——All is vanity, saith the preacher

The gods spoke your name long before your mother ever did.

It was never a question of whether the prophecy would awaken, only when.

There are older things than kings, and older promises than crowns.

I fear the prophecy less than I fear those who seek to fulfill it.

The realm has spent generations preparing for your coming. I wonder if it prepared you at all.

You have mistaken a prophecy for a promise.

Every man who has interpreted these words has reached a different conclusion.

The stars have not been thus aligned since the prophecy was first spoken.

There is another verse, though none alive dare recite it.

The oracle begged that your name never be written.

The prophecy speaks of two heirs, though history remembers but one.

Some truths were buried not because they were false, but because they were true.

You bear the face the prophecy described.

The realm has long awaited a savior. It never considered what such salvation might require.

The scroll has outlived kingdoms.

The prophecy did not foretell peace.

I have devoted my life to preventing what now stands before me.

There are some doors that ought never be opened, and some prophecies that ought never be read.

Fate has a curious habit of finding those who flee it.

Every attempt to thwart the prophecy has only strengthened it.

The gods delight in speaking plainly only after it is too late.

The prophecy named no victor.

You ask whether I believe the prophecy. I ask whether it believes in you.

There are many who would sooner see you dead than see the prophecy tested.

It is no blessing to know the shape of one's own ruin.

The child foretold has become the very thing the realm feared.

We have spent centuries preparing for the wrong heir.

Not every chosen soul is chosen for glory.

You were never meant to inherit the kingdom. You were meant to change it.

The prophecy concerns blood far more than birthright.

There are those who worship the prophecy and those who fear it. I have yet to meet one who understands it.

Your ancestors spent their lives hiding these words from the world.

Every generation has believed itself the last.

I would sooner question the gods themselves than trust the certainty of prophets.

Some prophecies awaken only when spoken aloud.

The oldest lie ever told was that destiny cannot be resisted.

There is a reason the seers refused to finish the tale.

You have inherited a burden no crown could equal.

Even the ravens refused to fly the night you were born.

The heavens marked your coming with uncommon violence.

There are prophecies written in ink, and others written in blood.

The prophecy was never meant for mortal eyes.

I begin to fear that we have misunderstood every word.

The final line has been missing for generations.

A kingdom may survive a poor ruler. Few survive a fulfilled prophecy.

The gods have remained silent ever since your birth.

I do not doubt the prophecy. I doubt our understanding of it.

The greatest danger lies not in destiny itself, but in those determined to hasten its arrival.

The beast ( almost juvenile in contrast, yet no less of a threat ) barely vanishes behind the top of the ascension, before the flaming serpent finally lunges and strikes, swiftly closing the illusion of a head start in a blink.

The lord's shadowy silhouette towers above all. Whether the beast met its end there and then, Rya could not tell. If not, the flames could have spread quick, making the sheltering evergreen into a scorching prison of searing black trees, devouring all it touches.

And everything she admired on their way here.

For mere seconds the air carried her the echoes of an agony. Short lived. Then, silence.

Stillness allows the harrowing realization finally to crawl its way to a naive mind. The feeble fingers reach to grab and pull the robes tighter around her form, as shock spreads a shiver over the thin bones. The threat came without a forewarning: so inevitable, and undeserved.

Her body ached from impact against the ground, her spirit crushed by an idea of somene wishing her harm. A woman never had a hand offend her for punishment, never trained to endure violence, never done a thing to claim an enemy. The small serpent knew no anger or resentment, the lack balanced by deep fear and sadness.

All the excitement washed away. The remaining forest feels suddenly cold, bare and unsafe. Far away from reassurance and care of her mother.

As soon as the shaking feet find balance, she stumbles forward. Towards her cruel champion. Bristle like grass breaks beneath her step. The closer, the ground still glows in embers. Born of blasphemy, rejected even by devouring flames, thus oblivious towards its malignant nature. How could she fear what cannot harm her?

Hands extend. Tense. Hesitating contact in a dread of rejection. When desperation is far too overwhelming, maintaining respect for her lord's request becomes non-exitent. Soon, the trembling arms find the way to lock tightly around his form. Her face may sink deep into folds of the red fabric.

