9. show us a finished piece right alongside the original sketch

OH OH OH I even have a good one for this. I'm so proud of this piece and it took me four (4!!) different sketches to get to the final piece.

I usually ink straight over my original pencils, so that's fairly unusual for me.

11. show us the last thing you drew, be it a finished piece or a small doodle

hee hee hoo hoo Souls OCs

Whose is the blood, is the real question; whose the ash. What caused the rapid breath, redundant as it is in an undead body. What put the red glint in the dark eye, glimpsed for just a moment behind the slits of a visor. No moonlit duty, this; something else is going on.

The low voice breaks on a stuttering laugh. Someone will open a wound. Someone will open it again.

Ifsahan goes still for a moment. No flutter of pulse, no breath, no blink of a dark eye. "She was terribly sweet. I thought for a while that we could be friends, the way she'd creep closer when I'd rest by her gate. But that's when I still thought the bars were to protect her, not-"

They shake their head, swallow horrors. "-not to confine her. I didn't realize at first that she'd been treated with such needless cruelty."

Maimed; silenced. (Not just her; one drowned alongside her ward, another was trapped in a horrid oubliette, guarded by vicious dogs. It did not have to be so.)

"Her faith was beyond my understanding. How she's stayed sane at all-" For she had, for who knows how long. Holy woman for a sacred fire.

"I tried to be kind to her. It was the only way I could make her burden easier, her soul lighter."

And what a soul she had, impossibly rich with humanity, impossibly bright despite everything. What undead could fail to sense it? What hungry soul could fail to crave it?

That gets a rare smile - fleeting and tender, not meant for the asker. Here in Anor Londo itself, it doesn't feel like a trespass to speak his name. "Gwyndolin is--" The last light of divinity, pale and distant. The voice that beckons, the rustle of soft fabric; the veil that must remain drawn. The sight denied, but the presence deeply felt. Not the unblinking eye of the moon, but rather the last crescent in the rapidly darkening sky. "-the best piece of Anor Londo. If not for his voice at the right moment, I fear for where I'd be now."

They'd have been lost, they mean - one more hollow, wandering hostile through the golden city, prey to the silver archers.

"I would call him friend, if I could. If he permitted such intimacy. I think that he is very lonely."

But not all is ease and candlelight. Gwyndolin accepts their offerings with fleeting praise. Also he sends them to hunt, again and again, unexpected and often unprepared. The invaders of the eye, at least, choose when they go.

"The human followers of the Darkwraiths, I understand. Those who've offended him - well, I must trust Gwyndolin himself on those. He has taken the light itself from those hunts, and I must pursue them in the dark." Not that it matters, when the eyes flash blue and one is drawn, instead, by the beacon of a sinner's soul.

"But... some of his targets have placed themselves on the list. Some of them use it to entrap us Blades, and to toy with us. Sometimes, only sometimes, I get to surprise them." A thin, grim smile; their eyes sparkle, relishing the fight. "The rest? I won't say I often come out on top when I am sent into a trap. Why, if his goal is justice, does he permit it?"

And the real question, the pointed one, sharp enough to pierce their own heart: