blixtrandetorst

[blixtrandetorst]

Do you not miss the warmth of the sun?

“I’ve made my peace with it.” Dieter started to answer. There sounded something more to the idea but it didn’t materialize immediately. His ending inflection leading to the slight possibility of more. He, mulling it over it seemed, waiting with Paukka as it trickled into place whether to continue or not. One does not gain all he had without sacrifice. The feeling on deep orange light plunging into his skin to heat it was a small one.

A minuscule martyr in the grand scheme of his original purpose. As the propaganda said, give your human life for an immortal one and lead the country to victory. Though he had no longer need to bear that mission either. It joining the sun’s rank of things he has long since given up. Funny, he never realized how both had culled to the same fate. And yet he hadn’t regretted stepping into his vampire-hood. He never looked upon the raising sun at the end of a long night and said I wish to give it my hand one more time. A reach out before the door closed so he couldn’t feel a temperature so great it diluted perfectly upon getting to the skin.

He, as Dieter saw it, had had his time within those rays. As a boy upon a high place wishing to fly. Icarus. Bathing himself in it without knowledge it’d be taken from him. That simply his turn was over. Willingly over. Turned over into something new, the sun’s colleague being handed dominion of him. He was just under new management. Didn’t the moon reflect the same light? He hadn’t thought about the sun lamentingly since trading it in for fang and wing. Warmth, as was its nature, was able to found in many other places. To make his muscles give up their tense grip within him in those found places. As it notoriously relaxed all beings. In that heat he drank from a third party. The cold being chased away with a red wash down his throat.

He did add on after all. “I don’t have much a need for it, and that makes it easier to not miss.”

[blixtrandetorst]

if you try to run me through with your blade i'll just pull it in deeper until we're face to face and kiss you on the mouth. with tongue.

[blixtrandetorst]

[blixtrandetorst]

[blixtrandetorst]

“I will be wild. I will be brutal. I will encircle you and conquer you. I will be more powerful than your boats and your swords and your blood lust. I will be inevitable.”

— Iphigenia, from A Memory of Wind by Rachel Swirsky. 

[blixtrandetorst]

Dracula, 2020, dir. Jonny Campbell

SE01E01 The Rules of the Beast

[blixtrandetorst]

file this under moments in amc's iwtv that permanently altered my brain chemistry

[blixtrandetorst]

InViVo Medical Animation of Red Blood Cells.

[blixtrandetorst]

How Surface Texture Affects Bloodstain Patterns

[blixtrandetorst]

[blixtrandetorst]

How often does he lie? What situations cause him to be dishonest?

//He's not purposely dishonest most of the time. He prefers to withhold information. Yes and no’s, can neither confirm nor deny, the like. He’s really a man of few words and when he does speak a decent amount it’s still brevity. (Better moods mean more speaking.)There’s no moral reason he doesn’t lie either. He just will not tell if you don’t ask the right questions. You must be very specific and frank. A genie and those fairy tale guards that answer by giving you the run around. One must assume he will not outright tell unless you explicitly ask. (He’s not trying to mindread (in the human sense, he has not vampiric ability for this) or even read body language, etc that’s too much work and he just doesn’t care to.) that being said he can do that, just when it’s prudent for him to do so.

That being said, when he does lie it’ll be hard to spot. They’re just ever so off the truth it’s believable. He’ll lie for a few reasons. One being that he just wants to. He doesn’t do it a lot, as to not dull the affect they have when he does. He wants what he wants and he wants his methods to work the first time. The second is if he feel whoever he’s talking to doesn’t need to know. This was more the case during the war, operational security and all that, but now he’ll just decide. Almost at random. (Probably having kept this habit from the war) For his own amusement, or he genuinely sees for some reason whomever it is has no reason to know that information.

pick your battles getting information is all I can say.

[blixtrandetorst]

Imagine. A figure standing within the shadows, hidden and yet noticable through the silhouette drawn by the faint light of the moon. The same light that incessantly reflects in a par of eyes. A pair of eyes hovering almost 2 feet from the ground. A figure, a man, watching ominously and staring at Dieter with eyes that reflect light. Human eyes are not supposed to do that (he has followed your scent Dieter and the anger and frustration born from your last encounter is ever-seething).

Something nibbled at him. At his heels, his shoulders, the back of his neck. He’d crush it while rolling his neck to alleviate its discomfort. A vermin feeling. Exterminated. Not physical force, just the stream of one. Something sent through thought alone. Sick wishes of harm, to be the one to do it. To bite at his skin making it near impossible to carry on as usual. Night walks were suppose to be peaceful. One of the few peaceful things Dieter did. Maybe nourishing had things played out well. But it seems he was the one being preyed upon. Instead of the usual predation he partook in. One where he was doing the spearing with his eyes from the dark.

