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Post by Joliette Thorne on Jun 5, 2006 9:51:37 GMT -5
Diiroehn said to Anshera, "It is done....What? You were expecting some incantation, or ritual? My love, I need none, for this pain is in your head."
Laurelle laughs, taking a sip of water... her eyes never leaving the bartop "Pain is immortal... like the gods themselves. You may think you escape it now... but it catches up to you in end.."
Diiroehn said to Laurelle, "Do not deceive my creation with lies."
Laurelle said to Diiroehn, "*laughing still, not looking at him* Nay... I deceive naught, love. Pain... cannot be beaten or stripped away. It is not a thing of the mind... but a thing of the ages. You never escape... not -even- in death, as I'm sure you would know, love. Why deceive her? Do your magics only work on those ignorant of the truth?"
Diiroehn said to Laurelle, "You naught but barely grasp the concept of pain. Nay, I do not feel it, I cannot. My nerves don't feel anymore, whatsoever. Pain, can indeed be beaten, it can indeed be stripped away by the willer himself. It is not a thing of the ages, but a thing of the body, and henceforth of the mind! You are the one who is ignorant of the truth, now, -love-."
Tenebrae said to Diiroehn, "There are all kinds of pain. Mental, emotional, physical ... and every sentient creature suffers it, and can be made to suffer it. Everybody has their ouchy place."
Diiroehn said to Tenebrae, "Not true!"
Tenebrae said to Diiroehn, "Did I not just irritate you?" The necromancer smiles, that expression as thin as an assassin's blade. "I bet, dear Diir, if I kept digging... and digging... deep as I could, I could find yours. Scratch the surface, or dig deep, there's ouchy in there somewhere..."
Diiroehn said to Tenebrae, "Irritation, dear mistress, is an entirely different concept than pain. Irritate me, pester me, annoy me to the highest point, but all of such will never hurt me. Only serve to infuriate me. Our ideas, lady, are of entirely different perspectives."
Tenebrae shook her head. "You mistake me, dearest Lich. For if I were to strap you down, for say ...oh, a century... and needle you, and needle you; dig and probe your seemingly easily triggered annoyance buttons 'til they become the entire focus of your being, pester you, annoy you to the highest all that time... I bet I could cause you just a little smidge of agony? Mental anguish? Tell me it's not so, and I will doubt you."
Diiroehn said to Tenebrae, "Then doubt me, dear necromancer. Of course the being would become warped to a point of insanity, yet the being would never have suffered pain. No, just twisting of his mind. Never pain."
Tenebrae's brow lifts gently. "There are all kinds of pain."
Diiroehn 's death's head grin contorts itself in an illusion of the light; a malignant scowl warped upon the rotten facade is a phantasmal display of will. The spectre being has grown impatient, infuriated; his view clearly the right one...to him, at least. Vocals have warped to a sneer of malicious measures, a vented fashion of irritation, and traced of anger. "Can you do as I have? Is it possible to suffer so? Wracked upon by wave after wave of unspoken terrors. Mind, body alike tortured to a degree not known by man? But, one thing, Tenebrae, one thing is that the mind slips away! It is its own master, its own servant! Will it, can it continue withstanding pain? Never, and it does not need to, because of this ability, this defence, this craftiness of the mind. It can fade!"
Tenebrae's darknesses shifted, coiling and recoiling like some pythonic mantle about her shoulders; that facsimile of a garment - cloak-like yet oddly sentient to her wishes, desires - extruded little whips and wisps of blackness to lash and taste the air, the way a serpent might its tongue in search of a hapless rodent. The necromancer's mien remained serene as a Madonna, an innocent little smile quirking rosy lips. "Oh, you poor creature, to be thus deluded." Her words wore the sound of sincerity, wrapped in the very fabric of compassion. "For did I want to harm you.. as I assuredly do not... I would not -let- your mind slip away. Any master of the crueller arts worth his salt is familiar with the problem of dissociation of mind and body. Oh no..." She still smirked, shaking her head so that soft ebon gently touched her pallid cheeks. "I'd keep your little consciousness wriggling like a worm on a hook, for a very long time."
Diiroehn 's altered illusion of spectral anger once again follows suite, shifting back to the true grin that enthrals the creature so. His hand raises slowly, ferally, fingers positioned spread as if lethargic in poise. Gradually, the shadows surrounding the Cabal's leader begin to shift, figure transcending to depict a skull. "And what if the mind, in all consciousness, can spread outward; can affect the physicality around it?"
