Ayato
(#82033575)
SONG OF MY SOUL, MY VOICE IS DEAD
Familiar
Parasitic Stockpile
Click or tap to view this dragon in Predict Morphology.
Energy: 46
out of
50
This dragon’s natural inborn element is Ice.
Male Skydancer
This dragon is on a Coliseum team.
This dragon is under the permanent effect of a Silhouette Scroll. A toggle on the dragon's profile allows swapping between the artwork poses available for the breed.
Expand the dragon details section.
Collapse the dragon details section.
Personal Style
Apparel
Skin
Effect
Scene
Measurements
Length
5.35 m
Wingspan
5.11 m
Weight
424.38 kg
Genetics
White
Skink
Skink
Cornflower
Foam
Foam
Platinum
Stained
Stained
Hatchday
Breed
Eye Type
Level 25 Skydancer
Max Level
STR
120
AGI
10
DEF
5
QCK
64
INT
5
VIT
26
MND
5
Biography
#396186
I. OF PROMISES UNKEPT, THE NIGHT FLOWERS SPEAK
II. TWILIGHT, MIDNIGHT, WITCHING HOUR
The sound of rattling, like dried grass shaking in the wind, wakes him.
Thoma is cold. It’s late autumn, but unseasonably hot, and the heavy bedclothes feel like lead against his skin. Briefly furious, he flings the sheet away and pops open the neck closures on his yogi, letting the cross-breeze tickle his skin. Somewhere up on the roof of the house, an owl takes flight, the sound of its wings rustling into the distance and into oblivion. Surely that was the source of the noise–with the bird gone and his skin cooling, he’ll sleep.
Thoma closes his eyes.
Sleep does not come.
The liquid-time of half-sleep solidifies like blood into fatty gel. Finally, he reopens his eyes and stares reproachfully at the ceiling. Despite the breeze, the room’s air is stale; it smells like nothing, neither comforting nor foul, and yet he tastes iron as if the scent of war surrounds his bed.
Rattle.
Somewhere deep in his brain, a scared prey animal perks up its ears. A wolf hides in the tall grass. An intruder lies in wait.
Slowly, he sits up, the hot bedsheets peeling away from his clothes. The wooden floors, polished carefully the day before, glow gently in the low light, and the winter jacket hung on the rack across from his bed sways gently in the wind. Everything else is in deep shadow, moving slowly in the wind or breathing subtly as houses do.
It takes him some time to realize that the jacket sways out of synch with the black fabric that hangs in the corner nearby. He squints into the dark, leans forward to brace his elbows on his knees. In the deep black, a gleam coalesces into his vision, sharp and wet. It moves with the same rhythm as his own chest.
Rattle.
Thoma knows he has to call out. The shell in the corner won’t come to him on its own. He takes a deep breath of hot air and prepares his sleeping voice.
x
uhhhhh main design quirk notes until i give them ref sheets
spark notes for au/dragon/whatever lore. you dont have to read this if i'm not commissioning writing or more scenic art
hmmm
⊰ ⇒Currently playing Serene and Fathomless...⇐ ⊱
⊰Pillar of Fortitude⊱
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Despite his succession as the family head at a young age, he appears to be a mature and determined man, notably even more than Ayaka, who's known for her steadfastness. Like Ayaka, Ayato cares for the well-being of the common people. He is also a family man, as he had taken the position of Commissioner per his parents' wishes to also protect Ayaka, stating that he would not forgive any who would harm his family and wanting to ensure that Ayaka had others to rely on when she needed it. He also risked his life to smuggle the Watatsumi Army into Tenshukaku for the sake of doing a "small favor" for her. Ayato is also known to be cunning and mischievous, as both the Shogun and Yae Miko note him as unpredictable and tricky to understand, with the latter strongly disliking him as a result. 
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⊰Relationships⊱
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Thoma
 .
