wizardofrozz

Not in any lucid-dreaming way, nor from any sense of what the fuck was that? when you inevitably awaken, but there's a quality about your dreams lately that makes them feel real. More real than your actual life, half the time. You know you're not lucid under your own volition; that would imply you're able to influence anything that happens in these bouts of unconsciousness, that you're the one stitching together threads of a tapestry still in progress. Lucidity would imply control.

You know better than to even pretend you're in charge here.

Not when his presence permeates every pore, every cell of your incorporeality. Even on the nights you don't see him, you know he's there, just beyond the veil, watching you.

The routine of it has become familiar by now. Not a night has gone by since the first where you don't fall into this dreamworld almost immediately upon fading out of consciousness. The fear—metallic and oily and thick on the back of your tongue—doesn't even register anymore.

Maybe it should.

You're here again. 'Here' is a relative term, the logical part of your brain knows. Sometimes the dreamworld tastes like blood and sears just as hot—never enough to burn or scar, but enough to be uncomfortable. Sometimes the landscape teems with vicious life, glossy leaves, and a shattered city. Sometimes, your personal favorite, the dreams take you here, a place that feels paradoxically safe. Ancient ruins perch percariously on the cliffside, overlooking vast fields of rolling hills. The air smells of ash and rot, sweet but not enough to stop the instinct to gag with the first deep breath.

A breeze rustles through the sparse, hardy blooms that have forced their way through cracks in the banded cliffside. You don't have to look to know the flowers are five-petaled and softly furred; their deep fuschia throats give way to pastel putrescence at the edges. The scent of rot strengthens when you step back from the edge, accidentally crushing one of the flowers underfoot.

Behind you, a familiar facade. Caves pockmark the jagged rockface as it ascends towards the bruise-mottled sky. Fragments of broken pottery, multicolor glaze peeking out behind eons of gathered dust, litter the ground. Most of the recesses here are shallow, you know. A few trail deeper into the sandstone, only to dead-end just where the faint daylight fades into oblivion. You don't like those caves. Sometimes you're compelled to squeeze into them, to contort your body, suck in your chest and pray to whatever unholy being you're not afraid of that you won't get stuck again.

Dying in the dreamworld hasn't stopped you from waking. Not yet.

But you have the uncomfortable sensation there's only so many times you can play roulette before coming up lucky. Unlucky. Whatever.

Thankfully, tonight, the presence of your unseen voyeur isn't yet urging you in a specific direction. You take the opportunity to try to gather yourself. Though this is your favorite place in the dreamworld, 'favorite' too is a relative term.

Exploring the depths of the main cave is only slightly less terrifying than running from fiends in the concrete jungle or waiting for a thousand eyes to peer at you through the blanket of fog.

The cave, at least, is also the only place you've reliably encountered your watcher.

Rocks crunch under your boots as you trudge along the cliff's edge to the left past the main cave. Until or unless your head starts to feel like it'll burst, you have time. Time to strategize, to wonder, to simply think. It's a luxury you rarely have in your waking life.

Scanning the distant horizon, hazy with a dust storm, you take a slow breath and hold it. Grit scrapes the insides of your nostrils, but this, too, is familiar. You sink into a criss-cross seated position, back to the caves. Nothing stirs here except the wind and the flowers. This high up, the wind should be constant, but there are lulls, too regular to ignore. Like this entire dead world is breathing right along with you. Like the thick-bellied clouds pressing down from the sky aren't condensed water but a massive gullet, and you're just another morsel swallowed down and caught in the esophagus.

The physiology of a god, after all, can't be expected to match that of a human. As far as you know, an ancient deity's body is a world unto itself. Deserts and cities and blood clots, all.

It doesn't rain here. Not in any of the dreamscapes. The dust never settles. The heavens don't split and wash the sins of a god away, and you have to wonder, not for the first time, whether the aid you've willingly promised to him will be enough to remind this place what the kiss of water can do.

Pressure twinges deep in your sinuses. Exhaling slowly, you wait. Could be a sneeze. Could be him. Hard to tell this early. But when the pressure only intensifies, spreading, until it feels like thumbs pressing on the backs of your eyeballs and like your brain is being forced into a space too small for it, you know time's up.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm coming," you mutter.

Pushing to your feet, you turn back to the cave. That yawning maw, a pair of stone jaws unhinged and perpetually starving, ready to devour you whole. You try not to look at it until you have to. Toeing a small chunk of rock over the cliffside, you listen to the way it clatters and echoes before the wind resumes and snatches the sound away.

The pressure in your head doesn't abate until you're within feet of the rectangle of void beckoning you into the bones of the earth. You raise your gaze. The doorway is flanked by crumbling columns, fluted by mortal precision and eroded by the patience of divinity. The pediment's severe angles bear similar signs of deterioration, though the central disc with that haunting, ever-present sigil appears pristine. The circular stone gleams like its artisan just finished polishing it. You let your eyes trace the sharp lines, the graceful center curve, the spokes of a sun's rising—or a crown of thorns. Beneath the pediment itself, an etching of a few words in a language you can't decipher, no matter how much research you attempt in your conscious moments. Still, skimming the runes sends a frisson of electricity up your spine, hairs standing on end. Thunder rumbles, sounding far too like laughter for comfort.

You step into the waiting portal.

Darkness cloys at the edges of the tunnel. In your periphery, you swear the shadows quiver, with anticipation or anxiety or both, but when you tilt your head down, they're no more mobile than the rocks casting them. The diseased daylight suffuses the carved pathway for a few dozen feet before it begins to fade. Setting your shoulders, you push deeper.

