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imagine-darksiders · 5 years ago

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👏MORE👏DRAVEN👏CONTENT👏 (pls)

And what better way to satisfy the needs of Draven fans than to add onto this fic? Here’s the rest, if you’ve missed it.

BEAUTY AND THE DOORSTOP - CHAPTER 3.

Fashionably late.

Sparkling bursts of colour and light dance at the edge of your vision as the Chancellor leads you through his portal and you instinctively grip his forearm just a bit tighter. You'd done some portal hopping with Death in the past, and it always left you queasy for a few moments, as if your human body knows it isn't supposed to jump through a tear in the fabrics between realms, and as such, it makes its discomfort known.

Lips sealing into a firm line, you ignore the pressure in your head and push on, at last stepping out of the cold, empty wormhole and onto solid ground. In an instant, the pressure lifts and you suck in a soft breath. At your side, the Chancellor is smirking down at you, no doubt amused by your discomfort.

“Ugh, this is why I prefer using Vulgrim's serpent holes,” you gripe, running a hand absently down the skirt of your dress to smooth it of wrinkles, “They don't leave me feeling like my body's been squeezed through a pinhole.”

Behind you, the cosmic gateway disappears following a subtle wave of the Chancellor's arm.

“Tch! Why doesn't it surprise me that a human is more comfortable using such a common means of travel?” He waits for you to quip back, glancing down at you when his jab goes uncontested for a beat. “Human?”

But the undead's pallid gaze finds your attention elsewhere, eyes wide and alive and wandering in every direction but his. Realising what has you so enraptured, he tuts impatiently and forces himself not to stare at the gentle parting of your painted lips.

The Chancellor's portal has deposited you both just inside the entrance to the Eternal Throne's courtyard, where, beyond the narrow, wooden passageway, lays a sight you never imagined you'd be privy to in a hundred years. The space that had once been modestly sparse and occupied only by a handful of undead is now packed from rampart to rampart with a throng of otherworldly beings.

Angels, demons and even a maker or two - along with several other species that you don't recognise - mill about the courtyard, each species going that extra mile to avoid one another, which is a vast improvement from the alternative, you suppose.

The war may have ended, but thousands of eons of hate and animosity is not so easily forgotten, or forgiven. That the angels and demons present aren't at each other's throats is testament to the strength of their self discipline.

Oddly enough, there aren't as many undead as you imagined there would be, and those that are here have taken up positions on the upper ramparts, their weapons gleaming in light cast by hundreds of lanterns that have been painstakingly strung up over the courtyard.

As you and the Chancellor proceed out of the entryway, your eyes are drawn up to the sky.

Night, or what passes for night in the Dead Lands, has settled its velvet blanket over everything, rendering a horizon that stretches out like the void above you, almost black as pitch save for the subtlest touch of emerald tinged into its vast expanse. Even through the glow of lanterns, you can make out innumerable, winking stars, some bright, some dim, but all a dazzling, if unexpected sight. There's an effort here, a pride of appearance you'd never have anticipated from residents of the Dead Plains and you suddenly find yourself struck by the unsettling awareness that, just as the Chancellor hadn't bothered to look past face value with you, you in turn hadn't even considered that the Eternal Throne could be anything other than a dank and dreary place.

“It's beautiful,” you breathe as the Chancellor escorts you into the courtyard proper.

“Beautiful?” he echoes softly, his dull, grey eyes widening at your words and they follow your line of sight.

It isn't a term he's ever heard in correlation with the Land of Dead before, and likely never will again.

Beauty, in any form, has no place here, left behind and discarded by the denizens of this realm once they had died, and beaten out of the land itself by a cruel sun. The Chancellor cocks his head and hums at the stars, then trails a perplexed gaze down to you. After a pause, his perpetual frown lifts a fraction.

Trust a human to find the beauty in a dead world.

Heels clicking audibly on the wooden boards, you tear your eyes off the heavens and focus back on the throng of ethereal beings in your path instead. At your approach, a hush sweeps through the crowd as several of the less subtle guests swing their heads around to gawk, immediately causing you to swallow down the nervous lump in your throat and force a hesitant smile, failing to notice how the Chancellor has pressed a few inches closer and set his jaw, scowling hard at a leering phantom guard.

“Well,” you raise your voice for the gathered crowd, opting to make a joke out of the awkward situation, “I don't think I've had this many eyes on me since I fell off the stage at graduation.”