Alive
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━━━ "Friend" There is no doubt in my mind about Thoma's loyalty to the Kamisato Clan. A long time ago, partly to see where he stood, I advised him that he would be better off leaving if he didn't want to get drawn into the never-ending disputes that plague public life. Still, he chose to stay, and in all the time he's been with us, he's spared me much worry. There are very few people I trust completely these days, but Thoma is one of them. |
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Ayaka
 .
xAlive
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━━━ Sibling I am confident in Ayaka's abilities. But I want her to be able to hold on to her innocence. She shouldn't have to get personally involved in power struggles, or confront the darker side of life head-on. As her older brother, it's my job to shield her from all of that... Heh, just... between the two of us, of course. Sorry, that got a little more private a little more quickly than I'd intended. |
Cypressus Custos: Guardian Cypress
SOME STORIES MAY INCLUDE MILD TO MODERATE BODY HORROR AND INJURY
I. OF PROMISES UNKEPT, THE NIGHT FLOWERS SPEAK
I. OF PROMISES UNKEPT, THE NIGHT FLOWERS SPEAKClick to expand this section
Of Promises Unkept, the Night Flowers Speak
By jejune
x
Time.
Ayato needed more time. There is still much to do today but here he is, laying in a mixture of creek water and his own blood. There is much to do and not enough time.
Since he woke up, he had felt something he could only describe as…odd. All through the morning, snow fell as if it were trying to hide something. As if gravity slowed, each glimmer descending eyeless and soft with sleep and a mouth blue as secrets.
He tried to open his and felt the cold settle there. Well, this is a lot less lonely than I had expected, he thought.
There is not much to do now at this moment other than wait for the Shuumatsuban. Surely they’d be able to locate a dying man a few paces from the estate? But isn’t the problem exactly that? The simple fact that an assassin had managed to leave him in this state so close to home? Someone managed to evade the eyes of the Shuumatsuban. Would that mean the estate is under attack?
What of Thoma and his dear sister? What will become of them? In the best case scenario, all of his responsibilities would now rest on Ayaka’s shoulders. In that case, would death have been a mercy to her?
No, that’s selfish thinking.
He will be found soon and he will return to being the head of the Yashiro Commission and the Shuumatsuban. There is nothing to worry about. The slow, bleeding out will be brief and he will be found and everything will be back to the way it always was.
It’s just, often, he'd yearn to come home and collapse onto his bed. There has always been a deep-rooted ache in his bones and it spreads and throbs and it only gets worse. But that’s trivial when his role is integral to Inazuma and keeping the people safe. Slacking off too much would have disastrous consequences. So, this is the least he could do. He’d bear the weight of the world on his shoulders in every lifetime.
Yet, it feels relieving to be laying here, in the flowing water, staring up and through the aralia trees as snow finds its place on the earth.
But time is love’s cruel mistress.
Cold quickly takes the place of blood in his body and he doesn’t want to let go. He needs more time. He had only started to understand the feeling of being alive. There is still much to do.
Though if this weariness he felt all his life is the price, he’d pay it tenfold and carry it for lifetimes.
Slowly, the light is replaced by the colourless notion of what he suspects to be joy. He has buried all the cruelty in his soul in a dissolution of desire, a funeral of ice, and the way the pale sky opened up to reveal a heart—no larger than a fist, no kinder than a child with a tender dream of spring.
Ayato needed more time. There is still much to do today but here he is, laying in a mixture of creek water and his own blood. There is much to do and not enough time.
Since he woke up, he had felt something he could only describe as…odd. All through the morning, snow fell as if it were trying to hide something. As if gravity slowed, each glimmer descending eyeless and soft with sleep and a mouth blue as secrets.
He tried to open his and felt the cold settle there. Well, this is a lot less lonely than I had expected, he thought.
There is not much to do now at this moment other than wait for the Shuumatsuban. Surely they’d be able to locate a dying man a few paces from the estate? But isn’t the problem exactly that? The simple fact that an assassin had managed to leave him in this state so close to home? Someone managed to evade the eyes of the Shuumatsuban. Would that mean the estate is under attack?
What of Thoma and his dear sister? What will become of them? In the best case scenario, all of his responsibilities would now rest on Ayaka’s shoulders. In that case, would death have been a mercy to her?
No, that’s selfish thinking.
He will be found soon and he will return to being the head of the Yashiro Commission and the Shuumatsuban. There is nothing to worry about. The slow, bleeding out will be brief and he will be found and everything will be back to the way it always was.
It’s just, often, he'd yearn to come home and collapse onto his bed. There has always been a deep-rooted ache in his bones and it spreads and throbs and it only gets worse. But that’s trivial when his role is integral to Inazuma and keeping the people safe. Slacking off too much would have disastrous consequences. So, this is the least he could do. He’d bear the weight of the world on his shoulders in every lifetime.
