#⋆⁺₊❅. 𝐺𝐸𝑃𝐴𝑅𝐷 𝐿𝐴𝑁𝐷𝐴𝑈. › 𝐢𝐜.

[raytm]

@dupliciti continued ฅ/ᐠ˶> ﻌ<˶ᐟ\ฅ

Gepard looks like a revenant, swathed in dark clothing. he had not realized he still bore the mark of an executioner, a smear of drying blood high upon his cheek, he had thought it effaced, he was negligent. sampo looks upon him not with the anticipated shudder of trepidation but penetrating concern, heaving him away from the precipice of nihility, his senses numb then, suddenly, acutely coherent. he blinked, slowly, cognition lethargic as it seeps back into him. part of sampo was tensed, a quarry's instinct to flee from the snapping jaws of a predator, he recognizes it in the way his gait carries him, in the slight tremor of his hands. gepard’s own hands trembled, lithe fingers, pallid, calloused from years of combat, it was only when he discarded the pouch that he realized that the daze of ire had waned into his heart’s stuttering alacrity in his ears and the desiccated feeling of bile raking up the back of his throat. he felt nauseous, it hadn’t plagued him when he was striking flesh and pulverizing bone. it was like all at once the reality of the night had swarmed in on him, compelling him to avert his eyes, that the hands that yearned to reach for him might find him putrefied. outwardly, he was not much different, save for the slick of sweat which beaded upon his forehead, his palms clammy. “.. I’m not.” he manages, as far as reassurance went, it felt rather brittle. his knuckles were bruised a grotesque smattering of lurid purple. something felt fractured - or broken, the sheer force behind the impact of his fists appalling. his muscles ached with it, reverberations of such incessant strikes, absentmindedly his hand strays to his shoulder, applying pressure as if it might alleviate the dull ache. the flickering light is cast across his hand, the signs aren’t obvious but beneath the wan shafts of fluorescence it’s easier to put the pieces together, he looked as if he had been in a fight. “ Ive got more than what is sufficient.” it felt stilted to speak like this, as if they were business associates, as if sampo’s mouth hadn’t flush to his, his fingers firmly holding gepard’s wrists, delicate - when one was stripped down to obscenity. “ although what I am to ask of you cannot be repeated. I trust you have your ethics about you when it comes to such things..” sampo’s eyes are adhered to the copious amounts of cash, perhaps it’s better that way - that he does not see the shards of guilt that rear their abhorrent heads, the darkness that settles across gepard’s expression. “ I need you to move something for ..” he hesitates, pauses then continues “ with me.”  in that moment gepard was neither the amorous lover nor the obdurate guard, he was a patron, someone with money to splurge. “ what I ask of you - it will not be pleasant.”  had their interactions prior to this ever fell beneath a mantle of pleasant, a strenuous chase which ended in him exhausted and, more recently, ineffably flustered. “ can you handle that?”

[raytm]

the dining room felt barren; once, that grand, lacquered table had hosted the whole family, their seats now tucked neatly beneath regal, blue cloth. the woefully empty porcelain plates with elegant roses on sinuous vines stared at gepard, his sole consolator within that narrow hall of judgment. he was only ever summoned there upon their father’s whims, often capricious, lurching violently from commendations for his exploits into fierce tirades, accusing him of incompetence, in his duties, in life. he could often gauge his father’s stance from a guarded distance, having grown adamantine beneath his irate thrashings. for now, he is pleasant, yet their conversation is pervaded with tension. his father was insistent that gepard yield to his decree of marriage, that he had a besotted aristocrat's daughter lined up for him when he finally realized that his father knew better than him.  it was an enervating conflict. gepard landau was many things, resolute, dependable, principled, he could not permit himself to view another person as nothing more than an asset, furthering his father’s avarice. it was a stand still they had crested many times, that always ended in rancorous arguments, that gepard capitulated before because he knew his father was a vile man, he would not put it past him to fetter that responsibility onto his sister if given the opportunity. “ I will hear no more of this nonsense, boy.” he had a penchant for hitting him with that epithet, acrid and demeaning, as if he were a child - not a man. “ I have given you enough time, enough chances.” fingers adorned in thick, golden bands curl around his goblet, striking it to the table for emphasis. “ you have done nothing but disgrace this family’s name, do you know what they say about you.” he lies, he was practiced in it, if anyone knew the renown their family name held, the burden of that esteem, it was him, the one who had to preserve it, epitomize it. he doesnt realize he’s standing, that the edges of those thorny vines grow amorphous, the red bleeding into the green, the green into the off - white. “ I was a fool to entrust you with your own affairs.” 