The moment the light abandons you, you feel it—you feel him. No, wait. There's more than one tonight. Though it makes no difference in what you see (or rather, don't see), you scrunch your eyes shut to concentrate. Yes, there's your usual voyeur, his presence second-nature, your survival instincts so dulled to him that even if he were to present as a danger, you're not sure you'd recognize it until his teeth were in you. But beyond him, beyond your awareness of him, anyway, are the others.

All three of the others, to be exact.

Heart slamming into your ribcage with a sudden ferocity, you swallow thickly, tasting stale air and ancient dirt and something else. The tang of your own fear. Your breath, steady but too fast, reverberates back to you off the stone walls.

You don't want to speak. Don't want to entice all of them closer, to let them hear the tremor in your voice, but that all-encompassing pressure in your skull shifts again, lower, until it feels nearly like a hand on your throat. Licking your lips, you give in to the demand.

"I'm here," you whisper.

Manic giggles echo from somewhere deeper along the tunnel, or maybe from inside the rocks themselves. Suddenly you're aware of the innumerable tons of solid earth sitting over your head, kept at bay by an architecture carved before memory. You swallow again.

"What—" Your voice cracks, and another peal of unhinged laughter sussurates up from the void. "What am I here for tonight?"

Whispers of voices, so many voices, hush along the rocks around you and nearly vibrate the air. You can never tell what they're saying; you're not even sure they're speaking the same language you are. One of the presences shifts closer, cold and just this side of foreign. You resist the urge to twitch your head left to track the movement.

The rules of the dreamworld are simple, really.

Rule one: don't run.

Rule two: don't scream.

Rule three: don't look for them.

Rule four: always invite them in.

You've never broken a single rule in all your time spent away from the waking world, and you don't intend to start tonight.

"You're almost ready," the nearest presence sighs out. His voice breaks against your skin like ice chips spat from an unforgiving sky: sharp and frigid, melting quickly to drench you in freezing water.

Part of rule four is to always respond. They don't like being unanswered, even, perhaps especially, when they haven't asked a single question.

Questions are your domain.

"Ready for what?"

Another presence, this one devoid of temperature but radiating a palpable force, crowds your other side. You clench your hands into fists to hide the trembles. This isn't the first time the others have approached you, but it has been a long time. Your body remembers them but your mind shrieks with the uncertainty of your position. Oblivion is so close you can feel it, and what it feels like is them.

The vessels.

The one radiating his own forcefield chuckles, the sound grating from this close. "'Ready for wot', she says. Don't tell me he didn't tell you, pet."

Brow furrowing, you try to wrack your brain, ignoring the way his voice batters your body like polar magnets, simultaneously drawing you in and repulsing you, a strange sensation that is sure to leave bruises everywhere it hits. You know whose domain this is, you know the reason you've been returning here night after night after night—at least, you think you know. You recall flashes of an answer given in this self-same void, that the shape of your dreams would feed an old god and keep Him from destroying the waking realm. Gnawing at your cheek, you exhale a little sharply.

"He told me," you say, sounding far more confident than you really ought to.

Your skin buzzes with energy as that presence looms closer. "Did he, now? Well, how about that. Whatcha say, II, you sure she's not ready just yet?"

If you could see, you're certain you'd find your breath condensing in the air when the first presence, II, moves closer. You hadn't known his name before. Or, if you had, you'd been made to forget. The dreams are slippery like that. You only remember yourself, the world, and him, but rarely the others. Rarely their names.

Rarely your own, too, it occurs to you in passing.

"Too soon," II says, voice so cold against your skin it burns, a paradox. "Besides, you agreed—"

"Ugh, don't remind me." The magnetic winds of the other's voice buffet you, nearly pushing you back a step. Only locking your knees keeps you rooted in place. "You know, I still don't think it really matters who does the taking, only that the taking is done, eh?"

A puff of frigid air brushes your cheek. You shiver. You're not sure if any of this warrants a response. You feel more like you're caught in the middle of a conversation happening over your head, about you, but not including you.

"III, how many times—"

"Enough."

A small noise escapes you at the introduction of a new voice. Deep and resonsant, in the dark it takes on the shape of a caress against your freezing, bruised body. Warmth like a spring sunshower diffuses through you, but in its wake it leaves behind the faint aftertaste of decay. Halitosis covered with honey and herbs. This presence remains at a distance.

With reluctance, II and III retreat. You heave a breath, lungs expanding to their full capacity for the first time in minutes.

"You both know better than to interfere with your brother's work," the new voice intones. "Go. Leave this one be. I don't need to remind you what will happen if you don't each find your own entertainment, do I?"

Your entire body feels like a compass pointing north, if north was that voice. This time, it isn't fear you have to steel yourself against, but desire. Turning toward a presence you can't even see would be a mistake, one you can't afford this deep into the dream. Always the undercurrent of awareness that you are dreaming runs through you, a second stream of consciousness beneath your currently-frantic thoughts. You don't want to know what happens when the rules get broken.

Thankfully, the bickering voices of II, III, and the one you don't know, or don't remember, fade quickly. You're alone again. Before you can process that bit of relief, the pressure in your skull returns. It's almost…gentle, this time, but you know if you hesitate, the softness won't last. So you take another blind step forward, hands half-outstretched to keep you from ramming face-first into any unseen corners.

The ground slopes almost imperceptibly. You only notice it because you've trodden this ground before, and because you find yourself leaning back just the slightest to counterbalance the angle. Yet, instead of the cold dampness you expect this deep in the earth, the air warms around you.