Dieter spun, in no real hurry. As if he forgot something and turned around to see if it fell along his way. To stop once his follower was seen. The lost object founding its way back. Blocked by overpassing bridge only two eyes stuck through. Bright, only half human. Human in shape but not in essence. Just watching. Nothing more. Just above the ground they sat, where dogs held their heads in distress, duress, anger. That’s where he assumed they sat now. Lower than their haunches, pulling slathered lips back to show teeth. Strike two. Was he sitting on his finger tips, splayed open by body weight like paws? A hunched posture to get his head that low? Those canine poses must wreck his human anatomy. Unless he was further gone. What of his teeth? Snarled in a primate fashion or matching his eyes. And could they match the teeth Dieter had. Enamel for enamel if pushed to scorch against each other. Whose would chip or break? Whose would pull flesh best.

Any other man would be humbled into running. Any other man without contingency within themselves. Abilities beyond human. Dieter only looked back at those eyes. His undaunted blues still keeping back the pupils within them. It’d be a shame to not give him a chance yet. And wasn’t that why he was here now? The vampire kept his eyes forward. Hands behind his back, an old man just on a stroll. As if he was just beckoned by a passerby in the bridge tunnel. It was all very casual to him. Although Paukka was certainly making an impression. Dramatic and daring. A choice Dieter liked. Coming to find him without prompting, with reason. With revenge in mind. It was all very endearing. That Dieter had been on his mind since then, any reason being reason enough. It’s so rare to have someone you just met rattle around between the folds in your brain for so long you’re compelled to seek them out again. The vampire called into the dark. Coaxing the beast further to him. “Has the puppy got his teeth yet?”

[blixtrandetorst]

Strasbourg Cathedral

[blixtrandetorst]

The fragrant trail that spittled the ground was the same still dripping from his maw with the spit. Bent over on all fours the vampire was heaving. Gross, guttural noises, one bit hiss and the other a chirping unable to be reproduced by human vocal cords. Its giant body kept from the expulsions by the joints of wings. Joints that were hands mere minutes ago. Now the former palms propped it up in its waning sickness. Damn this flavor, this scent, that disgusting animal. The joints, knuckles of fingers, webbed with thin strong leather sprawled out to its sides. Flattening the snow haphazardly. The beast swayed back and forth in its effort. He wanted to turn and rush the culprit. Anger filling where stomach content left. How dare you pull such a deception. Again and again. Thought the Finn’s fault, or intention. Dieter took it as an egregious misstep. That he had done it on purpose. Filling his veins with canine blood just to thwart him. He groaned the bat head around to where he had left him. A pool of red pointed for him. Playing tattle tale to the not so far off position.

It was still unfortunately appetizing. Unable to fully reconcile it. Enticing, the red. He wanted to lick it from the snow. Looking at its heat lift from in blurry vampiric vision. Its scent dissipating to the air through the leafed nostrils drawing more heaves, only to have it waft up more to him the closer those muscular wings dredged him. Their effort churning the powder up. You screamed so sweetly, why didn’t your blood taste the same? You were so promising, why didn’t you have blood to match? It repeated, over and over. The sound of his heart beating in record pace. Look how beautifully it spread across the ground, only to be a lie? The instincts in his brain weren’t in tune. He knew why but didn’t at the same time. It wouldn’t let rationality penetrate. It didn’t want to. In, out, human sight for what things were blurred by terrible instinctual wants. It never had to sink in before. Why should it capitulate now? Frustration drew a wretched, clicky growl. One that shook the branches of nearby trees.

Staying on what counted as all fours for bats. Tertiary arms, gripping their human-esq hand into the snow. Claws that laid in wait. He hid his weakness from the turning of its stomach here. Silhouette was streamlined, taking the moonlight on its bowed back. True Desmodontinae in form. That disrespect still festering in the pit of its belly. Thought still looking as if it was panting. Dieter sat there to figure his next move. Following the red, he found the man still close. Still moving. Grunting and groaning, had a new audible flavor from him. It wasn’t entirely human. Though pain stricken all the same. Then he was felled. Something working from within him that did it. Wound? More? Had he succeeded? What did werewolf transfigurations look like? He saw body heat raise, snow around him contrasting it for maximum potency. A blur of body, limb, and blood. Dieter waited, watched, a man’s comprehension coming to in the lull again.

