#the circumstances of their embraces were similar at least in the initial premise?

[thedeadthree]

so the way im thinking is that yelizaveta there at the time the assassination of dmitrii happened. the camarilla were hoping to embrace him to gain a foothold on the current ruling in russia by embracing from one of its more influential noble families. [the wasiowskas were there and in moscow but since a good chunk of Eastern Europe was held by the tzimizce the camarilla needed a stronger hold on russia other than just moscow u know?] and dmitrii was the one they had their eyes on. so they had set up through dropping in words that would cause the mortals to conspire an assassination so that they could swoop in and embrace him. it worked, and so they orchestrated his assassination in the hopes of taking the crown for themselves.

buuut they didn’t take into account that yelizaveta had been at the palace and has a close allyship with the current mortal nobility. at the right place at the right time it seemed she found dmitrii bleeding out in a hallway and in an attempt to save him decided that it would be best to embrace him. [also realizing that this was in no doubt planned by the camarilla] and though dmitrii was grateful to her he was FURIOUS at the people who he thought had his best interests at heart. and so he wears the rings that belonged to them as a reminder of them and what the had done to him. heavy is the head that wears the crown and if held by the weight of betrayal u know?

[gingernutsofhorrorposts]

(via ​ THIRTEEN FOR HALLOWEEN: THE MAGDALENE (AKA “MAMMA PUS”)) Conceptual nightmares are Clive Barker's millieu; he is a natural and sublime master at encapsulating elements that disturb or unsettle in the the various monstrosities he conjures. The novel Weaveworld is not generally noted in this regard, tending to be catalogued alongside Barker's flights of phantasmagorical fantasy rather than the horror he is most iconically associated with. However, the book includes some of the most disturbing and monstrous creations he has ever conceived, and some of the most disturbing and monstrous scenes in which to parade them: An inversion of the classic mythological “triune Goddess” (i.e. “Maiden,” “Mother,” “Crone”), the antagonist Immacolata and her sisters are wry and horrific subversions of those labels and the assumptions they encapsulate: Immacolata, representing “The Maiden,” is no thing of soft sighs and proscribed virginity; far from it. She is, rather, a thing of terrible purity; a creature that cannnot be borne because her contempt for creation is so utterly pure, nothing can withstand it. She is lethal virginity; a concept of “purity” that is self-authored and murderous, in her hands. As a result, even her breath, gaze and shadow are lethal; the desire she excites in those around her nothing less than an invitation to suicide. The “Crone” of this unholy trinity initially appears much closer to her mythological roots than her sisters, conforming to the thanatic and deathly qualities of her inspiration. However, here, the inversion comes from her status as midwife to her perpetually-pregnant sister; she is not merely a harbinger of death and decay, but something that eases the passage of monstrous births, a thing of strange vitality that lends her a certain innate ambiguity. But the most distressing and overtly monstrous of the sisters is “The Mother,” The Magdalene, as she is most commonly refered to: Classically, “The Mother” of the trinity represents exactly what her title implies; fecundity, ripeness, birth and affection. However, Barker sublimely and horrifically lampoons that status by making this particular “Mother” an undead rapist and a creator of monsters: According to Immacolata herself, her two sisters are long dead; they were never given the chance to be born, as she strangled them in the womb. Despite this original betrayal, they now follow and do her bidding, slavishly devoted to their sister and murderer. As a result of this circumstance, they have become ghostly perversions of what they might have been, and none more overtly than The Magdalene: Like her inspiration, she is indeed a thing of ripeness and fecundity, but she is also a thing of death: a hideous spectre that marries the monstrously sexual and lustful to the surreal and horrific: Appearing as a spectral column of vapour and ectoplasmic  matter, she is a shifting, uncertain thing that one moment boasts the form of a ripe and gleaming woman, a vision of overt sensuality and sexual intent, the next a stitched-together, not-quite-coherent mass of limbs, a pregnancy-swollen belly and a sex that endlessly disgorges monstrous young. As grotesque and disturbing as her physical appearance is, it's nothing compared to the perversity of her nature: The Magdalene is no slave to men and their ideologies of proscribed reproduction, like her namesake: rather, she is an assaillant and rapist of men, her back mythology, in this regard, intermingled with that of Lillith, the first bride of Adam, queen of Hell and Mother of all demons. Throughout the story, she assaults several men, sometimes to the point of death, the experience that Barker describes a sublime inversion of the manner in which female rape is all too often portrayed in similar fiction; detailed, sensory and repulsive, The Magdalene swathing her victims in dreams and glamours that are not only sensual, but which reduce them to children in their own minds. Those that survive her assaults are often left weeping in horror at the violation, Barker playing on male power fantasies and narratives of female domination to invert those premises, to make the reader shudder and recoil at the sheer wrongness of it. It's an excellent example of how Barker uses his creations to turn the tables on standardised or enshrined traditions; to bring into question pervasive tropes, assumptions and stock-narratives that even incredibly lauded and acclaimed authors fall prey to. But that is far from the worst of it: The Magdalene is, after all a Mother figure, and in that, she is arguably more monstrous and antithetical than anything else attributed to her: Being dead herself, what “life” she creates is necessarily hideous, her undead body incapable of crafting whole or healthy babes from the seed she steals from her victims. Instead, Barker paints explicit and horrific scenes in which the entity gives birth, the children that slope from her smouldering, distorted body not truly alive, but not truly dead either; malformed mockeries of their parent, they often boast certain features and characteristics of the men that unwillingly sired them, rendered hideous and deformed so as to present the most horrific parody of parental pride imaginable. Conceptually, the notion is one most horror writers wouldn't go near, certainly not at the time of writing, and that fewer still could make fly in the manner that Barker does. The sensory detail of the Magdalene's assaults, the hideous atrocity of the births that follow, are at least as brilliantly repulsive as anything in Barker's more horror-oriented works. That they are framed in a book that also includes such transcendental imagery and subject matter only serves to emphasise them by contrast; the fantastical and inspiring lends the images of horror and grotesquery that much more weight, since the book also does not allow the reader to get away with such simple distinctions; the two are often one and the same, and nowhere is that more true than in Immacolata and her sisters: They are monsters, undoubtedly; creators of horror, sewers of death and trauma, but they are also semi-divine, other-worldly entities that operate in states of being that humanity can only realise in its dreaming imagination. Even The Magdalene, as monstrous as she is, is also strangely beautiful, certainly in terms of the elegance of her rendering; Barker himself clearly adores this creature, and relishes any instant in which he gets to introduce her to the reader and expand upon her mythology. In that, we cannot help but relish her company, as much as we might lament her rapine embrace.

