#very happy with how this came out

[quisters]

The Drawtectives visit Prismo!!

(Screen background from s2 ep11 ofc)

[icyboiiii]

art for day two of my version of magnustober! Based on episode 2 of tma!

[crawdraws]

anotha Scarecrow for the books

[sevenish-spheres]

03/10/24- ‘Riddle’

Taken from the memoirs of renowned artificer Erik Van Tolman, referencing his time as an apprentice under his master, Simon Geneste.

I don’t remember exactly when my master acquired the cube. I must have been around sixteen, as I recall still having all my fingers at that point. I remember how proud he was of it, having bought it at some flea market down the road from his workshop.

It was a small thing, a dark, slightly rusty iron cube small enough to fit into a palm. It was split into sections, nine on each side, and each could be pulled out or twisted as part of some elaborate mechanism, or they could have were they not so corroded. The cube sat on his desk for days, and I could tell how it irked him. No matter what he tried, he couldn’t oil it, wedge it open or even just pry it apart so he could see how he put it together. It seemed almost like it was taunting him, and I could tell how it annoyed him just as much as it intrigued him. It wasn’t until I awoke late one night and found him bent over his desk, candles burning all around him that I realised how much.

He obsessed over it for months, growing more and more agitated until finally it happened. Whilst trying to wedge it open with a screwdriver, Mr Geneste managed to slice a great cut down his palm. He cried in pain and cursed more profusely than I’d ever heard. It took some time to bandage and treat the wound, for the cut was remarkably clean and strangely deep, but eventually he was in enough state to re-enter his workshop.

It was then that he discovered that where the blood had touched the rusted mechanisms of the cube, the rust had flaked off like an old scab, revealing gleaming brass beneath. If I had been more observant of this fact, I might have saved him from what was to come.

Rats and pets began to go missing around the house, and my master grew ever more reclusive. Still, I tried to focus on my own studies, trying to blot out the metallic smells that began to emit from the locked door to the house’s basement, a place my master began to frequent more and more often. He grew more and more irritable, muttering about failure and about the last option. Even then I tried to ignore it, to simply hope he would come to his senses. It was only when a local beggar went missing that I decided I had to act. By this point I hadn’t seen my master in days, and the smell emitting from behind the door was almost unbearable, the sharp scent of metal mixing with the almost sweet perfumes of decay. The door was cleverly built, but I was, in my mind, approaching my master’s own skill at mechanics, and so it was not long before I threw it open.

The smell hit me like a knife to the face, and I almost vomited there and then. It was overpowering, the metal and the flesh melding into a disgusting buffet of slaughter. Still, the scent was nothing compared to what I found. Rats, cats, dogs, even a pig, all strung up with their throats slit, completely drained of blood. Almost the whole floor was covered in old gore, but I was spared the full scene by the exsanguinated carcass of a pig. As I swung it aside, then did I vomit. Lying on the ground, their throat practically torn out, the blood collected into vials, many of which had been broken.

But lying just beyond the poor soul’s corpse was my master’s desk, and on it was slumped the body of its owner, drenched completely in far fresher blood. And lying in front of him was that cube. It had been opened partially, its gears and pistons gleaming in the candlelight. It looked almost complete, and even just seeing it filled me with the urge to open my own veins, to complete the riddle, to be free. But then the smell hit me again, and I appreciated the slaughterhouse the vile object had created. I reached out, preparing to grab the thing, and I saw a single gear click.

The thing closed on my hand faster than I could blink, shearing two fingers off my hand. I watched it then, as my blood and the blood of who knows who else oozed out of the cracks in its simple iron exterior, drying into rust before my eyes.

I cast that thing into the river, and afterwards I burned that house to the ground. It pains me to think of all of my master’s genius that was destroyed in that fire, but I felt sure that any taint of that hateful thing, and the massacre it caused, had to be destroyed. I lost two fingers, my home, and years of work, but it was better that than to have the memory of that thing to persist. I do often wonder, though, in my weaker moments, that if the cube caused such misery when unsolved, what would happen if someone was to truly open it?

Mr Erik Tolman disappeared some weeks after finishing this entry. He has been presumed dead for some number of years, and the memoirs were published posthumously.