 he takes a breath, a shuddered inhale, compelling himself to remain composed, to not let the barbed defamation sink beneath his skin. “ father.” he manages. it was a title bereft of any sort of paternal fondness. his gait carries him, stride after stride, past the chair his sister serval used to sit in, her elbows propped on the table, talking loudly, despite their father’s chagrin. past the chair adjacent to their fathers where once their mother had sat, a lovely, ethereal apparition, her countenance gentle, her eyes cornflower blue. he stops before him, his father, unbothered by his audacity, accustomed to his puerile efforts to revolt. he tilts his head back, their eyes meet in a clashing of glacial steel, the temperature in the room descending sharply, as cold as the inhospitable winter outside. “ you believe yourself wise.” his tongue is laden with disdain, his mouth contorted in disgust. “ if you will not concede to me - then I’ll have your sister do so in your stead.” it’s a threat, buried to the hilt in his chest, his father knows he would relinquish his hold for their sake, even if the repercussions left him in anguish. his father recognises the weakness in his eyes, the reluctance in his rebuttal, he knows he has won. he is dreadfully wrong in his surmising. until that moment, where ire pulsed through him as a second heart-beat, he had not realized his hands were clenched, that they trembled at his side. it takes a second, only a second, for that smug expression to be scoured from his face. the impact is dreadful, his fist collides with his father’s face and his jaw jerks forward, blood filling his mouth, a tooth dislodged, agony billowing in its wake. his father turns on him, cradling his jaw, screaming - gepard is so sure he was screaming. he doesn’t hesitate the second time, nor the third. it was as if he were an unadulterated rendition of violence, his arm drawn back then thrusted down, each blow a keen, incensed weapon. his father’s face crumples, his broken nose drove further back into his face, his eyes bludgeoned and bleary. he was scrabbling to find purchase against his son’s arm, digging his lamentably blunt nails into his white, now stained red, livery. the fabric twists, slick with blood, as if his father were hanging onto him in hopes of salvation. he sinks his fingers into his father’s hair, he teeters on the verge of unconsciousness, inhaling in rasps, sputtering mouthfuls of blood. without warning gepard pulls him back, his body sagging, slamming his head violently into the corner of the table. again, again, again. each time his father’s skull caves a little more, the clumps of hair and blood glisten with rime. gepard’s breath is ragged, heat seeping from between his teeth in a visible haze. it was as if all the warmth had been drained from the room, shards of ice prickling along his viced fist, smeared with cruor. 

he strains to release his fingers, as if they were rigid and frozen, his father sinks to his knees, then falls gracelessly to his side, blood pooling from his opened mouth, his eyes blanched and sightless. he isn’t satisfied. he brings his foot down upon the man’s sternum, the sound of bones cracking eases his smoldering fury, it doesn’t bring it to cinders. “ you bastard…” his voice is unrecognizable, a grating cadence of years of resentment. he applies more pressure, his muscles straining as he feels the tenuous bone give way, skin sagging and organs squelching.  “ you fucking bastard..”  he keens, it’s an almost laugh, deplorable and shuddering, waning into a soft, furious sob. he does not feel sad. he notices how blood pools in the white, porcelain dish, how his chalice lays on its side, disgorging wine onto the blue velvet. he cannot tell where the wine coalesces into blood, where his father’s dinner mingles with fragments of skull and streaks of gore. his body hums stridently with the adrenaline of it, with the abrupt, moribund silence. his father would never be ushered to such quietude unless he was dead, that was how it rose to the surface, that it breached the threshold between gepard’s blinding, incarnadine rage and his returning senses. his father was dead.

[raytm]

to gaze upon the eaves of the passing, amorphous buildings in awe. the glistening of stalactites tapered to blunt, convex points. they revealed his reflection in billowing streaks of colour, nebulous around the edges, waning away as it skirted to the other side. he could have stared into its frosted, ethereal world for hours, fractals of shimmering light dancing across his vision. his stomach lurched, knees threatening to buckle as serval’s stride continued on and he sank into the snow, hitching forward inelegantly. the alcohol settled in him as warmth, imbuing his senses with a pleasant distortion. this place, often bleak and wintry, was far more benign when witnessed slantwise. his laughter was a sweet baritone, untethered to ludicrous things like decorum. serval shook her head, either nonplussed by her brother’s descent into delirium or finding it hilarious, incongruous to their soirée’s dignified air. her hair, long and blonde, shone with a lustre of starlight, whipping back and forth on the brisk, eventide wind. her laughter sung with a dulcet cadence of incoherence, not because she was inarticulate, but because he was drunk. one, two, the crystalline glasses of effervescent wine were sweet, and even their father’s hibernal lower did not jerk him from his stupor. he had ushered them over, brandishing his arm like an incensed, seizing branch, lowering his voice to a seething hiss, take your brother home. it wasn’t a request. stumbling through the early evening snow was far more thrilling than a ballroom of stifling vanity and perfunctory niceties. the streets were vacant, cast in arresting shafts of sputtering street light, oil lamps burning away, their flames high and quivering. where the undulating swells of darkness stopped the light became loose strands, lambency wreathing through the spills of ink before fading away. these otherwise familiar sights were augmented in his inebriation, so much more enthralling now than ever before. “ move it, slowpoke.” his sister’s scolding is gentle, a lenience afforded to so very few. he blinks at her, slowly, allowing her features to bleed into clarity. “ home - right, home.” often, that word held with it an insurmountable weight, manacles that kept him adhered to his family’s noble name and inherited responsibilities. now, it felt like the benevolence of a smoldering fire, chasing the lingering chill from his bones. the fireplace was imposing, built of old, clay bricks and filled with neatly chopped logs. the aromatic scent of still glowing cinders, the quiet stillness that accompanied it, that felt more akin to home than any tepid gatherings of family ever did. Gepard leans into her, his shoulder bumping into hers, bracing himself for another, labored step, then another, his thighs felt like gelatin. “ we’re going home.” it was spoken softer, a whisper of chattering teeth and rallying sobriety. his sister nodded, turning her attention back to the street and the two of them continued on, lurching just a little less now. 