He isn't what one would call ' proud ' of his work. There lived a sense of pride for what truculent, sure ruin he could enact on a whim. Never was there any doubt of it. But — its danger was not in his forgotten ability as it were the comfortable habit. An old routine that has never betrayed him ; a certainty, a guarantee that would never leave him. The Serpent took pleasure in such havoc, enough so that the spurned, burning golden rune seated in his skull couldn't deter him from sinking into the solace of his calling.

This bandit vanished from his sight. Either into the flames or into sanctuary is unknown to Messmer. The long taut of his body poised into a lethal elegance —— a true serpent steadied to strike —— as he leered over the lands for his prey. His spear aimed true, proffered over head to guide his smite, when he felt the smallest, desperate graze gliding the metal of his thighs.

The illusion shatters. Hairline fractures spider over his vision, compartmentalizing reality into trenchant shards that tumble from the window of actuality into freefall, stabbing down at his heels.

" Rya, " Messmer's dulcet voice succumbs into an beastial hoarseness ; hissing its bid towards her.

His spear is lowered, discarded to sink into the lank dirt beside them. Their guard detail, well attuned to the heat of Messmer's flame, vanished over the hills some moments before, leaving the Serpent willing to dispel his warlord nature enough to be something else. Something that could encourage, if not comfort.

" Thou art scatheless, " he assures at first, descending carefully onto the opposite knee as metal-fitted fingers come up, claws threading over gossamer cloth to capture his Maiden from harm. " They are gone. "

melina's face is drawn into an exhausted line as she kneels (not to him⸻she faces the flames, the braziers scattered through his barren room) in her typical fashion, with shadows flickering across her back. here, she is warm, so perhaps there is no need for the cloak; when she looks at their mother's weathered face, carved from stone and sullen, she is glad to be covered.

messmer is a cage'd snake, and they both know it. he may posture his position however he likes, ever the obedient, hesitant son⸻but she, untethered and smouldering, sees the truth. it is as he says; there is no one to stop him, anymore, and yet, he still stands guard here, on the edges. for what? a sense of arbitrary loyalty for an uncaring god? there is a far beyond, a world that lays past the shadow. does he care?

“ anywhere, ” comes her proposal. resolve is ashen with nerve. beneath it all, a flash of irritation that makes way for jealousy. she does not envy the stagnant life, nor the burden of marika's past, but messmer is solid and real, and can go where he likes, untied to fragments of grace. “ you can go where you like, and yet, you let the embers of a dying dynasty cage you. do you never wonder what lies beyond the veil? ”

The Great Serpent shifts over his throne. Everything from scale to flame-cloaks slither about him, his bare thighs, and the seat as he did. " Wonder often I have. Portions of that world hath slipped in. Glimpses of what hath tumbled t'wards mine feet in fragmentary glances. Everything stripped from gold —— have thou noticed? Surely. "

Queen Eternal hugs her flame. She clutches the pioneering essence of sapient mankind ; him, and all the unblemished youth before dualistic abyss took hold. He could almost feel Her frowning over his shoulder where She was already carved somber into the stone. It doesn't dissuade him from the revelation he has beheld.

" Rot would not become me, " he laments. Eternal are the children. Eternally they suffer their cages before their boons. " How unpleasant it is —— but thou does not beseech me in mine ruination. Nay, what I see in mine dearest sister is a syllable of credence. "

The Revenant wonders if it might surprise him to know the way she's toiled the thought, and for how long she has thought of the answer. The wonder sits behind her eyes as they watch him, expression unmoving and yet warm all the same.

       ❝ I have come to realize there is no distance at all between the two. ❞   Her voice is even and soft as she answers him.   ❝ One's good deed could do evil upon another. One's evil may only be dark because the good in another will not see it's purpose. ❞   Now she averts her gaze, letting it drift to her hands. She holds one up, as if to let the both of them inspect the delicate joints as she slowly opens and closes her fingers along her palm.   ❝ The good of  my life  was borne of an unbearable and heartbreaking evil.   - The darkness of my vengeance is the only good I see left in myself. ❞   As Daphne lowers her hand again to her middle, her eyes rise to meet his own.

