valentin the alchemist

[valentinstjohn]

appearing to be 38, this 541 year old true vampire is a well educated alchemist and scholar. he is the founder and head of a private invitation only club of vampires called the caliburn club, whose mission statement is for the betterment of vampires. he invented a viable substitute for blood so that vampires are no longer restricted in their diet and now strives to create a new subspecies of vampires who can walk through daylight unharmed.

       𝓼 𝓽 𝓪 𝓽 𝓼 …

NAME: valentin st john TITLE: ard tiarna - high duke: the contract alchemist, saviour of the starved, fólaíomh aos sí AGE: 541 GENDER: male PRONOUNS: he/him SPECIES: true vampire FACE CLAIM: cillian murphy

HEIGHT: 5'10" HAIR COLOR: brown EYE COLOR: blue (right), black (left) WEAKNESSES: direct sunlight, blood lust, needs to be invited into private and holy residences, pure silver, his grave dirt STRENGTHS: immortality, regeneration, enhanced senses, can control and manipulate his own blood, can see through fae glamour or secrets with his left eye PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: he has fangs which he can retract and descend at will, otherwise he has a generally average looking build and features save for his left eye which the iris is black in color as opposed to his natural blue. it is the eye of a faerie which he plucked out and made his own. ADDITIONAL INFO: his ability to see through fae glamour is linked exclusively to his left eye, if removed this is no longer an ability he has. he smokes a tobacco blend of his own making that is infused with crushed fae bones which allows him to glamour his left eye so that it can appear to match his natural color.

       𝓫 𝓲 𝓸 … 

TW: War, Non-Sexual Non-Consent, Fire, Body Mutilation.

The life he had as a human is but a distant memory for Valentin. His becoming a vampire was a result of the 40 Seasons War that raged between the different kingdoms and while he does not recall most of his life as a human, the way in which he became a vampire is a memory he can’t forget, nor the way he had been unable to stave off the ravenous hunger for blood. It made him flee his once human life, too afraid to inadvertently kill any he had once cared for. 

He didn’t know his sire well, mostly knowing them as a voice in his head issuing demands and various tasks that he couldn’t deny. For years he’d been ravaging towns, preying on innocents, a shadow in the dark that stole lives and was hunted for it simply because he needed to feed in order to survive and for years he’d let himself believe that it needed to remain as such, but no more. 

Valentin turned to science, to educating himself on the anatomy of his fellow vampires, learning everything that he could about their species and their unique abilities and conducting experiments. He discovered his own innate powers, if well fed he could control and manipulate his own blood, change its properties, alter its cell structure to make it dense and hard like crystal or steel or turn it to vapor. The vampire who had turned him now made her grand reappearance into his life, perhaps she believed she could use his abilities to her advantage. She turned him into a true vampire with the belief his powers might grow and once he was freed of her influence, he never again followed a single one of her commands. Upset with the loss of a potentially great ally, she left, spiteful. With his age, he was no longer burdened by his thirst for blood and could manage his abilities and emotions masterfully as an artist and precise as a surgeon. 

After the end of the war, he spent the better part of the next two centuries conducting various experiments and formulating a club of other elite vampires with  shared interests as his own. His research and acclaim brought him to the various kingdoms and courts across the continent where he was ever in search for more scientific and alchemical advancements. Test subjects were easy enough to come by, often they would seek him out once his reputation reached their ears, for the promise of further enhanced abilities drew out the power hungry, and existing vampires seeking respite from the daylight or their bloodlust brought the desperate to his doors. Most were unremarkable and then one day, an aasimar approached him with an offer and she was remarkable. Something about the components of her blood and the way in which he had turned her had worked. She was the first vampire he’d spawned through his experiments who didn’t face insatiable bloodlust in her new life. This was a breakthrough, however, the promise of turning her had come with a stipulation, to find a way to restore the once aasimar now turned vampire with her wings which had been tainted. 

This was a scientific mystery to the vampire and he spent countless days locked in his lab running test after test, trying to find a way to restore the wings to their once radiant celestial glory and more importantly, allow the woman to not be poisoned or killed by the transplant. She was his first major success and his first major defeat at once and she found a way into his heart in a way he could not have anticipated. Out of everything he had created or done, she would always and forever be, his masterpiece. Even when she, in her emotional despair at seeing him experimenting on her wings – something which he had tried to prevent her from witnessing for he had seen the desperation in her eyes when she spoke of the restoration of her wings and knew without a shadow of a doubt she could not tolerate the sight of them being experimented on – destroyed his work and his lab and his estate, he did not fault her for it, nor did he hold any resentment. 

