#the vake

[seekingcylem]

I was on team Bag a Legend back when I first joined Falled London so Veils will always be my personal favorite space bat

[waterlogged-detective]

BaL has been going well. (thank you for letting me steal gio @that-giorgione)

[moonstruck-stormy]

The vake’s eating dome

[thedeafprophet]

That first confrontation didn't go too well, now did it....

(maybe turn ur screen brightness up for this one)

[caperingcryptid]

Fires and Fabric

@fallenlondonficswap @the-insouciant-scientist @artisanoftheredscience @finerandbonnier @sparingiscaring (Notes: This is, unsurprisingly, for the group event, and for a couple people I saw on the list with a Veils or BaL interest. Hope you all enjoy!

(Additional Notes: It's my first time writing the Masters, so they may be a bit OOC.)

Fires and Fabric

Mr Veils, Mr Fires, other Masters mentioned, Vake/BaL content, brief and off-handed reference to a certain betrayal

(1,016 Words)

Veils was not so often satisfied, but tonight, its bottomless hunger had ebbed...if only, again, for tonight. It was no matter, of course. Tales of the Vake and promises of the fortune placed upon its head drew aspiring hunters in like flies to honey, and as the number of Echoes climbed ever higher, so did Veils' prospects of returning to the Bazaar well-fed and well-amused. 

It picked its teeth with a shard of bone as it ascended the steps, working some of the sinew out from between its fangs. Its latest catch had been some poor, hopeful fool with dreams too big for his head: not unique in the slightest, but still a nice little morsel to feast on until something more fascinating came along.

A hunter was only as good as the prey that they sought, after all. Someone with more gumption would make a fine meal for the Vake, indeed. 

It was ready to return to its lodgings in a good mood (as good a mood as Veils could ever be in, at least) when it sensed, rather than heard, a presence join it on the stairwell. It turned in a whirl of velvet, eyes burning a hole into the creature that had dared disturbed what was otherwise a lovely night.

And that creature was-

“Fires.” Veils glowered, teeth glinting like needles beneath its robe. “What purpose?”

“Temper, temper. I am not so easily frightened as your pet seamstresses.” It held in its hand a lantern, which cast harsh, flickering shadows on the walls around them. It was not so bright that it lit the face beneath the hood, but that was of no interest to Veils anyway. There were far fewer secrets between them than the rest of the city.

“I wanted,” Fires went on, in that strange, honeyed voice. “To have a word about your little...amusements. You were out hunting again, weren't you?”

“Foolish question.”

Fires sighed. ”Perhaps. No, no. It was. But I needed to hear the answer from you. Perhaps I thought there was a chance otherwise, which would be quite foolish of me, indeed.“

”To the point.“

”Never one for small talk, were you? It makes me wonder, sometimes, where that spark of plotting in you came from. Words are what pluck the strings of man, after all, and you are of few.

”And yet, here you are.“ Then, somewhat mockingly, Fires added, ”Veils, the Intriguer.“

Veils scowled. It wasn't in the mood for whatever this was, and already it could feel the sweetness of the night souring. It wanted to return to its chambers, curl up, and sleep away the weight of its meal. It had no interest in hanging around a stairwell like some shifty-eyed urchin while Fires relished in the sound of its own voice.

When it replied, it wasn't in the debasing and irksome words of man. It was somewhere between a snarl and a lick of Correspondence, a fusion that, though brief, was still enough to make the sigils in the walls alight and the tiles shudder beneath them. The closest translation to human tongue, for those curious, would be a particularly colorful suggestion as to exactly where Fires could take its commentary.

Fires calmly adjusted its footing, then raised a single claw in a gesture of peace. ”I'll be on with it now,“ it said. ”The others and I have come to share an opinion: you are getting out of hand. We could forgive your little excursions when they were occasional. But now? Nearly every night? Do you have no self-control?“

Veils puffed up. ”I do not meddle in your affairs, Fires,“ it hissed, begrudgingly picking up speech once more. “You have no right to meddle in mine.” 

“I think we do. I think it is in our best interests to ensure that we're all behaving ourselves. To an extent, of course.”

“I fill my role. My trade is flourishing.” Then, pointedly, “Can you say the same of yours? I have heard word of the Docks.”

Fires didn't rise to the bait as Veils hoped it would. Instead, it went on. “There are less of us than before, when we first came to this place. You know this fact better than anyone.”

It did. 

“Your hunger could very well become your ruin one day, Veils. If not, then it could lead trouble to our doorstep, and none of us are interested in spending our time cleaning up your messes.”

“It's handled.” Veils bristled up. How dare Fires and the rest make such accusations? How dare they think so lowly of it that they think a human could harm it? Humans, with their dull teeth and their flat faces and their stubby little fingers. It was a born hunter. The humans were the soft and succulent prey. London, the city, was its hinterland. 