When that gentle warmth turns molten without warning, you know you've reached your destination. You've reached him.

"Apologies about that business earlier, dearest," comes a smooth, low voice from just ahead of you.

A smile touches your features. "Ivy. Finally. What was that all about?"

"Ask me again tomorrow," he says. "My brother was right, though. You're nearly ready."

Ignoring the previous request, you cross your arms. Ivy's presence, unbearably heated and as liable to bubble your skin as relax your aching muscles, has never carried the same terrifying weight as the others'. Maybe that's because you've known him longest, or maybe that's by design. Either way, you talk to him in a way you'd never dare with the other vessels.

"Ready for what?" you ask again, exasperation laced through your voice.

His chuckle is as warm as his being. "So impatient. If I tell you, you have to promise you'll come back again tomorrow."

You roll your eyes. You're sure he has no problem seeing in the pitch dark. "As if I have a choice."

"Don't you?"

"Do I?" You sigh, gesturing uselessly around you. "Every time I fall into bed, I end up here. Even on the nights I just want to rest, really rest. I open my eyes and I'm back here. So you tell me, Ivy."

He's silent long enough for you to grow uncomfortable. The scent of ash thickens in your nose as he shifts closer.

"Of course you have a choice," he murmurs. He's standing close enough that you swear you can feel every contour of his body just from the intensity of his heat alone. "The fact that you return nightly, even when you claim you wish not to, tells me that your true self, your deepest self, desires this above all else. You're quite strong in the dreamworld, in fact."

That's new to you. "Wait, what? Strong how?"

"You could cause us a lot of trouble, darling." His voice carries a smile. The image of a curved blade flashes through your mind, and you shiver despite the heat. "But that's not what you were asking about. You really want to know what my brothers were on about back there?"

Damn him, because now you can't dislodge the concept of you being any kind of trouble. You don't even get to choose where you go when you dream. You also don't often get to have full conversations like this. Something must truly be going on.

With a huff, you nod. "Yeah, yeah I want to know."

"Let me show you."

You expect that familiar pressure to return, but instead, something searing touches the center of your forehead. For a moment, the pain doesn't even register. Nerve endings cauterize at the source.

Then the agony detonates and you scream as your skull begins to smoke.

With a strangled gasp, you wake, hands clawing at your face. Your head is on fire. You swipe at your forehead, trying to find the melted skin, the charred bone, but there's nothing. The oscillating tower fan pushes cool air across your sweat-soaked body, and the sudden shiver that wracks your body is such a stark counterpoint to the lingering sensation of fire that you finally realize what's happening.

The memory of what you were shown slams into you a second later.

It's barely coherent, just a flurry of images and sensations and ideas that flick past faster than you can truly comprehend, a flipbook skipping every few pages. You get an overwhelming sense of pleasure, a burning hand pressed to your lower back, the gentle pull of exhaustion weighing down your limbs, a darkness so deep it registers as absence. And threading through it all, the feeling of being watched.

You should be afraid. Part of you is, you're sure, the part that's still remembering the excruciating feeling of your face beginning to sear, but the rest of you feels surprisingly light. Floating on bruise-tinged clouds.

Just like always, though, you can't find oblivion again this night. You lie awake, turning your vessel's words over and over in your mind. Of course you have a choice. You could be a lot of trouble for us, darling.

You hadn't stumbled into the dreamworld on accident. That first time had been intentional. You'd lain in bed that night broken and exhausted to the point of frenzied desperation, praying that when you woke, it would be in a different place. You remember very specifically that you'd wished for a different place—not a better one, not a good one, but a different one. Perhaps, you reflect, this is what drew you into that place. What drew the vessels in your direction.

When you had opened your eyes that night after squeezing them shut on stinging tears, you didn't question the blood-thick fog sloshing like soup around your ankles. You hadn't even questioned it when you spotted the first shambling shape in the distance, the edges blurred but the size of it unmistakable as it dragged itself across the ground with far too many limbs. The outline of a massive halberd had jutted out of its back.

What you had questioned, though, was the man in the mask standing just at the edge of your periphery.

He hadn't vanished when you turned to look at him—but he seemed to move with you, always haunting the very limits of your awareness. Even so, his mask was clear to you then. Black with gold, the contrast enough to draw your attention to the way it curved over his jaw and the smallest quirk of his lips behind gilded bars. You're still not sure how you could see any of that, but, replaying it now, the fire of his touch still faintly stinging your forehead, you know the memory to be true.

"Where am I?" you'd asked. In the strange fog, your voice seemed to echo and die at the same time. You heard a distortion of yourself repeat the words back a few moments later, and a shiver wracked your frame.

"Where do you wish to be?" the figure answered. His voice, melodic and the slightest bit raspy, seemed to be spoken right next to you, despite his distance.

Perhaps you should have hesitated. Perhaps you should have lied, or tried to leave, or to wake, but you'd done none of those things. Instead, you sighed. "I don't rightly care, so long as it isn't where I was."

Again you detected a twitch of lips as if in a smirk. "I can work with that."

"And…who are you?" you ventured when it was apparent no other information was forthcoming.

When he told you, you'd snorted. "Four? Like in the book?"

His voice had a bite to it when he responded, "No. As in 'I-V'."

"Ivy," you'd murmured.

"If you like." The tone of his voice shifted so quickly into dispassion that it left you reeling. But he hadn't said no. And you'd never called him anything else since then.

