#peter the first

[barmaleikin]

Saint Petersburg. The Bronze Horseman, an equestrian statue of Peter the Great by a sculptor Etienne Falconet.  It’s located in the Senate Square near Saint Isaac’s Cathedral and the State Hermitage Museum by the Neva riverbank.

[lapetiteaquavita]

Peter the Great by Godfrey Kneller

[igor604499]

Бронзовая фигура первого русского царя «бороздит» Москву-реку с 1997 года. Он пришвартовался на искусственном острове, который находится на разделении Москвы-реки и водоотводного канала. Скульптура была создана Зурабом Церетели по заказу Правительства Москвы в честь 300-летия российского флота.

[dsash]

The flood in Saint-Petersburg, Peter the First the musical by Frank Wildhorn and Yuri Aleksandrov. It's for linocut.

[bates--boy]

I wanted to do three of these, so I did.

First one is canon to the blog, second one is the Peter the First verse, the last one is for a fanfic that I keep thinking about writing but I never do, even when I have a thick ass notebook dedicated to writing it so I could easily access it and write without worries, why do I never write??

[bates--boy]

He opened his eyes, and the first thing he noticed through the murky water blur of his vision was the smell of sweetened sulfur. He would have gagged, but the immediate sensation following the scent of sugared rotten eggs was a ceaseless beating of his body that somehow reached his soul, rendering him unable to move. He lied there, tangled in his sweaty sheets, trying to force his throat to cough, trying to force his eyes to clear, trying to--

          “Who the hell do you think you are?!!!!”

          That did it.

          The alarming, disembodied shrill flooded Peter’s body with adrenaline. With a great gasp like a diver coming up for air, Peter jerked up and scrambled backward on his bed until his spine banged against the headboard. The sweat made his pajamas stick to his skin, his hair to his forehead and neck. He was consumed by a sudden illness, eaten from the inside by a fever. There was no other way to explain this hallucination of figures half cast in pewter moonlight, one of which bore glowing green eyes into him as she stood at the side of Peter’s bed, towering over him, all impossible five-one of her.

          Peter swallowed against the dryness of his throat. His body tingled as he tried to fully awake, thinking this was still a dream, wondering why it felt like his presence and existence were struggling to remain on this plane. “W-what--”

          “W-w-wh-what!” The woman mimicked him in a squeal. “You idiot! You nincompoop! You universe’s mistake! Who do you think you are--”

          “Rosie!”

          This “Rosie” whipped her head about. The robed being-- well, they were all wearing robes, Peter had realized once all parts of his brain had came to,  but this particular one had a wreath of golden grape vines adorning his head -- that received Rosie’s rapt attention stood in the center of the room. Her face puckered sourly at the thin draw of his lips. “But sir--”

         “Enough, Rosie.”

         “He tried to destroy the galaxy--!”

          “And we have talked about this.”

          Peter would have been grateful for whatever powerful force this being used to silence Rosie and get her to back off if he, himself, hadn’t felt his soul sucked out of his body by that same force. It left him wheezing and nauseous, ; he blinked to stop the room from spinning once more.

          The centermost figure gave the slightest incline of his head. “Right. My apologies, Peter, for such an awful scare. I promise you that--”

        “Who the fuck are you?!” Peter still felt like he just came out of a coma after drowning in lava, still felt like someone had split him apart and kidnapped him across multiverses, but once that wooly sensation in his tongue dissipated, he knew to draw on the Sealandic defensive: a couple of warning shots, as he tethered to his fort thousands of kilometers away, before someone started losing a limb.

          The leader of this group gave a small grunt and another, fuller nod. “Well, it is for the best that we move this along, hm? Alright.” He stood taller and gestured to his chest. “Peter--”

         “How the hell do you know my name?! Is this some kind of prank?!”

          “Please, if you would be so kind!” Try as he might, Peter couldn’t bring himself to bark back against that sulfuric push, so he pursed his mouth shut as the leader of the Hooded Intruders continued, “I am called many things. The All-Life Supreme Ruler, the Father Breath Giver, Prince of Being. To make it easier for my worshippers and to save time, I ask them to call me Dio. Which you may also call me.

