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Character of the Season
Once known as the Butcher of Whitebrim, he's now The Butcher of Dygra, stepping forward as the first created demigod of the Ancients. There is no question that Astaroth casts an intimidating silhouette. Tall, domineering and dangerous, if looks could kill you'd be dead already, but to get up close and personal with the Grounds' resident cannibal tells a much different story. Dripping with charm and clad in only the finest attire, Asta is a gentleman monster, as polite as they come and committed to his role as security for the Dusklight and those who have earned his loyalty. Be careful of that smile, though - those teeth are sharp.
Congratulations, Asta!
Credits
Court of the Fallen was created in October of 2018 by Odd, Honey, and Crooked.
OG Skinning provided by Kaons, with functionality and many custom plugins made by Neowulf!
Feeling his hips rise, Flora tilts her head admonishingly to the side as she clucks under her tongue. "You just can't help yourself, can you?" The queen scolds; she doesn't mean it, though. If he laid there stiff (wink) as a board the entire time, she'd have hated him for his lack of desire. Still, this was a pairing of passion not romance, and so in place of long and loving kisses or moaned I love you's, Flora was content for there to be a certain amount of banter between them to keep the moments connected from start to finish.
And, speaking of..
Reaching for one of his hands, Flora would try and score the pad of his thumb against his own teeth so that droplets of blood would drip into his mouth just as she let her hips lower slowly. Waiting for a moment to feel the full girth of him, once she was sure she could, the queen let her hips fall all the way as she tipped her head back and moaned a long and low note of utter ecstasy. The first thrust was always the best; the one that filled, the one that ignited. Everything else was just a chain reaction from there, and gods if those other couples in the mists weren't sure what was going on in the back portion of the cavern, there'd be no mistaking it now.
"Fuck—" Flora moaned, forcing her head back and fitting her thighs tight against his body. Reaching for his hand, she'd press at the wound on his thumb in order to trace bloody hieroglyphics against her nipples and around her breasts. He'd bled himself earlier in order to lick it clean from her skin, and now that she was the one orchestrating, she saw no reason not to lay a trail for him to follow. Once he was allowed that was.
The effortless way Flora rose and fell very much suggested that, either she fucked like this daily, or there was some sort of exercise regime she did often in order to train precisely these muscle groups. Either way, even as beads of sweat trickled down her bronze skin, even as her muscles shivered with tension, her expression was one of youthful arousal rather than effort. "Touch me. I want to feel your hands all over me."
“I cannot.” He confidently drawls, smirking up at her from where he’s very contently settled beneath her, hips rising to taunt and toy with her equally as much even if he has conceded to handing her the reins. This is certainly a moment of passion and heated emotion, his bloodlust sparked to life in a primal instinct. There’s no I love you’s, a phrase Astaroth is confident he’s never said in the entirety of his life.
Letting her take his hand and cut his thumb, his hips tremble and his cock twitches as the warm blood drips into his mouth, paired with the sensation of her sinking down onto him. He groans, not even worried about muffling his moan, lips painted red with his own blood as he lets her get used to him, that red haze blooming again as tension and arousal shocks through him in a lightning strike. “Gods Flora,” any darlings or my dears are now gone in the face of the deeper accent that leaves him, watching through a heavy lidded gaze as she marks herself with his blood, how his hips rock into her just enough to drive himself deeper with each expert rise and fall of her hips.
Once she’s released his hand and made her demand, he does, with a renewed vigor that he hadn’t seemed to have before. Curling up over her thigh and around to her hips and ass, he leaves possessive marks wherever he can with his fingertips, squeezing and dragging blunt nails up her back to her sides, dragging his thumb across her bouncing breasts, leaving the trail of blood along the dark blooming bruise that will form from his earlier mark. His other hand remains at her breast, toying and tugging at her nipple, which the bloodied hand continues to rise, dragging that bloodied trail up along the hollow of her throat. “Look at you.” He purrs appreciatively, shivering in delight.
Not squeezing her throat, he simply holds her and helps her rise and fall against him, moaning out encouraging sounds and compliments, broken up by how he pants to catch his breath and tries to keep his teeth to himself, driven further by seeing the blood coating her yet trying to stay restrained all the same.
Later, perhaps, Flora would ask if Asta could read her thoughts, such was the precision with which he stroked both her metaphorical and physical buttons with ease. The pain she feels from the clutch of his fingers or the drag of his nails is the sort she likes, the sort that makes her feel wanted, the sort that (problematically) almost makes her feel like an object to be fucked and used.
