Sanguina was alone. Utterly, heart-crushingly alone. Of course, it had been decades since the other three had died. So long she could barely even remember the exact number of years. But she could. She was sure that, as long as she’d live, she’d know the exact number of years since they’d died and left her alone.
Things were different without them around. Now she had to fill in for all four of them. It was hard, especially with how often all four of them were called upon in this new world. But, she’d adjusted. There was a lot less time for her old endless hedonism, like she’d had before, but then responsibilities didn’t leave a lot of time for fun.
That wasn’t to say she never had a bit of time to herself, of course. The Humor Demons, for all their power, simply weren’t as popular as some of the more “flashy” demons. Not that she was complaining. It was always nice to have some time to herself.
And usually, Sanguina’s time to herself was spent searching. Searching for the reincarnations of her closest, dearest friends. She knew they were out there somewhere. Souls didn’t just up and disappear, no matter what magical fluctuation caused the reincarnation cycle to go wonky.
Of course, the searching was long and difficult. There were billions upon billions of living beings around the world. And with the unique situation of her friends, she couldn’t even be sure that they’d reincarnated as human. The only thing she was sure of was a gut feeling, a sense of “right” or “wrong”. It was all she had to go on, really, even if it wasn’t much.
Once, she’d found someone she was sure was Chole, who at the time was the leader of some colony ship or another. The reunion was the stuff of dreams. Surprise them in the food processing facilities when they were performing a solo inspection, hold up the cake made entirely of raw entrails, just like they liked it…
Sanguina had been discouraged and rather distressed when the human jumped back in terror and fell directly into an organic matter shredder, ostensibly used for making nutrient paste, but now being used as an accidental murder weapon.
And then there was the time she’d found Melancholia again, after years and years of searching for the one she loved and loathed so very much. She’d embraced the screaming centaur in her heavily bleeding arms, and discovered that the mortal shell had an unfortunate heart condition when they had a heart attack right in their arms and died.
After those two unfortunate incidents (and a handful more we won’t get into here), Sanguina spent some time away from the mortal realm, instead taking the time to focus more inwardly. She learned to use the powers she’d inherited from her dead friends, and turned from a depressed former party-girl into a powerful force to be reckoned with.
Now, she continues her search for her friends. Openly, this time, known by many names. The Bleeding One, The Red Man, The Queen of Hearts, and many more. It is said to be met by her is to ensure your death, as the fates themselves will conspire to end your life in her presence.
To this day, nobody’s sure if the swift death of those she finds are a punishment for her victims…
Or a punishment for Sanguina herself…
Tag: sanguina
Another Day In America
Part 2 of my Music Writing Project. Today’s song is “Another Day In America” by Laurie Anderson!
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“And so finally, here we are, at the beginning of a whole new era!” The man on the screen begins. You’re not sure why you checked this channel. Normally all it is is a bunch of fringe religions holding televised “sermons”. But this man, who stands in front of a black-robed congregation in his blood-red tuxedo, in a church that shows obvious signs of decay, catches your attention.
The man seems to be ranting about a deeply personal issue, and yet nothing in particular, pacing in front of the mass of individuals as if he were delivering some sort of seminar instead of a sermon. “But then again, today’s the day and those were the days and now these are the days. And now, the clock points histrionically to noon. Some new kind of North.”
The man turns to the camera, almost looking you straight in the eyes. His eyes are bloodshot, his iris the dark red of congealing blood. “And so, which way do we go?”
His gaze has you mystified, and you sit there, staring into his eyes as he stares into yours, before he turns from the camera and continues his pacing. For a moment, you pay no attention to the rant, still mystified by your glimpse at the figure’s eyes.
“…and yes, that will be America. A whole new place, just waiting to happen…”
The rant continues for hours, and as you watch, mystified, you begin scratching your arm. Almost subconsciously, like a nervous tic or a barely noticed itch. But as he rants longer, more fervently, your scratching increases in speed, and eventually turns to clawing, tearing away flesh with your nails, releasing your blood from its confinement of flesh.
“And ah, these days. Oh, these days. What are days for? To wake us up. To put between the endless nights.”
