Post by Joliette Thorne on Mar 8, 2010 3:45:32 GMT -5
-- The Fortress--
Spawne jammed the smoldering cigar into the dirt between his feet, his stare lifting to meet that of Jolie. The jade rings surrounding his pupils made a cold reception of Jolie's request to the point where it would seem to manifest itself physically, to those perhaps a little underdressed for a change in temperature. "The sin you consume has been but an item... A taste you simply experience, without resistance." He rose to his feet, massive strides seemed to take an eternity between heavy steps, "A moment borrowed, to sate an addiction..." Another step, blackened droplets falling from his extremities, spattering onto the ground. It was the pool, it was his sin- commanding, ever present to the the point where it consumed him, quite literally. Growing more and more viscous, the darkness coiled around his form, threading itself between the fabric of his clothes as his approached Orange, a girl he'd never been formally introduced to, "But there are sins... and then there are sins."
Taeme , from the beginning of Orange's activity, remains off to one side attempting to understand the happenings between the group, one she didn't quite feel a part of. Erythros shifts on her shoulder feeling uneasy with his surroundings. Rustic-orange feathers shift as wings spread wide trending the air as motion carries him from his perch on one slender shoulder, off into the night. Sightless hazel eyes peer forward into nothingness, a drowning darkness akin to that of the sins being consumed by the little blond girl. One hand rises, nimble fingers seeking the staff secured to her back, comfort taken in its presence though the chaos surrounding this place seems to whisper to it, to reach for the shards nestled in the run covered wood.
Power. It could taste power, rippling through the soil, vibrating every particle. Like a liquid spider, the Obsidian Pool stretched its innumerable legs and heaved. The ground above would flex, then, minutely. A sudden pulse, underfoot. Tiny shards of rock dust trickled off the multi-planed blocks.
Jolie's eyes widened in alarm, and she half-stepped in front of the child, one arm slicing across the space between Orange and Leralynn, a pitiful sheild. "Orange. It's okay. You've had enough."
They both knew it was a lie, and the child voiced this as a plaint while the Catastrophe loomed monolithic above. "I'm fine." Her small fingers grasped Jolie's arm and tugged it down. "I can do it." There was a smidgeon of petulance in her voice, her own small challenge against O'Bannion, and before Jolie could stop her, the little mimic has slipped her grasp and was running to Spawne, arms held up as though she expected to be lifted into his bestial embrace. Jolie gasped a warning, an order to stay back, then took chase, but the child forged on, dodging the mortal's grabs. "I can do it!" Orange halted by his tree-trunk legs. Through eyes not her own, she stared at him, stared through him, stared him down. "Unless you're chicken."
Slippery as eels, quiet as mice, the Pool sent its pseudopod limbs grasping up, into the world it no longer knew how to destroy. Power thrummed here once more, and it was starving... But it was weak, too, and so sought a lesser flare than the ring of sustenance offered by O'Bannion. So, to Taeme it crept, staying out of sight, slipping through the rocks, until its thousand, spidery black fingers circled the blind woman. No beast could bear such a presence. And runes or no, power was.. power to the once-man, it cared not what the source may be. Though it liked the taste of sin so very much... Now, it licked the stone, flooded down to make a shadow at Taeme's feet, and the subtle magic of it wove an illusion -- much dilurted now, but strong enough -- to woo the woman to a soft, soft, sound, one she'd remember from long ago, a call from her past, to her heart. Thus, she'd be tempted to move deeper into the ruin.
Jolie glanced to the girl's parents. Shishi, in particular, her gaze panicky, featured contorting. "Stop him."
Taeme turns slightly to one side senses attuned to that soft sound so slight she wasn't quite sure it had been heard. For all of her centuries she did not bear the wisdom to fight, to ignore that subtle calling. Bare feet pad silently against crumbling rocks carrying her blindly deeper into the ruin. Behind her turned back she can hear the disagreement over the man's sin and the set challenge, Orange accepting the thrown gauntlet. Slender fingers wind tightly round that slender staff offering her no protection from the whispers, from her own curiosity. A low warning rumble sounds in her throat as the wolf buried within raises her head, watching and waiting. Unwittingly the druid-in-training opens herself sending out tendrils of her own power into the ruin seeking life of sorts if it could be found.
The man was but a vessel, a human form playing second chair to a much louder voice. Mounds of muscle within the perfect darkness which coated them meant nothing more than added mass to a greater will. A challenge was made, albeit infantile, and The Catastrophe had answered. It rippled lightly following the child’s collision, an immovable object against a very stoppable force. Featureless visage lowered to face the child, his body descending in kind to squat before her, elbows propped upon his thighs, "My, my..." It spoke, choked rasps through the mortals rumble. "I do believe you and I have yet to meet..." Jade flames erupted in empty eye sockets, to accompany a wicked grin of sawblade-teeth from ear to ear. The ooze dripped from his lips as he spoke, again in haunted duotone, "But I'm sure we'll both become very well introduced..."
