#this is post throne he got those claws from the shadow magic stuff

[lichenthropis]

getting used to claws doodle

[dzamie-oc]

02 - Gothic

I’m not too big on gothic stuff, but I know Bloodborne does it and Hollow Knight feels... close enough. So I made a bit of a post-Radiance dragon AU with some gothic architecture, heavily inspired by @deniax18‘s fantastic HK dragon AU art.

Length: ~2k words Rating: T (mild descriptions of violence, one innuendo) Summary: Ghost still feels drawn to fight, as a creature of the void. Luckily, he is not alone.

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The enigmatic being awoke on the bench, any remnants of its dreamless slumber hidden by its bone-white mask, and the darkness hidden within. It climbed onto the ground, one inky, black paw at a time, and set off immediately on a course it knew well. It was not a dragon - or, perhaps it was; it had never deigned to think on the matter - but rather an area where nothing else was, which took the shape of a dragon. It passed rows of glowing torches, and the firelight bounced off of its mask and dull blue wings. However, its main body remained unlit, not as though there were no torches, but as though no light - torches, lamps, even the sun - had ever shone where it strolled. The dragon’s stride did not break as it passed several shops and the home of a dragoness who would consider it her friend: it might be called dutiful, if it had had a sense of duty by which to walk.

By the town limits, the mayor had instructed a warning to be posted: “Danger! Monsters, rascals, and bandits roam this road!” The dragon, however, walked by just as it had many times before. And, like so many times, something rustled in the bushes, just out of sight of any possible onlookers. A burst of fire streaked through the still air as a trio of dragons leapt out on the unusual traveller, fire in their jaws and fierce, metal points adorning their claws. The masked dragon rushed forward in a burst of speed, slipping past the fireball, and with two quick swipes of its own claws, the first attacker fell, unconscious. It refrained from killing such foes, reserving its lethality for those less deserving of another chance. The shadowy dragon twisted its head to face its mask towards the remaining two, and they sprung.

The next dragon’s paws were batted away with ease before fangs made of nothingness itself sank into its assailant’s neck. It silently watched the remaining dragon, who hesitantly dipped their head in surrender... and to take hold of their compatriots’ tails, dragging them back into the shadows of the bushes. And then, once again, the hole in the world turned its attention back to its journey.

It made quick time to the city proper, alternating between a steady trot and sudden bursts of speed. The first time it had made the trip, it had spent quite some time staring up at the towering, spires and steeples, marvelling at the intricate carvings of dragons... and of other things, which were not dragons and yet were portrayed as reverently as the scaly residents. It would never admit to such a thing, of course; it maintained that it had no mind to think on something as arbitrary and ornamental as art. The ornate city gate was closed, as it was every time it journeyed to the city, and a pair of dragons, twice its size and adorned in matching silver armor, sat and watched it approach.

“Hey!” shouted one as he flicked his wings and brandished his weapon, a straight blade attached to the flight-capable limbs. “Purpose and identification! Travel is restricted here, on order of the Prince!”

The dragon-shaped darkness did not slow.

A low growl escaped the guard’s throat, and he rose into a crouch. This got his partner to extend her own wing and place it on his back, trying to calm him. “Let it pass,” she said, “we don’t know who or what it is, but it’s done this dozens of times.”

“It’s a threat is what it is! Not even the decency to show its face!” he spat back. Before the dragoness could say anything against him, he leapt at the void.

His wing blades clashed with a clang against its pure black claws, forcing it back. The guard pressed on his assault, even slashing upward when the anomaly tried to leap over him. The force of that clash, too, propelled it up - it was remarkably light, even for its smaller size. He was too slow to turn for it to land and rake its claws across his armor, but the metal proved too sturdy for its strike. The guard’s wing lashed out - it ducked under - and again his armor withstood a blow. The dark dragon sprang back, and light gathered in its jaws, issued up from somewhere deep within itself. By the time the armored dragon realized that it was not fire he was staring at, the blast of energy had engulfed him. It sought all the cracks in his armor, every unprotected part, and seared through his scales. He did not burn, for burning damages the body. It was as though his soul itself had been set ablaze. When the last wisps of energy cleared from under his metal uniform, he lasted one step before his legs buckled, and he collapsed. With its mask as expressionless as a mask ever was, the being of darkness strolled past him, then stopped at the dragoness.

She looked down at him and snorted. “Look, kid, would it kill you to get some papers? It’ll go a lot faster for you, and it’ll save the captain on the guards’ medical bills.”

The strange dragon stared blankly at her for several seconds, then extended a tattered wing, revealing a bag hidden beneath it. Hiding its head beneath its wing, it shifted its mask back to rifle through its possessions, then deposited a mouthful of coins in front of the dragoness. Enough to pay for the healing magic her cohort would need.

