L O R D

A hummed response is first to arrive, seeing his phone rumble with the incoming responses. Whether or not he accompanies will depend - more so on if Dante is wont to make an example of things. If nothing else, he supposes Griffon could, as he is wont to chatter about origins and the like ceaselessly…

“He is. Though I believe Dante is… more wise to sitting things out, these days.” A few things are typed up on the computer, micromanaging tasks, completions and scheduling. Looking up articles on the area in question… “Speaking of, I do not believe you have acquainted me personally on that. What is it precisely that yours commit to?”

“The watchful eye of a family has humbled him some, has it? For the better, I can only imagine. A business needs unity as much as a family does.” His voice croons with more subtle tunes of laughter as he strides idly by the other man’s desk. His gaze shifts elsewhere, to the afternoon sun in the windows as that question is posed.

“That’s just my face.” Still a little unwilling to touch anything brought by him, V pulls the folder towards himself with the butt of a pencil’s eraser. Flipping it open with the lead’s tip, going through it visually before that ‘grim’ expression turns a little more so. “Yes… you were right to do so; these fancy imitation, even if that means donning the likeness of other monsters and men alike to elude capture.” Nothing too bad. He opens his phone to begin texting the family’s group chat.

“Thank you for bringing it to our attention; this will be a good learning opportunity for my boy.”

“Then pardon the expression.” Though for all his performance of distaste, V wakes little more than a smile in reply, slight and fair, and just so reaching to Carvel’s eyes as the folder is relinquished into the other man’s grasp (or that of his pencil, at least.) “Yes...a little out of our wheel-house in regards to the sorts of nuisances we typically mind and manage. Doable, perhaps, but not well-suited to our expertise. Or to our methodology...”

@executare​

Oh, he’s back…

“Is everything alright, ‘Chairman’?”

           “To a certain extent, yes,” a tilt of his own head, albeit upwards in contemplation. May it be to his species that he looks with eyes as wine-red as blood itself. Unusual, for those he has paid witness to, and unusual more to stumble upon one of such fierce power as randomly as this. While there lay no outward threatening air, the discovery is no less startling to him. Brows narrow, but Hector’s tone remains firm as it does sharp, speaking over the distance that sets them parted.

             “Dare I ask who you are?” Possibly. A few steps are taken within the direction he were once directed towards. The horse pulling gently on the reins in hand. “A name, even. It is unusual… though to your credit, I smell no human blood on you…”

“...Carvel. I am called Carvel.” A name is a very simple thing to give, after all. As simple as a glance, as simple as a breath, and nothing in the grand scheme of things. The Lord leaves it to his peculiar guest to decide if one is owed in return--giving no chase but the silent, tentative tread of his soles on the sun-blown grass as his feline eyes slit in the daylight seeping from on high.

His is staring is… unprofessional, to say the least. Unmoved and gawking, albeit more so from sheer prowess that is so uniquely - “Oh,” it is as if he were in the company of Hades once more. How odd… how so wildly, absurdly odd that he did not know of this man’s existence. “I beg your pardon, please…”

This is awkward….

Though staring is well known to follow his passing; there are always eyes, leering or awestruck or fearful--the innumerable shades between. There are pale eyes today, mist-pale, lightning bright, curious and gawking. Carvel answers them with red, gaze feline and piercing as it ponders over the stranger from their starlit hair to the hollow of their throat. And then again, their staring eyes.

In my personal experience in the past few years spent roleplaying with Carvel, I’ve noticed the kinds of people he gravitates towards always seem to fall into the tall, dark and handsome sub category, but more specifically, he likes dominating personalities. People that are self assured, confident, charismatic and even maybe a little egotistical in their own sense of self. Carvel finds these people as irresistible as he does infuriating, perhaps purely because he is so overwhelmingly conditioned to the presence of people that worship him. When faced with someone that doesn’t, it’s exciting even if the size of their ego tends to annoy him. There is an infinite charm to these kinds of people who are strong and commanding of respect that Carvel is simply magnetised towards.