The fire she had started nearly destroyed everything but he had managed to save a few key notebooks that held some of his more important calculations and also her wings. He did not, however, come out unscathed. Despite his regenerative powers, a mixture of various chemicals and elements exploded in his face during the fire and he forever lost his left eye. The scientist in him only upset that he did not know the exact mixture of this solution that had rendered his regenerative powers unable to restore his lost eye, but this also only incited his interest to recreate it and noted this down as a future experiment to perform on another. A replacement of his eye came from a fae and provided him with a new form of sight, now able to see through fae glamour and other secrets. 

The loss of his estate was not great for he had many residences across the continent and he needed only remove himself to the next one but the loss of his more recent work set him back a few decades and he needed to regain what he had lost. He attempted to seek her out but found that something magical was blocking him, this however did not prevent him from continuing to try and restore her wings, nor did he stop seeking her out. The moment he felt this magical resistance fade, he immediately set out to return to her. Shortly after their reunion, Valentin was able to synthesize a viable synthetic blood substitute that could satiate his own ravenous hunger for blood as well as that for other vampires.

No longer beholden to feeding off others, more freedom to exist among others and travel to further reaches devoid of human contact could relinquish the shackles of imposed vampirism. Now, he is attempting an even greater feat. To create a vampire who can walk in daylight.

[zayaeze]

"Oh," Zaya let out with a small nod. She did not expect any sort of consolation from the man she had only met once, it was just not an emotion she was able to hide. That disappointment. "Were there still din-," Zaya paused, remembering they called them something else in this land. "Dragons then?"

[valentinstjohn]

"How old do you think I am?" If Valentin had it in him to sound amused, certainly a touch of it would be found in his inflection. Actually, the only whisper of it was through the faint flicker of his pale blue eyes, refracting the light from the burning end of his cigarette.

[zayaeze]

"The original source material? You have met others who speak my language?" she asked him, a sort of quiet shock that overcame her expression, letting all features fall and that of her muscles too. She knew some had come over across the decades but had not crossed paths with any, especially as most tended to return home. It was rare to linger in a place such as this, where cruelty seemed so common place.

[valentinstjohn]

Valentin replies in his usual unhurried fashion with no hint of anything emotive or indicative in his tone, "Original source material as in what I am reading. In this instance, your journal, but yes. I have met another who knows your language. Once, long ago, in a place far from here."

[zayaeze]

"I don't really know you," she reasoned of the offence because though she had been joking she didn't think much of what she said should hold any weight to his actual character. For all she knew he was calm and collected when necessary and a rabid devourer of mortals otherwise. "Dead auras are harder to read, they are all so dark." She could have tried to sense if his held any chaotic hue to it but amongst a crowd lie he was it wouldn't be easy, auras kept touching and moving through one another.

"You are fine, she was fun enough, said some funny words and wrote in it phrases I don't understand," Zaya wasn't even sure about half of what Derya had said to her and at one point had simply stared as the woman spoke about atmosphering pressure and innotated variables - even the words she remembered were not what Derya had actually said. "I am happy you could read it, having three languages in my head I use is hard enough," Zaya noted because that was more it than anything else. Zaya did know the words Derya used, just not in the language Derya had spoken them in. "You don't even need mine and you know it. Very smart."

[valentinstjohn]

"Translations are often poor misinterpretations of the original work," he sucks on his cigarette and releases another plume of shimmering smoke into the air. "I prefer to learn the language and the original source material than rely on the retellings of another. There is no better way," the way he said it was as a fact, not an opinion, because in his mind there was room for nothing else. It was, the best way. It was not the most easy way, nor the most accessible way for the general public, but for him, there was no room for anything less.

[zayaeze]

"Unlucky, you are handsome though, some are old and ugly," she shook her head, eyes glancing at some in the room, a knowing sort of look at an older gentlemen whose nose seemed somewhat too big and his chin set too far back. Zaya did not quite perceive her words as shallow, though they were, she hadn't been around adults long enough to learn better manners for such things. "Good you are fed too, otherwise we might all be in danger," she laughed.

"Beautiful dark woman, she tried to tell me she would hurt me but she was very uncomfortable," Zaya asserted. Derya had not actually said that, it was how Zaya had simply misunderstood the woman, both seeming to have walked in circles with one another. "She returned my book, you sent her, yes?"