[etoilesdephan]

Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt? (Chapter 12: Ratio legis)

Chapter masterpost

Chapter words: 2.4k

Overall words: 30.2k

Read it on ao3!

Trigger warning: Mentions of thoughts of death.

=====

It had been quiet, too quiet. A bit more than a week had passed since the dream had occurred and Dan found himself restless because of it. The last phone call exchange had warned Dan that no visitors were due to arrive this time and he couldn't blame them. His routine was harmful for everyone outside. Even though Martyn had suggested that PJ and Sophie had wanted to stop by, finally having been able to find time to make the trip to London, Dan had declined, unwilling to cause any additional worry.

It didn't help that guards had been looming all over him since the fight in the showers. It felt like he was the one dangerous and impure, as if they were watching him for misstepping rather than watching out for him. And in a way he couldn't blame them; the days after he had finally returned to his cell had been full of commotion and Dan had been aware of the sneers, the glares, had seen how some would avoid him while others would be held back by their pals from approaching Dan.

Clearly, the news had gone around quickly, and his physical outlook had been enough of a confirmation, too.

Dan, however, was preoccupied.

The shock from the dream was still apparent and questions plagued his mind, often times causing him to pace around the cell long enough until one day Larry had gotten annoyed enough to chuck a book in his general direction. It missed by a landslide; something that Dan had noticed over the long months was that the other man's aim was quite terrible, sometimes with even just setting something on the table. Nevertheless, the tossed book had caught Dan's attention, a blank expression on his face when he calmly picked it up from the floor to close and toss it on the other man's bed.

“Can you stop pacing, you're driving me insane,” The large man grumbled, and Dan stopped, looking at Larry for a quiet moment.

“And stop staring,” There was a bit more aggressive note in the voice, but instead of doing as he was told, Dan sat on his own bed, leaning his elbows on his legs, and forward to watch the other man more intently.

“Did you do it?” The question left his lips before he even thought it through properly and suddenly the three man cell became unusually silent.

“What the hell are you on about?” Larry, in that already familiar always-annoyed tone, asked after a small hesitation though Dan had a feeling that he understood.