“It's handled,” Veils spit again. “It is Wines that agrees with you. I know how it thinks. I know its softness. Tell it what I told you: to keep out of my affairs.”

“It worries.”

“Then it is weak.”

They stood there in silence for a moment, Veils' eyes seething and furious, Fires' unreadable. It was Veils who ultimately broke their stand-off, snarling as it turned away from the other Master.

“I am older and stronger and sharper than any little rabbit that could hop to my door,” said Veils. “If they dare, I shall feast on them, and leave their bones as my message. These cities have poisoned you all with softness. I am the only one that remembers what we are.”

Veils ascended a few steps towards its lodgings, paused, then turned again, brushing past Fires in a whirlwind of silks and spite. It needed to shed blood. It would hunt again, and again, and perhaps when it had glutted itself on all it could stomach, it would drop whatever was left of its latest play-hunter through the roof of one of Fires' workshops. 

In its haze of fury and bloodlust, it didn't notice- or care to notice- the somber, knowing way that Fires watched it go.

[im-ej-arts]

what happens when Mr veils finds one of its numerous hunters drunk off of blackwings absinthe and murderous?

disapprovingly stare and hold them in a burrito.

bonus:

(EDIT: I ACCIDENTALLY EXPORTED IT AT FOUR TIMES SMALLER, FORGIVE ME)

[iamnottoph]

Predator, Prey

My fic for the @fallenlondonficswap! I got @sparingiscaring as my exchange recipient, and so ive got a story about the Vake, hunting, their OC Wadiya, and nightmares (of a sort)! Sorry for taking so long with it 😭

1280 words, cw: violence and some (mostly vague) gore

She sniffed at the air again. Once, twice - wet nose glistening in the dim moonish light. Rising discontent growled low in the back of her throat, her lips pulling back into an anxious snarl. Something was not right. There was no scent of flesh nor fire in the air, no clumsy trundling-sounds of human hunters. But there was something there, nonethless. A subtle shifting in the eddies of sound and smell that she knew. A presence defined by absence; the ripples of a claw trailing in water. A predator, she pointedly did not think. For there was nothing in this place that could rightly call her prey - and she was more than capable of proving it. She stopped again, closing out all sight, all sound, all scent - these were worthless to her. There was only the cold mud beneath her paws, the pounding beneath her skin, the subtle wind through her fur. And-

Her muscles tensed. Her eyes snapped open as her neck snapped upwards, blood freezing in her veins.

There, in the hazy firmament above, a false-star winked.

She began to run, claws gouging the marsh-mud, adrenaline burning in her ears, the world both blurring and sharpening. Her ear twitched again at the wind-rustle of reeds somewhere behind her. Her pursuer was no longer bothering with stealth. Pursuer. The very thought made her entire essence boil with anger, with outrage. She was the predator, the apex, the incarnation of a thousand fears. Man-hunter, all-hunter, her white coat a beacon of superiority. She did not slink and hide in the grey mud as her lessers did, she was not a marsh-rabbit to be chased. But instinct drove her where pride could not, the little-whisper of death saying not here, not now, not in this way. Under the open roof was not the place to fight this enemy. It was gaining, behind her - but her intent was not to escape.

Logs. Briars. Brackish mud-pits. All of them whipped by, the treacherous landscape as solid as stone beneath her practiced feet, the paths etched into her very sinew, her destination blazing in her mind's eye. The trees all around began to thicken - sun-starved, salt-choked, revenants grasping with petrified razor claws for light long-gone. She could feel the pursuing wind of death behind her begin to slack; settling into the silent slinking prowl of a predator preparing an ambush. She was not safe. But its primary advantage had been eliminated. Her breath evened, she sharpened her eyes and her ears once more, her movements tense but liquid as she slowed from a run to a trot to a slow, careful, circling pace. This was to be a contest of tooth and claw, now - and in this, she knew she had no equal.

Stillness. Silence. Barest twinkles of blue false-starlight glimmering off the stagnant pools. Twisted shapes all around, black on black. Tension. Anticipation. Blood beneath skin, tendons and bone and flesh tightened to their snapping point, waiting, aching, with bated breath for the signal to release, to lash, to kill.

A shift in the air. A twitch of the ear.