        “We are here,” Dio went on, “to inform you of a pertinent matter. For thousands of years, we have looked for sources of great power to aid us in our war. For all the great fighters and wielders of thalergy and thanergy we’ve recruited, we find ourselves constantly backed into a corner. Until we have discovered you. I have no clue as to what you’ve planned when you attacked celestial bodies, but Peter, we need you to join our ranks.”

          Peter wasn’t in the right frame of mind to identify the swelling in his chest in that moment, though he was certain that, in the following heavy pause and in the smallest quirk of Dio’s lips, the leader’s intention was to enthrall Peter to his abrupt call to action. Peter was also certain that the air he swallowed in low gulps tasted hot and salty, too thin to make his mind work straight. And where the rationale failed him, the animalistic instinct took control.

         “...Fuck you.”

        All of the figures jolted; one of them, another man standing off to the side behind Dio, and one Peter realized had foregone hiding his snake-like structured face in his hood and was actually fucking smiling, while Rosie bared teeth and stepped closer.

         “How dare you, you insolent little--”

          “Rosaedeae, I will not ask you once more to settle--”

         “Fuck all of you!” Peter had shouted over him. He ripped the blanket off his body. “You think I’m supposed to be flattered by some-- egh!” He tripped and fell trying to get out of bed. He climbed back up to his feet. “By some vague ass speech and I’ll just come along to whatever cult-like bullshit you have?!

        “After you broke into my house and--” Peter heard a flapping of paper, saw a fluttering of movement, both of which drew his eye to the vanity, and of which the fourth and final figure sat, a magazine laying open on their lap and banknotes turning about in their hand. He charged right at them. “And going through my shit?!” He screeched as he snatched the krona, drugs, and latest issue of Frontline Titties from this sack of robed, steaming shit.

        Somehow, Peter could hear the uptick of a brow in Dio’s voice as he said, “Truly, I was not asking.”

         Peter, for as much as he valued the magazine he stormed across the room to protect, threw it at Dio, missing by just a quarter of space. “Truly, I don’t give a shit!”

        Dio turned his head to the discarded magazine, mouth pursed tight in a grimace. “Of course, I shouldn’t expect something different.” He looked towards Rosaedeae. “Rosie, if you’ll please.”

        A corner of Rosie’s lip curled up. “With pleasure, my Lord.”

        Parts panic and fury spiked within Peter, and with a great howl, he charged, fist raised, at Dio.

          Everyone was frozen in place. No one moved, Peter was sure of it. So, it brought him great confusion when he crumpled to the ground. He collapsed, and a part of him expected to fall into a chasm of darkness, to become comatose. But no, he was fully aware of his limbs bent and splayed about, the taste of his rug, the impending horror as the figures closed in around him, the bare-faced man placing his hands on his hips and chuckling as he shook his head.

        “Oh, man, I love it when they fight!” this snake-looking man said. “They always make recruitment so fun! Alright--” 

        He turned and hunched, arms held out. “Deirdre, help me get him on my back.” 

       The snooping cultist heaved Peter onto the man’s back, grunting, “Christ, why are you so fucking heavy?!” in a way that was familiar, and in that familiarity made Peter’s throat tighten. 

        The heretofore named Snake Man shifted Peter onto his back until he had a comfortable hold on him. “We should have went with this instead of all this pompous formality.” The Snake Man looked over his shoulder, his face too close to Peter’s face. Peter wished he could move, wished for all the world to not be smelling this man’s breath of stale mint and boiled eggs. “Alright, Raggedy Andy, get ready for a hell of a ride.”

         Peter patently did not want to go on this ride, did not want to be swallowing the stale breakfast breath of this man or be on his back, did not want to have woken up to this freakish breaking and entering, he did not want any of this, but he was forced to watch, with the sickening agony of being in a nightmare that one would force themselves to wake from in vain, as the room started to waver, as reality became gelatinous and blended together and Peter couldn’t breathe he couldn’t breathe and he didn’t know if it was from the way the air around them grew thick or if it was whatever Rosie-Rosaedeae had done to him. And his pets, oh, god, his pets, they were going to starve and they were going to be scared and his boss won’t know what happened to him and..