“When I arrived, Spike said that you're in for a similar crime as me, did you do it?” Dan insisted, his tone calm, not really frightful of the reaction his nosiness might cause.

Springs of Spike's bed creaked, the only reminder that there was the third man in the room, but Dan could tell that the thief was preparing for the conversation to get out of hand. Or perhaps he was listening carefully as well, to hear the full story.

“They think I did, so what does it matter whether I actually did it or not?” There was if only a little bit of discomfort in the way that Larry reached out for the book and turned the leaves to find where he had left off, brows furrowed just a little bit and it was clear that the other man was withholding something. “Would it change anything if I actually tried to say it out loud again?” If not for the fact that Dan was staring at the other man, he might've missed the low question, but he didn't pry any further.

Dark eyes turned to look at Spike whose posture was a strange mixture of peace and tension.

“Wouldn't you be in max security?” Dan questioned, and he realised that it was the first time since his arrival that he had tried to find out anyone else's story. So many different convicts, and yet the medium security prison was a strange place, where the most diverse convicts could be seen.

Rudy, and his questionable habits, muttering and eventual psychological reevaluation.

Stanley, whose whole posture and mannerism spoke of a merciless brute, yet still allowed to roam around semi-freely until caught in an illegal act on the premises.

Larry and the way Dan was beginning to suspect that he was an unfortunate man, weaker than his initial reactions and posture liked to portray, always attached to books as if they were his only escape.

And Spike, whose mouth was a tight-lipped smile as he regarded Dan with that cool gaze.

“We all get by the way we can,” The tension disappeared from his posture as he leaned against the wall and stretched his arms out in front of him, eyes trained on the long fingers as he bent them several times before saying anything else “And prison's a better alternative to sleeping on the streets again.”

Dan sat there, quiet, and his mind was fuller than he could handle, a familiar nudge behind his brow announcing where the thoughts were starting to boil over.

“What about you, boy?” A part of the nickname had remained, and Dan felt some relief when he realised that 'murder' had been dropped from it somewhere along the way “Feeling like you need to clear your conscience or remind yourself of the reality?”

As their gazes met, Dan was taken aback by that little wink sent his way, and Spike's mouth was still a smile when the man turned around, picking up the letter that he'd been reading earlier, all but effectively leaving Dan on his own and with his thoughts once more.

Dan found bliss in the silence.

Though his mind was buzzing, the strange, brief exchange with the two other man had relieved him from the initial weight that he hadn't realised had been there. It was a level of understanding that he had lacked.

======

The excessive silence was uncomfortable.

He tossed and turned in the night, staring across the dark room unseeingly, and it was as if his heart was sitting in his throat with anticipation. The only problem was that Dan didn't know what he was anticipating.

His thoughts were crawling one over the other, trying to take the foreplan of his mind, only to cause him to grumble lowly and he turned over, lying on his back and staring at the ceiling that he had grown so used to seeing. It was part of that forsaken routine, to awaken at different times and to find that the surroundings were not warm, were not home, and it didn't matter what he tried to do, what he tried to imagine, every corner felt hostile and sharp.

The light flooded in through the window, a far-away chirping of the early birds reaching him and he drew in a breath, eyes shut to the world.

He stretched out his fingers by his sides, and allowed a thought to bloom. A single flower turned into a dozen, their petals gentle to the touch and he ran his fingers lightly across them. There was the ghost of blades of grass and there was the chatter of wind in the leaves of the aspens. There was the warmth of the sun on his skin.

“Howell!” He stirred awake to the sound of his surname and the sound of the opening cell door. He blinked, confounded, and it took a moment to realise that he had fallen asleep while in his little fantasy.

“What?” He rolled over, pushing himself up as he rubbed his face only to look up at the guard now stood before him while another one remained by the door; it was too early for breakfast.

“You have visitors,” Was the only explanation that he was given before he was ushered out of the cell and down the halls.

“Isn't there only one visitation day per week?” He tried to ask, his question unsure, though he had lived with this order of things for months now. He knew exactly when the visitation days were, when and how long the calls were, at what time they had to rise and when to sleep.

“Special circumstance,” Again, the answer was curt, not willing to elaborate any other details and Dan racked his brain of what the special circumstances could be. His heart nearly stopped entirely when the one option resonated logically and he nearly tripped while crossing a threshold, just moments away from his visitors.

Death.

