Some people believe Erosia doesn’t exist, and others claim it can only be found in a dream. Some suggest that in order to see Erosia, one must believe in it first. It is up to you to decide what you will, and you may call me mad if you wish. Either way, I will live my life as a vessel through which passion emerges.
 Chapter 1: The Valentines |
 Chapter 2: The Muse |
Chapter 3: Prince Poison |
 Chapter 4: Dystopia |
*Work-in-progress – many photos to organize.
Prince Ruby Valentine was born to Queen Onyx Valentine, the most beloved Queen of Erosia – but she died in childbirth, leaving Ruby with the curse of being poison to women. As a boy, he vowed not to speak and to communicate only through music, art, poetry and prose. Yet even his art was doomed to consume the hearts of his lovers.
The Valentine family was rumored to have vampiric heritage because they used their magic to control others, but they did it for the sake of community and upholding the values of their God. Ruby disappeared from the palace whenever he pleased, and seduced on his own, forsaking his royal duties.
Ruby thirsted for inspiration, and feasted on the dreams of others. His magic gift was to make dreams come true with his hands. He lured his prey with music that reflected their deepest fantasies. As they succumbed to him, he embodied their ideal lover. Once he made their dreams come true, he became their only yearning, and they could dream only of him. Yet the person they dreamed of was not Ruby, but rather, their own dreams which he happened to enact. Thus, Ruby would soon lose interest, as he craved someone with enough passion to fill him and make him whole.
Ruby was enslaved by self-loathing for killing his mother, and obsessed with the need to break free from his royal duties. Yet the longer he ran, the more violently these shadows consumed him, and the emptier his inner landscape became. As his world grew more arid, he became increasingly insatiable, and yearned to escape into more conquests. Then he met white-souled muse Erica Xenne, whose inner world was so elaborate, he could not possibly drain it dry. She was a never ending well of inspiration, and he sensed she might be the one to satisfy him. What he failed to realize was that he could not see her without facing himself.
Erica Xenne was born while two musicians played together, unleashing a song so heartfelt that it created life. Upon seeing the daughter of their passion, they succumbed to their desire for the first time and remained together throughout the rest of their days. Thus, Erica’s first act was to inspire surrender in others. Yet she was not born of flesh like them, and did not fit into their world. She was a muse who reflected their humanity, but lacked her own.
Much like Ruby, Erica possessed the power to reflect the colors of the world, but unlike him, she mirrored the truth rather than embodying illusions. Just as the color white reflects but does not absorb, Erica mirrored the core of people moment to moment, then moved on to reflect other aspects of nature. When looking at Erica, people saw their demons exposed so brightly that they were blinded, but their darkness could never destroy her. On the contrary, she craved immersion, and yearned for anything demonic enough to cast a shadow over her whiteness, even for a moment.
She lived among wildlife in Erosia, singing with the birds like an animal reflecting on the human entanglement she lacked, yet also feeling more at home among creatures who were true to themselves as she was. Her music broke people open, and she enjoyed sharing emotion. Yet her deepest yearning was to find someone who could speak her language of passion. Society was grey compared to the nature of Erosia and the passions in her heart, yet she grew weary of exploring her wild world alone.
Everything changed when she met Ruby. Where once she had been isolated and white, he made her heart bleed red. She had always been honest, but he made her real.
He feared to touch her, lest he drain her of inspiration and ruin their love like he had with other women. Worse, he feared to reveal to her that underneath his lure, there was nothing but hunger and emptiness.
They played music together, communicating in the language that only they could share, but in the end, they could not resist the temptation to make love. As they consumed one another, Erica began to turn red, becoming a reflection of Ruby himself, with nothing left of her but lust and obsession. Ruby felt the dreaded feeling of emptiness. He needed to feast on her dreams, but all he could taste was the ashes of her innocence and the false hopes he had fed her. His inner hell had been exposed and reflected back in his face, leaving him more dead inside than ever. He could not look at Erica without seeing himself, and if he could not love Erica, he could love no one. He failed to believe in love, and thus, disappeared from Erosia. He left Erica naked with his guitar, starving for him, tainted red from their love making, doomed to obsess over him for eternity.
She wanted to follow him, but the Valentines told her she would lose her magic powers. They explained that, once someone was corrupted in Dystopia, they could never return to Erosia, as they could never love purely again. Regardless, Erica left Erosia with Ruby’s guitar, and turned up in Dystopia, New York. When she arrived, she had no voice, as her singing had been her magic power. She was doomed to speak in a whisper. Still, she did not regret her choice. Ruby was her muse, and there was nothing to sing about without him.
Although Ruby had lost his magic power, his vampirism had become habitual, and he consumed women in Dystopia just the same. He slowly built up his guitar skills and used his psychic sensitivity to pull people’s dreams from their souls and reflect them in his music. Yet now that Ruby was free of the Valentine spell, Erica had renewed hope. She believed he could shed his old skin, and be born again.
Erica spoke in a whisper, but songs about Ruby wrote themselves through her. She sang her memories of Erosia when they had longed for each other, the loss of her hope and dreams when he had disappeared, the emptiness she had felt when he’d left her alone, the soulful songs they had shared, her jealous hatred of the other women he seduced, and his reflection she kept seeing in the mirror. Music poured through her relentlessly, and she had no choice but to let it flow. Ultimately she released her first album, Slave to Freedom, originally called Freedom Broke the Exile’s Heart — dedicated to Prince Ruby. It was written as a conversation between her vocals and his guitar.
She knew her obsession with him would consume her, destroy her, and rebirth her. He was the only thing that was real to her. Where once she had yearned for her fantasy lover, she now obsessed over one she believed was real, who had barely slipped from her grasp. Her album reflected her love and longing, but was it truly love, or was she pining for the shadow of a dream that could never come true? Did she truly love Ruby, or did she love the reflection of her hunger that she saw in his eyes? Perhaps she and Prince Ruby Valentine were two sides of one person, doomed to destroy and inspire each other for all eternity. Theirs is a story of sex and death; their music is rebirth.