Covering one of his hands with hers, her fingers tighten over his own in a silent command of harder that he might tweak and tug at her nipple with more force. It has cords of white light streaking through her that spread out across her thighs before exploding in her core, and with every thrust of his hips against hers Flora can feel the tension begin to build anew, kindling quickly on the embers of the orgasm he'd already forced out of her.
"I want you to," the queen agrees in a small voice, but only because she's leaned against his hand at her throat. Flora did not go for daily runs, eat healthy, and exercise in her spare time in order for her body not to be appreciated, and she wasn't shy about it either. "This is how I thought about fucking you." Flora pants, her cheeks now the same colour as the blood smeared across her body even as tears of sweat streaked through the marks Asta had made. "I wanted you to see me, I wanted to make you cum." It was why, despite how she quite liked being fucked from behind, she'd opted to be on top. She wanted his pleasure to be because she'd got him there, not from the ache in his own hips but from hers.
Rolling her hips, Flora's moans took on a rough edge as her lips parted. "Tell me when you're close so that I can.." Well. He had said what he needed to get off, after all. Letting one of her hands fall between her legs, she began to circle her fingertip against her clit in rhythm with the movement of her body against his, her blue eyes hazy but focused unflinchingly down at him.
Everything she does, each and every request she makes silently but physically, Astaroth gives into. Roughness was something he appreciated, despite his attempts to treat her gently. This was supposed to be a thank you, after all, a thank you that had her littered with his marks and bites, objectively pleased by the results despite having not expected to get to this point.
The bloodlust and his arousal thrum within him in an electric strike through his body again and again. Heat harbors no effects on him, no sweat to handle it but the ones that drips from her to spread along his scarred skin. Not that he complains, of course, melting into her pitched voice and her hips, the way she fucks him and he’s very appreciative of the view. “I am seeing you, darling.” He pants, his voice rough and hoarse, peering up at her with dark delight.
So much so that his fragile hold on himself starts to falter, with the rough moans that leave her throat and how his pressure increases, how she draws that pleasure back up between her legs and drives him absolutely insane.
One hand abandons her, keeping the one at her throat, utilizing the other to prop himself up, bending him partially to run a hot tongue up along the blood, circling her nipple with the blood, trailing up to her throat where his hand shifts to fist into her blonde curls. Rough moans leave his throat with each and every one, drawn closer and closer and with that tether snapping so too does his hold.
Nosing his way up her jaw as she rides him, a growled out “Close—” leaves him at precisely the time he angles his head down, burying his face into her perfect shoulder, a kiss as the precursor before he sinks his teeth in.
"Gods, fuck Asta—" She croons, her voice a shattered buzz but for the pressure around her throat and the way a moan wrapped around his name at the end, blurring the shape of it entirely.
Close—
No but,
—she wasn't
—this wasn't—
Flora had had a plan, flimsy though it was, but based on everything so far, she thought it might be enough. In her mind, she was going to pin him down, or try to anyway, hoping her previously please would help keep his shoulders relaxed onto the stone. When he was close she'd bite the inside of her cheek or tongue and let the blood drip down onto his lips from a safe distance. Easy peasy.
Only as he curls up toward her, one of Flora's hands is still between her legs, the other grasped around his wrist as she leans into his clutching fingers to further constrict her own breathing. The trail of blood they'd both painted across her body was meant to serve as a reward, only now it served as a pathway that he followed like a hound, tracking left and right across her belly and breasts.
"I'm not—" She hiccups, her voice tinged with panic as she felt the sting of his teeth against her shoulder. With almost no thought at all to what she was doing, Flora edged off of the ring located on the hand between her legs, letting it drop onto Asta's belly. Immediately the tide jaguar he'd seen her use in the Grounds would appear, its bulk pressed firmly between them, separating them, with its paws on either side of the butcher's body. Though her shoulder might tear as the sudden presence of the beast pushed them apart, if nothing else the wound couldn't get any worse with the rise of his orgasm.
This had always been the problem with this for the Butcher. The step of craving and needing that control, of giving gentle agreements and concessions only to have them blow up the second the blood hits his tongue and the spark blooms that sharply. It’s a predators instinct that has him latching on, and whatever plan she’d had, whatever she thought she could do to keep him docile doesn’t really work with the deal she’s made.
He did warn her.