       ❝ The distance, Messmer, between you and I are only but a few steps. ❞   Daphne demonstrates by closing that very distance, every soft and slow step ringing with gentle and melodic chimes. She stands near toe to toe with him, chin tilted so her eyes never leave his.   ❝ Yet if we were to turn our backs and walk until we meet again, it changes. ❞   The turn she does is one smooth motion, graceful with a sweep of her veil.

       ❝ There  is  no distance. Only the path which one chooses between the two... ❞

" Thou'st right in thy assertion, " he couldn't argue such arbitrary distance ; he had oft thought the same, came to the same conclusion as her, " evil and good balance on unseen scales — yet unnoticed is oft how they borrow from one another. "

This Revenant steps too close. Messmer's towering physique lengthens at the spine, tied back by the shoulders, as he maintains the courtesy of their shared gaze. She almost vanishes beneath him under the obscuring long drapes of his cloak, inciting him to painfully recline his helmet in a illusion of a courteous forward tip.

A worse turn was dealt them, when they locked down the valley hamlet and set it to the torch. Yharnam remembers only the smoke and the cries of the dying, not the sacrifice that was slaughtered upon the gods' altars for her survival. Miriam was forged in those same flames. Her lungs have blackened with soot and even now she smells the roasting flesh of beast and man alike, the stench of fur on fire. Where she looks, this young faith-corsetted mind, her eyes reflect heat.

She bows her head to the Vicar in sweet gratitude, a pale veil-hung ghost by his side. You ought to forget, her professors used to say, that she is flesh and blood at all. She is a conduit for the Church's will. Translucent and formless. No surgeon, no servant, should be a solid thing. All so she can fit every space she inhabits. And yet, when the gods demanded proof of their aptitude, there was such a splintering, such a breaking.

The Church's will, of course, is Laurence's will.

"Yes, your Eminence." She casts herself back, into the furnace. "I know that I need not tell you of the events in Old Yharnam, how they transpired and what we came to do, my fellow practitioners and I. But let me speak, all the same, of the way things were done. The ashen blood spread so rampantly that we could not contain it. The patients themselves turned to poison beneath our hands. We washed and bound them, to no avail. We slaved in our laboratories and in the quarantine houses. And on the heels of the ashen blood, came the beast. I lost more patients to the scourge than I ever did to the disease. My colleagues succumbed, doctors and hunters both. I put them down myself in the end. There was nothing we could do." Her voice thickens with emotion.

"But it was in that hopelessness, that nothingness, that I understood." Her gloved hands open, unable to contain her sudden fervor. "It is all one and the same. The plague that brought us low, the beast scourge. All of it is sent by the gods, by Oedon Himself. I watched the fires and the deaths and I saw what my masters would not, in their hubris: This is not a punishment, this is not a horror to master. This is a lesson. The gods, in their grace, revealed the path forward, so decidedly, so clearly, that the mortal mind rebelled. The Old Yharnam fiasco, the burning, was that rebellion. A sign of our intellect failing us in the feeble addiction to a flesh that should never contain us if we mean to," her eyes widen, "to evolve."

A passion, a lust, has crept into her voice, an edge so radiant, one might see it glowing in the well of her throat when she speaks.

Laurence felt sorrow where most felt glee. Undue suffering for those loaning their trust && lives to those designated to care for them. The ambivalence of Yharnam was damning, and daresay the rot springing forth was a convenient but fatal allegory. There was a boon there, notably, new flesh outgrowing the old flesh, Laurence lectured feverishly on the divine meaning to no avail. In Miriam, he seems to have found a faithful peer. If not that, then someone so close to it —— the minor differences could not matter compared to what similarly overlays their obvious beliefs.

Miriam was a female figure clad in holy whites. To touch upon her was like touching upon an altar, or so the children would say. Had she been so dispassionate in her recital, Laurence would have found it easy to dismiss her, but the engine in his chest was ignited by her fervor. It was like witnessing his home burn to ash ; he was spurred into action, feeling his heart leap in his chest, and his joints twitch with hunger to perform. All such impulse stilled by his impressive refrainment. No intensity is mirrored in him, not yet, only a glittered acknowledgement in his stare and short smile tugged over his lips.

