confessthysiins

[confessthysiins]

Three of swords 🫀🗡️

[confessthysiins]

It was as though the earth had opened up and swallowed them whole. The great city of Izalith was nestled underground as if in a wound in the world, blood-bright with fire, magma veins pulsing with it’s beating heart. The heat danced seductively at the edges of vision, intangible and yet felt in every limb, on every inch of exposed skin. It seeped into bodies beaded with sweat, such that one’s very blood felt cool. 

The commander had allowed his men to at least remove their helms, gazed upon their faces reddened and shimmering. They wiped at their foreheads with gauntleted hands, pulled at their gorgets in desperate attempts to escape the sweltering heat of the earth’s bowels. Perspiration rolled off their steeds like a pungent rain, their gait slowed and unsteady. One of the palanquin’s porters had fainted on the way, and was resting atop a knight’s horse, the man having taken his place for the rest of the journey.

But now, kneeling before a throne older than time, in a room that seemed to be hewn from a single great black pearl, Oswald did not think of the heat, of his silver armor���s too heavy, too hot embrace. The sweat that ran off his temples and down his aquiline nose did so coldly. He never did feel at ease in his beloved’s homeland, and now, in audience with her Lord Mother, yet another feeling welled in his feverish body: fear.

It was not the fear one felt on the battlefield, no. It was something smaller, insidious, like a snake in one’s guts. He felt it coil, crawl into his throat as he prepared to speak. Think first, the snake said, Think hard. Thou yet wisheth to live. And so he deliberated, his head low, slick-black hair sticking to his cheeks. The Witch’s words bit at him, challenged a pride he knew she would see crushed. He wanted to say, Yes, I have taken her from You with these hands, and I have held her own with them. He wanted to say I have taken her for myself and I will keep her from You. And I will taste of her love with these lips.

“ I would ne’er dare pretend to such arrogance, my Lord. ”

He looked up to see pale, stone-like hands crossed over her lap, a face as impassive as the polished onyx that reflected it. Her thoughts were as closed to him as that of a dragonfly, her feelings just as alien. There was a venom in her voice as she addressed him, an anger like a spark that he feared would turn to raging inferno if he but spoke out of turn. He swallowed with a clenching of his jaw, cadence slow as he said: “ I believe she would have longed for the sky even if I had never existed. That she would always have belonged in the Light. I confess I am honored to be the one who’s hand she will hold when she walks toward it. ”

“ Know well, O Lord, that I take her away on my own master’s orders. I hold no delusion that I am the orchestrator of this tale. ”

The hall shines black on black, its onyx walls looming endlessly with intricate carvings and contorted sculptures. No earthly manner should draw stone nor jewel into such shapes. They must have been molten down, and licked to form. The Lord's throne room gleams and glitters, reflecting the fires on every facet. One ray of light should be enough to illuminate the looming chamber, nestled within a black diamond.

The throne is hewn from older rock, still. Sung forth from the roots of the Archtree, it dominates the otherwise empty room, forces the eye. Runes inscribed upon it wind like shackles, spelling out secret sorcery, glinting with red heat. Izalith is a city forged from the riches of the earth, but its patina is thin. One can always spy the magma that pumps through its veins like blood. She prefers it to the faceless sturdiness of other architecture. This city is hers, and all within it has been born from her. It should never reflect anything but herself.

Eyes of stone peer down at the sprawling courtyard and its many shallow pools. A feat of great engineering, to bring water down to her domain and keep it. It shall be forgotten with every other marvel of her culture, but not yet. And it is not the water that holds the Witch's cold attention. She regards the shining knights sweltering in their heavy plate, the gathered handmaidens that titter and flirt, the palanquin wreathed in the soft beguiling colors of Anor Londo. A foreign delegation.

Her daughter has come back to her a changed thing.

"'Twas folly to be lenient and let her go," The Witch remarks with her heavy, dragging voice. Timelessness pulls through each syllable, and something akin to regret. "Miriam hath not the fortitude to resist thy temptations. I should keep her locked away until the ceremony is complete. Ye delight in estranging her from Me."