[valentinstjohn]

"You must think poorly of me to presume I would lose control over my appetite," he comments in his soft voice, though understanding she was probably only just joking. The clarification of a beautiful dark woman didn't offer much clarity until Zaya added that she returned the book he had lent from her. "You must forgive me. I meant to return it to you myself. It was enlightening."

[valentinstjohn]

event: crowning the jester king

with: eirwen ( @furicdheart )

Valentin is not often in the business of offering advice, especially unwarranted advice, believing that most people will do whatever they want regardless, but this is not one of those moments. He watches as a shadow of a figure has been following the woman selkie and approaches her with a rare word of caution, "We are but beginning to turn a new leaf over where petty acts of crime are unwelcome but that will not deter the more determined. You should keep your sealskin better concealed if you wish to keep it."

[zayaeze]

"Ai! Vampire man, your friend told me you look younger, I do not see it," Zaya announced, her fingers flicking back some of her braids over her exposed shoulders that seemed to shine with the illuminating flowers that shimmered from the magic of one of the council members. "Have you not fed or did you die old?"

@valentinstjohn

[valentinstjohn]

Valentin only regards her with his usual expression, pale blue eyes half lidded with the weight of indifference. A freshly rolled cigarette that shimmers the air with flecks of faerie dust as he exhales a plume of smoke fills the space between them, "I died old. Rest assured, I am always well fed."

"Who is this friend?" As far as Valentin was concerned, he had none but one.

[dracothscourge]

UNLIKE Valentin, there was little that was sacred to Dracoth. Despite his great inherited wealth, amongst his vast collection of possessions there were little to nothing that he would have kept guarded with so much reverence. Had there not been staff in his home that went to lengths to clean and polish and maintain his possessions, he would have no doubt lost half of his possessions to the dust and the clutter. Even with help, Dracoth left a trail of tossed aside instruments, and haphazardly discarded books in his wake.

As Dracoth lounged in his oversized bed, he kicked several items off the spread and barely heard the clatter and crash as whatever it was hit the stone floor. When he drifted into a dreamlike stasis, the incubi stretched out languorously, and a petite bed companion took care to drape a fur across his body, before curling up at his side, a blade clasped tightly in their hands. As Dracoth drifted between the open minds of sleeping neighbours, dipping his toes into fantasies and nightmares, slowly travelling further and further from his body, his physical form lay beneath furs, protected by a loyal and devout lover.

In this realm, the dream realm Dracoth absconds his typical humanoid form, in preference for a scaled two legged daemon, with large, haggard wings, and emerald scales as dark as night in lieu of flesh. Gaunt willowing eyes, decorate his reptilian face, his gaze an unfathomable void. Behind him, a tail that resembled a weapon unsheathed, flicked intentionally, it's length almost meeting Dracoth's looming dark horns. Dracoth circles the depths of peoples' dreams, their fantasies unexplored. He slithers between the repressed memories of strangers and the sweet ghosts of their loved ones, and he bides his time, perusing the menu, holding out for the perfect select.

So accustomed was Dracoth, to the loud pleas from dreamers, that an assured absence of it snatched his fickle attention. Above Valentin's Estate, Dracoth's wings beat loudly as he descends, following the absence of noise. Expecting to soar gracefully down to the abyss of some unknown's slumber, Dracoth was perplexed when instead he was met with nothing. Not only could Dracoth not see the insides of someone's subconscious, but what he could see filled him with a cold shock; a barrier.

Dracoth felt an uninviting aura to the blockade. It was oppressive, and ominous; the place where dreams go to die. If he could have gasped for breath, Dracoth would have, and so with determination, the incubi pushed forward, determined to grasp at something, some texture, some familiar sensation. The barrier was not as smooth as it looked. To touch it felt like a series of uninviting, icy stabs, almost as if it were a living organism that reached out only to, at best warn you, at worst harm you for the sake of it. He could not penetrate it, and yet he wanted to. Though it hurt to touch, and terrified him to his core, Dracoth felt a chilled thrill of excitement. Curiosity merged with dread was a feeling Dracoth had not encountered for some time and it made him feel alive.

Miles away, in a physical realm more familiar to us all, Dracoth's physical form jerks awake. His bed companion is quick to provide him with wine and a comforting arm, but Dracoth is distracted. Though trembling, a sheen of cold sweat forming across his chest and back, Dracoth is quick to dress.

Touching the barrier had been a mistake. Dracoth knew it as well as he knew he was and incubi. When his scales had made contact with that icy, painful barricade, whatever and whoever it was, surely had been alerted.