" You have stolen the words from my mouth, my pupil. " The Vicar rewarding praise through a generous assignment of titles. " You are alone in your thinking, I am loathed to say it. I find myself smitten by your commitment to unseen truths many others readily dismissed. "

finally, as konrad finished his part of their impromptu performance, gawain let out a soft scoff. he did not reach for the proffered weapon, instead taking the time to properly seat himself at the table. he took another moment to swirl the glass, watching the contents from beneath dark lashes - before he affixed the vampire with another piercing stare.

"in all your wisdom, you still know very little about me." what could have been construed as disgruntled came out as a simple statement. gawain unfurled armored fingers, gesturing to the seat across from him "sit. i've no intention of attacking my host after he's so graciously served me." another slow drink. it was a good blend, even though his waning humanity meant it left a strange aftertaste at the back of his throat.

"i needn't kill you for death to claim you, nor need i die for it to see me off." one long leg crossed over the other, gawain held his wine far enough away to contemplate the sanguine red. "my wit is intact, fantomă... perhaps even my recklessness." a humorless scoff of a laugh. "have you never heard; death is but a form of change. a transition from one state to the next... surely, accursed as you are with unlife, you would be rather intimate with this idea, no?" a quick glance up, just a second of an upward flick before his stare returned to his hand.

" I know, " notes of lament flavor his rasping voice, " you disappeared so suddenly on me, I was beginning to think you abandoned me for another. "

Old wood protests the weight of the non-man seating over it. It groans against its bearings and scratches over the worn stones as he banks up towards the table's edge. A polite display of hospitality hooking his shoulders back, chest forward, and the slightest smile gleaned through unfurled lips.

Another mocking cackle hisses through his fangs, escaping over the lip of his goblet and into the belly of his aromatic sanguine blend. He tastes the proverb as he does his wine, letting both settle into his philosophies. " I was born ' dead ', as you might put it, I carry no intimacy with the concept outside of wielding it. " Not that he doesn't try to empathize with it. Somewhere in the vast oceans of his mind does he pretend to seep into fluttering heart prey, act as they do, ingest fear as they would, dive over the cliff's edge only to arise from shattered bones a wolf, or a bear. It was an unrealistic comparison to him, but he plays along.

" . . . A boring affair, " said Curze, inserting a break as he nurses his cup again ; deciphering visions from hearsay before he misspeaks," my brides told me tales of a father. My crows croaked tales of exile. I went searching for your bones in the outlands and found none, so I dismissed the rumors as libel. After all, there is no prize in jeweling your skull and parading it in any human keep, I wouldn't think. "

she exhaled through her nose and lowered her hands. "i do not believe there is a right way or a wrong way to be a human. no one has the same circumstance or experience to shape their worldview." her father had taught her that much under his tutelage. a correct approach and an incorrect approach for building and repairing machinery was a different matter altogether.

And, if she was still here, that is.

" If there is no ' right way ' to be human-, " he reformats her deduction with neat folds back onto the platter she served it on," -then, wouldn't He be the most human of all? Of anyone here, his collection of experience surpasses ours by a margin so impossibly immeasurable, we could not begin to quantify it. "

The Sigilite doesn't outright dismiss her conclusion. Glaringly obvious was the discrepancy between either one of them, pointedly singular && odd they were compared to a baseline set of genetic manufacturing, compared to Him. He who shrouds in golden light and unimaginable perspicacity —— the difference could not be anymore jarring.

His hands are at his sides again, nails digging into his palms. Ghostly echoes are thrown about him throughout the words spoken, reflecting the theatrical dance of Fulgrim's emotions and madness throughout time. They violate his captive souls, churning all their immaterial noise together into discordant music. Suddenly, he feels a rush of light-headed euphoria. Seethe turns to simmer, and the Eternal breathes deep.

Coiling over into himself in an endless, maddening fashion, the Phoneician every bit of aeternum in his own way, he reseats above Lucius. Boyish laughter grates beneath the scraping of many scales eroding the marble smooth, flat, where it mounted center of the choir hall.