Yet, it feels relieving to be laying here, in the flowing water, staring up and through the aralia trees as snow finds its place on the earth.
But time is love’s cruel mistress.
Cold quickly takes the place of blood in his body and he doesn’t want to let go. He needs more time. He had only started to understand the feeling of being alive. There is still much to do.
Though if this weariness he felt all his life is the price, he’d pay it tenfold and carry it for lifetimes.
Slowly, the light is replaced by the colourless notion of what he suspects to be joy. He has buried all the cruelty in his soul in a dissolution of desire, a funeral of ice, and the way the pale sky opened up to reveal a heart—no larger than a fist, no kinder than a child with a tender dream of spring.
II. TWILIGHT, MIDNIGHT, WITCHING HOURClick to expand this section
Twilight, Midnight, Witching Hour
The sound of rattling, like dried grass shaking in the wind, wakes him.
Thoma is cold. It’s late autumn, but unseasonably hot, and the heavy bedclothes feel like lead against his skin. Briefly furious, he flings the sheet away and pops open the neck closures on his yogi, letting the cross-breeze tickle his skin. Somewhere up on the roof of the house, an owl takes flight, the sound of its wings rustling into the distance and into oblivion. Surely that was the source of the noise–with the bird gone and his skin cooling, he’ll sleep.
Thoma closes his eyes.
Sleep does not come.
The liquid-time of half-sleep solidifies like blood into fatty gel. Finally, he reopens his eyes and stares reproachfully at the ceiling. Despite the breeze, the room’s air is stale; it smells like nothing, neither comforting nor foul, and yet he tastes iron as if the scent of war surrounds his bed.
Rattle.
Somewhere deep in his brain, a scared prey animal perks up its ears. A wolf hides in the tall grass. An intruder lies in wait.
Slowly, he sits up, the hot bedsheets peeling away from his clothes. The wooden floors, polished carefully the day before, glow gently in the low light, and the winter jacket hung on the rack across from his bed sways gently in the wind. Everything else is in deep shadow, moving slowly in the wind or breathing subtly as houses do.
It takes him some time to realize that the jacket sways out of synch with the black fabric that hangs in the corner nearby. He squints into the dark, leans forward to brace his elbows on his knees. In the deep black, a gleam coalesces into his vision, sharp and wet. It moves with the same rhythm as his own chest.
Rattle.
Thoma knows he has to call out. The shell in the corner won’t come to him on its own. He takes a deep breath of hot air and prepares his sleeping voice.
“Ayato,” he says to the figure.
To the figure, he calls out. “Ayato?”
The revenant in the corner blinks, finally. It’s deep in winter, and Thoma had just managed to get his futon warm enough to fall asleep, his feet pressed against a fire-warmed brick at the foot of the bed, when a cold gust arrested his progress to sleep. Now, he sat upright, expecting to see a gap in a window, a fire dying in the moya at the center of the mansion.
He sees a dead man.
Ayato rasps when he breathes. He reaches for his throat, almost as if self-conscious, and attempts to cover the death-wound that gapes open when he breathes. Why does he breathe?, Thoma thinks. He’s dead.
The pale figure’s mouth moves as if speaking. He covers the wound with his fingers until the gap is sealed; only then is his voice audible, though it’s thin and reedy, strained in a way it had never been in life.
“—sorry,” it says, to the room, the house, Thoma. “I came to see—”
“—leave,” Thoma hisses. “Go to your grave, dead man.” Already it feels too harsh an invective—in another setting he might reach out, take the revenant into his arms and comfort him, bind his wound closed and cover it with something warm and human—but the corpse in his room is unbearable. Ayato brings death in on his coattails, a creeping sickness that threatens to spread. Thoma is wracked with fear, and he reacts the only way a cornered dog can: he bites.
He can’t see where Ayato goes. He only sees when the figure melts into the shadows. After a long paralysis, he leaps from the futon and looks into every corner, scrabbling around with open palms, checking behind drapes and cabinets, opening and shutting the screens despite the cold, clawing the walls.
He doesn’t realize he’s sobbing until Ayaka comes to quiet him.