Tenebrae 's tenderly malicious smirk faded then, her features composing to a softer look, something almost maternal in nature, yet accompanied by such a coldness of gaze that the very air between them might have crackled, charged with the intensity of its focus. Those terrible, beautiful eyes shifted to align with the death's head illusion comprised of her shadows, that sardonically fleshless visage stretching its low slung jaw wide, as though in a silent scream. And from its lower edge, the lifeless creature began to melt away, corroding into a sooty ash that melded back to the coalescing darknesses that were the necromancer's very heritage, a gift from the darkest of them. "Even life-in-death needs life... to move, to house its sentience." The snaking, tentacular blackness shifted again, this time wending their way about the necromage like pernicious vines an oak, and like some blasphemous ivy sank tiny polyps to clutch at rotting flesh. "True pain is existence..." Tene's voice had taken a sibilant quality, a breathy hiss. "Only dissolution brings true freedom..." The nightmare wyrms of the dark flexed and heaved, and departed the lich's form, to tumble writhing to the floor, like horrid darkling fingers probing the corners of the tavern. From out a corner one pulled a screaming rat, that ghastly suckers imbedding to its flesh, which promptly caved in as though everything inside was sucked out very suddenly, leaving a mere husk. Then that too crumbled to powder, this dissolving to a base and oily stain on the tavern floor that soon vanished from view altogether. Tene smiled again, as her familiars retracted. "You see? That's now one happy rat." She blinked. "or ... un-rat?"
Diiroehn said to Tenebrae, "You win, yet again."
Tenebrae takes to metallic stiletto heels, those sharpened spikes ticking their fatal cadence across the tavern floor toward the undead. A chalky-white hand reached through the space between them, to pat him gently on the shoulder. Tene smiled. "Of course I did. Fancy a drink? One of those frothy jobbies, with all the little umbrellas in?"
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Post by Joliette Thorne on Jun 5, 2006 10:05:55 GMT -5
Leoxander cast a glance to everyone he recognized within those walls, and that was only a few, really. To anyone who looked back, they would see red and blue irises paled to hues of stormy gray, as if clouds covered the color. When the firelight began to wash over his dark clad frame, he peeled down the shadow woven mask to breathe, and moved to a seat close as he could find by firelight. With so much darkness slithering, the nocturnal human was craving warmth and light.
Jayde had watched the thief enter, as if -she- had been the one cloaked by shadows, and lurking, though such wasn't even really the case. The door was nudged open minutes after him; allowing him ample time to enter the tavern, and to perhaps purchase a drink, and get comfortable. She should have found some other form of mask and clothing; to feign as if she were going to kidnap the rogue. But then people might think she meant him harm, when she was doing naught but teasing. Nudging the door open, Jayde made her way inside, fingers plucking at the protective face vizard, whilst gray eyes swept around. She saw the tall figure move to the fire, and sit, and immediately made her way over to him. She had some business to settle with the pirate.
Leoxander didn't allow anyone to escape his observation - until his eyes settled to the hypnotizing glow of flames. So it was that he didn't even know Jayde entered soon after him. If anyone happened to be watching him beside the druid, they would see his hand fall to pet something that wasn't there, but the imaginary friend appeared to be about the same height as Jack would be, seated beside him.
Tenebrae noticed the rogue first, his movement catching her attention in the periphery of her awareness, and she glanced about for usual tag-along... oh, there she was. The necromancer offered them both a bright and cheery wave, and turned back to the task of convincing Mesthak that tiny colorful umbrellas would really liven up the cocktails.
Jayde placed her free hand at the back of the chair, her lips compressing when her gaze fell upon his moving hand, petting over.. nothing. Where was Jack? Why wasn't he here? Though she never voiced these questions aloud. Lowering a hand, her fingers curled into the outside of his shoulder, so she could lean in and whisper.. not against his ear, but only loud enough for him to hear.
Leoxander had seen the wave, since she was likely to do it on his walk across the tavern. But it wasn't until Tenebrae turned around that there was a response, before his eyes devoted to the flames. A crude, small throwing dagger suddenly impaled itself into the wooden bartop, an inch, maybe two from Tenebrae's smallest finger, should her hand happen to be resting atop that surface. By the time she'd look at the pirate he was petting his invisible dog.
Leoxander lifted his eyes a good couple minutes later to regard Jayde, who he'd never noticed enter but there she was, right beside him. Peering through ashen strands of hair, the center of his brow furrowed, and fingers curled into a fist. If Jack had been there, Leo would have been grabbing a fistful of black fur. "...Why?" He spoke almost too loudly, as if he couldn't hear his own words that well.
Tenebrae did blink, eyes widened taking several moments to regain their usual shape. "Some men just never figure out how to hit the right spot..." She said it to the knife, not the rogue; lips spreading to the kind of smile one has when musing on a self-amusing joke.
Jayde straightened.. her brow furrowing, and her full lips compressing. She wasn't about to beg him. Her jaw set firm, and her brow etched in a hard line. The hand that had touched to the outer side of his shoulder now moved in, to curl her fingers over the area that she had seen him favoring earlier. Her grip firmed, tightly, to see if she was sure about it--or not.
