#aedin

In the hanging garden, please don't speak // In the hanging garden, no one sleeps

beware; disguise, deceitful charms; I dreamed of thee. I will not survive you.

It turns out just doing my favorite parts of art without the frustrating bits means I make more art! who'da thunk it. so we are back to ink and hatching and thematic halos, and it turns out I'm better at it than I was (checks) eight years ago!

bonus masc melisande:

I redrew another piece from 2014! This one was really fun and makes me want to draw ensemble posters more often.

So, these are characters from another story I'm working on, Awakening Myth. I'm not prepared to divulge the entire plot right now, because it's a little complicated, but I'll tell you a bit about the characters!

The guy in the back is someone who's already on this account. His name is T'Arnysh and he's part cat. Here, he's in his thirties. The boy in the front is his son, Aedin, whom he had with Aisehna. The cat girl is his sister Grayse. There's a huge age gap, so she's still a teenager here. Then the girl in the fancy dress is named Levaeda. She's a courtier in a fantasy kingdom that's based on 17th-18th century France and England. So, I have the perfect excuse to draw those amazing dresses.

A Fissure Forms in the Vessel || Konstantin/Melisande, Konstantin/Aedin, original male character/ensemble || E || ch 1/1 || 2.2 k words

archive warnings: graphic depictions of violence, rape/non-con, underage sex

Original Character(s), Sexual Violence, Blood and Injury, Pregnancy, Implied/Referenced Death in Childbirth, Rape/Non-con Elements, Implied/Referenced Incest, Matricide, Filicide, Implied/Referenced Underage, Body Horror, Self-Harm, Castration, Internalized Homophobia, Misgendering, Unwholesome OC Week 2026

When Konstantin finds her Melisande is at the window-seat of her bower: outside, it is spring. The garden is in bloom, the trees’ boughs so heavy with fruit that they brush the ground and create a hundred small and hidden spaces that might shelter two lovers. Petals drift in through the window, just the same pink blush as his consort’s cheeks—if he caught one in his palm he thinks it would bruise just as easily. This should be his warning: Konstantin feels at peace. — Konstantin knows that he is a violent man just as he knows he is a wicked one. It is his nature; it cannot be gentled, and it will always, eventually, hurt those around him.

Read on AO3!

Day 2 for @unwholesomeocweek: Proxy Sex, Body Horror, Coercion

Lmaoooo yes absolutely!!

So to lay out the ground work, Aedin comes from the Tower of the Magerium, which is the center of magic in this setting. It's something like a research college, in that most mages (though not all) were educated there and remain to live and work after! Their education progresses through a few different stages: three levels of apprenticeship fierst in large classes and then under the tutelage of one master (Apprentice rank, levels three through one) followed by several years of independent study with a council of advisors (Magician rank). These are most analogous to high shool and college, and then to graduate school! A major working of some kind in one's specialty is the final requirement for being advanced to the next rank, like a capstone or thesis project. A graduated mage at this rank is called an Adept, and this is as far as most mages choose to progress!

As an Adept, any mage has almost unrestricted access to the tower's libraries and archives. If they're so inclined they can and often do continue researching whatever caught their fancy in their specialization, either to great ends or to quiet experimentation. If their work produces some kind of advancement of significance, whether in knowledge or by invention, they can be advanced by the High Council to the rank of Magus. This is a doctorate, more or less! You aren't... really supposed to do it twice. There's no additional rank, there's not really a ton of circumstances in which it's occurred! But sometimes a guy goes and makes SEVERAL leaps of progress in a field and you can't rightly ignore it.

More under the cut.