[raytm]

i decided i wasn't going 2 write my asks and instead write another gepard drabble. yipee.

there was nothing lenient about the way the tutor would stare down her aquiline nose, her hawkish eyes peering from behind thick rimmed spectacles, a honed lour devoted to mischievous children and their exasperating excuses. this time, she had caught them huddling beneath the bay window, a large, leather bound book spread across serval’s lap and gepard hovering over it in her lap, leaning so far forward he was basically adhered to the illustrations and loopy, elegant script.  they had circumvented the afternoon’s lecture on belobogian history only to lose themselves in the whimsical rivulets of fabrication. tiny, bare feet scrabbling over wet stones, the water purling around their precarious route, their reflections rippling and coalescing over shining, white rock. everything was more intricate in the narratives of fiction, elaborate worlds with infinite magic and endless days of indulgent warmth. gepard could have listened to his sister read to him for hours, stretched out under that bay window, the slivers of afternoon light cascading in as shafts of gossamer grey. her lilt was far more captivating than the droning hum of the tutor’s insipid lecture, speaking of valiantly fought battles by men with forgettable names. gepard had solidified the protagonist's name in his mind as someone truly unforgettable. he doubted those soldiers had wielded the ancient magics to fend off a rather cantankerous old man with a penchant for tormenting children. now that he thought about it, their wizened educator looked sort of like the antagonist of the narrative, things suddenly made more sense. she raised her hand and cleaved it through the air with impatience reserved only for misbehaving children and much to her chagrin she was coming to realize these two had a proclivity for it. the daughter, impudent and wise beyond her years, was the sort to shepherd the two of them into all sorts of trouble. it was best to rid that from their system early so as to avoid incidents in the future but it was proving an arduous task. gently serval closed the book earning an urgent look of disquietude from her brother, she shook her head, a reassuring sort of silent gesture and he rose, followed by her. the teacher’s reprimand beat down on them like a fusillade, aggrieved with their puerile notions of lounging about doing nothing. as the two walked ahead of her serval leant in, just close enough so that only gepard could hear her and under her breath she mimicked the old woman’s lambasting, nasally and derisive and it took all gepard had in him not to laugh, just a little. under her sweeping, irate gaze no such thing would have gone unnoticed. 

[raytm]

for twenty eight years he had endured. It had never seemed like a grueling task, not one that would scour abrasions into his forbearance until he was all exposed nerves and tumultuous ire. the thing was, when one was so acquainted with death, with killing, it no longer held its harrowing ramifications. It was disconcerting how comparable the crushing of bone sounded, like thick carapace splintering, how the pulp of brain matter and shards of skull could look monstrous if one let their vision fade into amorphous rage. his strength was an asset to the people, one they neglected to recognise as violence when it was harnessed for protection, not destruction. the air felt heavy, the stagnant calm before a fierce storm. that is how he had felt, how cathartic it was to irrevocably yield to that seething rancor. his father’s voice had droned on and on, an ever present second heart - beat, derisive and inordinate. it was rapturous, the silence as he gurgled on mouthfuls of blood, the shuddering heaves of a chest caved in. the crater from the impact of his fist over and over again, a purging of burgeoning resentment that gathered at the ridges of his knuckles, extending across tenuous bone as rib after rib shattered violently, imbedding in vital organs and soft, sanguine tissue. it had started as a trivial conversation, matrimony for the sake of the family, his elder sister too incompetent to even be considered a prospect. he wondered, in that euphoric aftermath, surging through him, his breath ragged, if that was all it too to break, finally. he had weathered their father’s animosity for decades - he was not going to allow it authority over his sister’s lives. gepard laid back, flush to the old, lacquered table where they had eaten dinner numerous times, the velvet cloth draped over it incriminating - saturated. his father’s crumpled body had slumped out of the gilded, imperious chair that sat at the head of the table, toppled over now, confining his mangled arms, stretching out in a blind terror, at all wrong angles. his sightless eyes were wide, horrified, his mouth an everlasting cavern of frantic screams. he sighs, it was like the breath he had been holding for years had finally been released.  he would have to get rid of the body. he closes his eyes for a long moment, considering his options, there were few, this had not been a plotted slaughter - it was impulsive. he had never once considered himself as his father’s killer yet there he was, an abhorrent rendition of carnage, his face pallid, his eyes dark and merciless, fists dripping with his father’s blood, cruor smeared across the back of his hands. he tilts his head back, gazing at the chandelier above, the tiny, ornate crystals seemed to shimmer eerily now, adjudicating him for his crimes. it was unsettling how facile the matter felt, how towing his father’s limp body out of the dining room, leaving a long, sinuous smear of blood, was entirely natural. he was unperturbed by the unpleasantness of it, but also recognised, with cold rationale, that he could not forsake his father to that room, in that house, lest a servant or one of his sister’s should stumble upon it. he had not bothered to clean himself of blood, there was so much he doubted it would be worth the effort expended. rather, with a spade clasped in one hand and his father’s collar viced in the other he walked the cobblestone path into the gardens, his father’s polished, black shoes disturbing the soft dirt, his immaculate clothes sullied with mud, slick with blood. cast in the ambient glow of the moon, the early hours of belobog’s dawn too cold to receive the sleepless, gepard landau buried his father in a shallow grave, the mire and grass shoveled ontop of it marked it not as the work of an amateur but as someone who no longer felt subjected to things such as discretion - or charity. 

[raytm]

gepard landau felt the foreboding attendance of death for years. an acrid tang of iron in his mouth, the lances of agony across the faces of his comrades as their limbs were wrested from their bodies, bloodied streaks of red in the snow. it beset his nights with harrowing memories, screams heaving from gasping lungs, the gossamer film of white eyes that stared out into the fray, sightless. It had marked him for a fleeting life the moment he had marched out into those desolate plains, a legion of soldiers at his flank. he had thought of it many times, but a captain was not afforded the benignity of choosing his own death.

when it comes its advent is undulating roars of fire, withering skin that curls in on itself, brittle and black. it’s his comrades dying one after the other in quick succession. he has enough time to seize an opening, to give them the opportunity to rally their remaining forces, to gasp in respite and arm themselves for the onslaught. he had not left home that day knowing it was the final time, had not greeted familiar faces at the barracks and warmed his hands around a blazing flame knowing that would be his last day. when he braces for impact, serrated limbs ending in hooked talons, he spares a solitary, fleeting glance over his shoulder and commands his men to retreat. they look upon him, astonished, exhausted, covered in slick sweat and drying blood. there’s an understanding that passes between them, wordless and pervading with the knowledge that he would not be following them.

