slvershdws

My fiction

It was a dark and stormy night. The kind where the rain came down in sheets and lightning crackled in some mad scientist's experiment. The kind where a dog hoped it was lucky enough to have a house to slink into to keep its coat warm and dry.

Jade Claymore, of Claymore Investigation, hunkered down at the desk in her office, with a stack of paperwork and a glass of scotch, two ice cubes slowly melting into the amber liquid remaining. The clock on the wall read a few ticks past six but she had no plans to close up for the evening. It was a rare night she left the office before nine and sometimes, judging by the rumpled blanket carelessly tossed on the back of the small couch, not at all.

But tonight she had another reason for postponing the exit into the ensuing weather; last minute client, name of Hastur. Zivian Hastur. Called a few hours early, asked for the after hours meet. Normally Jade might have made an excuse-she didn't mind burning late night oil on her own terms, but for someone else?-except everyone knew who Zivian Hastur was.

Not someone you left unread.

So she sat back in the old leather chair, sipping slowly from her glass and reading over her notes on her latest tail while the rain rattled incessantly against the window.

And waited.

When she reached the end of the page of the carefully curated shorthand she'd developed over the years, there came a quiet rap on the pane of her door. Like the rapid tap of fingertips, rather than knuckles.

Jade took one final sip of her drink and set it down on her desk, letting her other hand fall to the arm of the chair, close to where her Colt .38 hung in its holster.

"Come in," she invited, assuming it was her intended client. "Door's open."

There's an old saying about what happens when you assume.

“I swear, if you get me riled before Brunhilde’s ceremony—” Her rebuke ended the moment Kit jerked on her belt, dragging her hips forward roughly.

“—you’ll what?”

When Jade pulled her head up, Kit’s mouth was there, barely a breath away, curling up in a devastating grin. If Jade had a single thought in her brain, it fell away the instant she looked into dancing, bright blue eyes. Kit’s lips curved even more.

“You’ll what?” she murmured, transferring the words to Jade’s lips with the faintest brush.

Jade felt her knees shake. “I’ll be very cross with you.”

A scene from the Quiet History of the Marriage of Kit Tanthalos and Jade Claymore! No such thing as too much armor.

What I'm really enjoying about drawing digitally is if I put everything on its own layer, then I can adjust my proportions so that people look more human-like and less like eldrich horrors. :D

"Where to now, captain of my heart?"

Love to doodle a quiet little moment :D

Provoke the blade, feel it's sting!

Was thinking about how the Blood of the Six might physically manifest. Wild if Kit made a pact with the Crone or maybe even the spirit of Bavmorda.

Though actually I keep going to back to how the evil queen in Conan the Destroyer is Queen Taramis and how wild it would be if Princess Taramis was actually some terrible queen who's legend got distorted over time.

Maybe the Crone was Princess Taramis once upon a time.

Any excuse to draw Jade Claymore in armor! This time a la Shadowheart from BG3.

I've done so much doodling this past year! Some better than others but feels like there's been a lot of progress which has been really fun and motivating to see.

It's also been cool to move from sketching entirely in notebooks to digital sketching which I never thought I'd be able to do.

The amount of money I would pay to see an all ladies/non-binary casting of Hadestown is astronomical.

"Where am I?"

"Someplace safe. The crone won't find you here."

Tale as old as tiiiimm-

oops, wrong disney flick. :D

Guys, backgrounds are hard. Water, contrary to what science tells us, is also hard.

I was just thinking about the first time Kit told Jade she had to come to one of the royal shindigs. Cue panicked "a dress? AND dancing?"

Ballantine doing his best!

Bone Reaver hot springs!