Shishi acts on Jolie's command, his eyes progressing through their accursed transformation once more, leaving the assassin with a pair of glowing, crimson irises, the change a threat that he's prepared to back up in order to protect Orange. "Leralynn, enough." his voice is calm, but the use of her real name in place of her colorful nomenclature is enough to have the girl turn her head towards her father and give him a pouting look, "I can still do it, Blue." He ignores the girl then, turning his red eyes on the Catastrophe, his stare less threatening than it is pleading for the massive man to leave his daughter be, "You don't have anything to prove to my little girl."
Shishi 's little girl took a step or two back from the giant man when he dropped to her level, the girl making sure to keep that determined look on her face while staring down the Catastrophe...
It was that easy... the siren-song whispered through the cracks of fallen stones tumbled together. The Pool knew no triumph, that emotion was beyond it now its master's will went unchanneled, was absent. All it knew was that it had to feed, or eventually perish, a shadow waning into lesser shadows until it faded into the world like water lost to desert sands. On it crept, herding the blind girl, teasing her with sweet petals of memory all too easily plucked from the back of her mind. It wanted her alone. It wanted her... and as she walked on, the blocks about her groaned a stony welcome, one tipped over to thud behind her, sticky with inky black, a multitude of wisps and tendrils wound round it. The Pool was not strong enough yet to rebuild its shell, the fortress that blunted the pain of its existence. But it could topple a few blocks, set their edges together, make a wall to shield her away from the others. Then it would begin-- the illusion, woven of darkness and wants excised from the desperation of her soul. Taeme was suddenly not in Hollow anymore. And, unless the creature had done what any natural creature would do, and fled-- her little hawk, too.
Jolie knew that look on the girl's face. That stubborn look. The one that defied even gods to stop her doing what she wanted, what she -needed- to do. But the mortal wouldn't recognise it as her own expression, transposed to Leralynn's small face. "Pet, step away. We can try it without this..." Her own frigid eyes were on Spawne, Jolie wanting to snatch the child away but unwilling to make any sudden moves. "Shishi." It was a hiss. "If he... if they .. do this..." She didn't rightly know what would happen. Only... "Orange has to give it all to me. All of it." Where the hell was Caedan? Who'd show the girl how? Things were starting to look very pear-shaped, to the once-necromancer. "Red, don't you harm her. Don't you dare."
Spawne flashed his best crocodile smile at the child, serrated teeth lining up perfectly, top to bottom, "Such a brave young face..." A plated finger brushed her cheek, the shadowy liquid seeping from her pores rubbed against his thumb, that same finger nestled itself under her chin, lofting her gaze to met his own infernal stare, scornful grimace now spread across his features "But you stink of fear... Are you afraid?"
Again that warning growl sounds within Taeme’s own throat made by the dormant wolf now wanting release if only to protect the unprotected mind. Onward she walks, hesitant now, with the grating of stones following in her wake until they thud together sealing her away, entombed within the ruin away from the original ragtag group of adventurers. Reality strikes along with the finality of settling rock leaving her momentarily free of the song pulling at her thoughts and memories. The feelings of this place were so similar to that of the ship she'd walked fearlessly through aided by her ability to see what could not be, a gift from the chaotic ship. Only now she had reason to fear and to hesitate, to stall and fight the lulling call of a siren wanting to feed and rise. It was an unconscious realization that she no longer walked the lands of Hollow and perhaps that alone helped her to turn away from forward progress long enough to probe what lay behind with the end of her staff. Sticky black shadows receding away from the wooden rod until it strikes solidity. That nagging sensation that death is immanent stews in her thoughts, an inkling of fear weakening her resolve to the siren. To her knees she drops, arms curling round them as her head falls to rest atop the curve creating a shell with her body, one she hopes will ward off the beast if only long enough for the others to realize she is gone.
Shishi looked back and forth between Orange and Red and Jolie. It was impossible for the vampire not to know the shadowy chaos that was branching out form this place. Upon activating his cursed eyes his head was filled with it's black voices... or was it just one voice? He couldn't rightly tell, so chaotic the cacophony unleashed inside his skull. Just fighting to keep his head was enough to cloud his judgement and allow the interaction between his daughter and the Red man. That determined, defiant look is stuck on Orange's face as Red smears the dark ooze coming from her pours across her cheek, "I'm not afraid." she assured him, "I'll show you and take what she needs out of you."