[vennitrii]

THE GUY

[roetrolls]

Anyone like spooky nightmare sequences? :) Special shoutout to @/sasster for letting me put our grampa in here, as well as @/byrdstrolls, @/cryptiids, @/indig0trolls, @/sunnelion, and @/afallatmak, all of whom signed up for cameos in this without actually knowing it <3

Hallways

The Dreamer is unsurprised to find herself back in this place, unfazed by the yawning corridor that unfurls before her as she picks herself up off the floor. The hallway stretches past the horizon, far beyond where her eyes can see, and she only wishes there were time to find the end.

She is no stranger to this realm, and though she will not remember the feeling when she wakes, at this moment she is certain of her place in it.

The endless procession of doorways would be enough to drive any mortal mad, she thinks, but such things have never been a concern for her. Though each door appears identical to those around it, the Dreamer knows exactly what lies behind each one.

----

As always, she begins with the weary man.

To the Dreamer, he is as inherent to this realm as the very walls that make it, for she has never walked a version of this hall without him in it. She has known him longer than anyone, and remembers still when he was merely a tired boy– before the exhaustion had permeated his bones and the eyebags became a permanent fixture on his face.

Settling onto the bed beside him, The Dreamer brushes a thumb across one of those deep, dark bags and cups the young man’s cheek with care. She looks him over fondly, eyes glittering with the sympathy one might expect of an old, dear friend. 

He has looked less troubled in recent months, at least. With a pang, she wonders if he may one day stop appearing here. She wishes she could wish that for him.

When she is ready to begin, she closes her eyes and takes a breath. The floor shifts, and she finds herself in a cathedral not unlike that she was raised in, though every inch of the place burns with a venomous rancor that has seeped into the brick and stone itself.

The man is a child here, small and powerless in the pall of pink light that threatens to suffocate him. Though he tries to make sense of his surroundings, the church refuses to be understood, a tangled web of fractals built of scenery that is far too big. The child cowers beneath it all, hands pressed over his ears in a fruitless bid to stifle the screaming that rattles through his own head.

The Dreamer pays no mind to the room’s impossible structure or twisting walls, stepping forward with her tail fanned out behind her to offer the boy her hand. She has seen this dream before, and she knows what must be done. 

Shakily, he places his palm in hers and allows the Dreamer to pull him to his feet. It is a simple solution, this dream. Hand in hand, she leads the boy from the church. It is not meant to have an exit, but she has learned to bring one with her.

----

This visitor is older than most she sees, handsome face weathered with the strains of time and stress. The gray strands that pepper his hair are sparse, but the faint wrinkles around his eyes form the mask of a man who has seen far too much.

His expression, much unlike those that typically frequent her domain, is strangely relaxed, as though he has forgotten how to wear weakness on his face. The Dreamer lowers herself onto the bed beside him, reaching over gently to tuck a strand of hair behind his ear. The man grimaces as her fingers brush his fins, but, as usual, he does not wake. She must do more than that to free him.

She closes her eyes and takes a small breath. As the air exits her lungs once more, the room falls away beneath her.

When her eyes flutter open, the man is standing, a squirming bundle pressed into his chest. Around him is a battlefield, streaked with blood of every hue and heavy with the scent of death. Bones crunch beneath his feet as he whirls about, desperately struggling to shield his precious cargo from an ever-shifting sun.

The air is as thick and sticky as the viscera around him, but it is the least of his concerns. The bundle shrieks and flails in pain, and the Dreamer realizes suddenly that it is an infant in his arms. 

The child is burning in his grasp, little face pink with heat and tears, but try as he might to shelter it, the man casts no shadow. Hands blistering in the brow-beating light, he fumbles to tuck the wiggler into his uniform, mouthing silent prayers to gods he neither fears nor believes in.

It is the prayer that returns the Dreamer to her senses, reminds her of the power she wields. With an urgency she is not used to feeling, she opens her tail fully and places herself between the visitor and his celestial assailant, shielding both father and son from the rays that threaten them. He looks her over, bewildered and grateful, before the dream comes to an end.

----

Again, the Dreamer finds a new face inside her hall. This one, too, wears the markings of age, though the placement of his wrinkles suggests more smiles than strife. She traces a finger over his skin, lathered in a galaxy of freckles unlike any she has seen before. 