In the many, many dreams since that first, Ivy had warmed to you slowly. Over time, you became more comfortable with him, too. He wasn't in most of your dreams, in actuality, but the ones where he made an appearance, you always somehow managed to wake from them feeling a little too warm, a little too alive. Like being near him imbued you with some of the vibrating energy he radiated. Even when the dreams weren't dreams but nightmares, you'd never feared him. Never blamed him.

After all, you were the one who asked for different. You were the one who kept coming back, over and again, yearning for the place where your conscious and unconscious selves blended and blurred, aching to close your eyes on the real world and open them to the dreaming one.

Ivy has told you bits and pieces over your time in the dreamscapes. Who he is. Who his brothers are. The being they serve, the one they won't even name for fear of waking Him too early. The word you won't speak even in your waking moments. Ivy hadn't forbade you from saying it, but his aversion was strong enough that you felt compelled to bear that mantle, too. Through it all, you've gathered that you have something, some energy or power or essense, that could assuage an old god into slumbering for another few years.

Ivy had promised you wouldn't even notice a difference when the time came.

That answer hadn't comforted you. Not when you'd asked was if you'd survive the process.

Still, even the fear of dying in your dreams, real though it was, hadn't kept you from returning to the dreamworld night in, night out. You knew the landscapes there better than your own home. If you're honest with yourself, you prefer it in those disjointed, shifting worlds. At least there, you know what's out to hurt you and who will protect you.

You return the next night to the cliffside. This time, you have but the span of a breath to register the hazy horizon, drink in the familiar scent of sickening sweet rot, and find your balance in the buffeting wind, before the pressure spikes in your head sharp enough to make your eyes water. You rush, nearly twisting an ankle on a loose rock, toward the entrance. As is habit, your gaze flicks for a moment to the polished sigil. Then the darkness swallows you down.

The others remain at the very edge of your perception tonight. Cold and magnetism and that shiver of need so old it doesn't even feel like yourself, all three of them keep their distance. Just as well. For the first time in your memory, you're anxious about meeting with Ivy. Just being back in this lightless tunnel is enough to spark a dull feeling of pain in your forehead where he'd touched you last night.

Your entire body feels too hot, actually. At first, you wonder if it's the exertion. You're practically speed-walking into the bowels of the earth. But no, your heartrate doesn't even feel elevated. Then you assume it's Ivy, keeping pace just out of reach, but the air you push through remains relatively cool. Trying to even out your pace, you take stock of yourself. Is it the fear of being burned again?

Or is it the memory of what he showed you?

Something deep in your center lurches pleasantly at the thought. The heat swirling in your body condenses down to a point between your thighs, and all at once you understand what's happening.

To be a vessel implies a state of emptiness. To be a vessel implies the ability to be filled by something else.

Like the essence of someone running headlong into a potential horror just to escape the nightmare of the real world. An essence so wrought in the pleasure of slumber that it would entice a god back to sleep.

Warmth at your back grows steadily hotter. Slowing to a halt, you wait, back stiff and fingers tapping without rhythm against your legs. Only when the heat of him draws to your side, then to your front, do you let out a sharp breath.

"Am I ready?" you demand.

Ivy snorts, the sound echoing first in his mask and then in the greater darkness around you both. "It would seem so. I have to hear it from you, first, though."

You nearly respond with a snappy retort of I'm ready, damn you, but you don't think that's really what he means. Instead, you draw a breath tasting of old dirt and older rituals.

"I am ready to feed the Dreaming One," you say, chin jutted up in recklessness. "I am ready to receive the sacrament of pleasure at His altar."

The words come to your lips of their own volition, yet another reminder that nothing about this world is truly your own. Saying them aloud sends a tingle of what you can only describe as magic over your skin. The air in the tunnel, already still, seems to vacate the space entirely.

"Very well," Ivy murmurs into the deathless silence. "Come. There is a ritual to commence."

Time passes strangely here. You descend deeper than ever before as you follow Ivy by feel alone, never letting his scorching heat get too far ahead. This close to him, any sense you had before of his brothers burns away. He's all you have here. He leads you down a tunnel that, judging from the way your footsteps echo back to you, doesn't narrow or turn, simply leads farther into the world's skin. Each step you take marks some semblance of time passing, but you can't be sure if the clock is wound for an hour or a day or an eon.

You suppose time doesn't weigh the same in a place bound only by the limits of unconsciousness.

Ivy remains silent the entire trek. Taking his lead, you sink your teeth into the questions squirming across your tongue, desperate not to invite a repeat performance of last night's incident. Besides, most of your curiosity will be slaked whenever you arrive to the site of this ritual.

At long last, you sense that Ivy has come to a halt. Unlike your breath and steps and rustling clothing, which return to you in distortions, Ivy's movements are as imperceptible as the rest of him. You only know he's stopped when the heat of him flares against your face before you catch yourself. Sweat dews on your skin. But you can't step back. You can only wait for him to draw away again.

He draws a breath that reminds you of the heaving of bellows. "Do you trust me?"

Worry twists your gut. Blinking against the darkness, you open your mouth to respond, only to close it again. Is this a test? If you say you don't, will the ritual still happen? Or is the ritual dependent upon your complete and willing obeisance? Licking your lips, you shift your weight, all too aware of the silence stretching like popped vertebrae between you.

"I- I think so," you finally force out, aiming for casualness but landing somewhere in confusion.

He huffs a quiet laugh. "Probably the smartest answer you could give. Well done. I want you to keep something in mind for me, yeah?"

You nod, knowing he can see the movement.

