bakerstreet | (no subject)

(no subject)

Everybody's dead, Dave.

How did you die?

Dramatically! Probably in battle or in some kind of noble sacrifice.
A really stupid accident you don't want to talk about.
Something drawn out and angsty like some kind of Victorian disease.
Hit by a boulder.
You don't know! It was pretty quick...
Something else...

Where are you now?

Back on Earth. You came back...somehow, to some degree. A ghost? A zombie? That sort of thing.
VALHALLA, home of the brave and/or the sneaky people who found a back way in!
The obligatory darkest reaches of some Stygian abyss. Maybe a lair of demons, maybe hell, etc.
Limbo. It's really boring.
It appears to be some kind of carnival and you're not really sure what's going on.
Other?

What do you want to do?

Fix this death thing and resurrect.
Take care of some kind of unfinished business.
Aggressively kill time, maybe because you're in one of the more boring locations like Limbo.
Take over the afterlife.
Stop someone else from taking over the afterlife.
...I can't cover all the angles. You can think of something. (aka wildcard)

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[Limbo or a Paradise Lost-style hell, less torture and more loneliness, boredom, and despair. Would love to do shipping and/or philosophical conversations.]

[Either in the True Terre d'Ange Beyond, or waylaid en route there.]

[Trapped in a monster-infested hellscape. No gore/vore/maiming/branding, but anything else I'm up for taking this to dark places.]

[Hi i heard dark places, what's your poison?]

[Non-con, psychological torture, captivity, monsters/xeno, master/pet. Possibly other things, if you had an idea or suggestion? For all options would prefer to be sub/victim, not dom/perpetrator.]

[Ahh, so many good options! I assume the setting is like, a sort of hellish afterlife akin to Berserk's setting, right? I dont know much about the comic except for comparisons to dark souls. ^^; so despair and skeletons and shit. .D.b

if so! maybe henry's become a corrupted monster and wants to Keep griffith. how's that sound?]

[I'm not familiar with dark souls at all. Berserk's hellscape is pretty brutal with some really intense monsters. Corrupted monster who wants to keep Griffith sounds good to me. Let's give it a go.]

[It's a difficult game that has some nasty creatures of its own, and is generally influenced by Berserk. so the comparisons are my closest osmosis to berserk.

anywho! would u like to make the starter or should i]

[Ah, yes! That looks right on the sort of thing that Berserk is filled with. If you don't mind starting?]

So, the afterlife. Lots of people had their own ideas about it, even Henry. They had pretty conventional ideas, idyllic settings, reuniting with loved ones, eternal youth and happiness, etc etc, so they were. Not prepared for this.

Maybe it was all the murder? That would explain why Henry ended up in a land overrun with bizarre creatures and hostile inhabitants. Since Henry still had the magic they wielded in life, they didn't mind so much, spending the first part of their death just having fun killing and maiming others. And getting killed and maimed, of course, but since they just popped back up, well, it was all in good fun!

After a while, though... Henry felt lonely. Their Mama wasn't here, nor Mustafa, nor any of their friends Henry was looking forward to meeting with in the afterlife. Probably for the best, considering, but Henry couldn't help feeling bummed out.

At the same time, they made a few new friends! Not a lot of humans or former ones, but a lot of animals, even monsters. Soon Henry found how mutable the afterlife could really be, and finally fulfilled their dream of growing wings, claws, jaws. Henry shifted until they were a sort of sphinx, having a lower body like a silvery wolf, fur giving way to feathers between waist and shoulders, two massive black wings sprouting from their back and claws from their hands. Henry only held onto humanity from the shoulders up, from habit if from nothing else.

Griffith was exhausted. He had no sense of how long he'd been in this place, only that it had to be days or more.

This dark, sunless hellscape seemed to be populated entirely with monsters, all of whom wanted to eat, fuck, or maim him. None of them seemed much inclined to conversation, which made it hard to deceive or manipulate them, and even with those who did talk to him, Griffith had nothing to offer but himself, which was what they wanted in the first place.