“That’s not really what I-”

Its paw pushed against the small, metal pile, particularly dark against the lustrous currency. Something that wasn’t a coin rested atop the pile; the dragoness leaned down to take a look. It was a bright white flower, almost glowing softly in exactly the way the mysterious dragon’s hide didn’t. She reached one careful paw to it and picked it up. The blossom looked incredibly fragile, but also incredibly beautiful.

The clang of something hard against metal interrupted her thoughts. The strange being had pressed its masked head against the gate. “So is this a bribe or an attempt at courting?” she asked it in a deadpan voice.

The dragon shook its head.

“Well, regardless, I still can’t open this gate for you, so-”

With no warning, darkness engulfed it, or rather, engulfed its mask and wings, leaving the rest of its body to continue being darkness. The guard dragoness gasped in shock as the usually solid void visitor flowed between the twisting metal gate, before the shadows retreated back into its body.

This time, the clang of metal on the gate was from the sole standing guard pressing her forepaws against it, staring dumbfounded at the weird... not-a-dragon. It watched her for a second longer, then nodded its head and continued walking, as though it had not stopped for the guards and gate at all.

It watched as it passed windows and doors of the well-carved, enormous buildings around it. The dragons within, and the ones it occasionally passed on the street, no longer carried the madness it had encountered when it first visited the city. Their eyes were bright with cunning, a pride in their perfectly fashionable clothing, and sometimes a simple joy for life, but that was all; no longer were they in the thrall of an eldritch abomination. As such, it had been a good while since it had had to sharpen its claws on their scales. It knew this was good, and yet it was driven to fight. For this reason, it sought out the palace.

The bridge was down, but it preferred the faster route of leaping and gliding across the nominal moat; in a city of dragons, it couldn’t keep anyone out any more than a regular door, but, reportedly, the king had insisted on it. The downpour from one of many draconic gargoyles splashed its tattered wing with water, but it was nothing a quick shake under the cover of the arch of a buttress couldn’t solve. This time, the door was open, and the castle guards barely glanced its way as it trotted along inside.

Stained-glass representations of the Prince and his father adorned the entrance hall on one side, while paintings of the Prince doing princely things hung on the opposite walls. It barely spared these a passing glance, and instead swiftly climbed a set of stairs. Its path to the throne room was hardly the most efficient, but it knew it well. It passed a dragon with brown scales, idly levitating himself as he studied magic and conjured a sphere of energy in his paw. Against his will, however, the orb quickly flew towards the living shadow as it passed by; it ran forward to dodge it with practiced precision and lead it into the floor, then ran over to its “attacker.” The scholar’s eyes grew wide as he saw another, more powerful glowing ball form in its mouth, and blinked a little to the left of existence with a teleport, just before a massive burst of energy angrily stormed through the space he had just occupied. The void dragon turned its head left and right, then continued on when it saw no more of its assailant.

Finally, it stood before the door to the throne room. An enormous arch, filled with double-doors. On each door, the king’s advisors had been carved: the foremost scholar of magic, the pioneer in the sciences, and the guard captain of the time. Above them was the king himself, appearing larger than any dragon had any right to be. It was from a time before the Prince, before the maddening horror had swept through the kingdom.

The hole in the world put its paw against the doors. It could sense that there were no gaps to flow through, and those that did exist were protected by the Prince’s own magic. To its side, two guards spared a quick look at it, though they knew it and the Prince well enough to leave it alone. And so it stayed there, standing still, its paw against the door.

Then, the door cracked open. Immediately, the void consumed itself and surged forward, before relinquishing its possessions to reality a moment later. Half a dozen spears were leveled at it from a line of dragons guarding the Prince. Behind it, the captain sighed, standing with her claws clutching the door’s handle. “My liege, the ghost is back. And it still goes through me.” Unlike most of the guards, she wore a mask similar to the Prince and the dragon-shaped darkness, and a full red cape rather than armor. She lashed her tail in annoyance, and the needle-like spear tied to her tail snapped around, forcing the visitor to leap away.

“Ha! Why, Hornet, perhaps you ought to stand to the side when it does that.” The Prince, adorned from neck to tail in gleaming, ceremonial armor, gestures to his guard with a forepaw. “You lot are dismissed from this room. Hornet or I will send for your return after my chat with the ghost.”

Hornet pulled the doors open fully for the exiting guard, then shivered. “Look, I just don’t like feeling the void itself... IN me.”

The Prince gracefully strode to the doors and applied several wards to them. “This in spite of what the tabloids say? Anyway, just stay and watch from the corner, then, alright? It’s been improving, and we may need a judge.”

The caped captain grumbled, but picked out a spot by one of the stained-glass windows to lay down on. She turned to watch them, for entertainment and to learn how she could improve, herself.

Like a ritual, the ghost and the Prince took opposite sides of the throne room. The small absence from reality flexed its claws and bared its fangs. The Prince stretched his body, magically removing his armor. Beneath was, too, a complete lack of existence, exactly as dark as his visitor, and as dark as nothing else could be. He let out a powerful roar, confined to the throne room by his wards, and then the two beings of void leapt at each other.