The vampire’s face, strung with anger. Gross from moments earlier, flung itself towards him again. To lift Paukka in its grasp again. But aloft, against the tree he reached in his attempt to flee. The leg wound he worsened hovering above its previous place against the bark To halt whatever was happening to him. The vampire held him with reverence, like a trophy won. Hubris he felt entitled to, chest and wings spread emphasizing it displaying him far above the ground at Dieter’s monstrous height. He had lived far too long for this, all for the sake of curiosity. If the wolf didn’t show…

He met the carbine being thrust under his jaw with a disapproving throaty grunt. Impressed though he was, the man still wanted to fight. Even with the pain coursing through him. A lame buck from the start it had been re-exasperated. Pushing floating embers of it into a medium Dieter could perceive with these ever familiar monstrous senses. Like the man’s veins were screaming for the very teeth he had to release the pressure within them and relieve them off that wretched anguish that kept them in woe. Dieter, the man who started this conversation, as the Finn knew him. Was growing fuzzier, dimmer, in the wake of animalistic senses, synapses, instincts and frisson that ruled him now. Appeals to human reason would fall upon deafening ears.

Ears that now flew back in displeasure of the rifle still being in his way. It would have to go, promptly being tossed aside by simply waving it away. Replacing the hand on top of a shoulder to keep him pinned. The webbing between pointer and thumb running along collar bones. Now unencumbered the vampire’s face drew closer to ground level. A hemoglobin hypnosis his instincts enacted upon themselves. Out of habit the monster tilted its muzzle. The adrenaline had churned the canine scent over and over till it was finely mixed, even a little diluted. He was still painfully human. A latent threat of a still to show up lycanthrope became less of a factor. As bood was just below the skin and Dieter’s teeth looked to make headway bring it to the surface. May as well bite at the most enticing part, the wounded leg.

Once the razor like teeth had sunk into their prize, and the blood rushed out to meet them as he knew it would. It curdled in his mouth, of long rotted victims of powerful canine claws and teeth. Territory ruled and objectors fought. Whatever human was in it had been completely bastardized, at least to his tastes. Taken completely within its fold, with no longing hand to help it back out. It had been turned over within the animalistic that only its scent was still fragrant. Deviously tricky these veins. What drew him in previously now was now entirely revolting. That fact alone flung his jaws wide open to let out a distorted chirpy yowl. In brutish hopes of flinging what had clung to its teeth off and out. Nothing of the like had ever happened before. No blood had ever been so reviled as this sample was. Such deception was angering. It got to spitting out what was persistent into the snow just next to him. Shaking of the demonic head to do so. Letting the spit run off freely, it would take the rot off with it.

Vile spoiled wine. Maybe all those years of only drinking from high places had spoiled his palate. War heroes, human and vampire alike. Those who had been given unwillingly, and willingly. Aristocracy even! Dieter never went without. Or having to turn to animal substitutes to get by. He couldn’t say which caused such disgust. The years of easy gluttony, or never having tasted animal of any kind. Regardless He held little interest in the veins now. That alone being frustrating. But his original goal still stood firm. Dieter’s mind connecting back after the shock of it all wore. He could still prod the wolf.

[blixtrandetorst]

"If someone told you they were afraid of the heights, how would you go about telling them what to do to get rid of it?" Hypothetically speaking, of course. The un-confessed confession of a man that felt ashamed because he was not blind to the beauty of gusts and strong winds and did dream of soaring the skies — despite the fright greater heights brought him.

Dieter mulled his answer over quietly. Thinking of the highest spires he’s traversed. The ones he had climbed up with human hands in the dead of night. The ones with long falls that facilitated the sprouting of his wings. The only things to save him. To fall through the air, for he wished to feel all of it. Its gentle, smoothed gravely texture, that picked up sharpness as he plummeted, against his skin. So fast he could only squint to see. The only witnesses being eyes carved in stone, horrendous with beaks and scales. Monsters of stone akin to him. They watched his fall, passing the watch to their friend on a ledge below. How he kept his wings close till the last moment. Then on working wings gargoyles had in similar fashion, sliding out and opened wide to catch, glide, flap and soar.

