On one hand, violent and angry villain moments. Roaring flames and broken glass and shouting and disheveled hair that he’s going to need to fix before he leaves. On the other hand, casual acts of violence. Murder without a second thought, or just letting someone suffer because it’s too much trouble to get them out.
[Geryon has Lawrence in his arms, and the man is curled into a ball. They’re sat on the couch, and there’s a blanket around Geryon’s shoulders, and some old clock chimes in the distance that it’s far too late for him to be awake.
This is the third time, now, by his count, that Lawrence has been brought back.
He hadn’t expected their dance to go on this long. And it can only last so much longer, before Erellise gets bored, or Lawrence caves, one way or another, and... Geryon can’t have that. When this ends, he needs to make sure the cards fall in his favor.
He leans into Lawrence’s shoulder, closing his eyes. He could sleep here, probably, if he tried. Which he fully intends to do.
“I’m going to kill you, next time. This... is an exception.”
Lawrence’s voice is low, little more than a shaky whisper, and Geryon gives him a gentle squeeze. He’s hopeful, in a morbid way... that that would be when Erellise would let him stay down. If he killed him. It wouldn’t be, of course, but now isn’t the time to tell him that.
“I know you will.”
Even if it would end his pledge, Geryon knows that Lawrence doesn’t have it in him to kill someone he cares about. Least of all, Geryon, most likely. He probably never will. But now’s not the time to tell him that, either.
Lawrence sighs, and pats one of Geryon’s hands.
They can only dance so long... and Geryon knows he’s going to have to be the one to end it. And he knows how he’ll have to do it. But... he doesn’t want to think about that, now.]
Derrek’s relationships with Geryon(romantic, and an au) and Amber(platonic and canon) are incredibly similar in many ways on the surface, but the reasons are vastly different. In this essay I will
*talks about that Derrek/Geryon au* “am I allowed to post this? Is this too much? Is this allowed to be on public internet or should I just send this to my friend instead?”
Of course! I’m gonna be a little light on details and talk about a lot of them, so buckle up!
SO! To start, there’s Erellise Feros, who could essentially run the city if she wanted to, but over the years, she’s pulled back from things, so she can call in favors almost anywhere, but doesn’t have to deal with individual things. She wants the power, not the responsibility. She’s got the title of Judge (which is a whole talk of its own- essentially came from titans and has been passed on over the centuries, gaining more power (both social and magical) with each new Judge) and coming to her for help is a sort of deal with the devil. Her family has a hereditary magic that basically gives them a random ability that they’re good at right off the bat, and can only get better at... hers is growing roses, but there’s rumors that she has a second, and that it might be tied into how she seems to know everyone’s secrets, but nobody knows for certain, and if you ask the rest of the family (who disowned her long before she took her title), it would be impossible.
Her wife is Karen Feros-Phelleure, who is... immortal and sad, to put it simply. She was there when and where reality broke, and oops, she’s not able to die now, and any wounds that happen just sort of... undo themselves over time. It’s kind of really morbid sometimes and Karen went ‘fuck it, unethical medicine time’ and became a doctor. She’s not legally recognized, but... if you’re willing to possibly be an experiment and have the connections, she’s the best healer you could find.
Ilkinz Seraq is Erellise’s best friend, and was sort of her mentor in villain-hood and power, and he’s effectively a people-shapeshifter. Think mystique, but they look human all the time, and to my knowledge, more complicated bc i thought it’d be cool. In their own face, they wear a mask (masquerade style, not covid style, 90% of the time, since the enchantment needs a sturdy object to grab ahold of) that’s been enchanted to keep other facechangers from taking their appearance, and jostling said masks is a good way to prove that they are who they say they are. The Seraq family has made a business selling their abilities, and they run the city the family lives in. Ilkinz left his family when he was young (relative to his age now... he’s a while over a hundred, and has cheated around aging by just staying in the appearance of others, so those appearances will age instead of his own. This has had a couple of complications, but he doesn’t mind) and ended up tangled up in a series of things that led to he and Erellise meeting and becoming partners in crime. He’s happy to let her have the spotlight- he’s gained a wide array of contacts and people under his hire over the years so he can work from the wings.