This might stem from the fact Carvel needs a pillar of support as much as someone who isn’t afraid to square up to him and tell him what he needs to hear; Carvel pre-ascension is extremely volatile and even weak in the emotional sense as a consequence to the trauma and misery he’s suffered for most of his life. Strong personalities as such are deeply attractive and deeply necessary, for someone needs to be able to take what Carvel can dish out as much as talk him down.

I’ll start by saying first and foremost that you are correct with your lattermost assumption. Carvel is an extremely volatile person even on his better days (at least pre-ascension Carvel is worse for this fact than post-ascension) and so he is an extremely reactive individual, whatever the emotion. He is always going to be deeply affected by things like loss. At it’s absolute worst, grief sadly manifests for him in a state of near madness as Carvel himself puts it, in saying that “like a mad man, he searched for her” to describe his desperation to recover Eve’s reincarnations. Though the stages of getting to that point go through some noteable patterns I’ve observed in his responses to relationships and loss of all natures, not strictly love (in my own interpretation, that is.)

The initial stage of grief is purely reactive; he goes through immense anger and pain which can sometimes be destructive in nature before he mellows into anguish and mourning, which is where the fits of crying, screaming, sobbing etc. manifest the most abundantly. He is, to begin with, very expressive in his grief. The second stage albeit is a lack of reaction. He turns almost numb in his depression, does not wish to speak, does not wish to drink and does not want to do much of anything at all except be alone with his thoughts and his pain, though not knowing in the slightest what to do with it. Pain therefore is usually answered in pretty nasty self-punishing tendencies in that regard whether he actively realises he is punishing himself when he’s already at his weakest or not. Essentially, he indeed shuts down but to his own detriment. He might still be functional but he’s not entirely present.

The next stage is plain and simple mourning, where he may somewhat return to his normal life, but it’s obvious he is carrying a lot of hurt with him; and Carvel mourns for an incredibly long time. His grief over Eve is the most extreme case as he has been tortured with her lives and deaths over and over again, though that is not to say that Carvel would not grieve for lengthy periods over less consistently traumatic losses either. This is also a period of retreat in the sense while he is able to resume being around others, he can’t bear being close to them and can become hostile when forcibly pulled from it before he himself is ready. Even in the cases where he has recovered enough to be both functional and sociable, people touching on those raw nerves in the wrong way can still set him off into a state of hostility and defensiveness.

            “Your evolution was first a distinct interest to me, as were your general person, your presence; how one could be so abundant yet entirely foreign to that abundance stirred concern as much as fascination. Then I grew fond over you in my eager, and mused over how a great and many situational missteps in cultivation were too risky to dismiss. You, as a person, as an individual… and the balancing of that person and this immense power that I wanted to handle precisely and cautiously. Though we both spoke in lying tones more often than we perhaps should have… I found it easier to explain things away back then. Perhaps it were easier on us both, for all we were lead to believe, or worried ourselves into believing, back when.” A terrible belief that would stir him to a flinch, would persuade him away - returning to morose thoughts if not for his God’s will to keep him securely so anchored. Weightily against him, yes, even dreamily so. Having a subtle twist, a light press into those hands that work something gentle into the paths of his ribs. The allowance of this small act of creation numbers too many pleasures to count. The mind reels; happily remade from dour thoughts and feelings into something else. Into smiling against him, into breathing his scent like a beloved perfume. Tasting his skin like a man desperate from fasting.

            “It has not ceased for me…-” a purring all his own is inevitable, then, when his God writes rapture with his own voice, inscribes it with his own hands as he pulls him so much closer. Claiming ownership that does not belong to him in flesh, however much it may feel to the contrary; yes, here to lay besides his God within his coffin delights Mathias to heights otherwise foreign to him. A strange discovery itself. A stranger hunger being nurtured that yes, bedeviled over and over into a stark state of emptiness, here is where revitalization breathes new and maddening in every vein, every pulse and every coherent thought. “I think of your every secret, your every hidden thing from me-”              Act precedes his rational thought, however. Biting into the neck formerly so gently-loved, only tenderly kissed. The overwhelming sense of welcoming acceptances that seduced silent-needs now rouse him jarringly aware: to bite as if to drink from one of tremendous caliber places a learned burden of guilt upon the lesser. Though he clutches Carvel as one would a Sire, grasping the lower nape of his neck to beg that he bend, move, to allow him in – the following (drowned) sounds of quivering whimpers reaches his ears before the panicked shuddering of his own heartbeat ever could. A horrific realization to him, how one act of need yet spirals him to this very day. Aches he once swore were imagined dreams reanimate in the tearing of fabric, the touch of his hands despairing. The fact remaining that he still cannot drink. Still cries within tones disembodied.