Your arm is a ragged hunk of meat at this point. You’ve torn skin, muscle, tendon away, opening your veins to the world outside. Blood runs down your chair, soaking the carpet, pleasing the Red Man.
“Dear old God… May I call you old? And may I ask, who are these people?”
Eventually, your arm is simply too ruined to continue, and you begin clawing at your own face, the blood must flow, the blood must flow…
“And you know, the reason I really love the stars is that we cannot hurt them. We can’t burn them or melt them, or make them overflow. We can’t flood them, or blow them up, or turn them out…”
“But we are reaching for them. We are reaching for them…”
The man’s speech reaches a crescendo in energy, frantic rantings to the heavens above, imploring them to answer for some unspeakable crime, the destruction of a family, the seperation of blood and bile and thoughts…
And as you watch, and see this man weep his agony to all who will listen, you collapse to the ground, having given all your blood in his name. And as you lay there, blacking out, you hear the last part of his speech.
“And all my brothers! And all my long… Lost sisters…”
“How do we begin again?”
“How do we begin?”
——————-
For reference, this story takes place in a theoretical future where three of the four humor demons died permanently, leaving Sanguina an emotionally unstable, semi-murderous wreck.
Hey, here’s the askblog again! thesummoningcorner-tumblr-com, just replace the dashes with periods!
a new TAU ask blog-ask the Humors, the Craftsman, and other of lord-of-coins characters anything you’d like!
Hot-Blooded
Sanguina was surprisingly chipper for your average demon. Despite her power over blood and air, she focused less on the ruination of humanity or other such things, and instead focused more on wringing every little bit of pleasure and sensation out of her life that she could.
When summoned, she could usually be placated by offerings capable of holding her attention. A game console of some sort, perhaps, or enough bags of cheap fast food to keep her taste-buds occupied. Blood was rarely accepted, except in large enough amounts, and Sanguina is typically, in fact, insulted by small offerings of blood, seeing it as a waste of the very essence of humanity.
Of course, her hedonism also leads her to frequently make forays to the mortal world when her power allows it. Which leads to the events of tonight…
———————————————–
“Sanguina, this is a really bad idea!” Melancholia said, popping another mint as they drove. Even after downing half the tin, there was still the faintest suggestion of rot and grave dirt in her breath.
“Relaaaax, Melly! This is gonna be a great time! Just you and me, out on the town! Phleggy wouldn’t know a “good idea” if it bit her in the… weird fluid, I guess? Look, my point is, it’s gonna be a great time, relax!” Sanguina replied, eyes intently on the road. Eventually, they’d reached their location, a club in the “bad part” of town. There were shootings daily, and it was frequented by some of the most dangerous supernaturals in the entire state.
To Sanguina, it was absolutely perfect.
————————————————
“Hey, buddy, is it true what they say about minotaurs?” Sanguina said to the bull-man, sitting at the bar and holding a mug the size of Sanguina’s head. “My friend over there wants to know…”
Melancholia didn’t bother to look up from her drink as she replied. “Don’t drag me into your sexual misadventures, Sang, I’m only here for the booze.”
Sanguina sighed at what a killjoy her friend was being, but at least she still had a chance with the Minotaur. “Well, my friend may be a bit of a killjoy, but what do you say? Feel like exploring my labyrinth?”
The minotaur snorted dismissively before returning to his drink. Sanguina was rather displeased by this turn of events. Storming over to Melancholia, Sanguina slapped her on the back of her head.
Melancholia glared at Sanguina. “And what the hell was that?!?”
Sanguina returned the glare. “I could ask you the same thing! We had a chance there! No man can resist two attractive bisexual girls, it was in the bag! And you ruined it!”
Melancholia rolled her eyes, sipping her drink. “I don’t “involve” myself with the mortals, Sang. Mortal reproduction is a disgusting interchanging of fluids in the name of creating life, and I see no point, no matter what pleasure my Thrall would derive from it.”
Sanguina couldn’t believe Melancholia right now. Didn’t she get why they here in the first place?!? “Ooooh my god, Melly, you are just… the worst! The absolute worst! Why did I invite you along again?!?”