Leoxander suddenly became a center of attention. When the healer reached out, the rogue reacted with reflexes that could be deadly, out of control. Unfortunately he had little balance or composure, and his chair toppled backward in attempt to escape the grasp that had him yelling out a loud and protesting: "No..!" He landed on his back, and crawled backward with only one arm really functioning, the other cradled to his body like a broken wing. With sudden panicked breathing, he looked over to the injured shoulder she'd touched, and his pale eyes widened. He tilted his head back, as if trying to get his face further away from something that appeared - to him - to be spreading over his body from that epicenter where the arrowhead was buried in cloth and flesh. No one else would see those hallucinations. To them, the human just appeared to start writhing on the floor, crawling backward with agony etching onto his features, eyes closing tightly with his face turned away from the wound. The string of curses to leave his mouth in a growl were colorful, to say the least.
Tenebrae yawned and stroked the tip of her forefinger up and down the handle of the knife. "Enter the sheep-eyed rescuer to spring to action, milky flesh quivering and lips suitably pouted. Oh, but he'll suffer, and make the rest of us suffer with him, 'til he ponces back into the shadows, sated, with chip firmly ensconced on shoulder..." She seemed to be having a very colourful conversation with that weapon, indeed.
Jayde stumbled back a step with his sudden movement, and the rise of his voice.Confusion reflected on her features, gray eyes focused on him when he began to writhe back.. dragging her teeth along her lower lip. What did she do wrong?! Cautiously, a step forward was taken, then back once again.. finally deciding to lower slowly towards the ground, to rest her elbows atop the stretch of her thighs. What was his malfunction? She knew he wasn't all right.. but he seemed to have gotten worse. Patience had always been one of her more finer traits, and she exercised it now, stretching it thin so she could attempt to come to the conclusion of his odd behavior. "Leo? 'Tis me, Jayde.." As if that would help him-- but she was trying to calm him down. "Leo, allow me to help you. You are hurt. Please.." In her lowered position, she attempted to move nearer.. rising slightly so the flat of her feet could press to the ground, before she lowered her backside close to her calves once more, and used her thighs as a flat surface to rest her arms..
Leoxander arched his spine in attempts to get away from the sensation promising to devour him. The panicked words that left him in a frantic, hissed stammer weren't finished, and his face half buried against the floorboards with a jerk and twist of his lean frame in futile attempts to escape something no one could see. To him, it was darkness, looming fathomless shadow like the dark waters of the pool, spreading to cocoon him entirely. "Sh...sha...sh-shad... Noo." And then, without warning, the low moans of pain altered and rose in pitch, and the expression on his face changed completely with it. His head was thrown back with maniacal laughter raising into the air above him. Mysteriously, from nowhere, something crawled out from behind Leo's neck, perhaps from the floorboards beneath him since he still suffered something of a seizure on his back. He continued to howl with inappropriate laughter as the midnight black arachnid crawled over his chest, down toward the trio of claw marks in his armor, at his stomach. Leoxander didn't even notice the large spider.
Diiroehn doesn’t appear present, as instead a masculine form of a male elf struts in. Former knowledge of beauty pales in the comparison of this majestic humanoid, his golden locks of glimmering faith lying kept about his shoulders. Neither dent, nor flaw mars the perfect visage of himself; women finding him simply irresistible, while men find themselves jealous. Glinting emerald hues slide over each patron’s appeal, smile warmly greeting those present in comforting manner. Woe, however, will be this one. Eyes widen to immeasurable roundness, bulging within their sockets as the previously jovial one grasps at his neck in utter agony. Lips of silk part, only to let way for a tide of crimson fluid to flow forth from tortured innards, as the orbs finally explode in their sockets. Dead, it falls to the floor in its pool of essence, no longer attractive, but hideous in timely demise. The form of the Lich stands beyond the corpse upon the ground, death’s head grin malicious in beholder’s eye; hint of laughter traced. It was laughter more terrible than any sadness- a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of the dead laughing at the futility of life, and its efforts. Skeletal digits elevate, and the scene of hideous endeavor vanishes, its will but an illusion.
Tenebrae said to Diiroehn, "You always were the most dreadful kind of show-off...."
Diiroehn said to Tenebrae, "Indeed. Always and ever."
Udrath notices the spider and nearly falls over trying to push away from the table, wanting to get as far away from it as possible.
Tenebrae grinned so widely as to almost echo the death's-head sardonic rictus of the Lich himself. And turned from that crypt-borne visage toward the prior excitement, lips licked and legs crossed. And when next she blinked, no flutter of lashes descended to gloss the surface of her orbs, but a pall of obsidian that swept from one corner of each eye to the other, from the outside in, like some ghastly second eyelid.
Jayde dropped to her knees, crawling closer.. though his body was spasming, twitching, and she needed to clear the area, so he wouldn't cause himself further harm by thrashing into objects. The chair was shoved aside with a skitter of wood on wood, and anything else nearby that wasn't too heavy to push was nudged away, as well. A hand rose, in preparation to grip a shoulder, to perhaps still him, when unexpectedly, his sounds of pain rose; and developed into laughter that sent chills racing down her spine, and goosebumps prickling along her flesh. But it was the eight-legged creature that had a scream rising, and emerging from her throat. The spider crawled across his body, creeping, and immediately she fell back, crawling back a bit, as if the thing was planning to hop from body, to body. Quickly, gray eyes scanned, searching for something; -anything- to use to swipe the spider off his body with.