Standing before his bedroom mirror, trembling in his robes, Dracoth's breathing is ragged and his facial expressions dart between terror at poking a beast unbeknownst to him and unabashed excitement at the unknown factor's potential for chaos. Manic eyes meet manic eyes in the great old mirror, and Dracoth decides he should find this unknown before they could find him.

[valentinstjohn]

Ah.

Someone’s here.

Valentin blinks once.

Anyone who knows Valentin, knows, he does not blink. A dead thing doesn’t move for no reason.

Valentin knows no one else is in the lab; he would have heard them enter. The presence was not physical. Not held within this plane of existance. The touch, however fleeting, was solely in his mind. The invasion was brief, a shock of exposure to the one who entered and they fled, immediately, rightly so, but this would not be the end.

Fabric scrapes against metal as Valentin rises to stand and he rights his vest, tugging the bottom to smooth the material neatly. He is, as always, perfectly dressed. He leaves the lab, ascending back through the secret pathways up to the main level of his estate. The house is generally empty, save for a select few servants and housekeepers. A maid scuttles by with her head down, arms laden with white sheets stained with blood, something is dripping onto the floor as she passes.

“Derya,” Valentin says the name as an inquiry and the maid pauses mid-step to shake her head. She is new. She is not yet acclimated to the strange wilds of this estate and its keeper. Uncertainty clings to her shoulders. “I’m sorry, m’lord, I do not know where she is. I can find her, for you, m’lord, if you wish it.”

Valentin does not say no, he also does not say yes, he just walks away and leaves the poor maid with her uncertainty.

Silent as a mouse, an impeccably dressed gnome slips out from the next hallway and meets Valentin’s retreating steps. In the absence of Derya, it is this gnome Valentin can always rely on. “We will have a guest,” Valentin speaks into the air and the gnome following him listens. “You will bring them to my study.” The gnome does not question how Valentin knows the things he knows, it is not for him to question, it is only for him to do, and ever since Valentin saved his life, he will do anything. Then they part ways, Valentin turning down the hall to the study where he will wait and the gnome to the front of the house, where he will wait, for their guest.

[forgottenbloodfather-deactivate]

Doran followed Valentin in silence.

Not because he had nothing to say, but because this quiet, this strange tether between them, demanded reverence. His footsteps were a shadow behind the man’s, soundless and eager, like a hound who knew the leash was invisible but wore it gladly. He walked where Valentin walked. Let him set the pace, the tone, the damn sanctity of the moment.

The kitchen—if it could even be called that—was everything Doran remembered and nothing he wanted to dwell on. Sparse. Meticulous. No indulgence save for the grim satisfaction of function. Dust gathered only where Valentin allowed it to. Light came from fire, never sun. Books lined the walls like sentries, their spines heavy with secrets no one but him had earned the right to keep.

“You’re a liar. This coat’s seen more high courts than most kings. I killed a lord for it. Stabbed him with a fork. He thought we were flirting.”

A pause.

“Well, we were. But I wanted the coat more.”

He expected a twitch. A scoff. Even just a glance. Nothing.

Gods, he hated that.

They moved deeper into the sanctum, Valentin retrieving tools with the same detached precision that once had made emperors tremble. Still unbothered, still in control, still not offering Doran so much as a scrap of his attention. Meanwhile, Doran simmered beside him, radiant and rattling and very nearly coming undone. Closeness to a second death had made him emotional. He didn’t like it. It felt too much like being human.

“You’re going to ignore me the whole time, aren’t you?” he asked, flopping into the chair like a prince disgraced. “So cruel. So clinical. Did Bellamy get that treatment too?”

There. A flicker. Not enough to savor, but enough to notice. Doran grinned, all canines and corners.

“Ah, her,” he purred. “The bird. She called you her paramour, you know. I would have gasped if I could still breathe.”

He waited for nothing again, smiling wider because he knew it would get under Valentin’s skin. Maybe not today. Maybe not visibly. But eventually. Doran knew how to wait. Immortality was good for some things.

“Do you love her, I wonder? Or do you just like the symmetry? You and I both taking in strays we think we can fix, as if we’re not the sickness in the first place.”

He stood then, slowly, theatrically, and peeled off his coat with the practiced flair of a cabaret phantom. Beneath, the white of his button-up shirt gleamed in the firelight, sleeves buttoned at the wrist like he was pretending to be civilized. He rolled one up, exposing his left forearm.