Death. That was the last thing the Darkness wanted. Where soul and flesh parted, there was no power, after all. So the oily dark cradled Taeme gently in its vermiculous hands, soothing, whispering, luring... It was weak-- once she'd have fallen for the ruse with no fear, no idea she was being stolen away. Now it had to work harder, on this one girl, to bring out of her deepest desires. All her delicious feelings, sorrows, joys, and the prize treat of her free will. Around her the air blossomed. Sweet fragrance filled it, flowers. On her skin shone the sun, warm as a thousand fingers of light. And blurred for the moment, the sight - oh, the sight! - of a garden she once knew.
"Red, don't you harm her. Don't you dare." Another challenge, however this one would go unanswered by its intended recipient. "Good girl... Fear is for what will hurt you, girl... Not what will help you." His free hand dragged from right to left across the obsidian liquid clinging to his face, exposing the familiar scarlet leather beneath. "We are, after all, more alike than anyone else." His attention snapped away, for his gesture had a second intention. O'Bannion’s eyes were exposed for but a moment before The Catastrophe reclaimed his sight, the deadened, milky hues of a mortal man brandished like a trophy in front of Jolie. Indeed, her demand would go unanswered. Flames relit within their sockets, he resumed with Orange. "You wish to take for her, while she stands afar? While your father stands afar? For all your bravery, there is nothing you... Or they... can do to stop me from snapping your neck like a twig..." He paused for a moment, "What you've taken from the others... Feel it, it has a voice... Listen to the voice, girl, and tell he how you feel, knowing what has become of you at the behest of those... Cowards."
Taeme shivers as the darkness surrounds her drawing her even deeper into its embrace. From the abyss clouding her vision comes light, a blinding vision rending her enable to define shape as anything but blurred imagery. Sweet scents assault her enhanced senses that sooth the wild wolf within. Tears sparkle, shimmering droplets that deepen her eye's hue to a dark umber as she squints to clear away the veils. It was an illusion, it had to be. Blindness had been the price she'd paid for the wealth of magic unlocked within her once Avian body. What did she want? Truly? Vision clears leaving her gazing into the lovely marble gardens of her youth, flowers rare and common littering the floor and walls to create a haven away from the chaos and pain of the world. For hours she'd sat and stared into their depths wishing she'd been born the daughter her parents had wanted with pearly white hair and wings like her ancestors. Vision, she wanted that, but the normal sight she'd once had no longer seemed enough. She wished to have that temporary gift that had scared the darkness aboard the ship, that had allowed her to know and befriend Mahri.
Jolie paled at the red man's words. Enough was enough- she had not banked on O'Bannion's holding in him this.. monstrosity.. though he'd hinted at it to her once or twice. What Darkness he held was far to the left of Chaos. Was he even Red, anymore? Still, she dared not snatch for Leralynn, in case he made good on his threat.
Possesed, or near enough, by the once-necromancer's gift, that inborn power that was melded to her soul, Leralynn stood staunch in the face of horror and her words were sharp as new-cracked ice. "It's her fear you feel." The child cast a peridot glance over her shoulder at Jolie, and then smiled at the Catastrophe, her small white teeth showing bright in the dimming light. "Not mine. I said I'm okay. Are your ears waxy? Mine stop hearing so good when they're waxy, and Blue has to clean them." The child stepped toward him, as though to embrace a favourite uncle and not the right arm of hell. Her voice was sweet and lilting. "It's you who's a little bit scared, isn't it? Or you'd have killed me already, I think." Tilting her head to form the question before she asked it, she added, "May I have a kiss?"
Spawne would have her hold her ground, a massive right palm wrapped around the junction between Leralynns neck and skull, ready to perform certain adjustments should the need arise. And yet he'd appear taken aback by her comment, rows of jagged teeth grinning sheepishly from ear-to-ear. The Catastrophe, shaken by but a child? Or perfectly played possum? "Rest assured, infant, that whilst a marionette made from your bones would prove itself most amusing... It leaves little to speak of that delightful hatred you currently harbor..." A moment, a revelation. "Do you... Hate me, girl? Or is it my limitless sin which you envy... The paltry misdeeds of mortals would never compare to what you could gorge upon should I allow it..." Muscles tensed, meaty thumb pushing her chin slightly higher, "Of course... I would want something in return."
Leralynn only nodded to the Catastrophe. Then her sweet child's lips pursed, in a pucker.
Ahhhh. There it was. The woman was giving in, not without a fight. That she had the will to fight at all had the Darkness in turn muster its own depleted, now minutely revived, will-- the scrap it'd been left, anyway, when its brothers had flensed from it all flesh, all self, and left it.. like this. Hungry, always hungry, never satisfied. The Pool had brought itself to the surface more fully now, and encased Taeme like a big, black fist. It wouldn't matter that she stubbornly resisted giving herself over entirely to her visions, to the illusions that crossed the plane between reality and dream. What mattered was she was exuding power, and the Pool was feasting.
