Twice Forbidden Toad

Rah! Rah! Im gonna do something. -

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Art blog for - @ari-is-hiding

Relevant tags-

#koro - all Koro related writings, art, animation, etc

#itn - it’s a project, you’ll find out.

#one-off - any disconnected or unrelated artwork I do just for fun.

#canon

#non-canon

Self explanatory-

#writing

#sketch

#digital artwork

#painting

#animation

-add more as it becomes relevant-

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Just some assorted Koro related sketches

Enjoy

[twiceforbiddentoad]

Unnamed -

Her shoes clacked against the clay tiles, her hair swaying as she let her head lull. She ran her thumb over her fingers, letting it catch against the nails. She took long breaths in sync with the closing of her eyes. The darkness was comforting, the silence as stars peaked through the gridded glass ceiling. Her eyes traced against the tile lines. Her feet stopped. Her skin felt thick. Her throat felt coated in oil. Looking out at the empty glass halls she an odd feeling of freedom. It was exactly what she had always dreamed of, a place where nothing meant anything, but in the moment she still wasn't sure if she could really accept it. Even with no one else to judge her, she would judge herself, and she would judge wrong. The fresh air blew through the halls filling her lungs. She played the wind's motion in her ear like music, as if a distant choir of ghosts sang. She let the wind sooth her, letting her arms drop limp to her side and closing her eyes. She let herself collapse to the ground. Hitting the floor hurt, but strangely she began to laugh. It was fun. No one cared, and for a moment she didn’t either. It didn’t matter. The sheer absurdity of simply collapsing overwhelmed any pain she felt. Even she didn’t understand why she was laughing, it didn’t matter, it was just fun. The only thing around her being the wind and echoes of her laughing. She knew it would end, that at the end of time it would be nothing, but it didn’t matter. She laughed because she could, because if in a thousand years nothing existed she would still have laughed in this single moment. The universe was absurd, so why not. She existed, was that not reason enough? She knew she wouldn’t believe it later, but for now she could. She could accept it now, and maybe that was enough. She lay in silence for a moment. Her eyes snapped open, still and staring into the sky. It made her dizzy. She felt as if she could climb out of her body and drag herself slowly up into the night. She felt like she was crazy, perhaps in some small form she was. Living was crazy, and perhaps she had just joined it in its manic dance. Her mind scrambled with words and ideas, trying to assemble itself into something more than the sum of its parts. She found herself unable to separate life and death, to bleed out slowly would be as painful as it would be beautiful. She wished to die but not be dead. To live in the pain of dying for eternity seemed for a moment the most lovely thing. To live was to bleed and heal, and to live was to love something. She slowly pushed her fingers into her throat. As she gagged she lurched up from the floor. She stared down at her hands. She wanted to tear open her own ribcage. Viscera was life, and she wanted to live.

(I’m making Koro a bit more manic in her behavior, but her calm demeanor around others is still the same.)

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Bird.

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Nothing notable to say, I got my hands on some nice watercolors through.

Enjoy!

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ITN - when two women, both of the same small fishing town reunite in the middle of the war.

(I really don’t know what more to say about it)

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Itn Animation testing - I’m learning animation almost solely for this.

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May - This is May from INT (Again, you’ll find out) she is one of the main characters in INT. May would hate artwork like this, because she thinks it’s a stupid thing to put her on a pedestal.

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Artillery gun - standard issue rail based artillery

Beads from Divinity sickness - When encountering the Divine, humans often become temporarily sick, coughing up blood and copper beads such as these.

Priests or Acolytes (I have not yet decided) - These tall entities serve as general servants of the archive, dragging people to the archive and maintaining the status quo in the upper levels. They do not have a will, and are controlled by the will of the archive. They do not like to be seen, and will remove visitors from the vicinity of their work if bothered.

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Eye in Eye with the Divine -

( Muriel in the depths of wing 1)

Muriel walked through the maze of stairs down into the library, stairs twisting over hallways, wrapping around shelves, and down into the heart of hell. He tapped his foot with his walking, keeping a simple rhythm in his ear, tap, tap, tap , tap. He stopped at the foot of a statue. It stood probably 12 feet high, its head raised up, hands spread wide like a hug. At its base sat a small plaque, engraved with a simple phrase, “Burned are the souls of humanity, like ash they suffocate angels.”

Muriel wrote the phrasing down onto his notebook, turning his head to the door behind him, “What a rich place of religious work. I can't say I've seen something quite like it before.” Muriel clicked the notebook closed, lightly kicking a small copper bead by his foot as he continued on his way through.