If the dead silence that follows is anything to go by, you'd say your attempt at humour wasn't best received, made only more obvious by the Chancellor's long-suffering but barely audible moan. “Look, if this were Earth, people would have laughed at that,” you hiss at him from the corner of your mouth, receiving no more than a dubious 'hmph’ in return.

After perhaps a few too many moments, chatter slowly resumes amongst the gathered crowd as they all return to previous conversations with just a few whispering conspiratorially about the newcomer in their midst. Once you don't find yourself drowning beneath the weight of all those stares, you visibly sag, your fingers unfurling from where they'd clamped down unwittingly on the Chancellor's elbow.

“If you are done embarrassing yourself,” he grumbles, “perhaps we could proceed? My Lord is expecting to address you personally.”

“Don't I feel special.”

The undead rolls his milky eyes and - with your arm still on top of his - strides forwards across the courtyard, leading you expertly between the mass of bodies. More often than not, you need to restrain your hands from brushing idly along an angel’s feathery wings, or lightly stoking the fur on a maker’s boot as you pass. The only thing keeping you from doing so is the grip you have on your undead escort’s arm while your other hand is occupied with keeping your dress’s hem off the dusty ground.

On the courtyard’s far side, slouched against a newel at the foot of the crumbling staircase is the Eternal Throne's resident blademaster, Draven. Sickly, pale grey skin stretches taut over a body made from nothing but bone and sinew. No blood pumps through his dried-up veins, no lips press together to hide a perpetual, skeleton grin and the heart that had once beat proudly inside his chest has been eerily still and quiet for centuries. So why then, when he tips his head around just in time to witness you emerge from the crowd, does something in Draven’s chest give a sudden lurch?

Time is no longer a relevant concept to the undead. Their bodies have already withered and rotted away to the bone. The passage of time has no meaning to the long-dead, yet watching you glide across the courtyard like a vision in a sleek, black dress, Draven would swear that time grinds to an immaculate halt and his jaw drops open so suddenly, it threatens to come loose from its hinges and clatter to the ground.

All else fades away, every angel and demon, every lantern hanging overhead and every undead patrolling the ramparts, even the sour-faced Chancellor beside you fades into a dull and lifeless background whilst you retain your vibrancy, bursting with colour and life. Nothing else seems as important to Draven's milky eyes as the woman before him. You are everything he sees for several, long seconds. Then, your head is turning towards him and your lips split open into that wide grin he's so accustomed to, the one that shows off your teeth and even a portion of gum. It's a smile he knows is reserved solely for very few people in your life, a smile that always leaves a rush of exhilaration in its wake when the blademaster remembers that he's one of the rare few who get to witness it.

Seeing your expression, Draven's own mouth tries to open in the same manner, but given any lack of lips, he merely ends up with something that closely resembles a grinning skull, which admittedly is hard to avoid, given that all the fat and muscle beneath his flesh has worn away, leaving nothing to keep the skin from plastering itself to his bones.

To you however, the blademaster’s spectral visage couldn’t be a more welcome sight.

Giddy with excitement, you slide your hand off the Chancellor's arm and at the same time, thrust the bottle of Cheval into his spindly hands. He sputters and fumbles with the slippery glass for a second, indignant at being treated as little more than a pack-mule. “Do you mind!?”

Evidently, you don’t, which only adds to the Chancellor’s mounting displeasure. His complaint is promptly ignored as you pinch the hem of your dress between two fingers and trot towards your friend, cheerfully laughing out his name. “Draven!”

Whatever spell you’d unwittingly bound the blademaster up in is suddenly broken at the sound of your voice. He barely has the time to come back to himself and spread his arms in anticipation before you crash against his chest, throwing your arms around him and digging with your fingers for purchase in between the notches of his spine.

“Y/n,” he returns, amusement dancing in his misty eyes. Despite the ease of his tone, Draven's sinewy arms press you firmly against him, squeezing tight enough that he inadvertently gives away just how much he's really missed you - your company, your touch, the smell of your hair when he leans down and pushes his nose ridge right into it, drawing air into his sand-choked lungs. If only he weren’t too proud to admit that your presence soothes an angry fire in his immortal soul.

All too soon though, the moment ends, and he feels you pull away to look up at him. But oh, how badly he wants to keep you there with your head resting on his exposed sternum and his dusty, green cloak billowing around you in the night’s gentle breeze. There are onlookers though, guests of his king with tongues that just love idle gossip, and it wouldn't be prudent to give them any inkling as to the nature of your relationship.

“God, it's good to see you,” you sigh through a smile, your hands sliding down to lay atop the blademaster's forearms whilst he cups your elbows in his strong hands.