@confessthysiins / Oswald says: " You will always lose her. "

The Witch's eyes slide back to the knight in her presence, half-overlooked. Pretty thing, she thinks. Dutiful though too beholden to life's pleasures. Broad in the chest and strong in his arm, commanding Gwyn's knights without fail. He is a fine prize. And an insult to her. She should have forced her will, should have made Gwyn offer up his firstborn as bride price. Miriam is happy, so she is told. So Miriam has told her, unasked. The Witch regards the knight who supposedly makes her so happy.

"Speak, commander. Dost thou believe 'tis thee I lost her to?"

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His silver gaze wanders the fell heavens, hangs on every lilac cloud and streak of stars red like blood. He listens attentively as Miriam speaks of Mensis. It was familiar to him, once, that word. He digs through his brain like he’s trying to unspool its folds, tries to find clarity in the fuzzy face that it brings to the forefront of his mind; an old friend, forgotten, already grieved. Oswald cannot remember the color of his eyes, only that he saw himself in them, once, perhaps through the shimmering veil of tears. In frustration he empties his chalice of wine, does not even glance at the prospector when he serves himself another. 

“ It is as you wish. I should ill like to call you by a name you do not prefer. ” He sighs. “ You may have already surmised that I am no longer young. A long life brings many regrets, ” he states, placing himself opposite her by the balcony railing, leaning an elbow upon it. He looks tired, bent so over the stone, nostalgia on his aged features. His new companion’s philosophizing brings him a measure of comfort that expresses itself in an unusual willingness to talk. The wine soothes, as well. He takes another sip of it. “ I have done much wrong in this world. I have wronged others, and I have wronged myself. I think that it is natural to regret, though one should not dwell upon it overmuch. Then again, ” he smiles, but it is an unsettling thing, teeth too sharp and eyes too cold, “ It was my own mistakes that brought me here. They had… thoroughly unmade me. I had seen the brink of my own collapse and jumped. ”

He stops for a moment, the words heavy in his throat. Slowly this time, he drinks, briefly revels in the sensation of the alcohol warming his muscles, like so many hands upon his flesh. “ I was lost. Little more than a slavering, walking corpse. It is only through the ministrations of my good doctor - a woman who shares your name - that I was made a man again, though much has been lost regardless. ”

His eyes wander over the peaks of the Hidden Village.

“ But tell me, ” Oswald speaks again after a beat. “ I remember a time where all scholars were as brothers and sisters, cradled within Byrgenwerth. What became of Mensis that they would bring such horrors to be born? ”

---- The man seemed to take amusement in her name. Best to offer an alternative, then. "Mary will do, if need be." Even if he claimed it to be beautiful, she knew too well how many hidden meanings could be writ in the words of men. Prospectors were simpler, in some ways. Too much paranoia drove one mad, so the sanest often were the ones who said what they meant, and meant what they said.

But, the word that leaves Oswald's lip grips Miriam's attention like a whip.

---- "You studied at Byrgenwerth!?" She had met Yurie in the past - found her company enriching and enlightening. If this man were being earnest, then her opinion of him had improved significantly. After a pause - collecting herself beneath the moonlight that cascades down, she regards how to respond to her schooling.

"Yes, the school allowed me to pursue the higher callings; to study what laid below just as much as what laid above. With abandoned Ebrietas having been found below, it is folly to assume that we had found all there was to be found. Dreams, Nightmares... that is where the School sought to pursue new discoveries. I know not how many yet live, but there are enough to still enact their rituals tonight."

---- She sipped her wine. "...Maybe one day I will see their handiwork, and then, I will have to decide whether I envy or pity those who stayed." A slight quirk of the lips, barely a smile. "Is it wrong, to be scared of a decision made? To never know for certain if it was the right one? To be more terrified that you may have made an important choice and been wrong?"

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"The Brothers Karamazov", Fyodor Dostoevsky (translated by Constance Garnett)

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Annika Tucksmith (American, 1995) - Untitled (2024)

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Inhale, exhale. Muscles relax slowly, one by one, tight tendons like garments of war shed layer by layer. He sheathes the reiterpallasch after a brief look around, a sniff of the air. Seems safe enough, at least for now. Strange to think, with the city in such a state. He looks behind her, to the eldritch moon that haloes her in lilac. 