The veins beneath his skin pulsed black, like ink in water. The second curse had made him a rot-born creature. Something in between, something seething. Doran didn’t know if it was poison, decay, or simply the wrath of a god who'd finally noticed him. He didn’t ask. He didn’t want to know.

He extended his arm toward Valentin without hesitation. Trust didn’t enter into it. This wasn’t about trust. This was about pattern. About necessity. About the only man who’d ever understood the difference between a monster’s wound and a monster’s want.

“Go on,” he said, tilting his head, watching Valentin with a thin veneer of humor stretched over something rawer. “Take your pound. Work your little miracles.”

The ritual was familiar. Almost therapeutic. Valentin always took his blood like he was extracting divinity from rot, as if there was still something worth saving in him. Doran let him. Maybe because he liked the pain. Maybe because, deep down, he liked the attention.

“I missed this,” Doran said, softer, quieter, just enough for the ghosts in the room to hear. “Not the bleeding. The… proximity.”

He leaned back against the cold steel of the table, letting his head lull to one side so he could watch Valentin work without ever meeting his eyes.

“You ever think about what could’ve been,” he murmured, “if the world hadn’t burned first?”

[valentinstjohn]

Doran talks. It’s what he does. Silence is apparently too simple for him and can’t seem to let it settle, only gracing Valentin with a brief respite from his ceaseless chatter before he picks up again. If Valentin had it in him to sigh, he would, but centuries of existing had weeded out the many casual habits of humanity and left him a hollow void. He did not breathe. He did not sigh. He did not blink. He did not glance. He did not quiver. He did not flinch. He did not move. Unless he chose to. He did not move. Unless it had a reason. It was one of the most grating things about him, the reason it was so difficult to get close to him. How could anyone befriend a statue? How could anyone befriend a corpse who gave nothing but took everything?

The maid in her corner of the kitchen continued to clean rags in her dingy water. The most living thing in the room. Humanity echoing in the wake of every heartbeat. Blood drips, thick and viscous into the glass. It’s too dark. Even for the dead. Valentin keeps his eyes on it slowly filling the bottom of the jar, watching as it gently creeps up the sidewalls, claiming glass like a conquerer.

He does not look at Doran as he reminisces. Memories float as particles of dust in the air caught in sunlight. When the wind turns them, some glimmer more prominently than others, proud displays of decay that do not want to be forgotten, small pinpricks of thought that demand to be seen, demand to be remembered. Doran has always been like that. Proud. Demanding. Relentless. Annoying. No matter how much Valentin tried to clear the cobwebs and the dust from the surfaces of his mind, somehow still, some speck of him would remain. Small, insignificant, he would float his way back through carried on the backside of some languid breeze until his thoughts were once again filled with him.

He looks at Doran now. Eyes as pale blue as forget-me-nots land upon the features of the man he’d grown to know over the centuries. His oldest, longest companion. Friend was not correct. Associate was not correct. Acquaintance was not correct. There was no word to describe what Doran was to Valentin. It did not exist in this language. If it exists in another, Valentin does not know it.

When he speaks, it is in a hush, Valentin rarely speaks above the sound of a whisper, “I have thought of this.” He was a man of science, of possibilities, it was only right that he consider different paths. He simply did not linger in them when things did not follow a straight line. He adapts. He changes. He touches Doran’s chin, not enough to move him, just enough to draw his gaze, to encourage their eyes to meet. “You’ve always been a dreamer. What did you dream of to turn yourself into your own worst nightmare?”

[valentinstjohn]

[katherinehoughtoncastle47]

DEPT.Q - 1.01

[bellamychevasym]

Keep reading...

She couldn't sense him the way he could sense her, she'd never been able to, but much as when she had initiated something beyond formalities between them he seemed to step out of his reactions that indicated a numb banality to show her he felt something. In the past what that something was lacked a clarity, the closest she could affirm was perhaps he was fond enough of her to appease her nature. His half lidded eyes now seemed less for her sake, a soft curl to the edges of her lips looking at him, felt his hand between them as her own was.

Her smile shifts into a soft moan when he lifts himself into her, a momentary surrender to the sensation of his fullness slipping inside her, eyes closing, the flickering candlelight light within the lab disappearing. It is when he draws her lower that a happy calmness fills her, so trusting of his affections she could not feel any reactive tension in her muscles, thighs she had expected to tense at his pull instead sunk until the curve of her arse rest against the inside of his thighs, only enough tightness to her hamstrings to keep her from entirely sitting on him.