That was the only reason he could see for them to be so secretive, for not just telling him what was going on.

Dan always thought that he would cry, scream, would lose his mind and trash if he ever got such news. In reality, his world was quiet, he was emotionless and it felt like the life had been drained from his limbs and he was a robotic, empty shell, just following the body in front of his that led him through the numerous count of doors.

His life was over. It would drain away with Phil's and it took him everything to not just turn around and numbly deny the visit. To avoid facing the reality pronounced in words.

It wouldn't matter anymore anyway.

A simple wooden door was the last obstacle in his way and he was soon met with the different colouration of lights in the visiting room, void of unfamiliar faces at the first glance. He later noted the two policemen standing aside, but he paid them no mind.

Numbly, he stood there, surveying the faces of a mixture of Howell and Lester families in that second that it took them to finally fully grasp his presence.

Suddenly, a body collided with his and he was enveloped in a tight embrace, dark brown hair in his face and his mother's voice close as she spoke his name, the tone relieved, cheering, instead of mournful. He flinched instinctively, having grown to know only hostile touch, and it was awkwardly that he patted her back in return.

Something wasn't right. Or at least something wasn't adding up to the truth he'd come to accept even before he was told about it.

There were no mournful glances, save for the pity, even a bit of guilt in some that he hadn't seen for a longer time. There were smiles, the room lit up not only with the slowly cloud-blocked London sunlight, but also with the relief and excitement.

It was then that it hit him that his mother was hugging him and the mere thought threw him off for a moment (He remembered clearly the instructions reminded him every time he had a visitor - no touching), and it took him pulling his mum away gently and looking her in the face that he began to understand. The news were not what he had anticipated.

No. It was something completely different.

“Oh, Dan,” She spoke and the gentleness exceeded any that he'd ever heard from her, but his muscles still tensed when she reached out to touch his cheek affectionately.

“What...” He finally spoke, looking past her and seeking out the one face he'd come to rely on for information. That face which had held hopelessness the last few times that they had met, but now was beaming and coming closer and suddenly Martyn's hand was on his shoulder, a light pat, nothing more.

“He woke up, Dan,” The words felt like the most impossible set of syllables to his ears and he looked the other man in the eyes for a moment, feeling the touch of his mother as she lightly stroked his arm, finally having noted his confusion “He's up. And he's fine.”

=====

The faces present were mostly happy. Family chattering away happily and promising things that Dan could barely believe in. It was all so different, and he couldn't fully grasp the concept that it was possible for him to not rot away in this place or a similar, or even harsher one.

It was when the policemen and the same lawyer from those months ago sat before him, having been cleared the way for, once some of the family had poured out, leaving only a few people there with them, that the idea was finally beginning to make sense.

“Five days ago Mister Lester gave his testimony and since then he has gone through additional questioning, in which he described the attacker which doesn't match your description in the least,” It was strange to Dan, to hear something Phil had done that wasn't a long-gone memory and rather something recent, “Therefore it gives us the right to file for an appeal, which should guarantee your release and full clearing of your name,” He could hear the words but meaning came to him slow.

Phil.

He was awake again, and had been able to speak.

He was awake and he was alive.

He wasn't gone.

Dan hid his face in his hands, allowing the reality to sink in. To let it break through the numbness that had taken over the majority of his being to shield him from the worst outcomes and negativity.

“Additionally, we have the right to file a complaint or even sue the news channel for violation of privacy,” He felt his skin crawl at the memory of the news report, and he slowly shook his head. “You don't have to make this decision now, but it would be safe to assume that the sooner this is addressed, the bigger chance you have at winning the case.”

Too tired to argue or to try and explain himself, he nodded, finally looking at up again and suddenly he became aware of the weight on his body. The tension had found a permanent residence in his limbs, the negativity had eaten away at him the same way as slurs and fists had chipped away at the remains of his wilting body and heart.

His face felt bloated, foreign on his own skin, and he was slow to acknowledge that his lips were his own before he spoke.

“Can I talk to him?” And for the first time the things he felt flooded into his tone, making for a weak and wounded sound, the words pleading around the edges and breaking in the centre.

“I'll see what I can arrange,” Martyn spoke whilst looking over at the police officers for approval, his hand resting on Dan's shoulder, comforting.

“We'll have to see about the legal processes involved in the appeal of such case, but there's a chance.”

And though it was not an explicit yes, it was a lot more than Dan had expected when entering the room earlier.