He could bring this man, or whomever needed such exhilaration, up above in the same way. Though they’ll certainly despise him for it. Such a force that has cradled him aloft would surely, with his escort, allow a guest. His endorsement to let them fly on leathery webbed wings as he does. Flight was a joy for him. How fortunate he thought that he wasn’t confined to a cockpit, or wooden propellers to get him airborne. That Dieter could experience it as avians did. Will full force of body and will. How unfortunate some suffered from a fear or it. That it wouldn’t allow them to willfully see to it on their own. Supposing that’s where he fell into the question. If one couldn’t make the decision to go up, Dieter could take them. Then he spoke, as nonchalant as answering what time it was.

“Exposure therapy.”

[blixtrandetorst]

Dieter got the feeling he was being shielded against. That the man was trying to hold himself as far as possible. His callous smile, no revelation at all. Yet it was something to notice. No notice to the bird that joined overhead initially. A flick of eyes to see it once it was heard, then back.

His chill reached him alright. Easily working its way into Dieter’s skin. Worming in through his pores, letting his bones feel what it would be like to be put on ice at market. They seemed to radiate it themselves if he didn’t know better. It invigorated him, though only briefly. A shock of energy, as those who’d just come out from a sauna would rush into the cold beyond its doors and plunge into a winterized lake. Only for a moment. Just a second. The name Voronov would carry that shrill feeling.

“With introductions out of the way…Voronov.” Dieter simply couldn’t help himself, smugly lifting his chin a tad more. His grip constricted firmly, unyielding to pull away attempts. With the same arm he smoothly yanked, elbow riding straight back behind himself. A dancer like move, force hidden behind grace. Positioning Alexander near abreast. He lowered his head ever so to let his mouth hover by Voronov’s ear. Not without taking a quick glance at pale skin. Skin that held beneath it, on any other human something to be lapped up from teeth and vein alike. The back of his throat closing in on itself, as if in heavy weeping. How a dog must feel when they whine. Instinct he fought, full well knowing the blood within there wasn’t to his benefit to drink. A yearning in regret. A reminder. His eyes flicked back beyond Voronov’s shoulder, to check those he could bite that they hadn’t turned their eyes on them again.

Then to what he intended. Eyes staying forward initially, they’d find their way back to the skin once more. That whine, a want. At this point it was almost self torture. Everything smelled correct. As to the iron levels, oxygen saturation. Pulse sending it through with laborious effort. Still he put himself in a cage of his own making and whined to himself through thought. The danger ever present, having to remind himself. Over and over. The bird above another reminder in itself. An uninvited party of eye if he were to sin against himself now. Alexander was more than the cold.

Speaking low, as if it were a secret. As if those who had all but completely evacuated their immediate area could still hear. “I have a feeling we both know neither of us are as we seem to them. Would you be so kind as to tell me—what makes you?”

Humans who sidled, to get this way and that, around them was beginning to thin out. They might’ve felt the growing atmosphere around the two without even knowing. Their animal instincts wanting no part of it yet human actions dictated how it happened. They simply left. Quietly, back towards the lights. Leaving it for them and them alone in a darkened circle of trodden snow encompassing them. It only looked as if they were stragglers in midst of a closing night market.

An electric aura gathering from him, lending to that force field that kept those not involved, out. Dancing on his skin pricking up the hairs under clothing. Mixing with the cold. The damn cold nipping at him. A normally amicable relationship. When temperature was fixing the two in the sky to make a storm. Not so tonight. A softer option of flurries began with a beating that throbbed thunderously just as loudly in Dieter’s senses as it did in the man’s chest. How could something so cold beat so fast? He could clap a metronome beat to it. For a moment wanted to. Again thinking better of it. Lest it be taken a mockery.

A faint cleave of a smirk broke on Dieter’s face. Manners were being forgotten so soon. Or had he wanted to see if Dieter was disingenuous with his demeanor. His gaze sharpening ever so slightly. Top hand squeezing its friend. He skipped over the first well meaning question. It wasn’t anything to give attention to. Direct as ice when one falls through it. Clear where his new found companion’s conversational intentions lay. A sterner voice adopted to highlight it. Neither had met before, they both knew that. At least for Dieter’s end those who found him rarely lived to find him again. “Remember my face…? You’d be one of the few.” His tone matched the raven haired man, but spoken ever so casually.

“I suppose you may as well put a name to it. In that case.” Unclasping a hand from its other to hold it out. Spitefully now he was holding his manners. Years of him only needing them and his teeth couldn’t be wrong yet, could they? Lifting his chin slightly till his offer was taken. Give willingly that frozen grasp. “Dieter Bergstrom.”

[blixtrandetorst]

//adding to this, if he’s ever discovered as the one who’s been picking off cattle and ranchers alike, the law is gonna have a hell of a time getting him.

//im bestowing upon him his western verse