spicyshimmy:

spader7:

suddenly dark and gory stuff, but i need to vent after today.

1+ hour sketch

It was not the first time he had been called an animal.

It was not the first time he had believed it. 

To meet accusations of anger with more anger was perhaps the point—the same principles upon which Danarius had drawn, to wind his pet like a lyrium vein around his crooked finger, to imply and, through the witchcraft of his tongue, make implication true. It was not about what another man said. It was about getting a creature to believe it. 

‘There comes a time,’ Fenris had once admitted, ‘when you must turn and face the tiger.’

But he had always thought the tiger was the animal that chased him rather than the animal he had become. He thought the blood that stained its jaw was his own—yet perhaps it was someone else’s after all. 

Talons, bright eyes, bared teeth. Tearing out a throat as only a beast of prey would do. And all the strength it gave him, all the wicked power—and, though Varric would appreciate the pun too much, all the wicked grace—saw to it only that he fought himself in the darkness, though he lit up the shadows with a white-hot rage. 

‘We should move on,’ he said, blood against his palms, hot against his face. 

It was not the first time he had been called an animal—not even with his own voice, his own name.