the blunt impact against his shield is so immense that it sends shudders to his bones, his teeth clacking, a lance of excruciating pain surging through his arms, burying itself in his shoulders. he sinks his boots deep into the snow, ice swelling upwards as he was plowed backwards, his entire body keens beneath the force. the monster opens its jaws, rows of serrated teeth incandescent with heat, its eyes buried deep into its carapace skull. It retracts its long, spinose pincer and brings it down again, the pressure fractures bone, he can feel the pain of it towing him backwards, forcing his senses to remain alert, to push back against the barrage of strikes. its frustrated wail carries on the wind and the next time it withdraws, inspecting him with its bulging, rotating eyes, he launches his counter attack.

the shield wedges itself under the creature’s limb, a strident crack of impact that has the monster reeling, ice burgeons from the wound, rushing up its flesh, solidifying around it. gepard heaves a searing breath in, all of his mustered strength going into holding it in place, suddenly, a sharp, blinding agony erupts from his shoulder. it had brought down its other claw, punctuating the juncture between his throat and shoulder. blood rushed to the surface, blistering against his cold skin, surging from the wound, filling the dip of his collarbone, sousing his proud, white clothes carmine. he is the last bastion between this monster and his men, so he endures with unfaltering resolve. the ice is like a starved beast, rapidly swallowing the creature, limb after limb, until it splintered the hard, outer shell of its skull and the pincer embedded in his shoulder went limp.

he sinks to his knees, it were as if all the vigour had been drained from him, his shield hitting the ground, burying into the snow. he presses his hand to the wound, staunch the blood, he remembered that, even in the amorphous haze of his wavering consciousness. but it keeps flowing, the gash is so deep it’s carved past bone, if he were to wrench it from his body it would tear open a gaping fissure in his skin.

it was cold, belobog was always cold. beside the gargantuan corpse the captain sits upright, his back flush to the jagged husk, sheltered from the wind. It was cold, it was always so cold. he had held his gloved hand against the wound until it was sodden, until his arm was heavy, until he could hold it up no longer. he yearns to keep his eyes open, the bleary winterscape feels so vast when it’s so very empty. his blinking is somnolent, the world an indistinct smear of ice and blood. if he waits here, someone will return, someone will find him. he tells himself that is why he waits, sits in silent vigil, that he will close his eyes for a moment - then awaken when someone arrives. however, when they arrived, desperately plunging through the snow, it was already far too late. the captain was cold to the touch,  delicate fractals of ice clinging to his lashes, to his hair, turning his skin to an icy pallor. he had not known it would be his last day when he joined his men on the battlefield, but there was pride in knowing he had saved them.

[raytm]

"Gepard..." This is not the first time his name has left her lips, but this one pleads for his ear, concern bleeding around the shape of his name as it falls from her tongue, her form too enervated to hide anything she feels after the hours they've spent scouring the vast expanse of the snowy plains for the smallest of signs.

"Gepard...! That's enough!" Oh how her voice cracks, the authority of the older sibling fracturing to unveil the concern for him that lurks beneath the surface. She cannot lose them both. "We're no good to Lynxie like this... we need food and warmth..." It's a hollow feeling, the kind that devours her from within, the taste of defeat acrid in her throat. "We're not giving up, not for one minute, but we'll be no good to her frozen through and depleted of all strength. You know this..."

She reaches then till she can place a gloved hand against the nape of his neck, reaching to make contact where the armour won't inhibit her plea and the shock of contact will make him face the grim reality. It takes effort to choke back the sobs that threaten to fall from her throat, but she does so, focusing only on drawing him back to her, out of the desperate hunt he's charging on. She's the eldest, the unshakeable bedrock, the foundation for all of them. She cannot afford to falter, to leave him untethered and grounded, no more than a sailboat in a malestrom. "We'll keep looking, just an hour rest. We'll take turns to sleep... that way if there's anything... we won't miss it. We're not giving up..."

the hibernal caning of wind is nothing in contrast to the ice flowing through his veins. white, desolate and devastating closes in around him. wading through the thawing ice, skin incarnadine from exposure, no warmth left to be found. his conscious teeters on the verge of delirium and his eyes sting with precipitately frozen tears. this was not the man whose authority governed the front lines, who could separate inundating fear and stratagem, he was more a sleepless revenant, trudging urgently through the snow. it did not matter when he sunk down to his knees, when his armor felt cumbrous with arctic reservoirs pooling in its apertures, did not matter when he’s lungs heaved in arduous gulps of air and he lost his senses to the numbing of climate or harrowing misery. he does not hear his sister call to him, her enervated desperation as light wanes from the sky, darkness eclipsing their insufficient source of light. gepard was weary with it, his anguish growing amorphous around his peripherals, haziness that obscured his vision, ringing strident in his ears, his pulse stuttering an injudicious crusade of desperation. her voice rings out again, clearer now, authority that upheaves him from his stupor, has him blinking, slower, achingly. that’s enough. It’s a lamenting behest, he, as witness to the dismal fall of his sister’s ever incandescent light. she had always been a guiding star, salvaging a haven for her siblings, even she - shudders and dims under the grave reality of their circumstance. every synapse of him begs to endure, to fight off the raw, biting injustice of it all and march on but, he stops, feels the water seep into his boots, caustic and freezing. her fingers breach the threshold of armor he cowers within and the sudden warmth of her, withering against his frostbitten skin, wrenches him back to lucidity. they weren’t giving up, they weren’t giving up - but it feels as if they were. turning his back now was conceding that they had failed, was to accept the fact that lynx wasn’t going to stumble back into their arms. he wants to rebuke her, to muster up something encouraging or ruthless but he was exhausted, persisting only on the fumes of his torment. he cries, or he thinks he cries, because something trails down his roseate - bitten cheeks in feverish rivulets. “ an hour..” he croaks, his voice hoarse from hours of bellowing out lynx’s name over the howling winds. gepard turns to her, his brows a dreadful furrow and his eyes scrunched up a little, bleary and red - rimmed. “ what if she comes back .. what if we aren’t here..” he grapples with his words woefully but he knows if they are bereft of sleep they are likely to over-look important details, might turn up empty handed because of their own ebbing clarity. “ an hour..” he acquiesced, allowing serval’s hand to guide him away from the vast, barren snow plains and back towards the city. warmth and rest - bracing for the worst had him hungry and enervated, when was the last time he had eaten ? when was the last time he had closed his eyes for longer than a moment and not felt as if he were drowning. “ then i’ll come back, i have to.” it was a hollow sound, a condemning one, that he would heave his aching, depleted body back out in search of lynx if it took every last bit of him. they had to find her.. they had to.