"Know that I could have started this ritual at any time," he says. "Know that I made the others wait until you were ready, wait for your latency to age like wine before we broke the seal and drank of you.

"Know that this could have been a far worse experience, darling."

Only sheer willpower keeps you from flinching when his fingers, hot but not dangerous, not like before, brush your cheek in the dark. Heart thrumming so fast you quake with the force of it, you swear you forget how to breathe. Your lungs seize. You've miscalculated. Every moment spent in this place, running from horrific creatures or avoiding your own reflection—blindly following a vessel to his place of worship—has been a fucking mistake. The sudden clarity of Ivy's words threatens to crush you more surely than the rock sitting above you.

He offers these words as a kindness, an act of contrition, an equation solving its own proof and coming up devoid of any sin. You realize, fear a cold stone sinking into your very DNA, that he's asking for your fucking forgiveness.

And gods above, hells below, your soul be damned—you're going to give it to him.

"I know," you whisper. "I know, Ivy. It's okay. I'm ready."

His touch disappears from your face, leaving you bereft and breathless. Then, with a deep growl of stone grinding against stone, a door grates open. You squint in the low light, the flickering torches brighter than the cloud-clothed sunlight somewhere far, far above you.

You register two things at once: first, the masive stone altar that dominates the room beyond, carved and stained with a vascular intricacy; second, the fact that Ivy stands before you now, fully present, and through the gaping sockets of his mask, bright blue eyes regard you with something too sharp for mere curiosity.

Hunger.

His admission just a moment before that he could have chosen cruelty crumbles like ash, scattered and forgotten. You don't care about that now. Not here on the threshold of something bigger, something older and unknowable. Every shred of information Ivy's ever entrusted to you comes flooding in, every cognitive leap you've put your faith in clamors for attention. You hadn't lied to him; you are ready.

You're ready for Sleep.

In every sense of the word.

Ivy holds a hand out to you. Ripping your gaze away from the altar, you look down at the offering, then look, really, truly look, at him. Every exposed inch of skin glistens black with paint so thinly applied you wonder if his skin really isn't just that color. Even the creases of his palms, a lifeline that wavers in the unsteady torchlight and a heartline that practically collides with his fateline, are the same dark ink. His clothing is the same shade of black, yet the custom-tailored jacket glitters and sparkles with every shift of the firelight. A hood covers the back of his head.

And the mask. The one you've only seen in stolen snippets and peripheral passes. The fire dances over the gold, making it writhe and shift as if alive, and your eyes widen when it finally clicks what the design must be.

A gilded handprint.

Jerking your attention up to his eyes, you can only stare, mute, as horror and fascination and need twine within your veins, slowly corroding you from the inside. An alkaline bath dissolving your bones just the same as the wind has eroded the temple entrance.

Ivy's lips curve into a bladed grin, white teeth flashing. Those blue depths never waver from you. "Hello, darling."

"H-Hi," you breathe.

"Take my hand," he murmurs.

Somehow you'd forgotten he still holds it out, expectant yet patient. Raising your eyes to his once again, you let your own hand follow. His skin radiates heat just like you've come to expect, and you hesitate only a heartbeat more before slotting your palm against his, braced for the wash of agony.

It doesn't come.

He's warm, yes, almost uncomfortably so, but it doesn't hurt. Before you can ponder on that, Ivy gently tugs you into the room—the inner sanctum, a place that nearly tastes holy, a mix of ash and ozone and the tang of arousal. Behind you, the door grinds shut on its own. You can only focus on Ivy, though.

He leads you forward across smooth stone floors to the altar. Ascending the shallow steps to the dais on which it rests, Ivy motions with his chin for you to shift your attention to the imposing stone rectangle. You let your gaze trace the profile of his mask before acquiesing.

You've approached the altar at an angle, letting you see two sides at once. This close, the unsteady torchlight flickering over the bas-relief carvings makes your eyes swim, as if the figures etched from stone really are moving. On the short end, you watch, rapt, as three feminine figures seem to sway to an unheard song, their arms outstretched to an eclipsed sun overhead. You feel the impulse to squint as you gaze at the eclipse, like the solar corona might burn you even in weathered stone.

But the larger design on the long edge quickly draws your curiosity. It's your turn to tug Ivy along; he doesn't release you, doesn't even let his grasp slip from yours an inch, as you step closer to the altar. A progression of scenes on this face plays itself out just for you. All of them feature four masculine silhouettes engaged in various activities, like the swordfight at the far end that leaves your ears faintly ringing with the distant clash of metal, or the obvious worship being offered at an altar—perhaps this same one—and the smell of rosewater, so faint as to be imaginary, cloying in your lungs.

The middle scene stops you dead in your tracks. Ivy's hand tightens on yours in an approximation of a comforting squeeze.

"This is my purpose?" you ask, not daring to speak higher than a whisper, eyes glued to the way that one of the sculpted vessel's hips dips to meet a faceless figure's body.

"It is." Ivy lifts your joined hands and gently taps the back of your hand to the barred mouth of his mask. "Our most sacred ritual. Very few ever make their way here; very few have the power to keep the Dreaming One doing just that."

"But I do." It's not a question. He'd told you as much yesterday, but standing here, in this cathedral of stone and divine worship, the knowledge prickles more sharply at the base of your spine. "I am ready, Ivy. Please."

"Oh, you don't have to plead," he says, a smirk evident in his voice. "Not yet."

A shiver trails sticky fingers up your back at the way his voice drops on that last statement. The rasp, almost a growl, that curls into your ears and burrows into your brain.