In the garden, a high voice piped, "Mommy!" A woman replied, "Taeme, where are you?" And a small winged girl, like a Yule angel brought to life, settled down from the blue, blue, sky to face her mother, and this little Taeme was all that the Taeme trapped inside the Pool's dark grasp would know, unless she had a most secret and hidden store of will and power the Pool had not yet sensed, nor tapped.
Shishi clenched his fist and growled the Catastrophe's way. A pulse moves through the recovering area, not felt by any tangible objects, but one that propagates through the very darkness surrounding those gathered, shadows swaying where they are cast as if blown by some unseen force. Blue couldn't act just yet without endangering his little mimic, but he could try and put himself in a more favorable position, which is what he's done here, attempting to gain influence on the shadows between Red's hand and his daughter's neck, doing nothing with them yet... he'd rather Orange take the man's sins and get on with this ordeal... Just a contingency plan that any good father should have; that best describes those shadows he's able to manipulate now...
Spawne said to Leralynn "Along with my sin, you will assimilate my will... You would become my... Little Catastrophe."
Shishi 's boy puffs out his cheeks and swats at Belulah's hand as she tugs on his hair. Inadvertently the quick motion causes him to toss a peanut over his shoulder that he had been holding to give to the spider monkey. Seeing the treat go sailing, Lulah gives chase, climbing down from the boy's shoulder by way of his back. The boy blinks once and heads after the animal, sending only a half-concerned glance over his shoulder towards his sister in the grasp of Red. "Come back, I have more anyway." his voice is a whisper, letting him move away from the preoccupied group unnoticed.
Leralynn still had her eyes closed, her lips puckered up. One green sliver of sight cracked open, and she nodded before scrunching it shut again.
Three centuries Taeme had walked the lands with stores of pent magic building within her body, untapped and unknown until that one night they'd been released. Wings, beloved feathers lost, now adorn the small girl in shades of pearl so pure they shamed the marble columns covered in vines of all types. The mother leans down scooping the small child into her arms whispering loving words and sharing laughter unlike the childhood she'd shared with her parents. That core of power trickles through her veins giving the grown woman pause as she stares into the illusion. This was not right, not right but what she wanted at least. Love, acceptance and family. Family she had, in Parsithius. Her brother. She didn't have her wings and her vision, but she had him didn't she? Quietly the struggle begins deep within, subconsciously. A part of her wanted to give in, to accept the vision for what it was and be happy it could be and some part of her mind wanted to know better and cleave to reality.
Where'd that Lulah go...? Yellow stomped after her, bag crumpled in hand. It wasn't any surprise nobody noticed him, with all the stuff going on. But he was worried about the monkey. She could get lost. Turn after turn through the maze of ruined walls, he wandered. Things grew quiet. Very quiet. Night fell... or something. It was dark. Then it wasn't. "Ari!" The boy perked his head up, eyes wide. Was that... did he just hear..? "Come along, I still have so much to show you." When Yellow turned the way of that oh-so-familiar voice, he'd see her, her swathe of blonde hair, the way she moved-- his mother, whom he'd missed. What had they been doing? He blinked, shook his head. Behind him, a walrus let off wind with a loud FRAP!, startling the lad. "Oh!" The bloated tusker flopped back on its stone bed, behind the barrier keeping it from the public. "Arius!" He stared at the blubbery animal a moment longer, though that voice called him, as surely as if it had strings tied to his heart. "Mommy?" he squeaked. That's right. They were going to the zoo. At the zoo. Hadn't they just seen the lions? Scary. Only he wasn't scared. He knew a lion. "Hurry, Ari. The penguins are marching!"
Shishi 's son turned toward her voice, turned toward her. They'd been at the zoo for some amount of time already, seen more than a few animals by now, he sure that is a fact, but it's only now, for a reason the boy can't comprehend, that he's chewing on his bottom lip and fighting back tears of joy as he runs towards her voice, taking a few steps to waddle back and forth like he's anticipating the penguins he's about to see will do, "I' coming~!" he called out, his voice cracking as he choked on the lump in his throat.
What is illusion, if not the art of seduction-- of the senses and, through them, the mind, the will to follow? From around trees thickly leafed in green and heavy-branched with aromatic fruits, stepped two more children, and a male. Fair, handsome, smiling. And birds winged and streaked in joyful flight.. Such was her home, the glory of it, the little wisps of cottony seeds blowing in the wind like dry snow. So beautiful-- wasn't it? Didn't it just make Taeme want to take it all in, with her eyes that saw clear as day? The Pool was desperate. It turned its whole on her -- and for every century she had walked the lands, it had crept and hidden and lived in Darkness ten more.