[raytm]

If he calls it duty he thinks he could swallow it, even if it were barbed, even if it scraped along the back of his throat and drew blood, if he labelled it could it not fall beneath the mantle of responsibility and be yet another thing he would accept, even if it were begrudgingly. this was his father’s answer to Gepard’s years of silence, that if he wasn’t going to cross the threshold willingly it would be forced upon him. the affair was shallow, there needn’t be something as intricate as love for it to satisfying the prying eyes of the aristocracy. so he accepts it, excruciating as it is to close the opened door and turn his back on it he knows, more than anything else, that this is the safest option. the woman he is to wed is pretty, with delicate hands and lithe shoulders, with a mouth that smiled only when it knew someone else was watching, she had the most piercing green eyes and hair the colour of stygian ink. she hates him, he had known it since their introduction, the feeling was not mutual, but they had both learned how to pretend it was something tender. her fingers with tapered, scarlet nails dig into his his arm, forcing him to remain present during his father’s spiel. this was the right move for the family, her’s would be assimilated into theirs and would operate as a branch of the landau’s, it was an honour, her resentful eyes sear with lucent green when he speaks. his father mistakes it for adoration, but its fetid, grown sour and overripe until its insides were nothing but decay. gepard listens to his father’s long, futile speech but truly, his eyes are affixed to the stain glass windows, separating the branches from the birds and then the leaves from both, it helps him remain calm, allows him to act as if he was satisfied by this arrangement.

“ I understand.” he says, his father entices him to speak and only when he does is gepard in attendance to this meeting, even if his fiance’s claws bury into his skin, biting and furious. she hates him because she did not want this either, she was a studious woman who was dedicated to her studies, content working rather than placating, she knew this would condemn her to the life of a lowly house wife and she blamed gepard for it. he couldn’t bring himself to hate her, not really, he would still be free to operate from the barracks and she would birth heirs to their family and raise them under his father’s rule. In the end, it would all play out just as his father had dictated it would, even if he writhed and buckled and bared his teeth. they were tethered to that renowned name inextricably, he understood that as much as his duty had felt at times burdensome before, that there was so much more weight to it now. he looks upon his wife, in her dark corset and gossamer layers of gown she is decidedly beautiful, in the way danger often was, as if she might poise a blade by his throat and slash it open and wouldn’t that be salvation. if he absconded now, left his seat vacated, his father would have one of his sister’s ascend to his position if they liked it or not, he didn’t want to allow it chance to happen, he shackled himself because it was less complicated if he did. He could deny himself as he had for years, pretend he was okay, he had a talent for stifling his needs until they were no longer cardinal to him. he leans down and kisses her, it’s an awful thing, kissing a mouth that yearned to bury itself into your jugular, there is no adoration there, only violent, seething animosity. her fingers loosen, though, as if to say i'm satisfied with your performance, when he retreats he maintains his smile, it’s practiced but not stiff, even if it made his cheeks ache with exertion.

“ you two will make a lovely couple, my son is fortunate to be afforded the opportunity to have such a brilliant woman as his wife.” his stomach churns, he has to still himself lest he allow the cracks in his facade to show. his wife smiles up at her father in law, a reverent, yet decidedly angry smile. “ No, truly, it is I who is afforded such an honor as to marry into your prominent family, my father was so pleased when the news arrived.” he thinks of the cold, the hibernal undulating hills of white and the way it seared at the senses, the way it coiled in his lungs and stung at his eyes, anything - anything other than the genial atmosphere that tasted stale and rotting. “ shall we go then, katherine, there is still much for us to organise.” this is him nudging her, she tilts her head and down her elegant nose she punctures him, rending him into ribbons of flesh with the talons of her abhorrence, then, she smiles, in the same way he did, reserved for posturing as his wife. he thinks, even if he could not love this woman, his heart held no room for her, he could love his sisters, love them enough to give up his freedom, enough to marry and pretend and still persevere. he had been doing this for decades, now, he just had a partner he had to dance the duplicitous performance with.  

[raytm]