Just as she sank to him with ease she is drawn to him with the same calmness, eyes still closed when she feels the wetness of his fingers at her cheeks, suggesting her lips lower to his. She can smell the blood on them, smell her arousal he had touched between her legs, and kisses him with contented need, her lips only just parting to breath in the taste of his kiss. A chosen action, the same for her hands drawing back from him, resting behind her hips, nails grazing the curve of her arse. A show beyond what emotions of hers he could feel warming their bond that she too wished for him fully, trusted him to move and roam.

It is when her lips part against his, breathing him in, that her hips start to roll forward. Those same parted lips exhaling, a quieter moan complimenting her breath when his cock partially departs her warm entrance from the action, before filling her once more, arousal slick around the near immediately healed scratches her nails had left on his cock. A deep breath pulling into her as she sought a gentle rhythm, purposefully tightening her entrance around him, pleased with herself, nose tenderly moving from one side of his to the other, lips not departing his. No, it was not a passion to get drunk on, to be overwhelmed by, but it was the passion she had yearned for between them; slow, purposeful, loving.

[valentinstjohn]

Keep reading...

The lab changes shape. It is no longer a lab with four walls, a floor and a ceiling. It is no longer a sterile and hostile environment inhospitable to comfort and warmth. Though their bodies are cold as corpses, there is a heat there, generated through friction and tender touches. Valentin relishes in her touch, every purposeful glance of her fingers as they steeple and peak on his thighs, every roll of her hips, every press of her nose to his and into his cheek, every caress of lips. It makes the lab into a special place for just the two of them. No one where could have housed them better.

He hands land against her hips and ease her movement, following the trajectory of her body like he’s a cartographer. The dip of her hips, slant of her thighs, all unexplored territories left open for him to roam. Valentin documents the flexing of her quads, thighs firm as she moves over him and finds them marvelously proficient in their work.

Time is on their side and it shows in the way they move, languidly, like bodies made of rich molasses. Valentin loses himself in her, lets himself swallow her and lets her swallow him. He does not want to surface any time soon. This is worth savoring. She is worth savoring. His lips connect with hers, never leaving. There is no need to breath so there is no need to part. The kiss is endless. It’s impossible to determine where one ends and the next begins, it is all one continuous kiss.

The cartographer in his hands moves upwards to cup the mound of her breasts and ascend the mountainous peaks of pert nipples. He vacations there. Taking all the time to sightsee. Pinching and rolling, massaging and twisting. He would extend his stay and perhaps he will but for now, his hands return to her thighs and wrap beneath them to lift her from her seat. Valentin rises as well, holding her up against him, bodies still connected in their most intimate of places. He hasn’t stopped kissing her.

It’s only until the edge of the metal table before them hits the very base of her body that their lips part only to be economical with their maneuvering. He sets her down on the table so that he can join her on top and then makes sweet worship with the plushness of her calf as he sinks himself into her luscious folds once again. The kiss cuts, fangs puncturing through pliable skin. Her blood is a shock of color against her pale landscape, dripping down in a solid line from her lifted leg.

[valentinstjohn]

❤️ - Do you find sex boring and a concession for your partner?

"No. I find that with my partner, sex is enlivening."

@bellamychevasym

[valentinstjohn]

location: valentin's estate

with: @dracothscourge

Valentin’s lab is a sacred space. It’s access is permitted only to a small circle of his most trusted and therefore cleverly concealed beneath the foundations of his estate. It is home to all of his more intricate experiments, a source of secrecy and whispers. Danger. Death. Promise. It is often more foreboding than he is, the suggestion of tampering with not only a body, but also a soul.

It is clinical. It is metal and ceramic scrubbed clean with acid. It is magic fog housed in glass jars that shimmer and shine in firelight and turn crimson at dawn. It is an iron cage filled with pixies, doomed to fly and illuminate the room until they collapse from exhaustion and burn against the bars. It is vials of liquid, mystical and foul. It is contraptions of his own making, swirling and spinning indefinitely by unseen magical forces. Silver and gold instruments. It is walls made of bodies and dying heartbeats. It is where the desperate wish to be and where they find either salvation or release. A mausoleum of discovery.

It is where he sits now, on a chair made of metal, a journal with neat and unreadable scrawl in front of him. His unfeeling and passive eyes reflect the light of dying pixies but they see nothing. Not the scripted cypher of his own making against the pale parchment. Not the hollow sanctum that is this lab, a cherished entity. He sees nothing though his eyes are open. He is not sleeping but he is, at rest.