Thoma feels watched once more days later, when he’s crouching by the side of the koi pond in the garden, feeding the fish little scraps of mustard greens that have gone too soft for his liking. He looks up sharply and sees Ayato’s eyes gleaming from across the small pond, half-hidden in the rushes. A strange surge of pride wells up in him: his master has chosen a perfect venue to approach him. He’s neither intruding in the comfort and safety of the manor, nor stalking in the fearful wilds of the outside world; he’s neither hidden nor shockingly exposed.
Despite the broken body, the mind remains, like a fire that refuses to go dark in a battering wind. Thoma swallows down a lump in his throat.
He refuses to speak to the wight. Ayaka is nearby. She doesn’t need to be involved in this post-mortem horror; her grip is weak enough on the various threads of responsibility she had to scramble for in her brother’s wake. Thoma feeds the fish the last of their dinner and stands up. He allows himself one long look at his damaged master before vanishing into the manor.
Ayato follows him from time to time. The wind takes on a warming quality, and Ayato’s corpse slinks behind him on a walk around the grounds. Spring buds appear on the skeletal trees, and Thoma comes across the creature that was once his dear master, standing haunted-eyed in the engawa. The song of new birds rings through the courtyard, and he feels the deadweight gravity of a body just behind him while he washes the wild radishes he foraged, the saltwater stinging his raw cuticles.
Cicadas drone outside on the first night Ayato touches him.
Ayaka is gone on this particular night, away in a nearby city, enjoying the comforts of a famous ryokan in between diplomatic meetings. The night is on the sharp edge of too-hot, and he enjoys a tenuous peace with the breeze that passes through the open dividers in the house. All that separates Thoma, half-asleep on his mat, from the outside world is the series of draperies that he’s fitted into the spaces that were once walls. The illusion of a closed-in house comforts him in the same way that the breezes do.
The illusory walls hide the sight of the specter, but the rustling noise he makes when he enters is evident. Instantly, Thoma is fully awake, the threat of perspiration prickling his skin, adrenaline primed but un-released in his blood. He shifts onto his side and observes the remains of his master.
Ayato has his shoulder braced into the wall, standing rigid but at an angle, holding himself in a fashion corpse-like. Thoma traces his sightline up the motheaten, once-fine military coat, through the brown staining that seeps into the hadajuban, into the horrifying sight he didn’t expect to see in the comfort of his own bed: the sickly grey, cartilaginous ripples of a broken trachea, smashed flat and straining with each breath. He hears the dry-grass rattle of those breaths, watches the apologetic look that crosses what remains of Ayato’s face.
He feels sickness and pity in turns. He feels the same love he always has. He feels too much and altogether not enough, fatigue-dulled and dream-bright.
He closes his eyes tightly against it all. The room remains silent but for the rattling breaths and whispering wind. A cold weight, a hand, drops on his forehead, soothing like ice on a wound, gentle in a calculated way, and despite a lingering fear he drifts to sleep in a comfort the likes of which he hasn’t felt in months.
There are more nights with the same shape, the same haunted form in the corner, an anchor of cold presence as the wind warms. More cold touches rain down on him in the infinite instant between sleep and wake. Stains of ink-black, tacky like blood and smelling like impending lightning, appear on his futon, his sheets, his floors, his bedclothes.
Thoma, like all creatures, becomes accustomed to his horrors. He craves what Ayato was. He begins to call out to what Ayato now is.
He sees a dead man.
Ayato rasps when he breathes. He reaches for his throat, almost as if self-conscious, and attempts to cover the death-wound that gapes open when he breathes. Why does he breathe?, Thoma thinks. He’s dead.
The pale figure’s mouth moves as if speaking. He covers the wound with his fingers until the gap is sealed; only then is his voice audible, though it’s thin and reedy, strained in a way it had never been in life.
“—sorry,” it says, to the room, the house, Thoma. “I came to see—”
“—leave,” Thoma hisses. “Go to your grave, dead man.” Already it feels too harsh an invective—in another setting he might reach out, take the revenant into his arms and comfort him, bind his wound closed and cover it with something warm and human—but the corpse in his room is unbearable. Ayato brings death in on his coattails, a creeping sickness that threatens to spread. Thoma is wracked with fear, and he reacts the only way a cornered dog can: he bites.
He can’t see where Ayato goes. He only sees when the figure melts into the shadows. After a long paralysis, he leaps from the futon and looks into every corner, scrabbling around with open palms, checking behind drapes and cabinets, opening and shutting the screens despite the cold, clawing the walls.
