☆ the dove
{☆} characters tsaritsa
{☆} notes cult au, imposter au, drabble, gender neutral reader
{☆} warnings violence, blood
{☆} word count 0.7k
Her hands are weapons, forged in a tragedy as much as a war of ash and blood that seeps into the earth and rots it from within. To them, however, she is salvation. Her hands are a kindness, not a threat. She sees it in their puffy, red eyes just brimming with tears, their fragile body so delicate and weak is still remains marred by wounds new and old – the gold still stains their skin, even long after it had been washed away.
She has seen it all – and she takes the injured dove beneath her wing with the sickly sweet promise that someday she shall mend its broken wings and teach it to fly again.
And in their stupor, they do not see her clip their wings.
It is for the best.
The wolves still salivate below the nest, waiting for her little dove to fall again – no, she shall not send her little bird to fly when it will just fall into their waiting maws once again.
This..this one is hers, she has decided.
Her little bird who dreams of the sky and the woman who clips their wings..what a tragic pair they must make, she thinks.
Not for her, of course. Yet not to them, either, unaware of the way she grounds them and keeps the key to their cage tightly in her fist.
"Tsaritsa?" The soft, meek lilt of the little bird draws her from her reverie, and she smiles – all teeth and little else, wolfish and predatory.
Yet the bird sees nothing but love in the sharp points of her canines.
As it was meant to be.
"Yes, little bird?"
She coos in honeyed tones, brushing her cold, cold hands against their skin, reveling in the way they shiver and shake beneath the ever present chill in her very bones. They do not fear the claws that ghost across their skin, and the smile they offer that illuminates their eyes like stars only proves her right – she wants to devour them whole. To see the stars in their eyes burn out beneath her teeth, their golden blood burn upon her tongue and down her throat.
"You promised to take me to the gardens today, remember?"
Her pearly, sharpened fangs peer out beneath her lips as she grins wider, unnerving to all but the little bird who sees not the wolf but the wool it wears, her hands finding their place upon their shoulders as she whispers into their ear.
She will guide her little bird where they cannot go, where their clipped wings cannot take them.
She will give them that bittersweet taste of freedom and then watch them try to catch the stars..
Just to drag them back down to earth where they belong.
"Of course, Creator – I am a woman of my word, am I not?"
Such sickly sweet lies come to her with ease – she lies and she lies and they do not see past the woolen cloak of the wolf until its jaw has snapped around its throat and its blood has painted the world a shimmering gold.
She will delight in that, too.
"If I may be so bold, Creator, you have been distant lately..have you grown tired of me already?"
Her words were as sharp as a blade, yet as dull as a rock, as sweet as they were dangerous. Like watching a mouse trap luring in its prey, she would snap it shut as soon as the little bird strayed too close.
"No! No, that's not..you've just been busy lately, I didn't want to intrude."
They remind her so much of a rabbit in those moments, and she so badly wants to know what would happen if she just took a small, insignificant bite..yet she restrains herself with a far too wide smile, her jaw clenched so hard she almost thinks they will hear it creak.
"Intrude? You could ever hardly intrude, Creator – what is mine is yours. Though, perhaps I shall have to lock you in my room to ensure you compensate me for depriving me of your presence."
In just a few short words, she snares the rabbit – her little bird, her Creator. They will see nothing but the sickly sweet lure of her smile, letting out a pretty laugh of their own as they press closer, like a bird wandering into the open maw of the beast lying in wait.
"As long as it has a nice view, I suppose I won't mind."
They jest, but she does not. And oh, how easy it is to ensnare an unsuspecting prey.
"Of course, Creator – just for you."
It won't be long until her little bird returns to its gilded cage, now. Permanently.
It is better that way.