Spawne jammed the smoldering cigar into the dirt between his feet, his stare lifting to meet that of Jolie. The jade rings surrounding his pupils made a cold reception of Jolie's request to the point where it would seem to manifest itself physically, to those perhaps a little underdressed for a change in temperature. "The sin you consume has been but an item... A taste you simply experience, without resistance." He rose to his feet, massive strides seemed to take an eternity between heavy steps, "A moment borrowed, to sate an addiction..." Another step, blackened droplets falling from his extremities, spattering onto the ground. It was the pool, it was his sin- commanding, ever present to the the point where it consumed him, quite literally. Growing more and more viscous, the darkness coiled around his form, threading itself between the fabric of his clothes as his approached Orange, a girl he'd never been formally introduced to, "But there are sins... and then there are sins."
Taeme , from the beginning of Orange's activity, remains off to one side attempting to understand the happenings between the group, one she didn't quite feel a part of. Erythros shifts on her shoulder feeling uneasy with his surroundings. Rustic-orange feathers shift as wings spread wide trending the air as motion carries him from his perch on one slender shoulder, off into the night. Sightless hazel eyes peer forward into nothingness, a drowning darkness akin to that of the sins being consumed by the little blond girl. One hand rises, nimble fingers seeking the staff secured to her back, comfort taken in its presence though the chaos surrounding this place seems to whisper to it, to reach for the shards nestled in the run covered wood.
Power. It could taste power, rippling through the soil, vibrating every particle. Like a liquid spider, the Obsidian Pool stretched its innumerable legs and heaved. The ground above would flex, then, minutely. A sudden pulse, underfoot. Tiny shards of rock dust trickled off the multi-planed blocks.
Jolie's eyes widened in alarm, and she half-stepped in front of the child, one arm slicing across the space between Orange and Leralynn, a pitiful sheild. "Orange. It's okay. You've had enough."
They both knew it was a lie, and the child voiced this as a plaint while the Catastrophe loomed monolithic above. "I'm fine." Her small fingers grasped Jolie's arm and tugged it down. "I can do it." There was a smidgeon of petulance in her voice, her own small challenge against O'Bannion, and before Jolie could stop her, the little mimic has slipped her grasp and was running to Spawne, arms held up as though she expected to be lifted into his bestial embrace. Jolie gasped a warning, an order to stay back, then took chase, but the child forged on, dodging the mortal's grabs. "I can do it!" Orange halted by his tree-trunk legs. Through eyes not her own, she stared at him, stared through him, stared him down. "Unless you're chicken."
Slippery as eels, quiet as mice, the Pool sent its pseudopod limbs grasping up, into the world it no longer knew how to destroy. Power thrummed here once more, and it was starving... But it was weak, too, and so sought a lesser flare than the ring of sustenance offered by O'Bannion. So, to Taeme it crept, staying out of sight, slipping through the rocks, until its thousand, spidery black fingers circled the blind woman. No beast could bear such a presence. And runes or no, power was.. power to the once-man, it cared not what the source may be. Though it liked the taste of sin so very much... Now, it licked the stone, flooded down to make a shadow at Taeme's feet, and the subtle magic of it wove an illusion -- much dilurted now, but strong enough -- to woo the woman to a soft, soft, sound, one she'd remember from long ago, a call from her past, to her heart. Thus, she'd be tempted to move deeper into the ruin.
Jolie glanced to the girl's parents. Shishi, in particular, her gaze panicky, featured contorting. "Stop him."
Taeme turns slightly to one side senses attuned to that soft sound so slight she wasn't quite sure it had been heard. For all of her centuries she did not bear the wisdom to fight, to ignore that subtle calling. Bare feet pad silently against crumbling rocks carrying her blindly deeper into the ruin. Behind her turned back she can hear the disagreement over the man's sin and the set challenge, Orange accepting the thrown gauntlet. Slender fingers wind tightly round that slender staff offering her no protection from the whispers, from her own curiosity. A low warning rumble sounds in her throat as the wolf buried within raises her head, watching and waiting. Unwittingly the druid-in-training opens herself sending out tendrils of her own power into the ruin seeking life of sorts if it could be found.
The man was but a vessel, a human form playing second chair to a much louder voice. Mounds of muscle within the perfect darkness which coated them meant nothing more than added mass to a greater will. A challenge was made, albeit infantile, and The Catastrophe had answered. It rippled lightly following the child’s collision, an immovable object against a very stoppable force. Featureless visage lowered to face the child, his body descending in kind to squat before her, elbows propped upon his thighs, "My, my..." It spoke, choked rasps through the mortals rumble. "I do believe you and I have yet to meet..." Jade flames erupted in empty eye sockets, to accompany a wicked grin of sawblade-teeth from ear to ear. The ooze dripped from his lips as he spoke, again in haunted duotone, "But I'm sure we'll both become very well introduced..."