Melanie (...) Phelleure is Karen’s sister, and technically they’re twins, but through some weird time magic, they ended up being born a day apart, fun fact. Melanie is able to turn things to gold, temporarily, and she has a habit of making friends and picking fights, and Karen started spending more time (you know... years, decades, etc) away from her to avoid having to watch her grieve. They always meet up again, sooner or later, because they’ve been each other’s constant for most of their very long lives. Melanie had intended to destroy the Judge title entirely, back when she and Erellise were still new friends, but through a series of events, the title got passed on twice in a couple of days, and time in the space of about a block just got... paused, essentially, for about a century. She’s still catching up.
Anna Syrene was the one that stopped time there for a century. The Syrene family can choose to flex their magic muscles in controlling time, to a small degree, or turning into very large cats. Anna had been working a little in both, and wasn’t very good in either, but when her sister fell incredibly ill, she panicked, and... nobody really knows how she pulled it off. She can’t tamper with time without hurting herself, now, though, so she just sticks with turning into a cat much larger than she is. She ended up getting married to Jackson Feros and having a kid, but Jack died due to complications with a deal with Erellise that she refuses to talk about. Since, she’s kept a place going where anyone can stay for any amount of time, but most people use it as a stop when travelling, or to get their bearings when it feels like everything’s fallen apart. She’s been a home for several of my ex-vent-characters.
Lawrence and Geryon started on Earth, not Elysur, and their arrival was an accident. They wound up dating since, and Lawrence ended up bound to an artifact of legend (PB) and Erellise got him caught up in functionally signing his life away. He’s since been brought back (undead, which... loophole in the deal, and all of it was an accident lol) and became an unintentional dad (and then had a crisis after killing geryon- payback’s a bitch). G has been selling portions of his soul, over the years, and he’s the one that killed Lawrence for good. They had been dancing with swords for years (Erellise told Larry to kill G, and they all knew that wasn’t going to happen but he had to pretend for the sake of the dance, and G would bite back. G knew how it was going to end long before he put a knife in Lawrence’s back) and he ended up becoming a significant figure in the black market, and has done a lot of fucked up shit. He ended up making a person (and refuses to let anyone call him a dad- Syl has several issues because he’s just as bad of a parent as he says he would be.) and making a lot of enemies, and when Lawrence got him to stay down for a while, he had a deal with someone else to bring him back. He’s currently undead, but like... i like having him around. He’s pretty, he’s charismatic, he’s a villain, and he’s got angst. What’s not to love? Aside from, you know, all of him lol
PB is one of the few remnants of the Lyrime. It was one of the titans, although very few people have ever known of this, and most of those people have been dead for a very, very long time. It was cursed to be a tool, and it can change form at the will of those linked to it, and through a loophole (it basically checked of itself as a user) it can choose its form, so most people know of it as a sword. A sword that can call upon storms, or summon a spectral army, or conjure items from seemingly nothing, and it leaves behind a mark that one can call it with? A sword that helped fell cities of titans (even if they’ve been forgotten)? It seems to have a different set of abilities with everybody, and most of its weilders don’t realize what they had until it’s gone or they are, so it tends to go missing for long periods of time. But, to summarize it in two words... asshole sword <3. It’s a little shit. Less genuinely bad than Geryon, but... very rude.