Udrath tosses Jayde a Glass Jar. Udrath gave 1 Glass Jar to Jayde.
Tenebrae said to Diiroehn, "He still won't allow me my little umbrellas. I'm becoming rather cross about it." She watched the hirsute arachnid's progress, with philosophical mien. "Were there only a way to bottle the effect they cause..."
Udrath walks slowly backwards, keeping his eyes on the spider, bumping into chairs every few feet.
Diiroehn said to Tenebrae, "Were there, and it'd be done, would it not?"
Tenebrae nodded, eyes still trained on the crawling creature. "I don't think those are poisonous.. You could just pick the blasted thing up." She made a sympathetic little moue. "So much for kindness. No-one ever thinks of how the poor spider must be feeling."
Kyros raises a brow, "Oh a spider!? Where? I love spiders!"
Jayde watched, dumbfounded for a moment, as the bottle dropped, rolling across the wooden floor to her, to tap against her thigh.. forcing her to realize that she could use -it- as a scooping device to sweep up the monstrosity of a miniature beast. But it wasn't as wide as she preferred, or as large. She still risked the -thing- touching her with one of its legs, or fighting to enter confinement. Perhaps she could do the whole.. incapable woman thing, and swoon. But that wasn't her style. Tenebrae's voice had her head lifting, and the bridge of her nose crinkling in distaste. Pick it.. up? Well at least it was pleasant to know that the thing wasn't poisonous. Didn't mean it was any less creepy. Raising the jar, and uncapping it, she held both objects in opposite hands, and then proceeded to attempt to push them together--with the arachnid between.
Leoxander continued to laugh awhile, though the sound became mere coughs of grated vocal. His eyes, however, stopped reflecting humor long ago. The man didn't blink, instead his traumatized stare locked on the dark ceiling above, as if the roof were being torn to open the portal to hell itself, above his head. The spasm of his body became convulsing shudders that tensed the muscles throughout his frame, and something ink leaked onto floorboards from the unhealed marks at the back of his neck. The rogue, trained to maintain his silence even under conditions of torture (as Movdon had learned...) soon physically bit onto his tongue to quiet himself, though his eyes watered from the sting of pain mingling into his weak sense of awareness.
Udrath points, his eyes wide. "Over there." He says hoarsely, pointing in the direction of Leoxander and Jayde.
Tenebrae clapped her hands together and made a sweeping gesture toward Kyros. "And thus, I am proven wrong." She grinned to Diiroehn. "That's gotta bring a smile to your... Oh, sorry.." The lich was always smiling. Wasn't something he could help, really.
Kyros 's mouth moves, but no sound seems to emit, for humans. The arachnid freezes, shuffles a little in every direction but remains in it's relative position, "Awwweee......poor thing.....scared to death....."
Tenebrae canted her head down to address the knife still embedded in the table before her. "All over but the poncing, my friend. I dare say it'll be a good show."
Diiroehn could almost laugh at Tenebrae's comment. But yet, he did not posses the ability to.
Leoxander turned his head at that point, his mouth parting open to release the bite on a tongue that tasted like blood. Features speckled in perspiration, it was through a foggy, blurry vision that he looked toward the bar, toward his clan members who he didn't truly recognize as such. Trembling digits curled into the surface of floorboards beneath him, struggling to clarify the visage of the necromancer in the distance. With his mortal eyes still fearful shades of gray, he gurgled the syllable of a 'J', stomach and chest heaving for the ability to simply breathe. For him, it was like trying to do all of that with a transparent but dark plastic bag over his head.
Jayde found it so much less difficult to sweep the spider into the container when it seemed to have difficulty moving.. capping the lid tightly, and likely cutting off its supply of oxygen. It wasn't her style to kill animals--but that thing wasn't something she considered an animal. It was a beast; a small one, but one no less. The substance that bled onto the floor beneath Leo's head roused her attention, and she immediately scooted upwards, biting down on her bottom lip to slide her fingers beneath his skull, to touch the tips of digits to the wound she had.. cleaned.. whilst in the dark pool. Her other hand plucked at the cape 'round her shoulders, untying the not so it slid to the floor, using it to press to the back of his head, either for support against the hard wood, or perhaps to stop, or absorb the disturbing, unhealthy draining liquid. But at least it wasn't pus, eh?
Kyros lets out a disappointed sound poking a few little holes in the top of the jar so the arachnid can breathe.
Jayde dropped 1 Glass Jar.