Lifting your gaze to his once again, you tilt your head a little. "What do I need to do?"

His thumb rubs maddening arcs against your skin as he hums in thought. Desire catches in your belly and smolders its way lower. "All you need to do, darling, is let me play my part. You're going to feel very good, but it's going to hurt, too. Remember your promise?"

Swallowing thickly, you nod once. "I do."

"Good." He releases your hand; the loss is devastating. As he turns toward an alcove you'd missed up to this point, he gestures at the altar. "We'll start here. Clothes off."

Exhaling a shaky breath, you know you have no other option. Yet, despite the spike of cold concern suddenly knifing through you, your hands are steady where they pluck at the hem of your shirt and draw it free of your body. The rest of your garments join the first in a haphazard pile on the dais, discarded and immediately forgotten. Your nipples pebble at the feeling of open air against them. Anticipation slides, hot, slick, and curling, through your center.

Ivy's gaze rakes you from head to toe and back; you catch a glimpse of a lazy smirk behind the mask. His heavy attention makes you want to fidget, but you strangle that impulse at the root. It's too close to breaking a rule for comfort. If he notices your restraint, your vessel says nothing.

He deposits two bowls along the short edge of the altar's surface before beckoning you closer. You obey without question. Tilting your head back to bare your throat just the slightest, you resist the temptation to glance at the bowls or try to discern their contents. You'll find out when Ivy's ready for you to, or you won't, and either way, it's out of your control.

Part of you starts to realize that you prefer it this way.

Dipping paint-stained fingers into one of the bowls, Ivy turns to face you properly. His fingers glisten with something thick, oil perhaps, but you're distracted from trying to figure it out by the haunting note that rises out of his throat in the same instant. Something inside you twists hard enough to snap; you draw a ragged breath, eyes suddenly burning with tears.

come close, little darling again and again ask me over and over ‘am I ready?’

His voice drags a sob out of you as it crests into some ancient spell, the syllables rising and falling like breath.

come close, little darling like this and like that tell me over and over ‘I’m ready.’

Oiled fingers anoint your skin like you're the thing that's holy here. Ivy takes his time, letting the rhythm of the song guide his practiced movements, touch gliding over your bare skin in indecipherable patterns. Tears stream down your face. Every few strokes he has to replenish the oil on his fingers, before he returns to the canvas he makes of your skin. Reverent fingertips trace arcs around your nipples, draw strange runes against the softness of your belly, and sketch lines like bones down your arms. When he sinks onto his haunches, your breath hitches. Aside from a brief flicker of his eyes up to your face, he pays you no mind as he continues with his ritual.

come close, little darling away and away let me take you there you’re ready if He wills it, it’s right and He wills it tonight come close and tell me ‘I’m ready.’

Trying to steady yourself, you suck in a deep breath, tasting the peppery notes of the oil in your diaphragm. Ivy rises to his full height again, only to step lightly around you to continue drawing shapes against your back. Heat, whether sparked by his touch or stoked by your own desire, flushes through you as his voice swells with the song.

come close, little darling unshackle your bones give yourself to the night you’re ready

When he returns to your front, he sinks his hand into the second bowl and withdraws with a large fistful of salt grains. Brine hits your nostrils and you inhale, greedy, having never smelled the sea in any of the dreamworlds many facets. With his empty hand, Ivy grabs your wrists to position your hands in a loose bowl, then tips the salt into your grasp.

You nearly drop it.

It burns, scalding, and a hiss of pain slithers through your teeth before you choke it into silence. After a moment, the initial flare of heat subsides, leaving the salt emiting a soft radiance in your palms.

come closer still make this deal we must seal He requires that you be ready

The ritual song fades into the walls of the cathedral. You want to cry again for its absence.

"Bathe," Ivy orders. "Use the salt to purify yourself so you can face Him without the taint of life on your skin."

There is no pressure in your head to comply, not this time, but your hands move to obey just the same. This time, you can't stifle the cry of pain as you begin rubbing salt over your oil-slicked skin. Everywhere they meet, the salt and oil smoke; heat-white pain sears into your entire body as you do as your vessel commanded. Only once you've reached your feet do your shoulders start to relax, the hurt fading just like the song.

"Very good," Ivy praises.

A different type of heat altogether rushes through you at his words. He winks, then gestures to the altar.

"Ascend."

With a single nod, you clamber up onto the stone. Where you expect it to be cold, the rock is almost disconcertingly warm. Now that you're sitting on it, too, you realize that the reddish tint you'd spotted from the doorway wasn't just a trick of the light; rust stains the entire surface in uneven patches, old rivulets running over the edge. Suddenly it hits you that the altar is the same temperature, the same scent, the same taste, as the fogged landscape you'd first arrived into.

Again, Ivy gives you no time to process that. With gentle touches, he guides your legs up onto the stone, helps you rotate, and, with a firm hand in the center of your chest, lays you back. Breath hitching, you watch as he climbs onto the altar with you, still fully dressed.

The dark fabric of his pants does nothing to hide the evidence of his own arousal.

You let your thighs drape open, exposing your heated center to him, to this place of sin and grace. A quiet hum catches in his throat. Blue eyes scour your body, lingering in all the places you expect him to—the heaving of your chest, the curve of your waist—and in a few you're surprised by—the angle of your knee, the pulse jumping at your jugular.

His own chest jumps with ragged breaths the longer he drinks in the sight of you. Emboldened by his apparent fluster, you raise up onto your elbows, a small smile tantalizing the corners of your lips.