He'd ripped a horn off of one of the first monsters he'd encountered, and used it as a spear, fighting off monster after monster and then trudging onward, trying to find some nook hidden enough that he might sleep safely, or some salvation from this endless wasteland and the creatures that inhabited it.

Days without sleep, and the whole world swam before his eyes. His thoughts were blurred, and he became slower, weaker, knowing that he could not risk sleep, could not risk losing a single battle. Naked since he'd arrived, Griffith wore only the spattered blood and slime of the monsters upon his pale skin.

Another monster fell at his feet, and Griffith stumbled on for some small distance further before he collapsed, utterly exhausted. Unable to stave off sleep any longer, he was helpless prey now.

At first Henry thought the body at their feet was another corpse, primed to revive after a while. A shame, but everyone started out like that, at the bottom. Wasn't there a line about that back in the living world? 'Hell is other people' or something. Well, most were quick to shed their human forms into more powerful and useful ones.

This one, however, had to be new, and was just sleeping. Exhaustion? Poor thing. Henry poked the human, examining them out of idle curiosity. Very very pretty, of course, but a bit scrawny for Henry's tastes, scrawny enough for their muscles to show through. Those felt solid enough, at least, so this human had to have some modest strength.

Still, this was no place to be sleeping. Someone else would come around and devour this person if they were just left here. Just like Henry was, just like most of the newly dead. Did this one not know how to survive? Managed to break off a horn, though, that was impressive. Henry struggled with their own decision, knowing they couldn't help everyone, but finally just let their sympathy win out. If they couldn't help everyone, they could help the one!

So Henry carried them with their own inhuman strength to bring the human to their lair, a stone structure jutting out deep in a tangled forest. The plants and animals here adapted as well as the human dead, and Henry could still talk to them, and listen for alerts about intruders. It wasn't a glittering palace, but it was solid and defensible and served Henry well. Safely within, Henry could focus on cleaning up the human and keeping them warm until they could awaken.

Griffith woke warm and comfortable, groggy for a moment and then startling awake when he remembered where he was and the unbelievable dangers of sleeping.

He found himself in a stone lair, laid on a soft bed of furs. Griffith didn't like thinking about the furs of what. His body was clean, and nothing hurt, aside from the throbbing ache from his exhausted muscles.

Startling when he saw the monster who inhabited the lair, Griffith watched it with wary eyes, though he didn't yet leave the comfort of the bed. Let the creature think that he was too weak to move. Hiding his true strength and skill would be better, in case the creature attacked.

The furs weren't the only little trinkets Henry took as trophies. Bones were stacked and sorted on shelves along with jars of miscellaneous organs and tissue, the ceiling strung with herbs and roots and flowers as well as cured meat. The overall effect was a parody of a humble cottage to gruesome effect, but the whole room was tidy and free of stench.

Many of the effects were from humans. After all, if Henry's opponents would fully revive, why not skim sometime useful off the corpse? They needed various parts for their dark magic, and sometimes ambushing a human - former or otherwise - and hacking off a tail or foot was the easiest way to get a missing ingredient.

Henry happened to be preening when Griffin woke, running their dark claws through their secondaries, the black feathers gleaming in the light of the bright fire. Noticing their guest was awake, Henry stretched and settled into their bipedal form, stepping daintily on their toes toward Griffin. Even as a monster Henry didn't bother to make themself taller, but one didn't need to be tall to be strong.

"Heya! You must've been tired because you slept forever!"

"I was," Griffith said, tilting his head as he considered his host. His eyes were guarded, but the tilt of his head was careless, innocent, even a tiny bit flirtatious, all of it carefully calculated. "Thank you for your hospitality."

Looking past his host, Griffith's eyes flicked over the lair and the gruesome details that filled it. If he handled the situation poorly, he assumed, there was every possibility that some aspects of his own anatomy might end up decorating the place. It was just a question of what his host wanted from him, and why he'd left Griffith intact for the time being.

Edited 2017-03-15 01:35 (UTC)

Fortunately for Griffith, Henry wasn't great at reading nuance in expressions, and so took his at face value (haha).