He doesn’t realize he’s sobbing until Ayaka comes to quiet him.
Thoma feels watched once more days later, when he’s crouching by the side of the koi pond in the garden, feeding the fish little scraps of mustard greens that have gone too soft for his liking. He looks up sharply and sees Ayato’s eyes gleaming from across the small pond, half-hidden in the rushes. A strange surge of pride wells up in him: his master has chosen a perfect venue to approach him. He’s neither intruding in the comfort and safety of the manor, nor stalking in the fearful wilds of the outside world; he’s neither hidden nor shockingly exposed.
Despite the broken body, the mind remains, like a fire that refuses to go dark in a battering wind. Thoma swallows down a lump in his throat.
He refuses to speak to the wight. Ayaka is nearby. She doesn’t need to be involved in this post-mortem horror; her grip is weak enough on the various threads of responsibility she had to scramble for in her brother’s wake. Thoma feeds the fish the last of their dinner and stands up. He allows himself one long look at his damaged master before vanishing into the manor.
Ayato follows him from time to time. The wind takes on a warming quality, and Ayato’s corpse slinks behind him on a walk around the grounds. Spring buds appear on the skeletal trees, and Thoma comes across the creature that was once his dear master, standing haunted-eyed in the engawa. The song of new birds rings through the courtyard, and he feels the deadweight gravity of a body just behind him while he washes the wild radishes he foraged, the saltwater stinging his raw cuticles.
Cicadas drone outside on the first night Ayato touches him.
Ayaka is gone on this particular night, away in a nearby city, enjoying the comforts of a famous ryokan in between diplomatic meetings. The night is on the sharp edge of too-hot, and he enjoys a tenuous peace with the breeze that passes through the open dividers in the house. All that separates Thoma, half-asleep on his mat, from the outside world is the series of draperies that he’s fitted into the spaces that were once walls. The illusion of a closed-in house comforts him in the same way that the breezes do.
The illusory walls hide the sight of the specter, but the rustling noise he makes when he enters is evident. Instantly, Thoma is fully awake, the threat of perspiration prickling his skin, adrenaline primed but un-released in his blood. He shifts onto his side and observes the remains of his master.
Ayato has his shoulder braced into the wall, standing rigid but at an angle, holding himself in a fashion corpse-like. Thoma traces his sightline up the motheaten, once-fine military coat, through the brown staining that seeps into the hadajuban, into the horrifying sight he didn’t expect to see in the comfort of his own bed: the sickly grey, cartilaginous ripples of a broken trachea, smashed flat and straining with each breath. He hears the dry-grass rattle of those breaths, watches the apologetic look that crosses what remains of Ayato’s face.
He feels sickness and pity in turns. He feels the same love he always has. He feels too much and altogether not enough, fatigue-dulled and dream-bright.
He closes his eyes tightly against it all. The room remains silent but for the rattling breaths and whispering wind. A cold weight, a hand, drops on his forehead, soothing like ice on a wound, gentle in a calculated way, and despite a lingering fear he drifts to sleep in a comfort the likes of which he hasn’t felt in months.
There are more nights with the same shape, the same haunted form in the corner, an anchor of cold presence as the wind warms. More cold touches rain down on him in the infinite instant between sleep and wake. Stains of ink-black, tacky like blood and smelling like impending lightning, appear on his futon, his sheets, his floors, his bedclothes.
Thoma, like all creatures, becomes accustomed to his horrors. He craves what Ayato was. He begins to call out to what Ayato now is.
“Come here,” he says against his better judgement.
Against his better judgement, he calls out. “Come here.”
Ayato blinks, fearful, from across the room, looking down at the tatami mats that he’s ruined over the last month’s visits. He’s still covering the wound on his neck, which continues to seep night after night. Thoma smiles at him; somehow, it’s endearing that his master’s shambling body protects the wound as if the blood is what’s staining his floors, clothes, hands. It’s really the viscous ichor that makes up his new void-black face.
Unbidden, Thoma wonders what it feels like. He banishes this thought as injurious, cruel, perhaps as a servant’s overreach, even though Ayato is not really his master anymore.
“I’ll flip the omote over in the morning,” he promises. “Come lie down.”
Still, the specter hesitates. The void of his face creases uneasily, as if frowning in disbelief.