Motion. Tearing. Ripping. Spearing. Sundering. Pain. So much pain. Nothing but pain. Gradations of pain, throbbing and piercing and burning, pain in a thousand colors and textures and shapes, a whole world rendered in pain, an image more clear and agonizingly detailed than any that sight or sound or smell could render. Claw and tooth sunken in yielding flesh, yielding red, so much red, red on black clouding and swirling among the twinkling blue above, red dripping off leathery black colder than death that screamed when her claws rendered it asunder

Breath. In. Out. In. Out. In. In. Out. Guarded. Circling. Searching. Waiting for the moment when the other's fear would overcome pain. Blood, flowing freely, red and black and not-black, dripping into the pools of false-sky. Twisted shapes, black on black, prowling, star-eyes not false but real, burning with fire older than this place, older than her, old as the freezing and ancient winds-between. Star-eyes, flickering with just a hint of…

She grinned. Oh, it didn't know, did it? She kept grinning, skin stretching, fangs growing, red tongue playing like a serpent across the perfect silver moon-crescent of her smile. Foolish is the hunter who does not know what they hunt. She let herself unfurl, claws sharpening, limbs lengthening, a nightmarish parody of that which she pretended to be. Foolish is the hunter who mistakes the territory for the map. Her eyes danced with a fire of their own, something wild and joyous and violant, old as the first predator and the first prey. Foolish is the hunter who mistakes reality for dream. She can smell it wafting from her enemy now, oozing, noxious, delicious. Fear. Good. It was correct to be afraid. To be afraid was its rightful and natural place, the rightful place of all prey, the rightful place of all those who dreamt in viric and violant of claw and fang and things beyond the edge of firelight, of those who had built fragile walls of glass and silver but had never truly forgotten what walked beyond them, had never surrendered the fear that it might walk through them - and so had made their fears come true.

She lurched forward with impossible grace, rearing up on two legs now, hook-claws latching, tearing the beast in two, its upper half flung aside while its lower one continued to squirm. Tooth and claw and wing and rage, familiar now, and slowing, laboring, easily countered. Vicious but pathetic. Cornered prey, fighting not for dominance but for survival. Her limbs were bowed willows one moment, ironwoods the next, turning aside its offensive with ease born not from practice but from sheer, unrivaled superiority. Its strikes, once so fluid, so powerful, grew clumsy and languid. Her fangs tore through its hide like lazy fingers through water, bloody ripples tearing it apart and apart and apart. And then, at last, came the decisive moment - the one she savored most. The slackening of the muscle. The intake of breath, preparing for the last exhale. The moment when hate, resistance and even fear died, leaving nothing in its place but submission. She reared her head back, jaws opening wider than a wolf's could, wider than anything, wide as the yawning gulf between stars, between mirrors, between life and death. A moment of exultation before the final blow.

A twitch of the ear.

Something in her defeated prey's eyes. Something from the trees behind her. Twin revelations, a moment too late, realized in a single instant.

Agony, white, endless, stretching from her back and across infinity to protrude from her chest, death-rasp of bone on bone. Claws and teeth piercing her chest, her face, her eyes, all its weariness gone, forcing her backwards, the harpoon withdrawn but the agony remaining, flowing from her wound, dripping onto the ground, ichor mixing with mud. A slash, another, blind, misaimed, clumsy, effortlessly dodged, vicious but pathetic. It struck at her leg and shoved at her chest, it speared her foot and turned away her claw, effortless, fluid, a synchrony of violence, as muscle and sinew. Two parts becoming whole again - no, that wasn't right, two parts that had never separated at all. A last buffeting of wings, a wind of death, she wasn't strong enough, leg buckling, weight shifting as she fell across the event horizon, down into the mud, her rightful place.

She could see its shape clearly now, briefly outlined in the moonish light as it fell upon her, a bolt of finality. A beast with two bodies - eight limbs, two wings of night, four burning-star eyes, two sets of fangs dripping red and not-black. Predator. Apex. Man-hunter. All-hunter.

[reaperfromtheabyss]

I don't know how one is "supposed" to use watercolors, but i sure as hell ain't letting that stop me!

Ambition: Bag a Legend! icon from Fallen London

[sparingiscaring]

I had a thought last night... my BAL PC, Wadiya, is 5'2~ in height. So... how big would their Weird Dog look comparison?

Guys.

Big Dog.

[deletingmyself]

(by Aleksandr Popov)| Tbilisi, Georgia

[anomalouscorvid]

oneiric bat-thing trying to make herself look as normal as possible

[thegreatyin]

oh, so when other people indulge in their special interests and find joy in their hobbies it's "joyful" and "whimsical" and "autism swag", but when i, mr veils,

[waterlogged-detective]

That guy on the right seems nice, I’m so glad the Vake’s not around

[peliginspeaks]

Listen, I'm sorry to the people who draw Veils in torn/bloody robes because of the whole Vake thing but you're simply wrong. Do you think Veils would Ever go out like that. Do you think it doesn't have fifteen changes of clothes ready immediately, with options depending on the day and occasion, to climb into when it comes back from killing things. Of course it does. Veils is getting home, taking a shower in the Bazaar, putting on a new perfectly clean robe with accent panels and silk trim, and then dabbing 1 (one) tasteful bloodstain on the hem of it with a claw because it's arrogant and it thinks it can get away with it. What is a Veils if it's not serving cunt. Of course it is.

[the-insouciant-scientist]

Figured i should join the party and fill out the character sheet from @t6fs for Harper! This took me uh. Longer than I'd like to admit XD

[sunlessveils]

More master designs while I'm at college