Her hiccupped voice is difficult to hear from the blood pumping through his veins and roaring in his ears, and if it weren’t for some deeper hidden thought barking in the back of his mind that he needed to restrain himself, he might have actually chomped down harder than the rough handling of her shoulder between his too sharp teeth. And while he was close, it wasn’t so close that his orgasm crests, especially not with the sudden change to this dance.
Instead, he’s faced with the sudden pull, having half a mind to unlatch his jaw, leaving her shoulder fucked up but at least mostly intact – no chunk of flesh missing but certainly jagged cuts. His hands fall back to brace him as the tide jaguar appears, its weight a heavy thing against him and it has him inhaling a sharp breath despite the mouthful of blood, dark eyes swallowed up by both lust and the bloodlust tracking from Flora to the beast between them – recognizing it nearly immediately, before he looks back to the doubletake and her shoulder. With a flare of his nostrils and the tightness of his jaw, Astaroth tries to bring himself back. “Flora, I –” he starts to say through that very same hoarse voice, tight from the weight of the jaguar, the back of his hand lifting to wipe at his mouth, to then run through his hair to push it back, trying to become more and more like the impeccable Ancient she’d seen before now. Still in her, though the tension has dropped immensely on that pleasure and arousal within him, he can’t help the janky shiver that races down his spine in the mixture of emotions. Emotions that hit a belated moment as sanity races back in.
His hands try to push at the feline next, trying to give him some air lest he feel so trapped between it and her and fuck, he’s still buried inside her. Suddenly everything feels ice cold and he’s both too exposed and too stuck. “I’m sorry – fuck,” comes the next little gasp of sound, markedly less into the moment as he had been. “Flora, get off of me.” Comes the next rising request, punctuated with the "right now, please" that passes through blood stained lips and too sharp teeth, around the spotted tide jaguar that presses between them.
For one ridiculous blood-soaked instant, Flora has half a mind to keep going. With the jaguar between them she was sure she was safe from Asta's jaws, and gods, he could just tear into that thing for all he wanted during his climax, couldn't he? Her desperate need for approval had her considering these things as her body internally debated whether or not fear of death was going to be a new kink given the latent shivers of pleasure that still drifted up from her core. She could fuck him the way she'd promised, make him cum the way she'd so boldly declared, and they could just forget all about this part of it, right? The way he wiped at his mouth, adjusted his hair, the way some small sliver of bronze was back in the black of his eyes, he wasn't that far gone anymore, was he? It didn't have to be over, she could still—
—Flora, get off of me
Kindly said, it hurt more than anything his teeth had done to her thus far.
Forcing herself up and back before releasing the breath she'd been holding in a shaky groan of pleasure and failure, Flora snaps her fingers to move the jaguar off of the ancient. "—you can..if you want to—" She hears herself saying as she nods to the feline who merely glances between the pair, not even knowing herself what her instruction was meant to convey.
On her knees, the queen's body was a golden canvas smeared with pink and flecked with watercolour splots of crimson and garnet; streaks of sweat and saliva had run through, blurring away some of the harsher lines left by the butcher's tongue, while the mark on her shoulder now freely bled, leaving Rorschach-like patterns blooming down the skin of her arm. Luckily, from being level 11 and it not being anywhere fatal, Flora wasn't forced to run to heal herself, such that the tears that began to sparkle across the sea of her gaze were from rejection and failure, rather than pain.
"I'm sorry—" She whispers, a whiplash emotional turn from having thought about continuing to fuck the butcher only seconds before. Ahh, but this is what happens when you date girls in their twenties, Asta. Flora had wanted not just to pleasure the ancient, but to please him as well, to prove she was strong enough to handle him despite his warnings, to live up to the implications she'd made of not being like other girls. Only here she was, shivering despite the heat and reaching out a trembling hand for him.
At least she hadn't screamed; at least she hadn't done that. For better or worse no one was going to come running to save the beauty from the beast.
The moment falters — as shaky of a thing as it was for the butcher, anyway. Despite the ice trying to budge through his veins, the second she moves up and back off of him, muscles twitch along his stomach, a bitten back hum of a sound slips from him. He’s only finally able to take a full breath when the tide jaguar moves, as Flora’s voice — pitched and upset, reaches his ears.
He looks at her now fully with the tide jaguar off to the side and his mind far less hazy and overtaken, he sees the way her body is marred and littered with colors, the way the blood from her shoulder pours down her chest and how he’d left the bite quite jagged as the feline separated them.