“ -Miriam?, ” he smiles, pale eyelashes fluttering closed as he brings a gloved hand to his mouth. It’s a habit, hiding his fangs, though he wouldn’t know how far back he’s been doing it. There��s much he has forgotten. But never her. She is in the reformed pupil of his eye, in his blood, in his organs. He couldn’t forget her if he tried. His body would keep the score. “ It’s a beautiful name. ” She looks so different, this Miriam, white hair blooming in the eerie light. She’s pale as scholar’s robes, her eyes a pinkish red. Albinism, he figures. Like a distorted mirror's image, a negative of his rosy and blue-eyed doctor.

Manners, he remembers manners. He curtsies before the prospector-scholar, tipping his wide-brimmed hat. His hair falls about his aged face like molten silver. 

“ My name is Oswald, ” he begins, following her gesture to the chalices set upon the stone railing. “ I was once a scholar myself, in the heydeys of Byrgenwerth. But such a time is long past. ” He sighs, approaching the red-filled basin with a certain apprehension. His eyes leave hers for mere moments at a time. He is tamed, now, human again, but the hold of the blood never fully leaves. He’s ready to flinch, ready to fight. He wishes it were not so. 

Wine. The concept returns to him as she says the word. With furrowed brows he avails himself of a cup, dips it into the basin. It swirls bright and watery, not quite like blood, in his hand. He brings it to his face, tips the chalice towards his nose. Scent, he finds, always has a way of jogging the memory. Yes, that sweetly acidic smell… the soft intoxication of it, so different from the blood’s. The hunter takes a gulp, quick and unceremonious. “ Mensis, eh…? ”

Another swig of wine. It’s dry on his tongue, unlike the unctuous velvet of blood. He remembers drunkenness as a gentle thing, like being swayed by a calm sea, and drifting further from oneself. The holy medium, the beasthood, made one feel all too alive, set veins aflame, made every second last an age. As day and night, they were. When had Yharnam last seen day? Now all was blood. All was night. He gazes at the moon, hanging too low in the sky, at false stars that shine coldly. A sigh draws a small cloud of mist around his face.

“ I suppose I dreamed, once, though it was more akin to nightmare. ”

It’s the smell that lures him here. Not that of incense, familiar though cloying as it is, near sickening to him now. It’s another scent, an elegant perfume, fruitlike and acidic all at once. It tugs at a knotted string of memories, one he would see unwrapped at all costs. He hunts no longer because it is what he must do, but because it is what he used to do - the return to life is a slow and sometimes painful process, but the body remembers. So he follows the body.

His steps take him through winding streets, under a sky painted purple and pink like a great starry bruise.  There are things prowling Yharnam tonight that belong not to the living, waking world, but to the domains of dream. Fell lights hang over abandoned parks, strange flowers bloom in eldritch moon’s light. Atop the tall spires of the Cathedral Ward and the rooftops of the city crawl the brain-stemmed, many-limbed horrors that had plucked him to and fro the haunted waters. Should he regard them - it? - as saviors? No, that honor was his good doctor’s alone. It was her ministrations, after all, that finally woke him from torturous slumber. He wonders if she worries for his brief absence.

He tracks the scent into alleyways that twist and turn, the city’s seemingly endless gutter guts. He walks past what was once a hunter, now cloaked in the fur of beasts, enthralled with the moonlight. It only stares, glassy eyed, a myriad stars in its collapsed pupil. He finds it more beautiful in the eyes of a beast. In the sky above Yharnam, the moon hangs too close, the stars burn. The green-black pupils of the monsters reflect it much more serenely. Ah, but he cannot be distracted. That tangy perfume must have its source nearby. 

Reiterpallasch firmly in hand, Oswald rounds a balcony's short stairway to find himself face to face with a hunter. In a flash his blade rises, his finger hovering over the elegantly-carved trigger. Milky eyes thin under his wide-brimmed hat as tension seizes every muscle of his body. A woman, younger than him, holds a pick and a chalice. In a basin behind her, something like blood, but not quite - watery and acrid in its scent. There it is. The stand-off lasts a few seconds; it’s those seconds that last a seeming eternity, like any moment where life or death are uncertain.