            ’I want your approval; I want after your approval of me, I want to drink the blood of who owns me, my God,’

“My abundance was never obvious to me for I was one that always felt he was empty, or that he might as well be for everything around him. A grave, a crypt, filled with mourning never meant for him, altars overflowing with sacrificial gold that was not even his. I woke in this body not even knowing my own name, let alone what abundance was mine and what was created by the person who owned it before me. It...always was like that. I grew abundant in curses, very little else. It is not until the truth was carved out on the surface of my life that I understood myself. It was not until I embraced it that I became, truly, abundant...until I embraced you, and for a while, I felt whole even before I truly was. As frightening as it was to say it. We were liars to one another, but liars with a cause.” Though the thought of ever having been a liar in the face of something worshipped so dearly becomes a sour wound on the surface of his heart to remember it now; there is shame in ever having cowered from Mathias once upon an uglier time, shame in having lashed and bitten and bared his fangs with all the aching of a wild animal. He wonders if that shame is a similar shade in Mathias as the two of them brush and tangle together in the silent warmth of the coffin’s velvet walls, as Mathias breathes him in and Carvel soaks in the peaceful heat of his skin. His hands fan their way round, finding their way along the peaks and wings of his shoulders that fit in the curves of his palm’s just right. A throaty purr interrupts the moment’s quiet, confusion tilting the sound as it slips between the Lord’s open lips.

“Nothing of me is a secret to you anymore, Mathias. I have no part of myself that I would keep from you. You are cherished beyond secrecy now. You know that, don’t you?” His nails carry themselves along the slope of Mathias’ spine, impossibly gentle, phantom-soft and flowing easy into the eventual slide of the Lord’s palms as they slip from spine to hip to the back of the other man’s legs as he yanks higher, pulls him tighter upon himself with a soft, sleep-sweet sigh as the Lord’s dark head swings back on its rest. Even before those teeth have found their way in. Even before pain bursts into pleasure profound enough to make Carvel seize with that moment of bright, brilliant ache. So close--Carvel’s lashes flutter over his wine-dark eyes much before he cares to compose himself (if indeed he ever cared to at all); so close, but Mathias hesitates as Carvel always fears that he will. At least today, it is a hesitance that he can soothe away.

[Real talk, everyone knows they can like...talk to me in the IMs if they just want to discuss this manhwa with me right lmao I’m not THAT unapproachable guys, c’mon. I’ve noticed lately I’m getting a mass influx of anonymous asks just basically repeating what happens in Vampire Library. I know what happens. I just don’t have a lot to say about everything in it. So like, if you just want to chat about it casually or REALLY want to get my thoughts on something that happened...you can just IM me? I don’t really want to keep bloating the dash with just basically paraphrasing the entire story piece by piece every time someone finds out a new bit of information because I sometimes get tens of these anons at a time week to week lmao so it’s not feasible for me to answer them all anyway, which is why I only answer a fraction of them; specifically when the topic is one I want to add some personal insight or opinions to. Which is...not many of them. Not every little detail in the story is something I have anything to really comment about except yeah, that happened, or otherwise something I need to clairfy (as with the confusion about Mano and Carvel’s relationship. I understand why that needs spelling out more clearly.)

That said, I appreciate the interest and I also appreciate anons inquiring about my specific portrayal or stuff that isn’t more or less common knowledge to people who have read the manhwa, raw or not. I do enjoy my character building anons a great deal. I always make an effort to answer those.