#velarik

[weiyingsbigbooty]

ah velarik my beloved, i had to draw them again! Alarik is very overprotective and posessive of Vera, but she thinks his behavior is cute (both are a bit deranged). tried drawing lighting for the first time incorporated with the background. honestly i didnt draw the background i just googled fantasy tavern and blurred it xd.

anyways i wrote a lil imagine for this scene so feel free to read it under the cut!

Alarik was sulking in the back corner of the inn's pub, looking over the people inside of it. Vera told him to ‘stay’, as she wanted to gather intel from the other residents and he would just scare them away and not get any information about their current case. Alarik doesn't think he's that scary, and Vera has called him adorable and the cutest on many occasions, but apparently the rest don't think that. Plus, she has given him another job, to listen to the whispers. Things people won't tell her because they are outsiders, and with his heightened hearing, he can hear everyone's heart beats much less the secrets they share under the comfort of the loudness of the pub.

On the other side, Vera was leaning against the tall island of the bar itself, stripped of any visible weapons and her red scarf, showing off the pale-grayish skin of her neck, collarbones and cleavage. She had the advantage of being a pretty little elf girl who shows off just enough to catch the attention of drunk patrons. And sooner rather than later, just a few minutes after she positioned herself three men surrounded her.

“Hey there sweetheart, care for a drink?”

“Only if you're paying.”

“Obviously.”

Vera flagged down the bartender, and ordered herself some wine that was paid by one of the men. She asked them questions as she sipped on her drink, and soon enough had information she needed. “Sorry boys, but I am retiring tonight. Have a long day ahead of me.” The half elf finished her drink in one go, and stood up to leave but was stopped by a hand on her wrist.

“Come on sweetheart, don't leave us now. We can make your night worthwhile.” His goons snickered as the man grabbed her jaw, his stinky drunk breath fanning her face. Feeling another presence behind her, she smirked. “Sure,” she was snatched out of his grasp and her back was pressed into Alarik's tall frame. She grabbed the assassin's jaw with her fingertips as he growled at the three men in front of them, his blood red eyes glaring from under the shadow his ink black hair casted on his face.

“If my Puppy agrees.” That drew another growl out of her puppy, which looked much more like a nightmarish creature than a cute little dog.

He didn't even have to do much but glare and barge his teeth under his mask and the three men were sent scrambling away from the two of them, throwing words such as ‘fucking freakshow’ and ‘crazy bitch’ as they made their way out of the pub with tails between their legs.

The patrons laughed at the unlucky men and went back to their drunk conversations.

Vera sighed and turned to face Alarik, cupping his face with both of her hands. “I guess they didn't like your answer, Puppy. Lucky enough they had loose tongues before you showed up.”

Giggling at him still glaring at the door, she turned him to face her. “You did a good job,” she kissed his cheek. “And a good job requires a good reward. Let's go up.” With that she dragged him up the stars by his hand, making a group of girls that sat by the stairs giggle as Alarik stumbled after her.

[the-rhyme-witch]

Velarik had woke to the scent of the dusty velvet lining of his coffin disintegrating like ash in a breeze.

His first waking thought, after so many years asleep, was to blearily wonder what day it was but his second was that he needed to cull the human who had made the coffin so poorly.

It irked him.

He had picked a long break precisely because of these thoughts. All vampires were a little neurotic but Velarik was not a male to do things by halves. Indeed, that was his problem. He couldn't just half-arse a task, not him. If it was a thing worth doing, he had to hyperfocus. For Velarik, his obsession with humans had gotten so put of hand that a few weeks (months? Years?) ago, a few other vamps had rocked up at his castle and told him pointedly that he needed to take a time out.

Velarik had taken the advice. No one did "pointed" quite like vampires. So, it had been unfortunate that he was thinking about culling humans before he had even opened his coffin.

By the time he had assessed the castle, he had mentally jumped right back into farm mode. There were a few cracking bloodlines in the villages he managed. Before his slumber, he had been planning to try and introduce some outside bloodlines, perhaps build a bridge over the river....only one, though, he didn't want too many wild humans wandering into his lands and messing up his breeding scheme. He delighted in how easy humans could form mating pairs when it meant that ensuring the right male and female met in the right way at the right time but when it came to rogue outsiders, human mating habits could be truly annoying.

By the time he had found out the year, Velarik was beyond annoyed. He was incandescent with frustration.

Two and a half centuries! He'd overslept and managed to sleep through ten generations! His humans bloodlines would be a mess now. They'd have mated willy nilly, no regard to how well their blood tasted at all. It really was unacceptable. He had been planning to find a human and slake his thirst, maybe change his clothes, but he obviously had to jump straight back in. Perhaps his villages had isolated enough for the humans to have started inbreeding? He wasn't a fan of inbreeding but it might have secured some traits, at least. He was out of the castle with a notebook and a quill as quick as a bat out of hell. He would find his humans and take stock of the situation.

Except there were no humans to find. Velarik roamed what had been his territory, his lands, and uncovered the terrible truth. His human stock were not merely diluted into mediocrity. They were not there at all.

It had taken time to find another vampire to tell him the sorry tale. Vampires, it turned out, were not doing well. The human population had crashed and it was not just Velariks precious herds that were depleted. The humans just were not there anymore.

Fortunately for Velarik, an afterlifetime of obsession meant he understood the behavioural patterns of humans quite well. He located areas where lingering humans might be. Then, pun not intended, he staked them out. He learned where lingering humans remained.

Other species, he discovered, had the same idea.

There was a new predator, an invasive species. They, too, seemed focused on finding the humans. Velarik had watched them hunt down one human to kill, but they had then just left the body. Left it! The vampire understood culling but one did not cull an unstable population. And they had culled a woman! Madness! You could rebuild a bloodline even if you lost some males but lose human females and your herd would be a managerial nightmare. Velarik was enraged with the other species.

The sensible thing to do was to take out the new predators. Velarik could do that himself. He had no idea, however, how he would get his herds back to scratch, and once they were, where would he be? He needed humans to self sustain. They tasted better with a little fire in their blood. So he made a plan.

He would take samples from the remaining humans, take them to a village near to his castle.

He would assess their stock value and plan his vision for a new bloodline appropriately.

And he would teach them learned behaviours to deal with the new predator.

Honestly, it sounded increasingly delicious. Of course, it would definitely need him to give his plan his full attention. Immediately.

Velarik could not help but feel rather pleased indeed

After centuries of slumber, a vampire awakens to find humanity on the brink of extinction by an alien invasion. Furious that his “cattle” are being wiped out, he lead terrified survivors to arms . The aliens soon learn that humans aren’t their only enemies and this predator doesn’t play fair.

[specgram]

Books for Linguists

Markedness’s Search for Meaning, by Velarik Frankl; The Retroflex Less Transcribed, by M. Script Peck