Penterium Hinge - Concept 3 (Incubation Halls)

This is a concept for the halls in the Penterium Hinge, the Drixilian capital in Raktogin, in my RAVAGE AND REQUIEM series.

The grotesque glass incubation urns depicted here house horrific mosquito-like vampires, the "blood-eaters," which are responsible for spreading the eponymous plague known as the Ravage, fashioned in preparation for Drixilo's reentry into the material realm of Raktogin to infest the world with his otherworldly contagion and amplify the Ravage's effects. Rather than converting humans to the typical Dracula-like vampires seen in various media, this plague infects and mutates mortals into the morbid likeness of these malefic insectoid precursors, transforming them into beings known as the Ravaged, the first stage of the virus.

There are three stages of the Ravage: the Ravaged, the Torpid, and the Insatiable. In the second stage, the Torpids begin to spin macabre cocoons that resemble infernal, winged, bloodthirsty cicadas, which is a symbiotic being of its own, also equipped with wings, legs, and its own vicious appetite. While the cicada-like cocoons rampage through the wastelands, the once-human hosts within their corrugated exoskeletons grow numb, inert, and utterly consumed, preparing for their metamorphosis into the final stage: the Insatiable.

Once an Insatiable, the skeletal host bursts from its sentient cicada-like cocoon as a bloodied, ragged, wraithlike fallen angel enveloped in a misty gray cloak that swirls around them like shredded clouds, intended to mock the angelic Arczells of the Unleztruv. Insatiables are irredeemable, permanently and hopelessly predisposed to their undying blood-hunger, unable to ever slake their bloodlust, having completely lost all sense of self. To mindlessly consume without any contentment is a hell all of its own.

Though Spathi Ansdari and Staea Holudre are also blood-eaters, they are quite unlike the Ravaged, much to the unease of the other characters; even the Drixiles are unsettled by this. Why is that so, you ask? Well...you'll just have to read the RAVAGE AND REQUIEM novels to find out!