His face is gaunt and heavily shadowed underneath the hood he wears, but his eyes still glow ethereally as he gives you a slow once over, exhaling a cool, stale breath that brushes invitingly over your lips. “Likewise,” is all he murmurs.

Shifting beneath his scrutinising gaze, you feel pressed to ask, “So...What do you think? Too much?”

“Huh?” Draven's white pupils dart up to your face again and he realises with some distress that he’d been leering at you, probably in an unsettling way, if your expression is anything to go by. “Oh! No, no, I think you look....” He pauses for a moment, trying to conjure something adequate, something that would let you know just how radiant you are without directly saying it. ‘Radiant.’ The word sounds so foreign and sophisticated in his head, more befitting of a charming suitor than a rotting, roguish knave such as himself.

So far, your relationship with one another has only lingered just beyond the realm of friendship, dotted intermittently by flirtatious repartee and the odd gesture of physical affection in a hug or the skimming of your hands along his arms. He daren't ask for anything further. You're already more than he's ever had, and most assuredly more than he deserves.

“...You look...indescribable,” he eventually settles on, because Creator knows he was never a well-read man when he was alive, and words beyond ‘radiant’ always seemed to escape his grasp.

The side of your mouth quirks upwards. “Indescribable? Well, now you're just playing it safe,” you tease, and before he can look too worried about having possibly offended you, your mouth stretches into an even wider grin and you add, “I'll take it.”

“You'll have to,” he replies with a hollow chuckle, “You won't be getting any more compliments from me tonight.” With that, he gives your elbows a playful squeeze and lowers his face towards you, his voice drifting lowly out of the tattered hood. “It really is good to see you...”

Ducking your head coyly to escape that profound and haunting gaze, you try to stop your cheeks from burning with the effort of smiling so wide, echoing the reply he'd given you earlier. “Likewise, blademaster.”

The pair of you are so caught up in one another's presence, you don't even notice the other undead glowering behind you, fists clenched around the bottle of Cheval so fiercely, its a wonder the glass doesn’t shatter.

This scene playing out in front of the Chancellor is one he's well accustomed to. He's had to bear witness to this sort of interaction multiple times in the past - you and the blademaster, practically arm in arm and fawning over one another like fairytale sweethearts... Had the Chancellor possessed a working uvula, he'd gag at every encounter.

This time however, the sight hits a bit differently. This is somehow harder to watch, and instead of his usual nausea, the Chancellor notices the faintest twinge of anger, heat of a different kind rising up under the collar of his robes. Without even realising it, the undead has begun to grind his rotting teeth until the bone of his jaw creaks loudly in protest of the pressure he's putting it under, like he's trying to chew through steel.

There's no conceivable rhyme nor reason as to why he so despises the sight of Draven's hands on you, drinking up the warmth your blood provides through his own, decaying skin! As if a master of blades were so much more deserving than the rest. You never even hesitated before you embraced him, as though his decomposing flesh were far less abhorrent to you than the Chancellor's had been, who pretended not to notice when you'd faltered as he offered you his arm in your home and your lips pursed distastefully, no doubt repulsed by the very idea of touching an undead. What makes Draven so worthy of that touch, all of a sudden? 'Hypocrite!' the undead's hateful mind screeches at the blissful ignorance on your face. There’s an anger in him, certainly, but his skull is too thick with pride to realise that his rage is a byproduct of something else. Something greener than the hooded robes he died in.

Unable to simply stand by and watch any longer, the Chancellor stiffly raises a fist and clears his throat loud enough that you flinch, whilst the blademaster merely tosses him a scathing look.

“Oh, you're still here?” you say, genuinely surprised, “I'd have thought you'd be dying to get as far from me as possible once we arrived.”

Draven smirks at your joke, but the older, angrier undead wears a scowl so deep, you fear his forehead will crumble to dust. Suddenly, before you can utter another word, he marches forwards, snatches up your wrist and tugs you out of the blademaster's loose grasp, proceeding to quite literally drag you up the wooden staircase that leads to the throne room.

“I think you've kept my Lord waiting long enough, human,” he spits, ignoring the defensive snarl Draven utters at your expense.

One of the steps nearly trips you up and would have succeeded if not for the Chancellor's iron grip. The moment you begin to stumble, he jerks his arm and all but lifts you over the stair, and if your eyes aren't mistaken, he even slows a fraction, just enough that you can right yourself without much trouble. There's no time to be shocked about it though. Twisting around to glance at Draven, you find him following you up the staircase and raising a hand out to snatch you back out of the Chancellor's crushing grip, but he stops short once you flash him a bemused smile. “Don't worry about me,” you call, lifting the hem of your dress so it doesn't get caught on a loose splinter, “I'll catch up with you later.”