the two of them had a proclivity for it, staying out until the morose gray of the sky receded into darkness, until stars scattered across its canvas, softly lambent. they had conversed in explicit detail about what they anticipated might lay beyond its tenebrous bulwark. gepard was convinced he could have become indulgent, listlessly meandering those quiet hours between dusk and dawn. he had never spoken it aloud, bereft of autonomy over his life he knew, without room for doubt, that it would not accommodate devotion for any other than their people. but he could have, given the chance, counted the freckles that spread across leo’s shoulders and found himself just as hopelessly lost. he granted himself the freedom to yearn in the abject melancholy of silence, with only a slither of hope that he might find contentment should the two of them drive back the fragmentum in tandem. It was injudicious for him to think he would be afforded such mercies, even across the pit from him, avidly listening to his tales of vapid training regimes and superiors with haughty dispositions and acrid tongues, he felt he was staring too intently, for far too long. gepard steeled himself, for his long lashes and piercing green eyes were enthralling, the sort of person who could usher others to their feet, rallying under their banner. they were young, the sort to be filled with zest for their futures, but also the kind of people who lived as a fierce fire often did, short and reduced to cinders far too soon. they laughed often, traveled as a pair, when sparring training arose they would hastily stumble into each other, grasping for weapons and their footing. It gave him faith, bestowed upon him the capacity to want to protect something. if his father’s tirades of virtue and honour had offered him one thing, it was the room in his heart for someone like Leo. sometimes, he spoke upon how unjust their world was. how all were not bestowed the same cardinal freedom that they were, that the segregation of their people was egregious, that he would march down there himself and do something about it if their superiors did not watch in hawkish vigils. gepard wanted to change things, it was not that he did not know how wrong things were, it was that, until this moment, no one had the audacity to speak it out loud. the supreme guardian made decisions which reverberated through all of belobog, but when he pronounced that they would be the ones to bring about change, he felt, if for a moment, that it was within his power to do so. gepard was the one to give the eulogy days after they returned from that mission, the casualties too great to fully comprehend and gepard landau’s side woefully empty. to die young was not unusual for the guard, their world was inhospitable and the monsters ruthless but someone had to rise to press back against the encroaching danger. it was then, in those hours of bitter silence, as the caskets were assembled and the mourners gathered, that he realized what it meant to be a shield for the people. that he promised himself he would not allow another to fall the way that his comrades had, he would make sure of it. 

[raytm]

Golden depths had been watching those fluffy ears for a while now and as each second passed, temptation grew and filled the the Nameless' chest as his fingertips started to itch, with the desire to touch. Slowly, Caelus reached up, in a manner that would give Gepard enough time to tell him off before gentle digits brushed over the soft ears, something that instantly made the golden depths grow in size as awe danced within them. However, suddenly, properly realizing, what he was doing, Caelus quickly withdrew his hand as warmth blossomed upon his fair features as he was a little embarrassed by his own action. ❝ I... apologize, I should have asked first - they just.... looked really soft... ❞ If the earth could just swallow him now. He really was so impulsive at times.

gepard’s pupils wither, tiny, feline pinpricks of revelation, the nameless’ hands reach out and rather tentatively graze against two, soft cat - like ears. instinctively they twitch, flatten a tiny bit and then prick back up, as if disturbed by the sudden, unsolicited touch. It wasn’t that it was an unpleasant sensation - rather, it was the sort of sensitive area that made him huff a little, wrestling with his composure and clearing his throat in order to preserve some semblance of equanimity. “ if you had asked.” the captain remarkably salvages his even tone despite the fact that the very tip of his tail was swishing back and forth, indicative of perturbation. “ I would have permitted you to touch them again.” he pauses, it wasn’t a punitive reprimand rather, the old adage that curiosity killed the cat could be prominent when heedlessly touching the ears of an apex predator. “ .. I would still consider it, if you did ask, that is.” ah, it would seem despite all of that strenuous effort the heat still rose to his cheeks, a roseate fluster and his rimy eyes were averted, fortified in his resolve in case those curious hands decided that the velvet of his ears and the tufts of flocculent fur, were intriguing enough to reach for a second time. 

[raytm]

the sense of home that the shop evoked was nothing like the crowded, tumultuous base of operations for the guard, nor was it like their father’s estate, imposing and distant, yet still prevalent in his mind when he tried to turn away from it. he could not escape serval’s vigilance, she had kept him in her sights and, in her concerns, since they were children, was it sentimental to think back on that fondly - to feel a sense of placating at her catering to him as she had once before. yet it also feels a little unreal, the way light drifts in from the frosted windows, shafts of fluttering silver that cast her workshop in an otherworldly shimmer. all of the things she worked on here, diligent and innovative, reminded him a little of the work-shop they’d established back home. the untidy desk with all of her blue-prints and the stereo that had stuttered out old, classical music until she’d repaired it; both quality wise and taste wise, in her words. “ sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you sis.” but he’s crossed the threshold now, his armor glinting softly in the same slivers of light. It’s weight seems so insurmountable now that he’s departed from the front lines, something no one person should have to shoulder. he doesn’t often complain, nor bicker, rather tucks it away and holds onto it firmly, like the reasoning behind it will palliate the ache in his bones and the remorse that erodes at him. “ it has been a day, truly.” he laughs, void of amusement, running his fingers through his damp, blonde hair. It seemed so improbable now, them meandering back into camp, slapping each other on the back, laughing boisterously and straying off into their own homes for the evening. yet here they were, here he was, these were the things he swore he would remember when his resolve wavered, that these were the things they were protecting. “ i have also brought some specialty scones from the bakery, you chastised me last time for forgetting them so-” he trails off, a little awkwardly, settling the basket covered in a chequered cloth at the counter. “ your favorite.” he says fondly, after all, there had been many times the two of them had snuck out to buy some -  the frosting straining his mouth in a saccharine smear. things that felt like home - more than home ever did. 

H.SR STARTER CALL // @raytm

"Sit down, Geppie... you linger there any longer and not even my mechanisms will be able to prop you up..."

Though her voice teases, there's a firm nature to Seval's voice, the insistance of care as she watches her worn brother drag himself from the cold into the safe haven of her workshop. He seems haggard; vibrancy sapped from him, stature chipped away at for each hour he had stood on the front lines defending the nature. Her fists clench unconsciously behind the screen of her worktop, not for the first time cursing their father for the sacrificing nature instilled in the her dear brother. For the failure in herself from preventing him from this.

"I'll put the kettle on and brew some of that tea... you can regale me with tales of the front lines - I'm sure Dunn's been up to antics if nothing else." She'll let him pretend a little while before she probes further, let him settle into the sense of home he's been abstaining from for too long.