Old as he is, ancient by some standards but still young to other more ancient beings, Valentin does not sleep. His eternal body can run without stopping as long as he is fed enough blood to satisfy him but it is his mind, his ever working mind that needs at least a few moments to recover. He does not sleep, Valentin does not do something so reckless as sleep. Dreams do not come to him. Wakelessness is a weakness, an invitation. No, Valentin does not sleep, but he does rest.

His mind travels through the permeable ether that is meditation. He is aware of everything around him though he feels none of it. He is a suspension of his own self, separate to his body and it is here, in this state, where Valentin finds his rest. With his eyes open, seated in a chair like he is a statue carved from flesh. He does not blink. He does not breathe. He simply is as he has ever been: a suggestion.

[heidi-lx]

[forgottenbloodfather-deactivate]

The Weight of Unrotting Things

(Starter with @valentinstjohn)

Doran had forgotten how quiet the place was.

Not the building, no, the structure itself groaned with age and purpose, the scent of burnt parchment and oxidized metal in every stone. But the man inside it. That was the silence Doran remembered. Not absence, but restraint. Tension. Like a blade pressed flat against a neck.

Valentin hadn’t changed. Of course he hadn’t. And Doran hated him for it.

Some things should rot. Some things should split at the seams when eternity breathes too close. But not him. Not Saint Valentin, patron of lost blood and worse decisions.

He stepped inside without flourish. Theatrics would come, they always did, but first he just had to look. To make sure. To confirm that the anchor point of the last five hundred years was still standing exactly where Doran had left him, untouched by the ruin that clawed its way through everything else.

He was.

Perfect bastard.

“Well,” Doran said, his voice slicing through the stillness, “you haven’t changed.”

And neither had he, not really. Not the core of him. Still full of venom and want. Still straining at the edges of immortality like it was a coat tailored too tight. But the difference now was the bite. The second curse. The one that made him poison.

He spread his arms, letting the coat fall open, every movement intentional. See me. Don’t look away. No weapons visible, but that meant nothing coming from him. His presence was the threat. His history. His ruin.

“Look at me, old friend. Ruined art.”

It had been years since he’d called anyone that. Friend. The word came out rusted, unfamiliar.

He watched Valentin’s eyes, waiting for a flicker of revulsion or pity. He got nothing.

Of course.

“I can’t sire anymore,” Doran said, voice light, flippant. Deflect, deflect, amuse them before they get too close to the wound. “I bite, they rot. Flesh sloughs off the bone like meat in vinegar. It’s poetic, isn’t it? The great Doran, Lord of Want, Patron of Monsters… now just a walking contagion with a pretty coat.”

He didn’t mention the first time it happened. The woman in the alley with copper hair and ambition in her eyes. He’d chosen her because she reminded him of someone he’d once lost, and because he thought the world might be better with her in it forever. Her screams still visited him, stitched into the back of his skull like a second tongue.

“I can’t hear them anymore,” he added. “The ones I made. Their voices are gone. Do you know what that silence feels like, Valentin? Like being buried in snow that never melts.”

He probably does. Of course he does. But Doran said it anyway, just to fill the air with the shape of his damage.

“I don’t want redemption. Gods no. I want results.”

That was true. He had no interest in mercy or penance. He wanted what was his. His legacy, his bloodline, his noise.

The coin slid from his coat, runes glinting in the dim. He flipped it once, casually, like it wasn’t worth more than entire kingdoms. Just one of many treasures. Trinkets for barter. His real currency was memory. Grudge. Madness.

“I’ll fund whatever fever-dream project you want. I’ll open vaults. I’ll empty tombs. I’ll even behave.”

Lie. That’s a lie. But it sounds good, doesn’t it? Sounds like something a man might believe if he hadn’t seen what Doran was like at his most bored.

He stepped closer, close enough now to see the outline of old burn scars on his own knuckles reflected in the glass of a flask on the table.

“I want my children back,” he said, softer. “Or at the very least, I want to know.”

He let the quiet swell again, pretending he didn’t care what the silence meant. Valentin didn’t answer, of course. Doran didn’t want him to. Not really.

Words would ruin it.

“You’re the only one I trust not to fuck this up.”

Gods help us both for that.

Doran let himself remember as his eyes traces the blue of Valentin’s eyes. They had met, as all terrible things do, in the aftermath of something worse.