Shishi acts on Jolie's command, his eyes progressing through their accursed transformation once more, leaving the assassin with a pair of glowing, crimson irises, the change a threat that he's prepared to back up in order to protect Orange. "Leralynn, enough." his voice is calm, but the use of her real name in place of her colorful nomenclature is enough to have the girl turn her head towards her father and give him a pouting look, "I can still do it, Blue." He ignores the girl then, turning his red eyes on the Catastrophe, his stare less threatening than it is pleading for the massive man to leave his daughter be, "You don't have anything to prove to my little girl."
Shishi 's little girl took a step or two back from the giant man when he dropped to her level, the girl making sure to keep that determined look on her face while staring down the Catastrophe...
It was that easy... the siren-song whispered through the cracks of fallen stones tumbled together. The Pool knew no triumph, that emotion was beyond it now its master's will went unchanneled, was absent. All it knew was that it had to feed, or eventually perish, a shadow waning into lesser shadows until it faded into the world like water lost to desert sands. On it crept, herding the blind girl, teasing her with sweet petals of memory all too easily plucked from the back of her mind. It wanted her alone. It wanted her... and as she walked on, the blocks about her groaned a stony welcome, one tipped over to thud behind her, sticky with inky black, a multitude of wisps and tendrils wound round it. The Pool was not strong enough yet to rebuild its shell, the fortress that blunted the pain of its existence. But it could topple a few blocks, set their edges together, make a wall to shield her away from the others. Then it would begin-- the illusion, woven of darkness and wants excised from the desperation of her soul. Taeme was suddenly not in Hollow anymore. And, unless the creature had done what any natural creature would do, and fled-- her little hawk, too.
Jolie knew that look on the girl's face. That stubborn look. The one that defied even gods to stop her doing what she wanted, what she -needed- to do. But the mortal wouldn't recognise it as her own expression, transposed to Leralynn's small face. "Pet, step away. We can try it without this..." Her own frigid eyes were on Spawne, Jolie wanting to snatch the child away but unwilling to make any sudden moves. "Shishi." It was a hiss. "If he... if they .. do this..." She didn't rightly know what would happen. Only... "Orange has to give it all to me. All of it." Where the hell was Caedan? Who'd show the girl how? Things were starting to look very pear-shaped, to the once-necromancer. "Red, don't you harm her. Don't you dare."
Spawne flashed his best crocodile smile at the child, serrated teeth lining up perfectly, top to bottom, "Such a brave young face..." A plated finger brushed her cheek, the shadowy liquid seeping from her pores rubbed against his thumb, that same finger nestled itself under her chin, lofting her gaze to met his own infernal stare, scornful grimace now spread across his features "But you stink of fear... Are you afraid?"
Again that warning growl sounds within Taeme’s own throat made by the dormant wolf now wanting release if only to protect the unprotected mind. Onward she walks, hesitant now, with the grating of stones following in her wake until they thud together sealing her away, entombed within the ruin away from the original ragtag group of adventurers. Reality strikes along with the finality of settling rock leaving her momentarily free of the song pulling at her thoughts and memories. The feelings of this place were so similar to that of the ship she'd walked fearlessly through aided by her ability to see what could not be, a gift from the chaotic ship. Only now she had reason to fear and to hesitate, to stall and fight the lulling call of a siren wanting to feed and rise. It was an unconscious realization that she no longer walked the lands of Hollow and perhaps that alone helped her to turn away from forward progress long enough to probe what lay behind with the end of her staff. Sticky black shadows receding away from the wooden rod until it strikes solidity. That nagging sensation that death is immanent stews in her thoughts, an inkling of fear weakening her resolve to the siren. To her knees she drops, arms curling round them as her head falls to rest atop the curve creating a shell with her body, one she hopes will ward off the beast if only long enough for the others to realize she is gone.
Shishi looked back and forth between Orange and Red and Jolie. It was impossible for the vampire not to know the shadowy chaos that was branching out form this place. Upon activating his cursed eyes his head was filled with it's black voices... or was it just one voice? He couldn't rightly tell, so chaotic the cacophony unleashed inside his skull. Just fighting to keep his head was enough to cloud his judgement and allow the interaction between his daughter and the Red man. That determined, defiant look is stuck on Orange's face as Red smears the dark ooze coming from her pours across her cheek, "I'm not afraid." she assured him, "I'll show you and take what she needs out of you."