Thoma presses the attack. “Please?”
The dim light from the window is blotted out by Ayato’s figure as he approaches.
He slips under Thoma’s light blanket, allowing the arms that link instantly around his waist. Immediately, Thoma is arrested by the smell of electricity and storms—he worries foolishly that he’s about to be struck by a bolt from the blue before he realizes that the smell is Ayato, who’s traded his wood smoke-cardamom smell for something unearthly.
Thoma presses his hands against the specter’s back and feels the creeping cold, even through his clothing. The black ooze of Ayato’s face has been dripping slowly like pitch, down his neck and across the ever-present wound, and has finally begun to stain his clothing. His master’s garments drape like they might on a rack, unwarmed by a living creature inside. Beneath his hands, they feel dusty, not oily or damp. It’s as if they were never worn, merely abandoned.
He realizes he’s staring at the ichor stains on Ayato’s jacket when he hears the rattle of Ayato’s voice above him. Perhaps the pitch that drips from his face interacts with his broken throat–the rattle progresses into a hiss, and Thoma catches bits of words and speech-sounds. It’s not clear enough to make out a statement, but even now, it’s clear that his voice, in the moments where the pitch briefly clears his strained trachea and his flattened lungs finally inflate, still sounds like it always has.
Inside the strange corpse-shell, his master lives in spite of it all.
Thoma grips the stiff form tight and buries his face in Ayato’s collar. A pool of black contacts his cheek, and it’s strangely warm, almost as if he’d touched fresh tears. The rest of his master’s skin is cold: lacquer floors in the height of summer, running water, a sharp breeze. His own skin, previously sweat-prickling in the heat, instantly relaxes, and his muscles unspool. In his arms, Ayato wriggles uneasily, but Thoma maneuvers after him, continuously wrapping himself around the specter.
“You know I’m not letting you back up, Ayato,” Thoma breathes, his warm breath creating steam against Ayato’s frozen mass. “Not now that you’re finally here.”
Once again, he feels the cool weight of Ayato’s hands against him as he drifts off. This time, the hands are carefully side by side on the center of his spine, cradling him as if protecting something fragile, gripping subtly as if afraid of loss.
In the moments before sleep comes to stake its claim, Thoma can feel, ever so slightly, Ayato trembling with the ghost of tears that his body can no longer produce.
Unbidden, Thoma wonders what it feels like. He banishes this thought as injurious, cruel, perhaps as a servant’s overreach, even though Ayato is not really his master anymore.
“I’ll flip the omote over in the morning,” he promises. “Come lie down.”
Still, the specter hesitates. The void of his face creases uneasily, as if frowning in disbelief.
Thoma presses the attack. “Please?”
The dim light from the window is blotted out by Ayato’s figure as he approaches.
He slips under Thoma’s light blanket, allowing the arms that link instantly around his waist. Immediately, Thoma is arrested by the smell of electricity and storms—he worries foolishly that he’s about to be struck by a bolt from the blue before he realizes that the smell is Ayato, who’s traded his wood smoke-cardamom smell for something unearthly.
Thoma presses his hands against the specter’s back and feels the creeping cold, even through his clothing. The black ooze of Ayato’s face has been dripping slowly like pitch, down his neck and across the ever-present wound, and has finally begun to stain his clothing. His master’s garments drape like they might on a rack, unwarmed by a living creature inside. Beneath his hands, they feel dusty, not oily or damp. It’s as if they were never worn, merely abandoned.
He realizes he’s staring at the ichor stains on Ayato’s jacket when he hears the rattle of Ayato’s voice above him. Perhaps the pitch that drips from his face interacts with his broken throat–the rattle progresses into a hiss, and Thoma catches bits of words and speech-sounds. It’s not clear enough to make out a statement, but even now, it’s clear that his voice, in the moments where the pitch briefly clears his strained trachea and his flattened lungs finally inflate, still sounds like it always has.
Inside the strange corpse-shell, his master lives in spite of it all.
Thoma grips the stiff form tight and buries his face in Ayato’s collar. A pool of black contacts his cheek, and it’s strangely warm, almost as if he’d touched fresh tears. The rest of his master’s skin is cold: lacquer floors in the height of summer, running water, a sharp breeze. His own skin, previously sweat-prickling in the heat, instantly relaxes, and his muscles unspool. In his arms, Ayato wriggles uneasily, but Thoma maneuvers after him, continuously wrapping himself around the specter.