           His eyes cut to Deirdre’s, finding their eyes glowing white and distant in concentration, much like Snake Man and Rosie and Dio, and Peter swallowed--

         “WAIT!”

          Deirdre blinked, their gaze cutting to Peter. It was enough for reality to snap back into place, and for the cultists to jolt and sway in the disturbance. “Shit!” Snake Man grunted, shaking his head. “What the hell--”

           “You aren’t supposed to be doing that,” Rosie murmured sharply, despite the quivering awe that colored her voice.

          Peter had no clue what she was talking about. He wasn’t even thinking about her. He had his eyes locked on Deirdre, arm limply raised, finger shaking and pointing at his bedside table. “M-m-my... ne...cklace. I -- hhh -- I need -- necklace!”

        In the abrupt confusion, Deirdre looked around until the request registered in their brain. They hurried to the bedside table, reached in to dig around until they raised the first accessory they could find:

        His Princess Joan coin, drilled and hanging from a gold chain.

         “This?” After Peter’s jerking nod, Deirdre hurried back to the group and stood behind Peter to work the necklace around his neck, pulling his hair from out of the chain once the necklace was clasped in place.

         “Okay, pretty boy got his jewelry, can we go now please?” Snake Man huffed. “This man is much heavier than he looks.”

        Deirdre stepped back and nodded, still staring wide-eyed at the group’s kidnapping prey. 

         The room once more snapped and bend as reality swallowed them, silencing the weak whimper of what constituted as Peter’s scream.

[bates--boy]

The hooded figure makes their return to the Kirkland-Oxenstierna manor, formed in a cloud of black wisps crackling with blue and white electricity. With hands in the deep pockets of their robes, the figure crosses over to the bed, stopping at the foot to gaze upon the occupant: the young, troubled man curled on his side, hair splayed all over the pillows, some sticking to his face from the saliva during his sleep. The figure glances at the open script lying in the empty spot next to him, and in the coldest pit of their heart, they can't help but feel... proud. And guilty, as they move to the side of the bed and pat the man's head.

Peter only murmurs and furrows his brow at the touch, but otherwise remains asleep. Sighing, the figure focuses on the empty space next to them. They reach out and curl their fingers into the air.

Clawing into the fabric of reality is much like digging a hand into burning slush, atoms and structures fighting to stay together and remain whole. The first few times it hurts like hell, but one gets used to it overtime. And one would expect the ripping of reality to have a cataclysmic blast, noise to upend the soul and destroy a human's fragile sanity. But as the figure tears, it sounds little else than a gentle rip of paper. The figure creates a gap long and wide enough to enter; though there are infinite rivers of realities and incomprehensible amount of space between here and the destination, the bedroom appears as if sitting right on the other side. They turn back to the bed. They shift Peter onto his back and hook their arms under his knees and shoulders, taking a deep breath and channeling their energy. They lift.

A thrum emits from Peter's body. A bright, golden light illuminates from Peter, and a moment later, this barrier of physics breaks, bursting into the air and vanishing. The figure can make the copy of the young micronation, now, and as they lift, yet another cloud of black wisps and electricity forms in their arms, whipping and stirring about as it's pulled from the sleeping man. It's quick to form the twin body of Peter, but just before monstrosity became flesh and blood, the figure notices the palm-sized singularity lying in the center of the black cloud's chest.

Turning to the rip, the figure grunts, "Christ, why are you so fucking heavy?!" and eases Peter into the new reality. Then, after catching a breath, the figure vaults into the gap and falls after him.

[barmaleikin]

Saint Petersburg. Monument to Peter the Great at Mikhailovsky Castle

The Italian sculptor Bartolomeo Carlo Rastrelli made a model of the monument during the lifetime of Peter I, however, the sculpture was completed only by 1747, when Alessandro Martelli cast it in bronze.