He lowers his weapon first.

“ My apologies, madam. I did not mean to spook you, ” he says, before lowering the scarf that covers the lower half of his face. His eyes dart from her own, with their sharp gaze, to the basin where that strange not-blood lies lake-still. “ I assure you I am no beast, and wish you no harm. 'Tis only a familiar scent what brought me here. ”

[confessthysiins]

It’s the smell that lures him here. Not that of incense, familiar though cloying as it is, near sickening to him now. It’s another scent, an elegant perfume, fruitlike and acidic all at once. It tugs at a knotted string of memories, one he would see unwrapped at all costs. He hunts no longer because it is what he must do, but because it is what he used to do - the return to life is a slow and sometimes painful process, but the body remembers. So he follows the body.

His steps take him through winding streets, under a sky painted purple and pink like a great starry bruise.  There are things prowling Yharnam tonight that belong not to the living, waking world, but to the domains of dream. Fell lights hang over abandoned parks, strange flowers bloom in eldritch moon’s light. Atop the tall spires of the Cathedral Ward and the rooftops of the city crawl the brain-stemmed, many-limbed horrors that had plucked him to and fro the haunted waters. Should he regard them - it? - as saviors? No, that honor was his good doctor’s alone. It was her ministrations, after all, that finally woke him from torturous slumber. He wonders if she worries for his brief absence.

He tracks the scent into alleyways that twist and turn, the city’s seemingly endless gutter guts. He walks past what was once a hunter, now cloaked in the fur of beasts, enthralled with the moonlight. It only stares, glassy eyed, a myriad stars in its collapsed pupil. He finds it more beautiful in the eyes of a beast. In the sky above Yharnam, the moon hangs too close, the stars burn. The green-black pupils of the monsters reflect it much more serenely. Ah, but he cannot be distracted. That tangy perfume must have its source nearby. 

Reiterpallasch firmly in hand, Oswald rounds a balcony's short stairway to find himself face to face with a hunter. In a flash his blade rises, his finger hovering over the elegantly-carved trigger. Milky eyes thin under his wide-brimmed hat as tension seizes every muscle of his body. A woman, younger than him, holds a pick and a chalice. In a basin behind her, something like blood, but not quite - watery and acrid in its scent. There it is. The stand-off lasts a few seconds; it’s those seconds that last a seeming eternity, like any moment where life or death are uncertain.

He lowers his weapon first.

“ My apologies, madam. I did not mean to spook you, ” he says, before lowering the scarf that covers the lower half of his face. His eyes dart from her own, with their sharp gaze, to the basin where that strange not-blood lies lake-still. “ I assure you I am no beast, and wish you no harm. 'Tis only a familiar scent what brought me here. ”

//==//==// BLOODMOON //==//==// CLOSED || With @confessthysiins

---- The Veil is lifted. The Byrgenwerth Spider lies dead. A heavy stone basin rests on arranged blocks, and the wine poured into it has served a delightful - if boorish - effect. Most Yharnamites preferred blood as their drink of choice, so imported wines were cheap, if rare. There simply wasn't much of a market in the city beyond those who try to stay 'sober' by comparison. Though Mary herself was not a hunter of the dream, she knew from experience that an offering to a basin like this bid 'Messengers' to carry gifts of its like.

A shame that she could not see the creatures nor pay them in reverberations and echoes for more bottles; empty ones which had been arrayed neatly on the side of the balcony. Oh no, as she dipped the edge of her glass into the basin, she filled it in a display of hedonism rarely allowed. The presence of the eldritch, cascading down upon a city gone to hell... there was power in each glass she sipped from.

---- In the distance, over the walls of Yahar'gul, she could hear the bells ringing, the chants rising. It was a good night to bear witness to the surface. A horrible night to be unprepared. A terribly time to be any of Yharnam's people, huddled in their cellars and behind closed doors to wait out the inevitable.

No... if a beast were to wander in through the incense burning on the balcony, she would survive or die by her own, gaunt hands. That was the only truth she would accept.

---- So, despite a glass in hand, when the creaking of a shoemaker's handiwork sounded from the alley behind her, the scholar gripped at her pick. When she glanced over her shoulder, it was with a body poised to defend herself.