“It's truly like walking through a place from a painting,” He strolled through a hall, “ Strange, abstract, but aspects intricately human.”

He made a slightly bitter laugh, “ I’ll live my last days in a hell with every book known to man, what's writing one more for those who come after me?”

Muriel paused for a moment, “I should really care, but you've got to understand how difficult that can be in a place like this.”

“Oli, I'm sorry. I made you a promise, one I can now never make true. I hope you get this message, but I hope you never read it from my hand. I would never wish you to be where I am now. I could never write exactly what I wanted to tell you. The Arwick east side library, furthest shelf north, in the corner, last book, page 32. Just read it for me, would you?”

“Youll live, the war will end one day. I hope in the ashes of the recovering world you can follow it. Don’t let your past keep you stuck.” Muriel sat against the shelves, looking down at the words in the notebook.

“Please, forgive me. I cannot help you, and you cannot help me. Don’t hurt yourself trying to save me, I'm as condemned to death as any soldier. Do not join me in death, you have so much more to live for. Not for me, not for an army, but fight for yourself.”

Muriel flipped the page, “Given anyone else finds this book, you're likely condemned the same as I. Good Fucking Luck.” He slammed the page shut and stood back up.

He grabbed a book off the shelf, throwing it into a small statue in the hall, “Fuck your divine ass so much, Die, Die, Die in The Pits of The Hell You Made!”

The book fell to the ground with a light echo. Muriel stared at it for a while, “You won't hear me. What a waste of time.” Muriel slowly picked up the book and placed it back on the shelf.

He walked on, silent and slow. He closed his eyes, trying his best to pull what was left of himself back together, “I can't let my last moments be broken and stupidly angry.”

“God, I hate how this place destroys people.”

He takes a moment to stare down at his hands. His head lifts up to the hall in front of him, “I have a quota for a reason. I have to keep pushing forward."

Muriel walked onward, green copper beads rolling down the stairs with him, into the darker and darker halls of this unending place.

He stared into the darkness in front of him, “Good luck? What a fucking joke.”

Deeper and deeper it went, statues began to line the walls like suits of armor, light starving the eyes. Aged copper beads began to line the sides in piles, the footpath cleared between them. It smelled like rotting wood and dried blood. Even the dark couldn't hide the decay, Muriel ran his hand against the shelves. Books missing, shelves tilted or broken, areas damp or rotting with moss. When rooms opened up into larger spaces all he could do was reach into the nothing and hope. Railings, surrounding what he could only assume to be a bell. Below the bell some large open space opened up, the sound of his footsteps seeming to go into nothingness, something expansive and hollow. He dared not try to go down, whatever hell lay below this one he had no desire to experience. He heard for brief moments the rustle of beads, but in the silence he could excuse it as mere hallucination.

Muriel sighed, “What cruel torture I made for myself. I either collapse into pieces or last a bit longer forcing my way through this hell. A pitiful grasp at structure.”

“How easy it is to say I'd rather die here, how hard it is to follow such a thing,” He mused.

The halls bent in strange ways, curves into sharp angles, and halls running through each other from different directions. It was a strange hollow, like being in an empty home, when not even you are really there. Down the hall his eyes seemed to catch, unrecognizable, yet seemingly it stood from the darkness enough for the eyes to notice. It seemed a figure, of odd proportions, hanging much higher into the shelves than himself. He began to feel ill, the smell of blood and rot becoming overwhelming. Even as nausea took hold, his eyes couldn't leave the shadow before him. The tall warped figure seemed to only stand still, perhaps not noticing his presence. He was keeling over, his vision spinning. Muriel clutched at his chest, heaving as he kneeled on the ground. He choked, then coughed up blood and copper beads. He wanted to die, it felt sick. Throat clogged with metal and blood, mind uneasy and dizzy. In a moment he knew that thing had seen him. Its eyes, six at least, glowed into his soul like a lighthouse. In that very same instant it seemed to rush at him. It seemed to grab him, something deeper than skin, like the small prongs of a spider's leg. It was a hard yank, almost like being suddenly pulled to a stop from a train. It didn't help his sickness, only pulling him to his feet to collapse again onto the floor. The thing was gone, and he was god knows where; it didn't matter anyway, it all looked the same. His condition slowly lessened, first the blood and beads stopped, then the coughing, and slowly the dizziness and nausea. Murial was left in a small pool of blood and beads.

“Dammit,” he muttered, curled up on the carpet floor, arms clutching his chest.

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Instead of productivity, I shall make vacuum noises.

Vrrrrrrrrrrrrrr vrrrr vrrrrrrrrrrrr

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Gup!