Death. That was the last thing the Darkness wanted. Where soul and flesh parted, there was no power, after all. So the oily dark cradled Taeme gently in its vermiculous hands, soothing, whispering, luring... It was weak-- once she'd have fallen for the ruse with no fear, no idea she was being stolen away. Now it had to work harder, on this one girl, to bring out of her deepest desires. All her delicious feelings, sorrows, joys, and the prize treat of her free will. Around her the air blossomed. Sweet fragrance filled it, flowers. On her skin shone the sun, warm as a thousand fingers of light. And blurred for the moment, the sight - oh, the sight! - of a garden she once knew.
"Red, don't you harm her. Don't you dare." Another challenge, however this one would go unanswered by its intended recipient. "Good girl... Fear is for what will hurt you, girl... Not what will help you." His free hand dragged from right to left across the obsidian liquid clinging to his face, exposing the familiar scarlet leather beneath. "We are, after all, more alike than anyone else." His attention snapped away, for his gesture had a second intention. O'Bannion’s eyes were exposed for but a moment before The Catastrophe reclaimed his sight, the deadened, milky hues of a mortal man brandished like a trophy in front of Jolie. Indeed, her demand would go unanswered. Flames relit within their sockets, he resumed with Orange. "You wish to take for her, while she stands afar? While your father stands afar? For all your bravery, there is nothing you... Or they... can do to stop me from snapping your neck like a twig..." He paused for a moment, "What you've taken from the others... Feel it, it has a voice... Listen to the voice, girl, and tell he how you feel, knowing what has become of you at the behest of those... Cowards."
Taeme shivers as the darkness surrounds her drawing her even deeper into its embrace. From the abyss clouding her vision comes light, a blinding vision rending her enable to define shape as anything but blurred imagery. Sweet scents assault her enhanced senses that sooth the wild wolf within. Tears sparkle, shimmering droplets that deepen her eye's hue to a dark umber as she squints to clear away the veils. It was an illusion, it had to be. Blindness had been the price she'd paid for the wealth of magic unlocked within her once Avian body. What did she want? Truly? Vision clears leaving her gazing into the lovely marble gardens of her youth, flowers rare and common littering the floor and walls to create a haven away from the chaos and pain of the world. For hours she'd sat and stared into their depths wishing she'd been born the daughter her parents had wanted with pearly white hair and wings like her ancestors. Vision, she wanted that, but the normal sight she'd once had no longer seemed enough. She wished to have that temporary gift that had scared the darkness aboard the ship, that had allowed her to know and befriend Mahri.
Jolie paled at the red man's words. Enough was enough- she had not banked on O'Bannion's holding in him this.. monstrosity.. though he'd hinted at it to her once or twice. What Darkness he held was far to the left of Chaos. Was he even Red, anymore? Still, she dared not snatch for Leralynn, in case he made good on his threat.
Possesed, or near enough, by the once-necromancer's gift, that inborn power that was melded to her soul, Leralynn stood staunch in the face of horror and her words were sharp as new-cracked ice. "It's her fear you feel." The child cast a peridot glance over her shoulder at Jolie, and then smiled at the Catastrophe, her small white teeth showing bright in the dimming light. "Not mine. I said I'm okay. Are your ears waxy? Mine stop hearing so good when they're waxy, and Blue has to clean them." The child stepped toward him, as though to embrace a favourite uncle and not the right arm of hell. Her voice was sweet and lilting. "It's you who's a little bit scared, isn't it? Or you'd have killed me already, I think." Tilting her head to form the question before she asked it, she added, "May I have a kiss?"
Spawne would have her hold her ground, a massive right palm wrapped around the junction between Leralynns neck and skull, ready to perform certain adjustments should the need arise. And yet he'd appear taken aback by her comment, rows of jagged teeth grinning sheepishly from ear-to-ear. The Catastrophe, shaken by but a child? Or perfectly played possum? "Rest assured, infant, that whilst a marionette made from your bones would prove itself most amusing... It leaves little to speak of that delightful hatred you currently harbor..." A moment, a revelation. "Do you... Hate me, girl? Or is it my limitless sin which you envy... The paltry misdeeds of mortals would never compare to what you could gorge upon should I allow it..." Muscles tensed, meaty thumb pushing her chin slightly higher, "Of course... I would want something in return."
Leralynn only nodded to the Catastrophe. Then her sweet child's lips pursed, in a pucker.
Ahhhh. There it was. The woman was giving in, not without a fight. That she had the will to fight at all had the Darkness in turn muster its own depleted, now minutely revived, will-- the scrap it'd been left, anyway, when its brothers had flensed from it all flesh, all self, and left it.. like this. Hungry, always hungry, never satisfied. The Pool had brought itself to the surface more fully now, and encased Taeme like a big, black fist. It wouldn't matter that she stubbornly resisted giving herself over entirely to her visions, to the illusions that crossed the plane between reality and dream. What mattered was she was exuding power, and the Pool was feasting.
