Black and grey realism tattoo of a crowned skull with smoke swirls across a forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Crowned skull on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A skull wearing an ornate crown with cross and fleur-de-lis details sits at the centre of the design, with a spine and wispy smoke forms below and behind it. The shading is heavy and detailed, with strong highlights on the bone and crown and soft grey gradients in the background. Only black ink and greys are used, and the tattoo runs the length of the forearm.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dearest Ysolde, the crown has gone back into the vault, though not on the old king's head, which the chapter would not allow. Master Corran says the skull must stay bare in the reliquary until the frost breaks, so I have spent three nights polishing its brow with wax and a rag until the cross on the band caught the lamp like a struck match.

Keep reading

You will want to know what the court is saying. They say King Aldric wore that crown through forty winters of salt-road tolls, and that the smoke off the furnaces at Harrowgate was his breath made visible. Nobody says it to his face, for he has none now. The jaw hangs slack, and the carved spine they set beneath him runs down into a black iron plinth, curling at the base like ribbon caught in a wind that never reaches the valley.

Last Thursday a boy from the stables climbed the scaffold to touch the fleur-de-lis, and I thought the guard would have him flogged. Instead the old captain laughed, bent low, and wiped the soot from the boy's cheek with his thumb. Kings are only what the wind leaves behind, he said, and that was the kindest thing I have heard in this castle.

I enclose a sprig of the rowan that grows by the postern gate. Keep it on your sill and tell me whether the weather turns. Your loving brother, Tobin.

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