[raytm]

[  guide  ]  sender  helps  receiver  through  a  difficult  video  game // not a video game but he is teaching him how to fly the ship ✋ ( gep ofc 💖 )

for decades belobog, mantled in an oppressive hibernal white, had been the crux of his life. gepard’s restricted view of the world was tapered by the rapacious hands of outward influences, only recently had it burgeoned into a surge of lurid color. the people one encounters can alter the trajectory of their course, even if it had been charted by predecessors and their delusive notions of virtue. from all that distance away jarilo vi was a minute pinprick of white and blue against the vast stygian stretches of the galaxy. it was surreal to stand before the large, glass panes and observe his life as a transient instant in time, on a planet segregated from the unfathomable immensity that was the rest of the universe. walking in tandem with the knight of beauty, listening avidly to woven tales of grandeur and the regions he had graced with his presence, made gepard realize just how much he had yearned for an opportunity such as this. he had spent such a tremendous amount of his life dedicated to his family’s fealty to the supreme guardian and the inherited responsibilities that it entailed that he had neglected the reveries of his childhood, when he had extensively read and ruminated upon a life of such freedom. 

“ I cannot believe how utterly unprepared I was for this undertaking.” argenti’s laugh is a dulcet thing, not barbed with intent to humiliate, but a salve for old, jutting wounds. there was such an extensive list of buttons and leavers and each was allocated with a different capability - it was astounding to believe one could remember all of them, lest they had dedicated their life to it’s undertaking. sitting in the pilot’s seat was kindred to a throne, authority over the ship’s course. the weight of that responsibility was a disconcerting one, even as argenti hovered over his shoulder, informing him rather courteously which handle would rouse the engine sputtering to life and which would chart their course to another world, foreign in ways that ached keenly with interest, stifled curiosity. “ and you are certain you wish to place such trust in me.” the answer was patent but he found himself asking in spite of it, casting his prudent, river - blue eyes to the coruscating stars outside, gently enticing him with their intermittent fluttering. it is only when the other’s hand, lithe and commanding, rests atop his and guides the lever forward that he finds himself capable of mustering courage, the valour he had coveted his whole life, perhaps, to do something so unlike the expected - to finally indulge those what ifs that he had for so long ignored. 

[raytm]

“you know,” luka says, not unkindly, “we did get by without the support of the silvermane guards for quite some time. it’s good of you to help out here, but folks are still kinda wary. you get it, right?” he’s uncertain himself, bolstered by the brash sense of pride that whispers, ‘we don’t need your help now; i can protect them.’

still, the mines are infested and the fragmentum creatures won’t eradicate themselves. he ought to be grateful that the overworld will send in aid now. “regardless, let me know when you’re ready to head out. i’ll be joining you.”

the underworld had thrived without them. the segregation had always felt inviolable, a severance between one world and the other, despite how they had all endured the eternal freeze. it had taken but a solitary, sweeping glance for him to recognize how the citizen’s of the underworld survived in their absence. they had relied on one another, there was no exigency of the silvermane guard here. they would have continued on with or without the liberty to breach that long, dismal passage between their respective worlds. even if they facilitated the change they would be interpreted with dubiety, they had prospered in their complacency for too long, even if he had wanted to change things, his voice was insignificant, nothing more than a frontman for an old, wealthy family. 

“ I am begging to realize that, more so than I could have ever known.”  luka’s words are not barbed with enmity, more an uninhibited observation, without mandatory niceties, it was preferable, even if it were disorientating, to hear someone speak candidly with him. he had grown accustomed to the formalities of his subordinates and the esurient adulations of aristocrats wanting to line their pockets with wealth. it was different, raw and telling of his own inadequacies. “ but i don’t blame them, we sat idle for too long, in saying that, i won’t forsake this mission.”  it wasn’t out of obligation, gepard had come down here separate from his guard duties, done his utmost to familiarize himself with the labyrinth of streets, lending his aid to natasha, doing all in his power to be an envoy of betterment, even if he were met with resistance, sometimes resentment. It was never going to be as facile as offering them passage to the surface, permitting them some semblance of the normalcy that had always been afforded to those from the overworld. If they harbored animosity towards him he would accept that, it had always been a possibility and he would weather it until they could see him as more than the captain of the guard, but a man, someone who wanted to see things change. as paramount as the guard was, as he was, he had always felt powerless to impact the situation before they were emancipated from the stellaron, now, he was given an opportunity to be present, to do something, and he wasn’t going to neglect it.

“ however, I can see they are in good hands.” brazen as he was, luka was proof that the underworld protected their own, that they confronted adversity together, him accepting gepard’s help, reluctantly or otherwise, was something he was appreciative of. “ lead the way, luka.” and he steps back, allowing the other to take charge, to wield the shield that had been forged for belobog, for all of their people.

[raytm]

[ DELAY ] for gep……..

[ DELAY ]  one muse is trying to get ready to go somewhere while the other keeps kissing them and unbutton/unzipping their clothes. 

there was something alluring about the rise and fall of sampo’s chest, the blanket strewn across his midriff, the flutter of lashes indicative of sleep. how he longed, keenly ached even, to forgo his dawn patrol in favor of the warmth of being flushed skin to skin, of resting his head against the curve of sampo’s shoulder and permitting sleep to claim him. this temptation only makes him recall how dangerous it was to invite the other into his home, into his bed, now, in more ways than ever before. Gepard believes himself discreet, parting with the comfort of his bed if only to pad across the floor barefoot when an arm slinks around his middle, briefly holding him captive. “ I have to go.” he says, with less conviction than he should be afforded under these circumstances.