"Careful, darling," he murmurs. "Looking at me like that will earn you nothing but trouble."

"What's a little trouble in the dreamworld to a god?" you rasp.

His gaze sharpens, blue flashing like sapphires in the torchlight. With a speed you didn't know he possessed, Ivy crowds your personal space, one large hand curled around your throat, the other digging desperate fingers into the plushness of your thigh. Lashes fluttering, your lips part in a silent gasp as you gaze up at him. Instead of scaring you, his speed, his power, exhilarates you.

Licking your lips, you try again. "Please."

He groans, hand flexing around your neck. "Please, what, darling?"

"Please, Ivy," you try.

A sharp exhale through his nose is all the response you get. The hand on your thigh loosens its grip, then begins a slow, inexorable slide toward your aching center. You can't tell if the tremble you're feeling is you or him.

Your hips jerk without your permission when the backs of his fingers graze over your slick skin.

"So wet already," he husks.

"Can you blame me?" you say, but it comes out breathy, less a challenge and more a plea.

Ivy lowers his head to yours, the shockingly cold material of the mask resting against the same spot of your forehead he'd burned last night. The contrast makes you shudder. Gently, as if he's already forgotten his promise of pain right alongside the pleasure, he flips his hand to rub tentative circles around your clit. Your quiet moan echoes in the cathedral. The heat of his touch only stokes the flames of your arousal higher. Drawing shallow breaths, you peer down the length of your body to watch the way his touch works against you.

Like he can sense your attention there, he presses a little more firmly. Thighs flexing, you shift your hips closer to him, silently begging him closer. His quiet whisper of shit gets lost in the rustle of clothing as he allows himself this moment, paint-dark touch dipping toward your entrance to gather your slick from the source. Pleasure unfurls in your lower belly like the petals of a flower opening for the kiss of moonlight.

"Hells, Ivy, please," you whine as he resumes his torturous circling of your clit. "A little to the left—yes, fuck, right there."

His huff of disbelieving laughter puffs against your face. All at once his scent overwhelms you. Gunsmoke and an ocean breeze, carbon residue and cedar: you're not sure how those notes work together so flawlessly, but it shouldn't surprise you. Your hands remember they exist, and you cling to Ivy's sparkling coat as if you can drag him into your body, into your very being, by sheer will alone. His touch slowly drives you higher, your pussy fluttering around a devastating emptiness that leaves you whimpering.

"Close," you gasp out.

Ivy pulls away immediately. You whine, the muscles that were just tense and straining toward release soothing without the constant stimulus. His hand squeezes your throat again, pulse jumping against his thumb and forefinger on either side.

"Rule five: you don't finish without permission," he states.

His voice, hard and flat, sends another wave of need burning through you. "I-I understand."

His gaze bores into yours for a long moment until, seemingly convinced, he rests two fingers against your entrance. Forcing your thighs wider, you nod, teeth sinking into your bottom lip. Slowly, so, so slowly, he pushes inside. A groan scrapes out of his throat, twining with the breathless moan that escapes you at the stretch of his touch. His fingers nestle inside you like they belong there, like your body was made to hold the shape of him, and that thing somewhere in your soul that had broken earlier listening to his song begins to mend. This is what you need. He is what you need.

"Perfect," he breathes. "So perfect."

You can't stop the smirk that flashes over your features. "Touch me, please. Make me feel good."

Wordlessly, he crooks his fingers up against your inner walls, finding the spongy spot that detonates colorless behind your eyes on the first try. This time, the cathedral walls nearly resonate with the tone of your pleasure, the sound a ritual all its own. Ivy rocks his hand to an ancient rhythm; the wet sound of his fingers caressing the deepest parts of you echoes in the room until you're deaf to anything else.

Deaf to the approaching sound of manic laughter, the sudden chill in the air, the sharp influx of honeyed rot.

"Sound so pretty for me, darling," Ivy croons. His pace never falters, not even when your grip slides up to the back of his neck and digs crescent moons into his skin. If anything, the discomfort spurs him on. His fingers stroke over that shattered shard of bliss on every pulse of his touch. Sweat beads on your skin from his sustained proximity, but you barely register it. The only thing that matters is that he keeps shoving you higher, pushing you to the ceiling of your pleasure hard enough to shatter it.

Your walls clamp down, aching, and Ivy groans deep in his chest.

Except—you whine, desperate and needy, when he withdraws a moment later. Panting, you slump back against the surface of the altar. He doesn't follow save to keep his hand wrapped around your throat. Pleasure ebbs like the tide once again as he lets you drift from the snare of pleasure he'd been laying. Though, it doesn't all drain away this time, not as you let your awareness drift down to watch his free hand pluck at the closures of his pants. Your gaze traces the veins and tendons that stand out, his skin its own bas-relief sculpture. Your tongue darts out to wet your lips.

Ivy's eyes track the brief movement. A flash of longing, quick as lightning and just as searing, lights his blue irises. The mask can't come off—you know that already—but gods you want him to be able to kiss you. He seems to want that, too.

That realization makes you clench around nothing.

Then, with a shuffle, he leans up on his knees, his cock finally free. Your mouth waters, instinct, at the sight. Some part of you half expected every part of him to be slathered in the black paint, so it's a pleasant surprise to be met with the flushed pink of his head and the smooth pale girth of his shaft. A dusting of dark hair curls around the base. His cock is warm and heavy where it rests against your skin, pulsing faintly in time with a heartbeat you weren't sure he still had.

Glancing up for a moment, you flutter your lashes at him. "Can I touch you?"