" Is this truly all a game to you, Lucius? " Two sinuous arms cast wide, outstretch as an honorable host would invite a waiting guest idling near an usher," here you are begging for results and you cannot take it seriously. Not yourself, not your situation, not your goals. What do you expect to accomplish, my dear? You . . . Rend clean through your enemies, dress yourself in lauded ichor, and expect power to stack with each head you complete on your totem? "

Silence stagnates his inquiry. Fulgrim really allows Lucius to chew on the question, but bated breath begs for a few moments extra to give explanation.

" You are the same as anyone else. What makes you different than your cousins or your betrayers? You want to make an impact, yet when I gnaw on the stars and peer into fleeting conversations, only foul Fabius has many any sort of admonishing repute. You're just another bladesman: what is your . . . edge? "

Happy Sunday.

Helmet description touched me so much

"The winged snakes were Messmer's constant companions.

nothing but serpents

hollow - empty - writhing -

Obedient to authority, head ducks back down with tensed shoulders, like coiling her body curls as small as possible with humanoid limitations, near the embrace of the ground. In contrast to the cold soil, her hands maintain the touch of the flame, the trails over her frame, still lingering over the unseen, impenetrable scales it had once come in contact with. Passively rejecting its malevolence and absorbing it into comfort, while her as discomfort sprouts from the mere tension of the scene, still oblivious to what even led to it place.

An unknown figure comes briefly in view as the shadow retreats from her, now lengthening as he stands at full height. The glimpse she was granted reveals a possibly young warrior. The build masculine, not much bigger than her. Malformed. Features humanoid, feline and canine in the same with messy fur and skin - here and there asymmetrical growths, long and short, sprout from crown of their head, spine and limbs, partly covered in simple natural canvas, folded and sewn to fit their features.

They step minimally on their spot, in a way that struggles against primordial instincts to flee. The fangs are exposed, screeches suffocating into a nervous growl as claws readjust around the hilt of an old blunt blade in new found courage. The beastly eyes, partly covered in rags stare up at the serpent with disgust, giving him no dignity of humanity, or divinity, not even dignity of any creation known. A way she would never cast upon him.

From there Rya cannot witness her lord's face. She watches as he gathers himself, as if he was a different person to whom she had known. Even if it was a mere second, she believes to witness similar eerie stillness and silent hostility of a wild serpent locked on a prey, patient, and ready to lunge at trigger of quick movement.

And just briefly her eyes might lock with her aggressor. The flash of shared confusion and a fear they desperately tried to conceal under encouraged aggression. Just like any soldier sent on a quest far too intimidating. Possibly tricked to march to a certain doom with romanticized ideals of an honorable death, the posthumous celebrations. Only to realize they were far from ready. Even if their cause was justified, to banish the terror that wouldn't stop, that would eventually devour them all, one by one.

Ash has yet to float across the field. The grass remained lush, dull but lively beneath the overcast over the sprawling hills and consuming tree line unperverted by the scorching flame. Though, it quakes within him, sputtering out the clutch of his palms as he stilled with the world whom breath was withheld in anticipation.

The beast, or in whatever manner this one might conform itself, didn't register to the Serpent. A diminutive thing snarling meters away only appeared smaller in Messmer's sights. An obstacle at best ; one of the plenty forefront fodders —— soft bellied, careless, easily slain in a swipe of his blade. Caution heeded within its draw of the knife, proffered forward in warning, yet wavered as its confidence pooled into the dirt, vanishing from its pride as it darted away.

True to the nature of his being ( miserable, impetuous, vile, && foul ), Messmer strikes forward, both lance and body, with a deathly grace. Unrestrained by the capture of wind nor the logic of atmosphere, the Silver Lord dash upon the beast in few short steps in a horrific ascent up the hill. The blade striking the soil first aimed at ragged steps, pinned into the Earth, marking its place on the field before the air swallows thick with a sweltering heat.

Any of his siblings would have ready some quip, some lecture, to crest forward their magnificence as both demi-god and warrior above those who crawl in pace of them, but never Messmer. His offended weighed over his shoulders and trickled into his heart until his skin burned with finding retribution. Killing for the God-Queen exudes a coldness ( simple, stalwart, predictable ), but killing for passion fed the Abyssal Snake.