In the garden, a high voice piped, "Mommy!" A woman replied, "Taeme, where are you?" And a small winged girl, like a Yule angel brought to life, settled down from the blue, blue, sky to face her mother, and this little Taeme was all that the Taeme trapped inside the Pool's dark grasp would know, unless she had a most secret and hidden store of will and power the Pool had not yet sensed, nor tapped.
Shishi clenched his fist and growled the Catastrophe's way. A pulse moves through the recovering area, not felt by any tangible objects, but one that propagates through the very darkness surrounding those gathered, shadows swaying where they are cast as if blown by some unseen force. Blue couldn't act just yet without endangering his little mimic, but he could try and put himself in a more favorable position, which is what he's done here, attempting to gain influence on the shadows between Red's hand and his daughter's neck, doing nothing with them yet... he'd rather Orange take the man's sins and get on with this ordeal... Just a contingency plan that any good father should have; that best describes those shadows he's able to manipulate now...
Spawne said to Leralynn "Along with my sin, you will assimilate my will... You would become my... Little Catastrophe."
Shishi 's boy puffs out his cheeks and swats at Belulah's hand as she tugs on his hair. Inadvertently the quick motion causes him to toss a peanut over his shoulder that he had been holding to give to the spider monkey. Seeing the treat go sailing, Lulah gives chase, climbing down from the boy's shoulder by way of his back. The boy blinks once and heads after the animal, sending only a half-concerned glance over his shoulder towards his sister in the grasp of Red. "Come back, I have more anyway." his voice is a whisper, letting him move away from the preoccupied group unnoticed.
Leralynn still had her eyes closed, her lips puckered up. One green sliver of sight cracked open, and she nodded before scrunching it shut again.
Three centuries Taeme had walked the lands with stores of pent magic building within her body, untapped and unknown until that one night they'd been released. Wings, beloved feathers lost, now adorn the small girl in shades of pearl so pure they shamed the marble columns covered in vines of all types. The mother leans down scooping the small child into her arms whispering loving words and sharing laughter unlike the childhood she'd shared with her parents. That core of power trickles through her veins giving the grown woman pause as she stares into the illusion. This was not right, not right but what she wanted at least. Love, acceptance and family. Family she had, in Parsithius. Her brother. She didn't have her wings and her vision, but she had him didn't she? Quietly the struggle begins deep within, subconsciously. A part of her wanted to give in, to accept the vision for what it was and be happy it could be and some part of her mind wanted to know better and cleave to reality.
Where'd that Lulah go...? Yellow stomped after her, bag crumpled in hand. It wasn't any surprise nobody noticed him, with all the stuff going on. But he was worried about the monkey. She could get lost. Turn after turn through the maze of ruined walls, he wandered. Things grew quiet. Very quiet. Night fell... or something. It was dark. Then it wasn't. "Ari!" The boy perked his head up, eyes wide. Was that... did he just hear..? "Come along, I still have so much to show you." When Yellow turned the way of that oh-so-familiar voice, he'd see her, her swathe of blonde hair, the way she moved-- his mother, whom he'd missed. What had they been doing? He blinked, shook his head. Behind him, a walrus let off wind with a loud FRAP!, startling the lad. "Oh!" The bloated tusker flopped back on its stone bed, behind the barrier keeping it from the public. "Arius!" He stared at the blubbery animal a moment longer, though that voice called him, as surely as if it had strings tied to his heart. "Mommy?" he squeaked. That's right. They were going to the zoo. At the zoo. Hadn't they just seen the lions? Scary. Only he wasn't scared. He knew a lion. "Hurry, Ari. The penguins are marching!"
Shishi 's son turned toward her voice, turned toward her. They'd been at the zoo for some amount of time already, seen more than a few animals by now, he sure that is a fact, but it's only now, for a reason the boy can't comprehend, that he's chewing on his bottom lip and fighting back tears of joy as he runs towards her voice, taking a few steps to waddle back and forth like he's anticipating the penguins he's about to see will do, "I' coming~!" he called out, his voice cracking as he choked on the lump in his throat.
What is illusion, if not the art of seduction-- of the senses and, through them, the mind, the will to follow? From around trees thickly leafed in green and heavy-branched with aromatic fruits, stepped two more children, and a male. Fair, handsome, smiling. And birds winged and streaked in joyful flight.. Such was her home, the glory of it, the little wisps of cottony seeds blowing in the wind like dry snow. So beautiful-- wasn't it? Didn't it just make Taeme want to take it all in, with her eyes that saw clear as day? The Pool was desperate. It turned its whole on her -- and for every century she had walked the lands, it had crept and hidden and lived in Darkness ten more.