Hopping back a little, Sean Runn is one of the folks Lawrence became an accidental dad to, and he’s the one that accidentally raised him. oops, sick kid with death powers and a corpse that had been brought back to life several times already. He had already been adopted by Ves (in short: demon cat who won’t admit he’s a dad. 2/10, very rude, but does help people sometimes), and talked Ves into taking care of Synaelia as well. When Lawrence showed up, he didn’t remember much of everything, but he knew that Ves would need help. So skeleton dad happened. Sean has spent the past several years learning to twist his magic out of shape so it will do what he’d rather it do (probably not very good for him, but he doesn’t really care that much). He’s a little bit of a magic nerd, and has stumbled across a few things that have been lost since the Lyrime fell, but nobody really knows that but PB who hates it because he twists that out of shape as well. PB, after unbinding from Larry, wound up with Synaelia, and they’ve become friends, despite what either of them expected. Syn was threatened by Geryon, which is what sparked Larry to kill him (don’t fuck with the ex-assassin skeleton’s kids lol), and she ended up being killed by some of his business partners, so now she’s a demon. With a healthy side of ‘my dad was an angel so now i’m stronger and also have wings’. She’s currently starting on a revenge roadtrip with PB, which is slow-going, since she doesn’t want to be too obvious about it, and the people she’s trying to find are pretty good at hiding. It’s a project.
I don’t have a good transition for this one, but... Derrek Velhues. First off, boyo knows he’s fictional and sometimes experiences things that happen to like... alternate universe versions of him. He used to be human, but he wound up being pulled out of his body and into a prison stone (lyrime magic, they could get a post of their own with how i wanna ramble about them), and when he was pulled back out, he was put into the body he’s in now. Significantly taller, and like... i made a fantacy race and called em Whelm. Grey skin, and their blood glows different colors depending on what they’re feeling (and those colors tend to mix because... people are complicated and so are emotions). Their eyes take on the primary color of their blood at any given moment, and their hair takes on the color they feel the most often, and it does shadows backwards. The brighter it is around them, the darker their hair gets. The darker it is, the more their hair glows. Derrek can also see magic and people’s essence but not physical objects (although he can see his own magic reflect off of things close to him). Boyo’s got a *lot* of angst and probably needs therapy, but like... he’s not going to do that. He’s stubborn and also would have to bring up the thing of how he’s fictional and also would have to actually talk about his problems which... he’s just not gonna do that.
Speaking of pretty men who don’t know what they’re doing with their lives, Feryn Rumer has horns and doesn’t wear shirts. Boyo’s mom kind of draws a good amount of power from a Lyrime god trapped at the edge of reality and she’s also kind of shitty and so he probably has a few issues that he hasn’t found yet? He doesn’t know what to do with his life now that he’s not just doing errands of various levels of danger for his mother all the time, but he does like using his middle name as his last name instead of using hers. It’s sort of freeing.
His best friends growing up were Aster Danica and Corvina Silva, and all three of them have horns. They’re all Faun of the Phalgon Woods, which has a whole lore of its own, but in short? They’re just people with horns, and sometimes Corvina’s voice gets magical and makes people do what she says, although she doesn’t know about that and just assumes it’s her own charisma and/or because she’s pretty. Corvina’s got antlers and is dating Rij Seraq, which... I’d really prefer to talk about the two of them in their own post. They just deserve their own thing lol. Aster has 6 or 8 horns (i don’t remember for certain) and the main pair are ram horns (with the others following the shape, although one pair is very short and the second longest aren’t very big. if they have 8, the last pair is in the front, just little nubs thus far- all their horns sit in a row. They’ve got grey hair and were the first to leave the forest town they lived in, followed eventually by Feryn and shortly after by Corvina. They’ve fallen entirely out of touch with Feryn, and only continue to be friends with Corv because like... she claimed them. They’re her friend and they’re stuck with her now lol. Also because she is really hesitant to trust anybody and they are someone she knows she *can* trust, and they’ve gotten closer since she’s been more sincere with them. All three of them have made money selling their blood to hemovores of various sorts (vampires, other Faun, whoever else might want to dig in), although Corvina has been the most successful in that, even if (or maybe partly because) she’s got to drink blood as well now or she’ll get ill.
I want to talk about all of them so much more but it’s getting chilly here (my folks like it colder than i do at night and also we’ve got blankets to bundle under, i just can’t type as fast with a blanket on my lap), so please, send asks or a message if you wanna hear more, whether its about any of these characters or anyone else! I always adore talking about my ocs (evidently lol)
Also! Thank you for this ask! I’m pretty sure i’ve said it tonight already but i always adore getting to talk about my ocs and settings, whether its something new or just going over the lore again or more in depth or whatever!