Udrath reaches tenderly for his jar and the tarantula, taking them outside, so as to set the spider free. No death is his policy. Udrath picked up 1 tarantula. Udrath picked up 1 Glass Jar. Udrath exits south.
Leoxander felt the pressure behind his head which caused his gaze to roam above, again. Jayde's features were blurry, and seemed to be growing darker, as if a disease was spreading across her face, eating milky complexion with a rotting darkness. The human was terrified with what his eyes saw, but he didn't emit a sound beyond ragged, nervous breathing.
Tenebrae stood, then and crossed the room toward the place where the rogue lay writhing and such. Her air was nonchalant, her stride one of a woman recently sated in full. Her lips bore the imprint of such satisfaction in the smirk that curved them, the line almost cruel. On six-inch metal heels the necromancer stood, halted quite near the man's head. "I've a cure for what ails you, pet. Quite simple, really. And all the darkness goes away..."
Kyros frowns deeply, a mumble given as Udrath removes the tarantula.
Udrath shouted, "OH GAWD!"
Jayde touched her hands to his brow when duo - colored eyes drifted her way, feeling to see if beneath the perspiration, he was fevered. Her head rolled back when the vampiress appeared alongside the pirate's head, her hand dropping so he could turn to peer over at her.
Udrath runs in the door, panting, and slams it behind him, his face pale. He looks around. "I got rid of it." He says hoarsely.
Leoxander flinched at the contact of heel so near his ear, a loud and pounding sound that echoed the void of his mind amidst the pieces of shattered thoughts, hopelessly drifting. Lurid gaze followed the limb north, toward the silhouette of the woman standing above him, a familiar shape of outline that he once smiled when he saw. The corners of his eyes squinted, and though he was silent, his body still twitched in places where locked muscles rippled beneath fitting armor. It wasn't pain so much as it was agony. The inside of his skin itched. The back of his eyes and throat burned like fire, yet the rest of his body was suddenly clammy and chilled to the point that he sweated from it. From that lowly position, he watched the feral glint of green to amber eyes. But perhaps that was just in his head.
Tenebrae was never much one for making a fuss when it wasn't about her... She simply dropped thigh to heel, palms pressing to floor on either side of the man's head, and lowered those still-curved lips to hover over the human's own, an inch or so above, so that he might feel the heat of her breath as she spoke, her tone pronouncedly reassuring. "Now you might feel a bit of a prick ..." She grinned. "But I dare say you'd be used to that by now..." She muttered a few more words - some ritual of her own perhaps, a string of curses that might make the sailor himself blush. Peridot irises were obscured beneath the oily sheen that swept to cover it, her mouth widening to expose the coral of her tongue and the gleam of ivory fangs. And then the sin-eater inhaled... A flood of memories came to her, of crimson murder and furtive couplings, theft and dishonour and mutiny ... and all the while the inky shadows crept and slithered from the rogue, called to the shadow-witch like serpents to a fakir's flute. Ribboning, swirling, they were all taken in, Tene's features blank and cheeks of a pallor to rival chalk hollowed. On and on they came, all the deadliest of sins .. were someone not to stop her, Leoxander would emerge from this a saint... and quite possibly, an incurably insane one.
Diiroehn 's unsanctified orbs linger upon the scene unfolding, his death's head grin appearing malicious beyond the extent of mirthlessness; his callous visage pinpointed in the dual eyes of cold tombstone, terror lurking within them. But not his terror. If one were to look within those depths of unholy ashen, a thousand souls would rise to meet them; a thousand eyes as grim and dead as the Lich's, a thousand mouths ajar with silent screams of the torturous hell. Cranium cants, and sinew stretches to relieve the movement, bitter sanguine dripping free from its rotten surface.
Leoxander eyes locked horrifically upon the so-near and vaguely... familiar features. She spoke, breath teasing his own lips, and he exhaled a slow sigh that she would scent no liquor on; despite his mannerism the human was completely sober. "J...Joli..." The barely audible name was something Tenebrae alone would hear before the Sineater curse left her lips, and pulled the sins from his body like wisps of his very soul. Leo was a very sinful man, after all. His eyes never closed, and the clouds seemed to drain away from them, taking some of the yellow and gray hues from the whites of his eyes and irises to brighten them immensely. With all this, his strength seemed absorbed, or maybe it was the tension that had him so stiff on the hard surface of the ground. He relaxed against the floorboards eventually, eyes rolling back to close - in relief.
Jayde watched the female's lowering, and when she moved intimately close to Leoxander, Jayde crawled back with haste, putting distance between them, allowing the pair privacy, it seemed. But when the black curls of exhaled breath, it seemed, languidly trailed from his breath, to her own, she couldn't help but stare in fascination.. her mouth slightly agape in wonder. She hadn't the faintest of ideas what was transpiring, but she was hypnotized for the briefest of moments. Though, soon, the healer came to the deduction that what was happening wasn't completely good. It was far fetched, but it worried her--she didn't know Tenebrae, and wouldn't put it past her to eat the poor, incapacitated pirate's soul. Scrambling to her feet, she moved towards the pair, curling her fingers into the vampire's shoulders, attempting to cease what was happening. "Stop! Stop!"