"G'head," he murmurs. His voice sounds taut, breakable. Which one of you will make it out of this ritual intact?

Shoving that thought away, you focus on keeping your hand steady when you reach for him. Like the rest of him, the heat of his skin against yours requires a moment of getting used to, but the softness of him encourages you to explore more. His breathing stutters when you rub your thumb over his tip, catching a bead of pearlescent precum and smearing it over his skin. With a soft, indulgent laugh, you stroke his full length, delighting in the shudder that wracks his frame and marveling at the size of him in your hand. He's going to split you apart, ruin you, and you're ready to let him.

Yet, with your fingers wrapped around his thick cock, this is the most control you've wielded in the dreamworld so far.

The realization is heady.

"Ivy," you murmur, pouting your bottom lip just a little, "you're so big."

"Gonna take it all, darling?" he rasps. Something dark and dangerous burns in his blue gaze. "Yeah, you are. Gonna make a mess all over this cock. We're so close to the end, sweetheart. Don't want this to be over yet."

"Then don't let it be," you say, soft and inviting. You don't even know the hole you're digging for yourself. "Let me keep you warm. Just soak in my pussy for a while, okay?"

A strangled groan rips from behind clenched teeth at your words. Hand around your throat flexing once, twice, he knocks your hand out of the way and fists his cock. He doesn't bother pumping himself, just notches the head at your entrance and waits for you to find his gaze. You do without hesitation.

The stretch is borderline painful. Without anything to slick his skin, his cock pushing into you dry, it hurts, but the pain is exquisite. Letting out a long breath, you relax into the feeling. Ivy sinks into you inch by inch, until he can't anymore, your hips flush together. Pleasure winds its way around every one of your bones, radiating outward from his hot length buried to the hilt in your fluttering pussy.

"Just like this," you whisper. "Just stay with me like this."

Shaking his head a little, Ivy squeezes his eyes shut a moment. "I- I- Fuck, darling, I shouldn't," he grits out.

"Why not?" you ask, unable to keep the genuine pout out of your voice this time.

"Need to finish the ritual," he says, voice strained. "Your pleasure isn't mine alone to take."

Right. His god. The other vessels. You don't care about any of that right now. All you can think about is the delicious stretch of his cock inside you, keeping him here for as long as possible, and eking as much pleasure from you both as you humanly can. Pulsing your walls, you drink in the way he whimpers in response.

"Please, Ivy." You don't have to fake the breathlessness. "Please, I need you just like this. So long as I cum at the end, the ritual will still be finished, won't it? What's a few more minutes?"

Your words are having the exact effect you want them to. Gods above, his pleasure really is all you want. His, and yours. Now that he's inside you, practically part of you, it's all you can fucking think about. His earlier warnings be damned, the pain he inflicted on you last night be damned, this whole fucking dreamworld be godsdamned, this is all you want.

And he's nearly ready to give it to you.

"IV," a deep voice warns from somewhere and nowhere all at once.

You know the moment your pathetic whisp of control snaps out of your hands.

A vicious snarl rips from Ivy's throat. He grabs both of your wrists and pins them beside your head with both hands. His eyes, so dark now that the blues are nearly subsumed by black, bore into yours as he draws his hips back. A shudder passes from you into him, pleasure hanging suspended in the inches between your bodies, tension coiled so tightly you fear the entire cathedral may collapse—

Then he snaps his hips forward.

You cry out. Breasts bouncing with every harsh thrust, it's all you can do to plant your feet and angle your hips for him, enticing him deeper, harder, faster, until you swear he's going to break you in half. The rough stone of the altar chafes your back, but you ignore it. Pleasure, molten and liquid, fuses your bones together. The cord in your belly, winched tight twice already, pulls taut so quickly it steals your breath. Ivy drives into you with a near reckless abandon, his eyes glued to the way your cunt swallows his cock with every thrust, the wet sound of your bodies meeting and your joined moans echoing in the room in a lewd mockery of his earlier singing.

"Touch yourself," he rasps, releasing one of your hands.

Without conscious thought, your hand flies to where you need attention the most. Your fingers press against your clit with just the right pressure, the right speed, the right pattern, and suddenly the precipice of your orgasm is right the fuck there. Your cunt clamps down on his cock hard enough to hurt you both, and only through sheer force do you manage to hold the explosion at bay.

"Ivy!" you wail. "Please, can I- can I cum?"

"Fuck," he snarls, grabbing your waist and using the leverage to push himself impossibly deeper. "Do it, fucking cum, darling, come on."

Pleasure cascades through you with the power of a supernova, a chain reaction of fusion and fission that leaves you half blind.

It's weakness enough for a blade to draw across your neck.

And as your blood drains into the rest of the salt, steaming in the hot air, you realize Ivy had told you the truth after all.

There is no difference between death and Sleep.

I wanted to make a rough drawing for May the 4th, but I just can't seem to draw armor in a simple way. So of course, I'm late this year again.

I started with a rough style for Sev and ended up with a cleaner one for Boss. In the end, I had to rework the characters several times so they would all look consistent.

I used Magic Poser Web to make the reference for the whole drawing. I initially planned a more classic back view of the characters, but while experimenting with the tool, I ended up liking the top view better.

For Mird, I used this nice walking dog 3D model to help with the anatomy (along with some Shar Pei references). I reused my previous design I made for it, but this time I fixed the legs so it has four back legs instead of four front ones. I tried several poses for the front leg and ended up choosing the one that felt the most dynamic. I'm pretty proud of the result.

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