The blademaster looks ready to protest, only pausing on the stair when you jerk your gaze over towards the courtyard, hoping he'll catch your drift. Bewildered, he glances over the railing, and understands. There are at least twelve pairs of eyes watching the commotion hungrily, some subtle with their heads tilted away but their ears pricked to listen, whereas others are far less wily in their nosiness, necks bent almost painfully over their shoulders and pointed at the stairs.

The message you'd conveyed in that look is now clear as Draven turns back to you and presses his teeth together, offering you a tight nod. 'Don't make a scene.'

As you reach the top of the steps, you can only shrug down at your friend before the Chancellor shoves you none too gently onto his other side, placing himself between you and Draven and barking for the undead at the door to let you both pass. Timid in the face of such abruptness, you softly thank the guard when he pulls the doors open. The Chancellor, of course, merely scoffs and presses the bottle of wine back into your arms with rather more force than is necessary.

Wood scrapes noisily against the ground as the entrance is slid open, the sound reverberating around a woefully sparse throne room. Unlike the newly decorated courtyard, this chamber has remained as cold and unadorned as you ever remember it being, with nothing but a few skulls scattered upon the pine-wood floor and a throne sitting proudly at the far end, upon which reclines the reason for your being here at all. To one unfamiliar with the denizens of this realm, it might appear that someone has stuck a halloween prop onto an enormous, stone chair, plopped a jagged crown on its head and called the whole thing a masterpiece. You, however, are more than aware that the bonafide corpse sitting in that chair is more than just dust and bone, and as soon as you step past the first pair of guards, it opens its eyes.

An involuntary shudder rolls over you when those twin lights of blazing green swivel in your direction. Suddenly, your ears fill with pops and snaps as the skeletal figure twists his neck around to follow his eyes, every bone fighting to be pulled free of the rigor mortis that has claimed them and set them into their rigidity.

The atrophied creature - a living corpse that somehow manages to look even deader than the rest of his subjects - gives his shoulders one, hard thrust and successfully detaches them from the back of his throne.

As you and the Chancellor slow to a halt at a respectable distance, you once again find yourself contemplating on what a fitting name ‘The Lord of Bones’ actually is.

“My Lord,” your escort drawls, bowing himself nearly in half in front of his master and sweeping a hand out towards you, “As per your orders, I have personally ventured to Earth and retrieved the human; Y/n.”

You’ve met the King of the dead before, but this time is different. He’s never had you here as his personal guest. And like any good guest, you feel it necessary to show your host the proper courtesy. Or in this case, the proper curtsy.

Swinging one foot back and planting it daintily behind the other, you take hold of your dress’s skirt and bend your knees, descending into a graceful dip. Then, just as evenly, you rise, inclining your head and saying with what you hope is your most fetching smile, “Your Majesty.”

Out of the corner of one eye, you notice the Chancellor’s head slowly turn to face you, his mouth agape and you don’t know whether to be offended that he didn’t think you would know basic etiquette, or pleased that you could throw him for a loop so easily.

The King, meanwhile, sits back in his throne and appraises you coolly, the only indication of surprise being in one, slightly raised brow bone.

“I see my invitation reached you then,” he says, “and, I trust, was well received?” This he addresses to the Chancellor, who draws himself up and you can see the wheels turning in his head as he tries to formulate a response that wouldn’t insult his king. After all, you had rejected the offer in the first instance.

Luckily for him, you notice the fumbling of his hands and decide to answer in his stead. “While it certainly came as a surprise, I was... humbled by His majesty's gracious offer. It's not everyday I get to attend such an occasion.”

The Chancellor will end up having to pick his jaw off the ground at the rate it keeps falling open.

“And I trust you were told why you were asked to attend?” the king drawls, stroking a long, spindly finger down his beard.

Although you have mixed feelings about being little more than a glorified accessory that the king can show off to his guests, you have enough sense not to complain. “It was mentioned....in detail,” you reply without adding anything further. Something tells you the Lord of Bones values discrepancy and the prudence of his guests.

As you suspected, the Chancellor's shoulders relax minutely and the King's dry lips quirk up into a reserved smile.

“If I didn’t know better,” he says, leaning forwards and steepling his rangy fingers together, “I’d say my Chancellor has fetched me the wrong human.”