“You know I’m not letting you back up, Ayato,” Thoma breathes, his warm breath creating steam against Ayato’s frozen mass. “Not now that you’re finally here.”
Once again, he feels the cool weight of Ayato’s hands against him as he drifts off. This time, the hands are carefully side by side on the center of his spine, cradling him as if protecting something fragile, gripping subtly as if afraid of loss.
In the moments before sleep comes to stake its claim, Thoma can feel, ever so slightly, Ayato trembling with the ghost of tears that his body can no longer produce.
x
uhhhhh main design quirk notes until i give them ref sheets
- IGNORE WHATEVER EFFECT HE HAS i put them on him for funsies and to spoil him
- head feathers look tattered/damaged (look: fiona)
- antennae are bent in multiple places, like they got trampled, kinda similar to fiona. has 4 of them
- has a wide horizontal scar on his neck, a little below his head. you can simplify it to a dark grey line if you're squicky about scarring or this kind of injury placement
- ideally his mane is styled like the og character just use other art in bio for reference
- the clothes on the skin have very old dried blood on them
- the black part on his face is actually pitch-black; has the consistency of tar or some similar liquid, always dripping down. typically also can be seen slightly smudged/dripped onto around his chest or on the ground, if laying down
pitch black as in. Pitch Black. #000000. rgb 0/0/0. it consumes light and makes him look unnatural and out of place. colour adjustments for artstyle/pallette (i.e dark brown or dark blue off-black shade) are fine but it's supposed to be a solid colour save for maybe a highlight at the edge via mood lighting. the only discernable feature is his eyes and maybe the gem, optionally - OTHERWISE: MESS AROUND AND HAVE FUN!!!!!! i love seeing what designs people come up with for his face part to convey the same concept. you can make it tv static. make it look like it was purposefully censored out with ink. old photo that got so weathered the features are indistinguishable anymore. please have fun
- head gem visibility is optional
- he's wearing (leather) gloves/dress shoes, but dark fades on his limbs are also okay
- addendum: generally when i'm commissioning i mean the game-accurate outfit (in-game model turnaround here), but i entirely understand that it's migraine-inducing-ly complex so whatever he has on currently also works if you don't like intricate detail/don't want to upcharge for complexity. PLEASE note that his clothes wrapping order is reversed from the base game (right to left, from top down on your pov; ref image below). it's not a mistake it's an intended design choice
- atp him and thoma are just ocs with extra steps to me
- guy who is DEAD!!!! hes dead!!! was assassinated which is why he has a neck scar
- since his neck was heavily damaged speech is a big struggle to him, if he retains the ability to do it at all. his voice is pretty weak and raspy and it usually takes some effort to speak long sentences. he also breathes with a slight whistle
- in a weird state bordering life and undeath, something like a physical manifestation of a ghost or an apparition
- the uma is diegetic. his face is somewhat non-eucledian in the sense that it both looks like it has volume but if you were to touch it you would probably sink. or maybe not. its like that optical illusion/paradox of a mask it simultaneously looks like its there but also not
- actually the saddest and wettest creature alive/undead. his undoing definitely scarred him mentally, he dislikes being left alone for too long and is generally more paranoid than usual
- constantly cold and kind of wet and sticky and gross. usually can be found either clinging to thoma for warmth or wrapped in thoma's jacket, the latter is somewhat of a comfort object to him when thoma is not present; this generally applies to staying by himself, but ayato prefers to linger around thoma and usually hangs around or follows shortly after if they can't stay together in one place. he does spend time with his sister, however he still feels somewhat guilty about being unable to protect her and that if anything happens they're both relatively vulnerable
- ^^^ i think he's constantly in the state of waking up in cold sweat from a particularly bad dream when youre very sick
- weird sort of shapeshifter of a thing, the way you perceive him depends on what you think about the guy. the way he looks to You, The Player and to thoma/ayaka is probably the most "normal", to latter two because they're family members. if you were a guy who feels neutral about him and/or know little you would very likely perceive him as some sort of smudged or blacked out silhouette, and as a person who actively dislikes him you would probably see him as something monstrous and distorted
template by ezevic :]
you can erase this, just please don't pass this as your own!
you can erase this, just please don't pass this as your own!
hmmm
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