It was five centuries past in a city that no longer exists, burned to ash during a holy purge, its name lost to sanctimonious flame. Doran had been charming a bishop’s mistress into bartering relics when the cathedral exploded. Valentin had emerged from the smoke with blood on his gloves and a look in his eyes like the gods had disappointed him personally. He was younger then; not by age, but by hope. Still believing precision could hold back the tide of madness.

Doran had watched him from the wreckage, bemused, intrigued, a little drunk. “You’re either the man who did that or the fool cleaning it up,” he’d said, and Valentin had offered no clarification. Just a long, unreadable look and a muttered remark about entropy in tailored coats. It was not affection. It was recognition. Like calling like. Order and chaos orbiting the same dead star.

They’d crossed paths for centuries afterward. Sometimes allies, more often foils, always circling each other like wolves in opposing myths. Doran admired Valentin’s mind, envied his detachment, and hated that he could never quite rattle him. Valentin, for his part, tolerated Doran in the way a scientist tolerates a volatile specimen—fascinated, cautious, but never careless. They disagreed constantly, loudly, and with alarming regularity in front of royalty, warlocks, and on one occasion, a sentient plague.

And yet, Doran always came back.

He always returned to Valentin when the curses dug too deep, when the silence became unbearable, when he needed someone who understood that monsters don’t want absolution. They want control.

And maybe, just maybe, to be remembered.

[valentinstjohn]

Sentiment. That was the only explanation for why Valentin humored Doran for as long as he has. Valentin is not the sort of man who collects friends. He collects useful people, acquaintances, scholars, scientists, mages. Doran is about as useful as a pebble in his shoe and yet he too has been collected. Against his better judgement, perhaps.

Valentin does not blink as Doran enters his space, comfort and confidence in his step, like he belongs there and has always been there and always will be there. An eternity of a person housed in one virulent body. He does not respond as the elder vampire begins to speak. He does not have to. Doran will spill everything he wants to say, Valentin knows him enough for this. He only waits, listening, watching with a keen but languid observation that gives away nothing of his own thoughts.

Ruined art. He says it like it might sway Valentin but artful words and poetry do not move the dead.

The rest stirs his intrigue. Talk of curses. Rotting flesh. A bite made to poison. Silence and lost voices. Children. Want. Want. Want.

Valentin doesn’t deal in miracles. He doesn’t need to tell Doran this. He deals in facts, in science, in magic made through careful manipulation of applied physics. He can’t do magic. He can study and observe and run tests and form theories and conduct experiments. He does not make promises. Valentin is a man of absolutes. Doran is a wisp.

He takes stock of the vampire before him now, like what he’s lacking now might be made visible if he stares long enough, searching for the secrets of his proclaimed curse like it might be lying on his skin. He determined that Valentin was unchanged but this is not quite true. Only what has changed of Valentin is cleverly concealed through faerie glamour. His vision is double, two sightlines merge to one to see if Doran has been touched by fae, cursed by one but sees nothing save for the casual lingering traces of dust against his coat. Perhaps he walked through a pixie.

Valentin turns from him now as if he hadn’t just listened to his entire spiel, as if suddenly the floor to ceiling bookshelf behind was more interesting, that it had called his name instead of Doran. He pulls a leather bound book from the shelf without needing to read the title burned against the front and lets the dusty tome fall open in his palm, its pages whispering.

“Your coat is not pretty,” is the first thing Valentin says to him after all that stretching silence. Then he snaps the book shut and regards Doran once more, a scholar being put to work, his mind is already leaping for the challenge. “I’ll need a pint to start,” of Doran’s blood. He needs to see everything with his own two eyes. This is how Valentin conducts his study, everything with his own eyes. Everything by his own hand. He needs to witness the rotting of flesh, he needs to burn and spill chemicals and magic and powders into his blood and learn it before he can do anything else.

He starts to walk, he does not gesture for Doran to follow, he knows he will. Footfalls of clicking hard sole shoes echo dully against hard wood panels to draw them out from his study and through the hall toward the kitchen. It is a kitchen in name only. Valentin does not eat food, he has no need for a kitchen in its typical form so it has been turned into a secondary lab of sorts for more accessible and less volatile experiments. There’s a maid present, scrubbing copper pots by a basin of water with a grey rag that reeks of lye. She is utterly human.

Valentin pulls a clear glass jar from a shelf and sets it onto the wooden butcherblock table in the center of the room and all the elements he needs to draw blood. He waits, palm open and expectant for Doran to give him his arm.

[sportsmusicsoapsmoviesfan]