Melancholia shrugged, barely bothering to pretend that she cared. “Because you’ll inevitably need someone to cover for you when you inevitably fuck up?”
Sanguina had had it with her friends’ sour attitude, and was just about to show how she felt about it when the gunfire started. Apparently some discussion or another had turned sour, and fueled by booze and music had turned violent. This would normally be an interesting way to cap off the night for Sanguina, if it weren’t for the fact that one of the bullets had dug into her Thrall’s back.
Sanguina dropped to the ground, bleeding profusely, and for one horrible moment everything stopped…
And then Sanguina sat up, laughing like a madman. “Oh, WOW! I got shot! I actually got SHOT! This is great, oh my god, it hurts so much!” She said, continuing to stand. “Ahahaha, hey, someone come over here and stick a finger in it, I wanna see if it hurts more!”
Confronted with the insane creature bleeding like your average anime protagonist and laughing maniacally about how painful their bullet wound was, the patrons did just about the only thing that made sense. That being, screaming and running from the bar at the strange immortal creature.
————————————————-
After a short time spent running from cops and ditching the Thralls, Melancholia and Sanguina were back in their realm. Both weren’t exactly happy with this turn of events.
“Melancholia, you ruined it. Just RUINED IT! If you’d just joined me in seducing that minotaur, then I wouldn’t have been shot and the night would’ve gone perfectly!”
Melancholia could barely be bothered to respond, as she ruminated over the events of the night and how they related to mortality as a whole. “Oh please. Like I’m supposed to go with every little hedonist whim your mind comes up with?”
Sanguina glopped back defeatedly. “Uuuugh, you’re so lame, Melly! Why do we hang out?!?”
Melancholia oozed a little closer to Sanguina, and grazed a tendril across her mass in a way that could almost be considered tender. “Because you totally like me, even though we’re fated enemies?”
Sanguina sighed. “Yeah…”
A Throne Of Ashes
Humans were like little, fleshy robots, when you got down to it. At least, that’s how Chole thought about it. Humans were made of meat, sure, but they had their own prime directives to follow, even if they felt they were above it. To eat and fuck and fight for dominance. Love was just a human version of the urge to mate. Anger and sorrow a natural expression of dominance struggles and their results, no matter what that sludgy asshole and the blood moron had to say on the subject.
Yes, for all their posturing, humans were predictable. And one of those urges, though many chose to deny it, was the natural urge to be led. A strong leader, the metaphorical carrot and stick all rolled into one individual who led the humans under their control, through a tender guidance or a firm hand, to throw away their mortal desires in the name of something greater. A community, a single group… or perhaps, the power of that same leader.
Chole could be that leader. Well, could implies that she wasn’t doing something about that every damn day of her existence. No, Chole WOULD be that leader, if she had to personally strike down every obstacle to that path of blessed, glorious control, then so be it. She could be wrathful when she so chose, and while she didn’t exactly enjoy getting her hands dirty, she could burn all but the mightiest opponents to cinders with but a moment of her time.
She’d already established her control, in smaller ways. The other Humor Demons saw her as a surrogate leader, even if Phlegmus would never admit it, even on pain of death. She was the one who could keep them organized, and they all knew it. Without her guidance, Melancholia and Sanguina would spend all day fighting or rutting or some other expression of their complicated, bloody relationship, and Phlegmus would spend all day engrossed in study. She was the lynchpin, the reason they could even be effective, and they all knew it.
And so, if one could keep three, individually powerful demons from wasting all their damn time, humanity should be simple. And Chole had a plan, a very good one. It had been honed by years, decades, centuries of repeated attempts, repeated failures, of blades and bullets and claws rending through flesh and spilling bile that burned like acid and death after death after death in the name of her goal.
An outright assault on humanity was suicide. There was simply too much strength behind them to result in anything more than a brief skirmish that ended in spilled bile and torn flesh. No, Chole would have to take a more diplomatic approach, she was sure of it.