Letting out a small bark of laughter, the undead at your side crosses his arms neatly and replies, “I thought much the same at first. But, you can rest assured, my Lord, that this is definitely the same woman.”

The fact doesn’t escape your notice that he’d said ‘woman,’ and not ‘human.’

“It would seem some time away from the Horseman has done her a world of good,” he continues with a sideways smirk. You bristle at his snide remark before recognising that he’s only trying to bait you, so, swallowing down a reply, you ignore him and instead take a step towards the Lord of Bones.

At once, a guard that had been at his side marches forwards and places himself between you and the king just before you reach the steps, his horned helmet tipping down to glare at you through a dark visor.

“Tenarus,” the old king sighs boredly and waves a hand through the air, dismissing the guard.

But, rather bravely, the undead towering over you doesn’t stand aside, instead, he calls back over his shoulder, “She has something in her hand, Sire.”

“Oh, I do actually,” you pipe up, having nearly forgotten about the wine altogether. Leaning around the guard, you hold up the bottle of wine and give it a slight, enticing shake, smiling at the king. ”It’s a gift. I brought it from home - just to say thank you for having me here.”

Curious, the Lord of Bones raises two fingers and beckons you closer. Daintily stepping around Tenarus, you start to ascend the stairs when the Chancellor suddenly blurts out, “Forgive me, my Lord, I did try to tell her that you would have no use for such a paltry little-”

“Be silent, Chancellor!” the king snaps whilst taking the proffered bottle out of your hands and raising it to his face, eyeing the label. You can’t imagine he knows the brand name. “Wine?” he asks more softly, flicking his icy gaze down to you.

“The finest I could find at short notice, given the state of Earth right now.” Suddenly, you do feel a little sheepish handing a bottle of wine to someone with no stomach. “Sorry, I couldn’t think of anything that would be more useful to you.”

Ignoring your apology, the Lord of Bones grasps the cork between his thumb and forefinger and wiggles it free. His eyes slip shut and he holds the bottle neck beneath his exposed nose bone and takes in a long, slow breath. After a moment, his eyelids crack open again, wider than before and filled with a strange softness unbefitting his hard nature. “Oh, I remember that smell,” he whispers, and his words linger in the air for a moment, his mind far away from the throne room. Then, all at once, he flicks his eyes down to you again and corks the bottle, holding it out to one side. Tenarus, who had begrudgingly returned to his post behind the throne, steps forwards and takes it from his king, handling the bottle with his too-large fingers as though it's more delicate than a flower petal.

The Lord of Bones appraises you with a newfound intrigue, his head tilted and fingers aimlessly stroking down his flimsy beard, as though you’ve suddenly become a puzzle he can’t work out at first glance. After a while though, he simply nods to you and you curtsy again, drawing back to the Chancellor's side.

“Enjoy your time here, Y/n,” the King says, “And, Chancellor?”

“My Lord?”

It could be your imagination, but for a moment, you could swear the King's tone is almost smug. “Do make sure to keep an eye on her. We wouldn't want to incur the horseman's wrath if something bad were to happen to our guest, now would we?”

You’re about to protest yourself when the Chancellor does so for you, similarly horrified at the suggestion.“But – but my King, with all due respect, I have far more important matters to attend!” he sputters.

The Lord of Bones turns a dangerous glare onto him, long, crooked fingernails scraping the arm rest of his throne. “More important than following my orders?”

Realising what he'd just implied, the Chancellor's mouth snaps shut. You can concur with him though. The very last thing you want is to be followed around by an irritable undead, especially when you plan to be catching up with old friends and, hopefully, making some new ones.

“Now, begone,” the king says with a regal sweep of his arm, “Go. Mingle, inject a little of that good, old fashioned human exuberance into the atmosphere.” Lowering his voice, he grumbles, “Goodness knows this gathering needs it...”

Sharing a look with the Chancellor that suggests neither of you are particularly thrilled about this arrangement, you nod and smile through gritted teeth. “Will do.”

“But, I-” The undead is cut off with a venomous glare from his king and he sighs, conceding, “Whatever his Majesty commands.” And with a dip of his head and a respectful bow, the undead turns around, his robes swishing gracefully out behind him as he ushers you out through the doors and onto the wooden deck beyond.

#Darksiders #Darksiders 2 #Chancellor #human/ghost #ghost?#zombie?#skeleton? what are they classed as?#ah well #draveline #Reader #jealousy #!!#the pining begins

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