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i was gonna wait until i finished the bitd and deadlands line-ups before posting these, but i'm not gonna get those done before the final season starts, so might as well bite the bullet now XD woohoo, oxventure d&d designs! i'll go into further detail below the cut for all of my thoughts on these designs and reasoning for smaller details, but for now, just know that i will never draw a cape. i simply cannot do it. hoods and weird draped fabric or nothing XD
okay i put like. waaay too many thoughts into a lot of these small details so im gonna allow myself to geek out here X3 firstly - though they're way too small to read properly, i did the little symbol eye shines i used in my first art for them! dob gets music notes, prudence gets fire, corazón gets hearts, and merilwen gets flowers. i usually draw egbert's pupils pretty thin to resemble a reptile, so he just gets normal eye shines, but i probably could have given him some here... he would get suns if i thought of that
dob - muscular in a wiry and dehydrated way, lol, hence having a more defined stomach/hips despite not being as strong as prudence or egbert. he has sad/down-turned puppy dog eyes at all times because i think the big-eyed endearing look is fitting for him, though i do make them darker blue than his canonical baby blues because i just... like how dark blue eyes look, lol. i'm pretty sure he canonically has the stomach scar, and obviously his facial scar has always been there, but i gave him a couple other ones just to show that hes pretty reckless. and he gets freckles because even though they arent mentioned in the dragon dogma's video, i noticed luke added some and. i like freckles a lot
prudence - i've said this before, but i love the thought of pru getting muscular after the werebear bite <3 i just think she should be a little bit hench. as a treat. once again, the heavy stomach scarring comes from the dragon dogma's video, because i found their design choices in that really fun. i change prudence's outfit the most out of any of the characters, just because her canonical outfit confuses me. i'm really bad at understanding/drawing fantasy wear as is, but her fit... i'm lost entirely XD so i free-balled a bit. her inner sleeves that hook around her fingers are based on jane's various prudence looks, and then the looser outer sleeve is just because i love prudence with a dramatic sleeve. originally the colors were closer to her canon outfit, but it just looked messy without all the details of the original, and then i tried red like jane's prudence looks but it didn't contrast enough with her skin. so i restricted them to just deep purples and black with pops of gold and dark magenta!
corazón - what can i say besides. transgender. LMAO honestly though, besides adding the top surgery scars, i just really like his canon look. i simplified the details, obviously, but i really love his big coat and his tall boots and the earrings and the black-on-black-on-black of it all. i didn't particularly feel like drawing hats when i was doing this, lol, so i stuck with a red bandana instead. the beads that are strung from it are black, red, purple, green, and yellow to match their guild's canonical color associations/the colored name plates they get in later seasons :] because corazón is the sentimental sort, even when he won't say it. also he gets a little cateye for his eyeliner, i dunno if i've ever said why i do that before haha
egbert - egbert my dearly beloved. literally just his canon look except he has la vache mauve on his tunic instead of fire! and the nose spikes i give him, i guess, but i forget those aren't canon. i actually usually draw him in mike's egbert get up, with the black robes and the golden dragon sigil, but i kinda wanted to move away from that to lean more into the end of legacy of dragons, where egbert fully commits to never going back to the dragon d'or. also i just love drawing little cow heads <3 also! i like the idea that rather than typical scar tissue, dragonborns grow thicker scales over places where they've been injured. so the thicker patches of small scales on egbert's body are meant to be scars! including his kidney scar, lol. the larger scales and the ones on his face were always there though, that's just dragonborn biology baby
merilwen - if i said i based merilwen's body on cartoon bears, would you forgive me... i just think it's cute LOL tummy <3 for the final dragon dogma's video reference, that's where her freckles and tattoos come from. ellen was right, merilwen with floral tattoos fucking rules. who am i to deny it. as a hairy woman myself, i also like making merilwen a hairy woman. she's a hippie, she would NOT shave. i also really love the red earrings she wears in her canon art, so i tried to carry that through to some other small parts of my drawing for her, and landed on the bands she has on her pants as well as the odd feather for her arrows. fun archery fact, for those who may not know - in modern archery at least, you usually will have a differently colored feather (or for my arrows, rubber fins lol) that indicate how youre meant to string the arrow! so i took advantage of that to give merilwen some more red, hehe
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