It does not serve as an emphatic deterrent for when he sits upon the edge of the bed, all but yielding to the pull of it, sampo’s mouth grazes his jaw, his throat, his cheek. somnolent, chaste kisses, still just enough to keep him captivated, unable to detach himself from the lanky confines of his arms, let alone the tantalizing brush of his mouth. he clears his throat, if only for emphasis at how improper and forbidden all of this was, that he would indeed be tardy for his shift and it would egregiously mar his otherwise immaculate attendance. commanding fingers hold sampo by his jaw, tilting his head back so that he could see just how unimpressed gepard was, which truly, wasn’t all that unimpressed at all. before, without proper warning, he leans down and kisses him on the mouth, slow and sensual and with purpose.

“ i’m leaving now.” his fingers lingered, coveted to stay, to sink into the softness of his hair, to trace the contours of his mouth, his jaw, his. diligently he holds fast to his resolve, resting their foreheads together, huffing a little as if indignant that he could not have what he wanted - a puerile sort of act for such a prestigious man. then, he left another kiss to the corner of sampo’s mouth before attempting once more to get dressed for his shift.

[raytm]

i love you .  nothing’s gonna change that . [ serval ]

their father’s diatribe was unrelenting. for years gepard had weathered it with a sense of culpability, not wanting his vitriol to trickle through to lynx or buffer off serval. he was impervious to it, or atleast, preferred to pretend he was. his words tapered to a lethal point and had an officious manner of wedging their way into the gaps in his armour, a baneful curl to his tongue and narrowing of his glacial, merciless eyes. beneath them gepard felt a child again, forbidden autonomy over his own life, it’s course charted by a legacy that felt like iron fetters. serval’s eyes track him, a restless beast pacing the corral of the shop’s customer area back and forth in short, brisk strides. he was agitated, eroded upon by their father’s inordinate expectations, to the point where his nerves were exposed and seared upon by the desolate, gelid walk to the store. “ you don’t understand what he’s asking of me, sis.”  he gesticulates with his hands, his cadence acute and fretful, pausing in his steps only long enough to regard her before turning on his heel and marching, desperate to ease the tension holding him taut and frantic. It’s not like him to succumb like this, but it was so prominent now, their father’s principles would not be swayed and so long as he was positioned at the head of the silvermane guard he could not be exonerated. “ marriage ?” he repeats like it left an unpleasant taste in his mouth, acrid and condemning. he had been whittled away by their father for so long, the unreasonable demand for matrimony and heirs felt like a blunt blow to his gut, burgeoning into a lurid, yellow bruise. “ what am I going to say..” he’s speaking mostly to himself, shaking his head, distress inscribed on each terse utterance, in the way his fingers clenched tightly, blanching and then straining as they’re forced to slacken. he casts his gaze to her, those eyes of once crystalline blue now turbulent, rushing rivers. “ I am gay, serval..” she knows, it was only ever her he disclosed this to, the only one he felt he could speak to about it.  “ father would never accept that -” distressed fingers ease their way into his hair, boring at his scalp, desperate for some sort of resolution. “ I don’t know what to do..” it felt as if the steady, linear current of his life had been violently misrouted, those durable bricks he had laid so sedulously were threatening to collapse, burying him in the corollary. “ I don’t know what to do..” and there was something so helpless about the way he repeats it, the way he dismally shakes his head. he did not want to capitulate to their father but what other options were there. 

[raytm]

gepard’s mother was an ethereal apparition, a woman to be spoken of in dulcet reverence, something he could never hope to grasp with his own two hands. he loves her, dearly. It isn’t the sort of disfigured feeling he holds for his father, buckling under years of unrelenting pressure and responsibility. It was not the sort of feeling that was beaten into him, an anvil for honing an adamantine shield. it was the innocence of a child in an afternoon cast morose as distended clouds threatened to weep. a pair of hands, delicate, lithe, holding a book, it was leather bound and had gilded scripture engraved on the front. at the time he could not read it, not on his own. his mother is a revenant who visits him in his dreams. her voice is a mellifluous tone of devotion. he thinks, in the stagnant silence of his own heart, that love was shaped in her image. it was a rather foolish thing, because he had come to realize love’s amorphous form depended on who felt it. his father’s love had never felt akin to his mother’s; never gentle and woven in gossamer thread. his father’s love was thunderous and imperious, the gathering of storm clouds before an initial, deafening clap. his mother was the rain, weeping and mournful, lingering petrichor that made him look for her. in the shadows of the estate’s long, sinuous halls he would sometimes see her silhouette, see the door of her study slightly ajar and be deluded, if for only a moment, that she had returned to him. his mother was an eidolon and she sits at the head of the table with their father, her face pallid, her eyes forlorn and distant. he hasn’t heard her voice for a time now, she’s bound to an inconsolable silence. gepard is too young to understand but feels the swelling ravine between them as it grows ever darker. she attends the aristocratic soirees and her mouth, thin and roseate, smiles in a way that is reticent, a cherished memory he can but witness from across the room. the floor, cast golden under the chandelier’s incandescence, threatens to fracture, a cavern, half-starved and infinitely black, slowly opening up to swallow him. he pretends it does not bother him. he sees his mother only ever adjacent to his father, thin and of gossamer herself. if he stares for too long he dreads he might see through her to the despondent path he has trekked thus far. he smiles, he feels she may look through him too and see some undeviating spectre, of a boy and his mother and the book that she had bestowed upon him. he still has that book, he cannot bear to part with it, a weakness that he holds furtively, for it was too grim to truly bear. it sits on his nightstand, a red - ribbon emerging from the top of crisp pages, it’s gilded title evoking nights upon her lap, her arms a sanctuary around him, her voice rising above the soft patter of rain on long panes of glass. a story of heroes. he wonders how she might view him now, if he were one of those valiant characters from the book she had read to him all those years ago, or if he too is nothing but a ghost who haunts her dreams.