It’s her apology that has him more confused than anything, though, because the second the tears spark and Astaroth sits up easier — no longer trapped or pinned, in control of a situation that’s rapidly spinning out of control. He reaches for her as she reaches a shaky hand toward him, trying to tug her back toward him, ignoring the fact that his erection is wilting quickly and how, because of the abrupt shift of his mood, there’s a stubborn, lingering pain.
“It’s not your fault, Flora.” He breathes through a voice far gentler than it had been, back to himself as he tries to pull her into his lap as if he could try to prove to her that he wasn’t upset with her. Himself? Sure. Not her. “Don’t be sorry. I am the one that should be sorry.” And he is, with the way he’d torn up her shoulder, with the way he’d quite nearly lost control. “It’s not you, darling, I promise.” He says on a softer note, shakily trying to figure out what the fuck to do.
Either she's too dazed or still too brazenly confident, but as Asta sits up Flora doesn't shy away from him the way she probably should. Instead, her fingers continue to slide toward him, and as he tugs her into his lap she melts entirely against him, only this time its done with a very different sort of neediness than before. "You were supposed to stay down.." She whispers softly, as if trying still to understand where things went wrong as if she might fix it. Her eyes search his, and though she wanted to kiss him, to try and claw back some of the intimacy if only so that she'd not feel so wrong in her own skin, she found she couldn't make herself move. "..I...I had a plan, and if you'd stayed down I would have had the blood drip into your mouth...and.." Flora continues in a hurried and hurt little voice as she shakes her head marginally.
In her imaginings of the moment, he'd cum, she'd be far away from his snapping teeth, and lo and behold the beauty with her strength and tricks would have satisfied the beast in a way he was unaccustomed to. Only the beast in her nonna's stories had been pretending, and Asta, for better or worse, had never once lied about who he was. Flora just hadn't listened.
"I still can," She insists suddenly, straightening ever so slightly. "If I use my mouth I'll be far enough away, and...and the jaguar.." Glancing to the side where the feline still stood, Flora lifted her brows in a hopelessly desperate expression. "You can tear it apart for all I care. It bleeds, and it won't attack you."
He was supposed to do a lot of things. He was supposed to be a good little cannibal in whitebrim, doing his social duty to continue their little clan. He was probably supposed to die in the Climb where that angry crowd had tied him down. He was supposed to be this tough, stalwart figure, where nothing bothered him and he simply took and took and took to his heart’s content.
But Astaroth has a habit of not doing what he’s supposed to do.
“I’m sorry,” he starts to say for her plan, how it sounded great but it still didn’t quite meet the whole of things needed to get him off. The biting helps, the human blood really helps, the whole tangle with danger and remaining in control lest he panic and feel stuck and trapped and at anyone else’s whim.
She’s in his lap at least and things feel like they haven’t completely fallen apart in terms of their cordiality, even if sexually it hadn’t quite worked. It gives him a moment to inspect her shoulder before she straightens up suddenly and his arms tighten around her as if trying to figure out what she’s intending to do, when his brows pinch and his head shakes, locks of loosened hair falling into his face with the movement. “No, Flora, it’s okay. Really. Not… human doesn’t really do it for me.” Dark eyes glance toward the tide jaguar, sharp teeth clicking as he shuts his jaw tight for a moment before he looks back to her.
“It’s fine, darling, I promise.” He tries to reiterate. “I will manage. I’m not like most men you’ve.. been with.” An assumption, of course. Still not realizing what kind of date it was, he simply assumes it was a moment of passion, nothing planned.
The movement of his hair seems to loosen her limbs, even as his tighten around her. Pushing the dark clumps back with trembling fingers, the Doubletake gives her head a shake, her lips parting in a small smile as if she could just make everything fine simply by wanting it enough. "Then it can be me, I just...I didn't expect it, because I thought I was in control, but if that's what you need, it's fine—" There's an almost pleading quality to her voice as she shifts slightly, her fingers combing his hair back, her cheeks flushed.
"I did it before—" She points out, glancing down between her thighs were twin circles were only partially clotted over. "I was just surprised, that's all. I can do it. We don't have to stop." Trying to brush her nose against his, Flora shifted her bitten shoulder toward his mouth as if to remind him that there was still a good amount of blood on offer—he'd spilt it already, it would be a shame to let it go to waste—as she slipped her other hand not between her own legs, but between his.
"I can heal right after." Now her voice is pleading no matter how her smile tries to make the words sound confident. "I don't mind. I want to." She continues, and gods while the accumulation of her damage doesn't amount to his, it certainly explains a good deal about both of their actions.