"You're welcome! I'm not sure if this is hell or purgatory or something, but it is pretty rough, so I thought I'd help out!"

What Henry did notice was how Griffith looked around at their effects. They couldn't blame him for thinking it was creepy, since it was!

"Don't worry, I'm not gonna tear you to bits! I'd have done that while you were passed out otherwise. I'm Henry!"

[I'd like to go with option 3, obligatory darkest reaches of some Stygian abyss, or literally anything involving vampires.]

[Queen of Hell. And/or willing to consider being Consort of Hell.]

[No zombie/ghost/undead. Totally up for anything else. Very open to cross-canon and OCs.]

[Limbo.

And here he'd lived knowing (thinking he knew) that he'd land his ass in Hell-- because he'd be a fine shinobi, if not one of the greatest. And he'd been a fine shinobi (if not one of the greatest [pardon the honest arrogance]). He had accepted that fate and had died welcoming it with a smile and yet. And yet here he was --had been, for gods knew how long now-- in this barren, horrible place. There was only enough comfort to make the afterlife just that much more unbearable, like this was a half-assed attempt at an apology. Sorry you can't burn for eternity.

At least then there would be something to focus on, some other power to fight and bare teeth at and spit on. (That was stupid bravado speaking, not rationality. Who knew being condemned to Nothingness was ever going to be this maddening?) The days, somewhere along the line, ceased to be Days. Nights bled into mornings. And then there was only Time. Time that Neji dedicated to thoughts and thinking, to wandering and wondering, to grooming. For fuck's sake. In Limbo everything was tidy and stupidly organized. And abandoned. There were these not-rooms and not-cities. There was light some hours of Time and less light the rest, and it was never wholly dark, Neji realized. He figured, once or twice, that that must be because if things ever went Black they'd never muster up the courage to return to their previous state and that would be It-- that would be the End of Everything.

And

being an elite ninja, born into an elite clan, born into a powerhouse of a nation

that notion scared the shit out of him.

He realized then (and only then-- how sad was that?) that he had to get out. Claw his way Up or Down or break the damn wall holding him in. He would not be caged. Not now, not again, not now.

In Limbo, rarely did one soul encounter another. It was part of the... vibe. He guesses. But on the second day of wandering, on this straight path to Anywhere, Neji found this... man. Another one. This older one, but not by too much. It wasn't really suspicion that made him stop at the sight. It sure as heck wasn't curiosity. So Neji chalked it up to habit-- the way he found himself standing straighter, taller, raising his chin that hair of a fraction in a not-challenge.] Are you useful?

[When had been the last time he'd spoken aloud like that, anyway? And holy blank was that a lack of tact that he'd feel sorry for later.] If you are and you don't have anything better to do, come with me.

[Said one stranger in a flak jacket and black fatigues to the other. What he means to say is: hi.]

[Abel had been sitting on a low wall, staring off into the Nowhere that was his current world, his current un-life. He wasn't sure how long he'd been here. Long enough to find that he didn't get hungry, didn't sleep, didn't feel anything too strongly. He didn't even get too bored. There was a sense of idle serenity suspended there, in the boredom, in the nothingness. A sense of dull, sleepy eternity.

He missed the intensity of life, the void of space, the fragile warmth and rigidity of his spaceship, missed the colorful volatility of his fighter.

There was nothing of that here. Only the silence and the maze-like anywhere of this place.

In the short--or infinite?--amount of time Abel had been here, he'd encountered no one else. He startled when he was addressed, nearly falling off of his perch.

For a moment, all he could do was stare. And then,]

I'm a navigator.

[Which was to say, yes, about as useful as they come, and no, not useful at all. How could anyone navigate in a place without stars, without maps, without beginning or end or distinction? What did it matter knowing where you were if you had no idea where you were going and you'd come from the same nothingness as where you were?

He's all in white, in a form-fitting, tailored jumpsuit that draws attention to the slim, strong lines of his figure. White hair with only a hint of gold and black-on-black pupils increased the monochrome of him, a ghostly aspect suited to this colorless place.]

Who are you?