But she would not strike first. Not on this night, where she intended only to observe.

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Fyodor Dostoevsky, from a letter featured in "Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky to his Family & Friends,"

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it's messed up that men with long hair can just cut their hair and then no longer be a man with long hair

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Reblog if you’re hoping 1848 will be a fresh start

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Hugo van Wanedoyen.

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V O W O F S I L E N C E

✹* Written by Maya, 30 + years old. 10+ years of experience.

✹* Sideblog to @rosmcrinus, follow backs come from there.

✹* Independent roleplay blog for Goddess of Sin, Velka Original blog thegoddssofsin was unfortunately sha.dowb.anned. It was over 10 years old.

✹* Multiverse and AU friendly! (Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Elden Ring)

✹* Dark and mature themes and topics are present due to universe.

✹* Basic roleplay etiquette applies. I am also here to write for fun. No drama or hate tolerated

[confessthysiins]

“ no  matter  what  anyone  else  sayeth , thou  art  so  important  to  me .   ” ( she has a feeling someone has questioned her sincerity of her feelings towards him asdadsdsa )

Were his concerns so apparent, so obvious? Were the tremors of his heart so loud? The pardoner's eyes were for a moment wide as he turned to the goddess. He opened his mouth to speak, but the words - or rather the absence of words - made a knot of his throat.

Could her icy eyes truly see his very soul?

Worry crawled over him like a shiver beneath the skin, a hot nest of shame and confusion in his chest. She spoke frequently of love, and though Oswald knew that he would give his flesh and soul for her, the very thought of such feelings returned shocked him. What could gods know of love? Of the warmth that fills one's soul when their beloved is near, of the shivers when skin brushes against skin, of passions ignited deep within one's flesh?

Perhaps the goddess' mortal body, a temporary restriction of her power, allowed her a glimpse of human desire - this he could accept. But love was much more than flesh; in her immortal life Velka had met a thousand souls, and she would live to meet a thousand more. That he could be an object of her affections, a companion for what - in her timeless wintry eyes - would be no more than blink, a brief instant of respite... That too, he could accept.

But in his thoughts always something whispered that he, in time, would be forgotten. Replaced.

" Of course." A half-hearted response.

This nagging worm oft chewed at the pardoner's confidence on moodier days. Perhaps she saw it crawling between his heart and lung, its glutinous body poking between ribs as it wriggled.

In his heart of hearts he knew Velka spoke not of strategies of war. But he ignored this truth, and hid instead in willing delusion. He was, after all, the last free pardoner. In this way, he was her right arm, exacting her will - and at once her protégé, her secret last resort.

"And thou art to me as the sky to the earth, and as wind to the sea."

It is the queen that wields power and crushes the enemy, but the king ( the old and worried king ) is the true centerpiece.

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In the dark that preceded the coming of the Flame, there were Men. They gathered below the shadows of petrified trees, at the feet of giant mountains, in burrows and caves that shielded them from the wrath of the dragons. They were small then, yet unformed, verminlike in their existence. But not all of them cowered from the wyrm-filled sky. There was such a group that wandered, daring to run below the shade of great wings like a pack of wild dogs feasting on the scraps of this gray world’s stone kings. 

They were many such mortal creatures, but among them one stood taller, ran faster, was possessed with a great spirit of conquering. It looked at the dragons with the beginnings of vengefulness, strived for a higher existence. And so when a being found the magnanimous Soul, and became the first Lord, this one defied the broken order of things, and begged for the power to annihilate its enemies. It would be as a hound to the Lord, it would fight each and every one of his battles with all its unstoppable vigor. It would lead its pack with courage and valor. It would do anything for a glimpse of light.

And so Lord Gwyn bestowed upon these creatures his gift; power, immortal power, at the price of their unwavering obedience. Thus they came to Be, and came to understand. Garbed in argent, imbued with the strength of their Lord, the Silver Knights rose from their nothingness and became fearsome warriors. They challenged the dragons with rancorous might, and at their head stood proud their Commander, who had led them in the gray and the darkness, and now led them in the light.

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the babygirlification of older men

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@confessthysiins sent: 🌿 for war, for ruin etc.

