to tell me – of the horror of the heartbreak, and of the wonders you yet long for.”

[menelvagor]

“what you have done, you cannot undo!” / @ echiar from eivor who seems a little desperate 2 me 💅 -✧- @allmonster

The vampire stood as a mirage of one of the Firstborn, a vision brought before mortal eyes by the creature's magical cloak. They glared at the warrior before them with arched, angular brows. Anger blazed in their dark eyes, dark blood pooled underneath them, even as the black cloak of their figure covered the wound and it stung painfully. It would heal, but it would take precious time.

They had unwittingly gone after prey which seemed easy enough to hunt and eat at first, but which had brought near dire consequences. Echiar had been driven by desperation to flying as a monstrous bat after a sleek, juicy-looking raven. It was wildlife which they sought much of in these times, for the life of humans, of elves, and even of orcs began to weigh darkly on their mind. Particularly for all the years before of drinking without abandon.

However, the action had earned Echiar an arrow in the leg, expertly shot with strong arm by a great figure of human-kind. In anger, they had wheeled down upon the human, claws and teeth at the ready to tear flesh. But yet, they had stopped. A strange feeling came over them and clenched their heart, paused them before the attack. Now that they had neared the vicious-looking warrior, they felt an otherworldly pull, a feeling they had not had for many an age.

"I did not even eat your beloved bird before you shot at me!" Echiar hissed in return, hands moving to hips. "The only thing which I would wish to undo is the harm done me. If it is the anger in you of which you speak, well that is none of my concern." They looked long upon the other, head tilting as their long ears twitched slightly. "Who are you?"

[1mperium]

the implication settles annoyingly deep within giulio's hollowness. it falls like a coin flicked into a well, and the turbid dark swallows it thickly—alongside the clinking notion of something being reached, anything, no matter how hard. scorched castilian wheatfields begin to glow as daybreak inches forward. giulio does not move away from the light that washes over him, but his black eyes remain fixed on the shade of hunched trees folding around olrox like a mother's embrace.

“the fates have already cut the thread of my life once. it does not matter what i dream, that spindle cannot weave me a second death.” the other's tongue falters, tinged with an accent that giulio does not recognize. he switches to castilian, mentally charting the reactions he earns: understanding, and then something that curls at the base of his nose. disgust? he steps forward, crossing the shadowy border that keeps olrox safe. even in the shade, the blackness in his eyes pools and gleams. “why curse the gift you were given, when you can exact eternal vengeance? honor your gods with countless tributes?”

deftly, giulio unfastens the brooch that pins his dark cloak, tossing it to the other.

“oh, olrox. you already are like me.”

@allmonster, cont