And while a cult may, perhaps, lend her leadership of a small group of humans, the simple fact was that most cults barely got through their first week without some manner of catastrophic failure, be it earning the ire of law enforcement or simply botching a ritual. No, she’d need to go for something a bit more… legitimate…
They said that any idiot could form his own religion. Well, then, Chole supposed it was a good thing she was far from “any idiot”. After all, life is short.
A soul is forever.
They Fall From My Right Eye…
Welcome to “Sense Of Humor Part 3”! In this part of the story, Melancholia puts his plan into motion. This plan is mostly just keeping an eye on everyone and occasionally pulling weird demon shit to keep the charade going. Unfortunately, it all starts going horrifically wrong because Melancholia is kinda crazy. Stay tuned!
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Melancholia was absolutely thrilled!
It was crazy how easily Melancholia had gotten himself into the “routine” of Gravity Falls. He’d managed to build up some funds working as a waiter at some restaurant or another in the small town, and he earned enough to stay in some crappy motel or another. Of course, he’d gotten the room at a steal, due to the fact that it was formerly inhabited by a group of manotaurs. Thankfully, Melancholia could just shut off his scent receptors whenever he entered the room, so the intense scent of sweat, body spray and spilled energy drinks barely got to him.
His routine was down to clockwork at this point. Resurrect his body at 7:00 AM, on the dot (he still hadn’t nailed down “sleep” yet…), get breakfast, head to the library and make sure to leave trace amounts of himself on as many books as possible, wait tables for a while, then check if any bits of you got into the Henry mortal.
More often than not, he’d find himself inside some child who’d checked out the “Nancy Drew” he’d left a drop on, or a researcher who’d somehow checked out every single encyclopedia that had been contaminated, but some days he got lucky. In that case, he’d get the droplet into the Henry human’s brain, fiddle around his memories for a moment, and see what he could find. Unfortunately, his droplets were usually destroyed by that same odd creature that was currently inhabiting Henry.
But one day, he finally found a lead. Probing around the thoughts of Henry, Melancholia discovered that he was apparently more of a “bystander” to Alcor, but he was married to a prime player in this whole fiasco. A human known as “Mabel”. This intrigued Melancholia, and he decided to make an attempt to get closer to her, and perhaps get a look into her perspective…
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Henry was uncomfortably surprised right now.
Henry supposed that he shouldn’t have been surprised. From what he could tell, the man he’d helped earlier in the month had been ready to put down stakes in Gravity Falls. Still, it’s a bit odd when a random stranger you let use your phone and then never expect to see again is your waiter on the one date night you manage to have.
“Oh, gosh, it’s you!” Melancholia had said. “It’s great to see you again! Hey, thanks for that thing a month ago, really saved my bacon, yknow?”
Henry tried not to look the man in the eye. Every time he did, something in Henry felt way too angry. “Uh, yeah, it’s no big deal…”
Mabel looked at the waiter, a bit confused. “Henry, uh… who’s this?”
Henry sighed. “Some guy I let use our phone, because his car broke down near us. I figured he was just passing through town, but apparently not!”
Melancholia let out a little laugh. “Yeah, I’m living here now! Got a place nearby, now I work here. Anyways, we’re not here to chat, can I start you guys with drinks?”
Mabel was a bit unnerved by this guy. He seemed nice enough, but every time he looked at them his gaze was… piercing. Like he was picking apart their brains in his mind, searching for some little bit. An analytical, searching look. But he seemed on the level enough, and a weird look wasn’t something to dislike a person over!
Melancholia, to his credit, was rather subtle about his infection of every food and drink item he was given. A single tear, while tinged a somewhat unsubtle black, was easy enough to slip into food, or a beverage. And so, over the course of the meal, Mabel consumed approximately 5 (somewhat diluted) drops of Melancholia.
Mabel had no idea, and Melancholia thought he’d committed the perfect crime. But the funny thing about Melancholia’s corruption was that, while it was subtle, it was technically a form of demonic possession. Sure, he couldn’t take over her body or anything, and all he did was comb a few thoughts and memories.
But someone had already claimed the soul of Mabel Pines. Someone with intense power, and someone who took very poorly to any demon of any kind interacting with the Pines family.