He wasn't like other men she'd been with, which was precisely why it felt so devastating to have things go so horribly wrong and why she was so desperate to see things through the finish she'd hoped for, if not the one she'd planned.
Her fingers tremble as they rake his loose hair back, the butcher watching her with a hint of skepticism in his dark gaze — notably brighter now than they had been when glazed with lust. “It’s not fine,” he starts to protest, even as she pleads and shifts and tries to prove that she’s completely capable of handling him. But she’s still missing the point — the point being that he is incapable of handling himself enough that he won’t hurt her. Which, he obviously has.
She does brush her nose against his, his mouth still tinged with iron and rust, smeared around his face as he keeps her held tight to him, listening to more and more of her protests as he’s out of his element and for the first time at a loss of words in how to word his rebuttal.
And now it simply just feels forced and wrong and Asta’s arms start to move before his lips do, loosening around her as her hand dives between them to touch him and a hiss leaves him briefly as he cups her face and shakes his head again, his tail swiping up to wrap around her arm to pull her hand back, even as she angles her bloodied shoulder, still dripping blood toward him and his jaw clenches tightly. “Not today, Flora. Maybe next time.” He tries to say, to convey, and to prove that it isn’t her fault but that his veins are still flushing with ice water, he pulls her in for a surprisingly gentle and tender kiss despite the blood and everything else.
He withdraws to press his horned head against hers, forehead to forehead. “I got you off once, don’t worry about me. We need to — let’s get you back to Torchline to heal you, alright, darling?” He makes his soft request, shifting slightly on the stones.
The way his arms loosen only has her fingers that much more greedy as she feels him slip away from her; had he not reached for her face just then, Flora might have forced her shoulder against his lips to try and ignite his passions as she had before. Only then she finds that he's holding her back instead of just holding her, his tail restricting her arm and his strong hands against her face.
Too stunned, really, to even properly kiss him back as he brushes his lips against her own, Flora's mouth opens to say something, but nothing comes out. As he presses his forehead against hers, the tears she'd been holding back succumb to gravity and drip down her cheeks and onto the tip of her nose, shimmering like delicate pink pearls. Though some faraway part of Flora knows that the butcher is trying to be reassuring, it all sounds so transactional, and while that might certainly have been the case for him, it's the wrong sort of used than the way she likes it to be.
"I can go faster than you can." Flora mumbles, heat edging her words if only to remind him that for all his sharp teeth and no Flora's, and, maybe next time, Flora, or, get off of me, Flora that she was the one who possessed real power.
For all the good it fucking did.
Drawing back from him as he pulled away from her, Flora drew her knees toward her chest, her ankles crossing. Not quite able to bring herself to look at him now that the flush of her cheeks was an ugly red and tears had marred the palette of passion he'd painted all across her cheeks, Flora simply swallowed thickly and tried to ignore the sob that built in the back of her throat.
They’re both stunned even as he tries to keep some kind of momentum going, even if it’s to separate them, even if it’s to keep himself in check. Her shoulder worries him despite the blood that calls to him, and he’s helpless in trying to explain his position even as he tries to prove it with his body — which, has never been a thing Astaroth has done or is good at.
Exhibit A; the current situation.
It’s jagged and coarse and he loosens his hold more as she sits back, drawing her legs up, the warmth of tears falling onto him and down her cheeks, and regret sits heavily in his stomach in place of prior arousal, even if that, too, hurts. “I know you can.” He says softly, no doubt in his mind. But if he’s actually hurting her, someone who had saved him, the thought of going too far and facing not only her wrath but the wrath of Safrin… well, it’s truly a killer to a mood that only occurs however often. A mood that has occurred more often lately to be sure, but only because of his realization and okayness of being touched more than he had been in the past.
For someone who doesn’t like to be touched all that often, the absence of her is too cold. Guilt sits heavily in his shoulders, too, but the mood is so far past any moment of recovery, Astaroth is helpless in trying to recover anything. So he sits up a bit more, tail dragging over the floral shirt from where it had been used to make her more comfortable, and he reaches up to drape it over her shoulders, careful of the one with the bite, moving to stand and collect his shorts to slip back on. “I…” Sighing and at a loss for words, he crouches before her and tries to reach out to her. “I don’t do this often, darling. And when I have in the past before I woke from my slumber, my partners never survived it. I do not doubt that you are more than capable compared to them, but I do not want to do this if you’re simply seeking my enjoyment and putting your own to the side.” An admission that has him watching her for her reaction, hoping that it might help or she might be willing to take his hand so that they can get her healed.