For once, she almost hesitates to join him. Despite the joy etched into his features, there is a sadness to the man, and she cannot shake the feeling that he has visited a world unlike either of those she traverses. She has felt this once before, she recalls, when the striped boy began appearing, but the weight this man carries is different somehow.

Still, he is here with her now, and the Dreamer does not discriminate. She has stalled this long enough, and it is time to see inside.

The scent of blood hits her before she has even entered fully. Immediately, she expects that this dream may be built of more memory than abstraction, a thread of vanilla splicing through the heavy current of decay that surrounds the scene.

She can feel blood pooling at her ankles, thick and viscous, and a single glance reveals the source; the freckled man sits hunched in the center of the room, a muddy red waterfall pouring from his mouth.

The Dreamer wades closer as he begins to claw fruitlessly at his throat, gurgling helplessly around the cascade of blood that forces its way out of him. He sounds almost as if he is trying to scream, though a painful whine is all he can muster in this state.

Gently, she takes him by the wrists and pulls his hands away, moving then to cup the man’s face and wipe away the tears collecting beneath his eyes. With her touch, the flow of blood begins to lessen, until it is only a trickle that runs from his lips. 

With no exit in sight, she does the only other thing she can think to, and cradles the crying man against her chest. Her tail moves to cover them both, blocking out the lingering odor of death and sheltering him long enough for his breathing to become steady.

They sit like that for some time, until finally he is whisked away to a more peaceful sleep.

--

The Dreamer continues down the hall at a steady pace, stepping into countless rooms and countless dreams as the morning wears on. Countless, that is, for anyone else. 

But who would the Dreamer be if she did not keep track?

These visitors are her people, and she is keen to remember each and every one. There is no faceless crowd to lose them in. She carries them all.

She carries the young girl who twists and flails in an all-consuming tide of brackish water, almost alive in the way it reaches for her limbs and drags her to its depths; the masked man who stands, shrinking under the oppressive gaze of his elders, until laughter and music is interrupted by the whistling impact of war; the purple-haired troll who is dragged, kicking and screaming, back to a life she cannot bear, her fingers digging into the sodden earth until the pull becomes too much and they splinter apart like bones. 

The Dreamer holds them, guides them, frees them from their chains, and still she carries them with her.

She remembers the troll with ink on his wrists, who begs for mercy while he is made to flay a man who wears his face, guilt sagging in his gut until he is certain it will be the death of him; the soldier that runs on blood not his own, grasping for innocent faces that slip through his fingers like grains of sand, a chorus of blame racketing through his brain; the sharp-eyed man who walks amongst gravestones, free of dread until he stumbles upon an open casket and a name he knows, the woman he failed reaching for him even as the flesh sloughs off her skull.

With each visitor she frees, the Dreamer can only look to the next, can only hope that it is not yet time to wake; there is so much more to do.

She slips into the room of another visitor she knows, the crying boy, and enters his dream as she has the rest to find him weeping, locked in a labyrinth of rippling beasts that want nothing more than to rip him into pieces.

The Dreamer offers the boy a reassuring smile as she takes him by the hand, but she is nowhere near prepared when he opens his mouth to speak.

It is the first voice she has heard all morning, and there is a question in his tone that he seems to answer on his own before the word is even finished.

“Nymira,” he says, her name almost a whisper on his lips.

The Dreamer’s eyes widen, and she shoots up, awake.

[goreforum]

artfight attack! me n the mutuals

in order from left to right: @lonewolfradio, @jestercircus, meee, @spinosauroid

[bacchuschucklefuck]

couldnt draw my thang for mid-autumn so treated myself to a calne redesign instead

[hinamie]

spiraling

[doodlefox2]

good girl

[devicecontact]

Did a little meme redraw thing. Og under the cut

[wangxianbaybee]

"Your flowers."

"You're welcome, I gave them to you."

[ouroblorbos]

karkat’s not sure what’s so interesting abt this toad …

[holistichiatus]

welcome to warframe, gianni

[art-soboro]

wearing thin

[daily-tma]

Daily TMA 219 (TMAGP) - Ink5oulll