——————————
Alcor the Dreambender was not pleased.
He’d been annoyed enough by Melancholia when the slimy bastard had just been watching Alcor from afar and being a dumb nerdy fanboy. But bothering the Pines family. That was something he couldn’t allow to happen.
And possessing Mabel was like a cherry on the “Absolutely Not” cake. A line crossed, even after crossing 15 other lines. Melancholia was going to pay. Alcor would see to that.
——————————-
Sanguina and Phlegmus weren’t exactly thrilled.
They supposed that Melancholia’s dalliances in the mortal world were harmless enough. Learning a bit about those fiddly mortals and gathering information on Alcor the Dreambender were simple pastimes, a bit eccentric, but ultimately no cause for concern.
And then, on an examination of his daily routine, they noticed him deliberately placing his corruption into one Mabel Pines. As they were both remarkably more intelligent than Melancholia, they immediately knew how poorly this was going to end.
And so, with this knowledge in mind, and in an attempt to save their friend/enemy/colleague from the wrath of a crazy ass demon, they cornered Melancholia’s physical form in his motel room, and brutally stabbed him to death before he could even begin to react.
They supposed it was awfully messy, and three dead bodies in a cheap motel room, one oozing black liquid from dozens of stab wounds, would raise some eyebrows. But they could hardly give less of a damn, because Melancholia was making a terrible, terrible mistake that would bite him directly on his formless ass if he let it go any further.
——————————–
Melancholia was rather pissed off at the moment, and not afraid to express it.
“WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT FOR?!?“ he asked his friends, tendrils flailing wildly.
"What that was for, you moron, was the fact you were heading straight for certain doom.” Phlegmus replied, looking rather unimpressed in her physical form. “You DO realize what you’ve done, right? Possessing FUCKING MIZAR?!? Do you HAVE A DEATH WISH?!?”
Sanguina looked up from her magazine (where the hell did she get that…?) to chime in with her two scents. “Yeah, pretty damn stupid there, Melly.”
Melancholia huffed. “It’s fine. I would’ve been in and out by the end of the week.”
Melancholia’s angry train of thought is suddenly derailed by the fact that his corruption managed to pick out a particularly juicy detail from Mabel’s brain. She is, in fact, the twin sister of Alcor. This… wow. This changed everything. EVERYTHING. Who was to say that, perhaps, the spark of demonic fire couldn’t be inside of this mortal right now? Who’s to say she couldn’t reach the same level of power?
…with the right push, could she become a demon too?
Despite the obvious problems with continuing to mess with Mabel, Melancholia had a new plan. A new, final plan that he’d bring to completion or die trying.
He’d bring Mabel to the same level as her brother. A new demon, so in-tune with their mortality and in-tune with demonic energy that she could answer every question he had. Through her, Melancholia would finally UNDERSTAND. And in the end, that was all he really wanted.
Distantly, he was aware of the other two pestering him. He nodded quietly, and they figured that his sudden quiet streak indicated he was aware of the issues in his plan. But that wasn’t the case at all.
Melancholia had a plan now. And nothing would stop him. Nothing.
Melancholia was the happiest he’d ever been in his entire life.
A Night On The Town
Okay, turns out I like Melancholia a lot more than I thought I would, and I figured now was as good a time as any to start introducing the other Humor Demons. So now, meet Sanguina, Melancholia’s weird combination of a mortal enemy, good friend, and semi-lover. Gosh, demons sure are weird!
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There were some days that Melancholia just couldn’t muster up the effort to make his own body. Sure, it was really just a thin shell of skin around a solid mass of Bile, but sometimes even that was too much. So on those sorts of days, he went and bothered Sanguina. Technically, the two of them were supposed to hate each other with a passion, and Melancholia HAD already killed Sanguina’s last form as vengeance for his fallen “Mother”.
But demons were weird that way. And so, the two of them slummed around Sanguina’s realm, occasionally smacking each other upside the head in a “Why does the TV have to be on the fritz” way while they watched static flicker across the device Sanguina had stolen from a cultist of hers.
