Waltz with the dead

Tunes of mendacity whispers
throughout the gloom, like echoes
of mystery or a lullaby of doom

An illusion of pleasure
an illusion of pain
Yield to the beauty and
soon you will waltz with the dead

Come yes you and listen to
my melody. Say can you do
another such sweet harmony

Deep in the mist you can hear him
softly playing his strings in order
to snatch your soul far away
Deep in the mist you reveal him
a naked shape of peace as he plays
you a song to lure you to stay
Waltz with the dead - Falconer
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Warning, long comment ahead.

So, here it comes, my first entry for ~mondeis contest!
The picture shows her character Manowar, the unicorn, and my wolf Din.
I choose to work with a rather dark and eerie mood in this one, and took some artistic freedom with her character, since I don't know much about his personality and such.
So I imagined him a bit like a Kelpie or the Swedish Bäckahästen (the brook horse), a creature that lures people with his beautiful appearance and then lures them down into the lake, where he drowns them. (But of course, Din isn't in any real danger, he's quite hard to catch, and even harder to kill XD)
I put a lot of effort in the small details, like the flowers and the wolf skull laying in the grass, and all in all, I've spent a lot of time and work in this drawing.
Many of the things have symbolic reasons to be there, like the withering flowers at Din's paws (representing that he is "death" and everything around him dies).
There's also a fascinating reason behind the waterlilies. As I see it, waterlilies symbolizes something treacherous and unreliable, beautiful at the surface but hiding deadly snares that will pull you down. Yeah, I'm strange... >_>'
The ghost hands are, obviously, symbolizing the victims of Manowar, and the skull have the same function.
I also wanted to keep a quite surreal and dreamlike atmosphere, and things don't look quite realistic because of that, but I like it either way.

This was much fun to work with, Manowar was a challenge, but he was fun to work with to. I found the jellyfish pattern at the end of his back the hardest part >_>

Oh well, I hope you like it!
Fullview for full size! Critique is most welcome!

Resources:
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as a ref for the pose only
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Manowar (C) ~mondeis
Art and Din (C) me

Edit: This placed third in the contest!