Tenebrae wasn't even aware of the woman's mewling cries, the hesitant touch of her hand on currently insensate flesh. Tene had three hundred and nine years of experience as a sin-eater and these were employed in full now, the taint of chaos and human badness alike drawn into her slender frame. The rogue's recumbence too was beyond her ken - her Fate was never meant to be used upon the living, and had only once been used as such before, upon a creature not nearly as mortal as the one outstretched below her. Ebon silk swept free, the necromancer's head lashing from side to side as she tried to wrestle herself from the grasp of the pirate's evils. But on and on they came, the shriver drinking them as they flooded down her throat; those that streamed to her as though willing and those that entered struggling, reluctant, alike. But dragged kicking or come freely they kept on ... Perhaps a more gutsy approach would do the trick.
Jayde grew worried when it didn't stop, her brow etching, and the curl of fingers into shoulders growing more impatient, more forceful.. until her hands planted to the sides of the female to give a firm push. It didn't feel right, nothing about it did.. so hopefully Tenebrae wouldn't be too pissed at the female for the sudden force she used to physically use the whole of her weight in that shove, almost as if she were tackling her to the ground. "Get.. off!" Her feet even planted to the ground, putting weight behind it. After all, she was sure it wasn't easy to catch a vampire off balance. "Stop it! Get -off-!" Her.. mewling.. was now outright shouts of anger, demanding that Tene heed her physical, and vocal demands.
Tenebrae wasn't willingly hanging on at this point ... Her own mind was suffering slippage, all the rogue's ill-gotten memories experienced as her own, and with no release of a cleansed and saintly soul to end the torture she was stuck with it - as was Leo, who by now would have a conscience as white as virgin wool and, with a bit of luck, a mind left in instinctive desire for self-preservation. She too was pulling back, helplessly, against the abysmal warp of shadow fleeting 'twixt the pirate's lips and her own. Until something caught her a blow, her head snapped back, teeth clamping hard on that luscious coral tongue. Not so good, for one whose mouth bore fangs as well. And as the momentum of the healer's thrust flung her from his immediate proximity, the taste of blood - her own, no matter - swallowed in sanguine gulps had her waking from the sin-eater's trance and sick to her stomach. Bloated with the nightmare of a criminal's sins and the cold and utter blackness that was the essence of her maker, she hit the floor... and that unprecedented interruption had her gagging, a swarming miasma of the inky stuff escaping her now-pallid lips to snap like rubber bands back to their source. Laid out on Mesthak's floor, shuddering and retching, the vampiress did the only thing that came to her shadow-riddled mind and clamped a hand across her mouth, curling herself to a very small shape indeed, against the horror that roiled within her.
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Post by Joliette Thorne on Jun 5, 2006 10:06:40 GMT -5
Leoxander didn't move; he was still as death for the time that it took for those inky specters to slither back over his jaw, into his mouth and down his throat, as though his sins were a source balled in the center of his body. Only slitted whites of his eyes, rolled back in his head as they were, showed through partially lifted lids to give him an all the more eerie appearance, one arm rested across his stomach, the other outstretched from the flail of his earlier seizure. His chest rose and fell, steady rhythm that signified he was alive, and breathing.
Jayde moved nearer to Leoxander, fingers slithering through black curls, holding them back so she could bow over him, her ear near his mouth, listening to his breath. That was a reassurance, where the white of his eyes were not. Though she was crawling over him, carefully, lowering to the floor alongside Tenebrae, a hand reaching out to stroke her fingertips lightly along the top of the other female's skull, brushing back any errant strands of ebon. She looked so frightened; like a helpless child.. and it crushed Jayde. The question that poised on the tip of her tongue, she knew, was a formality.. anyone could tell that indeed, she wasn't alright. Another pet of fingers along Tene's head, and Jay settled back on her haunches, dividing her attention between the two. She didn't know what to do to help, and it was obvious with the line of worry that etched between her brows, a frown pressing her lips together..
Anni shivers softly as she takes steps into the dank, depressing tavern that the towns people seemed to flock to. Her eyes show a look of tiredness, but she keeps her beautiful smile plastered on her face as she takes a seat at the bar, pulling a glass of red colored liquid out of her pack, and promptly, downing it.
Tenebrae was a little girl again, in her mind; the child she had been in ribbons and lace, ebon ringlets curled tightly against their natural dead-straight fall, lifted to the shrunken, toothless maw of the corpse of a village elder. "No..." It was the smallest of sounds, Joliette's cherubic face paling with fear and repugnance. Now, three centuries later, the woman they called Tenebrae spoke that same small word, though it came as a gurgle of blood as well, that flooded across her lower lip. But vampiric fluids in saliva and sanguine vitae were already knitting severed flesh back to itself. It was the inner wounds that had her limbs drawn tight against her body, her eyes screwed shut, though she saw more of evil there than she would have, were they opened. And yet more crimson spilled, from the eyes of the one the Lords of Chaos had chosen as their Unmaker, without her consent or knowledge. And, in the eyes of those who saw her now and those who'd see her in days to come, Tenebrae may well be one step removed from a monster; but even monsters cried, sometimes.