“Oh my LORD I am so damn bored right now.“ Melancholia stated, slapping a gooey tendril over the single eye he’d extruded.
"Well you know, you tarry moron, we could go out tonight and do something." Sanguina replied, multiple eyes rolling in the coagulated mess that was currently splattered across an armchair.
"The entire reason I’m HERE is because I don’t want to make a physical form, you bleeding idiot.” He replied, melting slightly more into the human-skin beanbag chair he’d glopped into.
Sanguina sat up a bit straighter… or at least as much as she could, being a mass of semi-coagulated gore with various body parts within. “Wait, don’t tell me, you never learned how to make a thrall. This is PRICELESS, could you be any dumber?” Sanguina said, oozing out of the chair and making for a newly-appeared portal. “Here, follow me and I’ll show you what to do.”
Melancholia, instead of going through the portal in his slow, tarry form, instead figured out where the portal was heading and teleported himself there instead. Now, Sanguina and him were in a catacombs. Sanguina oozed towards a body, slowly dripping across the corpse.
“Here’s how we’re gonna do this. Watch closely, tar-for-brains.” Sanguina said. Slowly, she let a few drops of herself fall into the corpse’s mouth, the blood-like substance spreading across the cadaver’s tongue and slowly down its throat. After a few tense minutes, the corpse shuddered and sat up, while Sanguina’s main form disappeared in a puff of metallic-scented smoke.
“Holy COW what a rush!” the corpse said, now the voice of a young man instead of Melancholia’s sorta-enemy-sorta-friend-possibly-with-benefits-who-knows. “Now you do it. Just get a bit of your essence into a corpse and we’ll go from there.”
Melancholia set himself over a corpse, and slowly extended a tendril down the dead woman’s throat. The bile began suffusing itself into the body’s very being, and suddenly Melancholia was acutely aware of being a woman lying on a slab. The rest of him had disappeared in a smoky cloud that smelled of freshly-turned dirt and vomit.
“Oooohhhh WOW!” Melancholia shouted, sitting up and standing on the slab. “Is this what mortality’s like?!? Shit, this is AWESOME!” he shouted, arms shooting into the air in a “victory” pose. Sanguina shooshed him.
“You idiot! We’re in a BURIAL GROUND, they have guards for this sort of thing! Do you want them to find two bodies just stood up and left?!?”
Melancholia, however, was far too busy exploring actual mortality to pay attention. “Hahahaha, wow!” he said, moving his limbs in an unnaturally slow, jerky way compared to the fluid movements of Sanguina. “Geeze, is this what being a woman’s like? Why do you do it all the time?” he asked Sanguina, hands fondling at his chest. “What the hell are these things for?”
Sanguina shrugged, ignoring the jerky movements of Melancholia. “Hell if I know. It’s just sort of a thing female humans have? Reminder that humans are SUPER weird, Melancholia.”
It was around that time that an employee of the graveyard these catacombs were in came into the area. He’d heard voices from below, and had decided to investigate. And now he was confronted with a young man with blood-streaked lips and popped autopsy stitches having a polite conversation with a woman covered in grave dirt and apparently examining her own body. He did the only sensible thing one could do in this situation, and ran screaming from the crypt.
Sanguina examined the fleeing human with some interest. “Oh for the love of… Look what you’ve done, now they’re going to be looking for us. Get out of that poor woman, let’s get going.”
Before Melancholia could bother to complain, the two of them were back in Sanguina’s realm, in their “true” forms, and the TV was miraculously working again.
“Oh, hey, that weird box is working again. Sweet.”
Before Melancholia could sit down, however, Sanguina had slapped him a head-like part of his mass and forcibly ejected him from her realm.
“Well gosh, not even a "goodbye”.“ Melancholia, to his credit, was less bothered by this than he should be. In fact, his main thought was when they could do that again…
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So, yes, the Humor Demons can possess dead bodies and turn them into "Thralls”, basically specialized undead that very strongly take after “Traditional” undead. Sanguina, unsurprisingly, takes after Vampires, while Melancholia takes after the traditional Romero brand of Zombie. I dunno, I’m just having a ton of fun messing with weird demon relationships, haha!
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