She's seen it in a movie. There was that awkward shuffling, the flustered smiles, everyone glancing up above their heads with an air of coy knowing. Miriam did not know. It shows in these small, insignificant ways, that something is missing from her. She has not lived the way others have lived. She's got a false start and is now eternally limping after every other runner in the race. Even if she feigns understanding, laughs at jokes she doesn't get, references she never caught, here she is embarrassed. It frustrated her, while watching the movie. She was angry at it. A sprout of mistletoe, she was told, signifies a kiss that is owed.

In the movie, everyone was smiling. She is looking at her doctor, and he does not smile. It curls in her gut like an animal in its burrow, that he is to blame. He trapped her here, bid her to wait. So she did, half in the door frame. She already had one foot over the threshold and she'd never have noticed. If he had waited, if he hadn't been impatient, he could have escaped this.

But he pushed in after her, too eager, and here they stand now, embarrassed by a tradition neither need to subscribe to. His eyes dart upward, once, and then he inhales too sharply. Not in shock or satisfaction, just the disappointing cousin of surprise. Miriam's gaze dutifully follows. There it hangs, evergreen above their heads: a kiss, fittingly out of reach.

"Ah..." He makes, knowingly, haltingly. The noise is small and he knows to cushion it with a small, flustered laugh. No, it isn't his fault. He didn't see it. Miriam stands with him in the door frame, her back to the wood. These things weigh differently under the strain of expectation. He doesn't just shuffle past, winding out from under her gaze like a rusty tomcat, back arched in displeasure. He stays right there, looking at her from behind the safety of his glasses. Silver eyes like this, so bright, so sharp... But they are widening by degrees as he looks at her, as he watches her watching him. Deer, meet headlights.

"Oh," She echoes obediently, and copies the flustered, awkward smile she's seen the actress wear. It's stupid. She's stupid. In the movie, things were much simpler and no one's life hung by a thread about a kiss. She is beginning to suspect that the mistletoe is a cruel little trick someone decided to play on American culture.

"We don't have to," Oswald starts and stops. Clearly he's had the same thought. Of course, they don't have to. But Miriam is looking at him with her wide, guileless eyes, and she can hear the gears turning in his head. Would she feel rejected? Would it hurt her feelings if he felt that even something as innocent as a mistletoe should trigger him to flight? Would he want it to hurt her feelings, if it did?

"No," She says with a small merciful laugh of her own. "No, no, of course. It's so stupid."

"Well, I didn't mean—"

"No, of course not."

Of course not. His lips part to speak again, but all he does is breathe a laugh into the warm air they are sharing between them. She can hear his relief like a stone dropping down a deep well. And she feels very magnanimous. She is the huntress, lowering her rifle again when the stag freezes in her sights. Her heart cramps around the thought.

Am I so terrifying? Would your life end if you kissed me? Miriam would never ask that. She does not want to know what power she holds. She wants him to imagine her powerless. But she hasn't released him and she knows he is waiting. She knows her sweet, impatient doctor cannot move on before she does. It must freeze his spine, that she is still looking him in the eyes. His pretty, soulful eyes that briefly know no one but her.

Let him go. Why do you do this? —She does not ask this either.

"How about this," She offers, and taps her forehead. She cranes her head just so, sweetly. See, she whispers wordlessly in his ear as she closes her eyes and smiles, as she offers herself up to him. I'm harmless. "One on the noggin."

Oswald says nothing and she refuses to see the look on his face. But she feels him move, a caress of warm air that smells just like his cologne. Then a touch; faint, singeing the soft peach-haired spot beneath her ear. With two fingers, he gingerly holds her in place. He does not kiss her forehead. He kisses her hair. She feels the press of his warm mouth, the weight of a moth's wing. He touches his lips to her once. It doesn't last a heartbeat. It lasts a lifetime.

When she opens her eyes, he has pulled away from her. He smiles wryly and she can see him desperately keeping from licking his lips. He presses them together in futile mimicry of indifference. Her scalp catches fire where he breathed. All tradition demands its pound of flesh, doesn't it?

"Have a good night now, Miriam."

"Goodnight, doctor."