Leoxander remained laid out in the middle of the tavern floor, where Anni and any other newcomer might notice a few chairs askew or toppled. From a position that had been motionless for minutes, he finally moved a foot, which in turn stretched a leg slowly out from it's agonized bend when he instinctively attempted to curl up in pain. His head turned slowly the opposite way, eyes closing entirely with a deep breath expanding his chest beneath the fit of black leather armor. Everything worn and terrorized on his features was absorbed to leave him looking as young as he truly was. Meanwhile... none other than Jack the shaggy dog quite suddenly appeared from the south, nosing open the tavern door to lift his head with an anxious look, ears perked.
Anni looks to Jack, remembering something about him in the file she had received of Leoxander. Anni looks strikingly like Corine, especially as she takes a place on the floor to pet Jack, lovingly, as her mother had done before her.
Jayde pushed abruptly to her feet, quick steps carrying her to the bar. She should have spared a glance Jack's way, but she was playing Doctor.. and not how the youth played it, either. Leaning across the bar, she asked of Mesthak, kindly, to find her a cloth, or towel.. and once one was passed her way, she returned to the prone pair. Lowering again, to the spot she had been in moments before, Jayde leaned in near Tenebrae to lightly run the towel against the woman's mouth, and chin.. to swipe up the crimson color that slid from the separation of the vampiress' lips. Gray eyes then rose to the shifting form of Leo, and her free hand reached out, extending, brushing along his nearer arm. It was a contact to assure herself, mostly, before she turned back to the Lady Tenebrae.. her attention divided equally amongst the two.
Leoxander hadn't seen his dog in a very long time. And Jack, in return, hadn't seen the rogue. Now, the black slipped out of Anni's hold after a quick and hasty greeting, trotting across the floorboards toward the tall frame seemingly exhausted beyond the point of consciousness. All it took was a few laps of wet, annoying tongue to have a hand raising as though he were waking from a comfy snooze, shoving at the canine's face with a squint of eyes. Plume tail soon swayed with a few excited whimpers sounding from the thief's long time companion, and a sleepy murmur was heard beneath the joyful pacing and spinning of a large furry body.. "...mhn.. mn'jack..?"
Larewen furrows her brow in extended silence, having been simply watching. Rising from her seat, she moves towards Jayde, intent on offering her help. Anni smiles to Leo and Jack, happy for their joyous reunion, wishing someone would come through the door for her. Instead of waiting for that person she knew would never come, she takes up a spot at Leo's and Jack's side, not interrupting them, just watching close by.
Jayde 's attention drifted momentarily to the human, and his canine companion, a faint hint of a smile twisting up the corners of her lips, before she lowered her gaze back to the vampiress. Movement, though, had gray irises rising to Larewen. Her voice was soft when she spoke, her shoulders rising slightly; a helpless gesture. "I do not know what to do to help her.."
Larewen 's brow remains in that furrowed position, gaze now falling away from Jayde and onto the form of Tenebrae. Her silence ends with the parting of her lips, voice ensuing softly, "Neither do I." The confession is made.
Tenebrae responded to Jayde's gentle ministrations the way a lost and frightened child might, upon being found... by weeping even harder. Her entire frame was wracked with long and gasping sobs, but it wasn't just herself she cried for. Within her were the memories of all the others whose sins she'd shriven; who'd begun their lives as innocents, and grown to adulthood amid the filth and corruption of a world that seemed to loathe purity. Loaded with their subsequent corruption, including that of the boy that Leoxander had once been, the vampiress was soul-sick to the core. The other burdens pressed upon her by Fate and the creeping sickness that was Eldritch seemed for the moment small by comparison... Jayde's presence, while not calming, was curative in some way and as her arcane metabolism slowly began to ingest the sins of the pirate, Tene cried her last for the children, and for herself, and fell to silence, her breath ragged.
Leoxander wrapped his arms around the solid shape of the dog, feeling more than just phantom memories reflecting his want for his friend, more than the hallucinations he'd been having. Though Leo wasn't normally one to express any emotions out loud, muffled laughter just escaped him easily into that shaggy coat. He leaned back to stare at the dog with eyes that coincidently matched Anni's, though the woman's could not be as bright as his were at that moment. Because she was the closest to him, she was the first one Leoxander smiled at.
