As-close-to-normal - Just Tal Here

ペタペタ描いたナランチャ

I have no motivation to do anything. My art lacking, my writing pathetic, my brain not functioning, my cat giving me judgement.

Urusei Yatsura trend with these little weirdos 🫶

Crimson Symphony

After being under the ocean for 100 years you have to be hungry, starving even.

Word Count: 780 words

(CW: Violence, blood, Dio being himself)

Big thanks to my sister for editing this and adding a bit because she can’t help herself.

It was out of habit that Dio sputtered for breath, looking up from the sailor’s neck. Blood dripped from his fangs, wetting his lips. It was the first meal he’d had since being trapped leagues under the wine-dark sea almost a century earlier. His shirt was damp, proper English manners forgone, shredded by the howling beast within. He wanted, no, he needed to consume, to drink the life-blood of anything living.

It had taken so long for his body to knit together in the darkness, nerve endings stretching out as fragile as his brother’s life had been. Nerve reached for nerve, connections sparking slowly, painfully, terminals matching up with dendrites. Time stretched on for an eternity in the coffin, in the darkness, in the silence. He’d counted his breaths for so long the numbers ceased to mean anything for him, breathing in the same air for nigh on a century if he had to guess. Decades of ravenous hunger gnawing at him, a dog deprived of a bone. One, poor unfortunate sailor was hardly enough to quench the beast unleashed.

A muted whimper came from the sailor’s friend, another deckhand. Dio had heard his footsteps creaking across the planks, the sharp inhale of air as he came upon the scene. Dio lunged towards him, muscles exploding with the newly found energy that the now empty corpse gave him. The scrawny man had more fight in him than the first, but that was hardly a fair comparison. The first sailor had not been expecting to become a meal. No one does, even if they had helped haul a rusty casket up from the seabed, cracking it open in the process. Dio chuckled, low in his throat, as the deckhand clawed at him with blunt, work-worn nails.

The deckhand screamed, but Dio’s hand curled cruelly over his mouth, muffling his cries for help as he twisted the man’s head to the side. Fingers pressed against Dio’s eyes, his cheeks, looking for vulnerability where there was none to be found. Though scrawny, the sailor had some muscle to him, bulging against his skin, his too thin skin, as he strained against Dio. Prey always struggled, even when death was inevitable. Dio could feel each pounding heartbeat, hard and fast, sending iron and copper laced blood through the arteries, rushing back to his heart through his veins. A heart that circulated blood, that sustained life in a beautiful symphony that every vampire craved.

His fangs sliced through the paper-thin skin, as easily as a butcher’s knife slaughters swine. Hot, ferrous blood touched his tongue, a metallic broth that would strengthen him. He drank deeply, holding tight to the sailor in the final embrace the man would ever know. His struggle was growing weaker, his fingers no longer pressing against Dio’s face with the same intensity as before. Each shuddering, fading gasp made blood dribble out from Dio’s lips, the messy mark of a vampire’s kiss.

Dio knelt, letting the weight of the man’s now limp body carry them both to the ground as he drank his fill. The man trembled, his limbs jerking before he died, succumbing to the blood loss. Still, Dio drank, slaking the beast within. As the deckhand’s life faded, it lent new strength to the eternal life that was Dio’s. When blood no longer came easily from the deckhand, Dio let go of the body. The deckhand’s head thumped against the planks, heavy and hollow. He hardly heard, looking up at the stars, so bright and beautiful and far away. Dio lingered on the sight that he had not seen in a century, before moving on, through open space that was now unfamiliar.

The boat that had pulled him out of the suffocating waters was alien to him; blue paint chipped and rusted on the railing’s surface, foreign looking machinery located along the edges and on the deck. The cabin on the ship had bright light coming from the door that the careless crewman had forgotten to close in his fear, much to bright to be from any oil lamp. He crept forward towards the shining rays streaming through the door, footfalls barely making a whisper not keen on alerting anything to his presence. Muffled noises of music poured into his ears like swirling mist the closer he got to the open door. Crescendos of violins, the whispers of flutes and piccolos, the lulls of violoncellos and double basses, piqued his interest more the closer he got. The tune unfolding before him strangely beautiful in such an unusual place, the middle of the sea being no place for a symphony.

If you made it this far thank you! The music I had in mind for this project was Romeo and Juliet Op. 64: No. 13 Dance of the Knights. You could also substitute The Rite of Spring, Part 2. VI. Sacrifical Dance, Lacrimosa, or Dies Irae.

Wouldn't you like a taste of the power?

Part of me wonders that if at certain points in his life Dio may have been redeemable or if deep down nothing could have saved him. That is probably just my inner therapist and 'I can fix him' mentality talking though.

Pleasantly surprised with how this turned out considering I haven't done anything in this style before. Alt. images under the cut!