Jayde 's gray eyes lifted to Anni, and for a moment, she seemed startled that the stranger was suddenly so close. And to her self - proclaimed patient. "I do not know, exactly.." Hopefully Leo was alright now.. though he seemed, indeed, much better. She would have to thank Tenebrae later, even though the vampiress hadn't done it for her, but for the pirate rogue, himself. The sobbing was heart wrenching, though she did all she knew how to, pet a hand along the back of Tene's skull still, attempting to soothe her with a maternal touch. When she fell silent, and heaved a breath, her eyes rose to Mesthak, contemplating on if the woman was well enough to drink something to perhaps calm her. Maybe some rum, or whisky..
Anni smiles softly back to Leo, giving him a small, encouraging nod of her head. Warm words dripping with care, flowing from her mouth, "Hello there..."
Anni gave 10 brandy to Jayde.
Anni said to Jayde, "This may sound a little odd, but if you can get her drunk enough to dull any of the pain she might be having, that ~might~ help...."
Jayde stared at Anni for a moment, though she was, admittedly, grateful for the brandy. "I do not wish to intoxicate her to numb the pain, simply calm her with it's warm." She had heard brandy settled stomachs, and nerves.. but was that the same for vampires? "Though I do thank you graciously for your suggestion." Lifting one of the brandies, it was held nearer to Tenebrae's mouth, gently cradling her head. Though if she made any movements that suggested she didn't want it, or wanted Jayde to release her, she would.. and gently, even. Otherwise, the druid was attempting to coax the necromancer to take at least a small sip.
Leoxander 's smile stretched at the edges as he looked toward Anni, but the sound of sobbing tore his attention away and made it fade; he followed his dog's stare toward the woman on the floor, weeping. He had only, mostly.. good, wholesome thoughts for a companion he remembered well. Concern touched his expression in a knit of his brow, and uncharacteristically, Leo's hand swept through his hair, removing strands from his gaze so he could better see, spikes resting back in the usual unkempt style, his tanned features for once... revealed. "...Is she gonna be alright?" His deep voice was more mellow than usual, though he genuinely seemed to care.
Jayde 's eyes lifted slowly to Leoxander, and with his question, a smile tipped up the corners of her lips.. faintly.. Relief a flood of emotion across her features. Though it faded when her gaze dropped back to Tenebrae. "She will be fine." But she didn't know for a fact; she simply said it in an attempt to soothe those concerned.
Anni watches Leo's attention turn to Tene, finally knowing in her head that these people would live, and she was confidant she would meet them all again. Playfully, she reaches out and ruffles both Jack and Leo's hair, before rising from the dirty floor, taking a second to dust herself off, and then heading out the door.
Tenebrae 's regular double shot on ice would probably go down a treat. Still shivering, and now shame-faced, her sense's slow return heralded by the sudden perception of the scent of blood -- and the rather mucky odour of the various liquids spilled over time upon the stained floor of the tavern. As good as smelling-salts, that sour and abrupt waft had her wrinkling her nose, coughing. And as she dragged herself to sit upright, one palm pressed to those not-too-often-mopped boards for support, the sin-eater was chronically aware of the other people present, and the fact they'd witnessed an act she herself considered beyond the realms of foul. Immediate escape from scrutiny was attempted, and abandoned, her body rebelling against any sudden movement with a lurch of stomach that boded yet more evil for the tavern's jaded timber. Blood-soaked eyes blinked sanguine away, her vision clearing; the first thing she saw was a man and his dog, the second a face filled with kindness. She sipped the brandy, coughing down that first mouthful, the rest guzzled gratefully. Alongside blood, liquor was her sustenance and comfort, never more needed than now.
Renin looks from Tenebrae, to Leoxander, and back again. A frown of concern passes over his features and he stands there, motionless, wondering if he could help in some way.
Leoxander finally began to push himself upright, no swagger or sway lingering long before he regained some balance, and looked down at the front of the leather armor he dusted off. The dragon claw marks in the front of it seemed news to him, and his fingers plucked at the ruined material a bit in confusion before he reached over to ruffle Jack's head in reassurance. Strands fell over his eyes again when he glanced down, but his bed tousled hair didn't do much to hide the casual smile that could even be considered handsome for a change, especially on clean shaven features.
Jayde sat back when Tenebrae attempted to rise, rocking back onto her heels, willingly handing over the brandy so the female could drink deeply of it. When it was finished, another was retrieved, in case she was still thirsting for more of the liquor. "How are you feeling, now?" Her voice held genuine concern.. concern that was reflected upon her youthful features.
Tenebrae winced against the sting of the liquor on her not-quite-healed and swollen tongue. Another long draught taken, eyes flitting over the room and its patrons nervously as she did so, and she offered Jayde a faint nod by way of reply. The rich distillation seemed to restore her somewhat, at least outwardly; and with a final look to the healer that spoke of gratitude, another to Leo that spoke of uncertainty, and a sweep of the rest that only added icing to her shame, she stumbled to her feet and, clutching rough furnishings periodically to assist her escape, made exactly that. There was a sanctuary in her mind and it, and its real-world counterpart, was what she most needed now.
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