Post by Joliette Thorne on Jul 22, 2007 2:54:16 GMT -5
There wasn't a ripple in the ebon sheen of the waters below. The vampiress, on her knees at the Pool's edge with her palms planted to the stone floor and her fixated on that inky depth, spoke softly - apparently to the liquid itself. "Do you hear me? I know you do. Give them back, damn you. Give me my Darknesses.." The Pool, of course, offered her nothing by way of reply, other than the flickering reflection of the torches lining the walls, her own too-pale face, and the gilded wine-goblet set to rest on its own bluestone rim. A snarl burred her tone, as she added, "You owe me, and you know that, too. Haven't I..." The rest would remain unheard, her tone dropping to an indistinguishable mutter. Rocking back on her heels to straighten her spine, Tene covered her face with her hands, shaking her head. "You know how bad it is. You know how the emptiness eats at me. But I suppose that's the whole point." She made a soft sound, possibly a sob muffled against her palms. Lowering them to her lap, the former necromancer leant forward again. "You leave me no choice. Of course, that'd be part of the plan too. Very clever." Tenebrae reached for the goblet's slender stem, the vessel trembling as her fingers shook. "There wasn't one, not one I could find strong enough. Only the chronomancer.. " More words, lowered to an indistinct pitch, before her voice rose again. "So I guess you win this round." The goblet would be dipped toward the obsidian water, with a motion as excruciatingly slow as the tread of a condemned man shuffling along his last mile; filled, then raised. "Cheers, I suppose..." Sooty lashes closed, trembling on the crest of her pale cheeks as the vessel was drawn toward her lips.
Caedan paused outside the ominous building, and immediately blanched, all color draining from already pale cheeks. A whispered, "No I don't want to go ..." was issued as she hesitated, and she refused to enter the structure for a prolonged time, until the urgency of the situation, those terrible visions of reality interspersed with illusion, flickered into consciousness. The image was weeded out, and taken for what it was; the vampiress Tenebrae, kneeling next to a pool of the deepest obsidian. This vision had plagued the deranged creature for some time, and it was this image that had led her to demand Leoxander accompany her to this place, this ominous, horrid place. She hated it instantly. She crossed the foreboding threshold, and steadily moved into the interior of the building, booted feet echoing upon the cool stone. And there she was, at the pool's edge, poisoned chalice at the ready. Caedan advanced, step increasing in pace, until she was close enough to swat at the goblet, and hopefully knock the contents back into the sentient liquid. She made no apology to the vampiress, and instead simply looked towards the pool, as if awaiting the consequence of her action. She shivered, and tried to mask it by folding her arms across her chest. "Swallowing people ... right in ... spitting them out ... taking love away ... sucking it right out ..." She grumbled towards the thing.
Demont had followed Caedan from the Corpse to this...Place, what it was he did not know, nor care, only that his fiancé was here and apparently distressed. Tenebrae was here as well, and a knit brow would serve to signify his confusion as to what events had transpired just moments before his arrival. The wraith did not enter fully into the dark dwelling, but rather slid among the shadows blanketing the outside of the entrance, white wings tucked to his back to give him as much camouflage as possible. Here, he would watch, the urge to step forward and demand to know what was happening nearly overpowering. Yes, he would watch until he felt the need to step forward.
Tenebrae's eyes had snapped open again, at the sound of approaching feet, her head whipping toward the source of the sound, only to find a rapidly-approaching Caedan. The goblet tilted; a few drops of midnight ichor spilled from within, splashing to the floor, before the girl swiped at the vessel hard. "No..." Tene could only stare at her empty hand a moment, before looking to the undulating ripples where the goblet had sunk, out of sight. Snap. Her eyes went back to the Dreamer, haunted and chill as the touch of a day-old winter's corpse. She was about to snarl again, demand to know what in hell the female thought she was doing. But then the words spilled over Caedan's lips, truths about the Pool that she couldn't possibly... "You saw it." The words were spoken in a hushed whisper, ire fading like the taste of some bitter fruit in her throat. "You saw me." Another hurried glance back to the Pool. "It wants..." What, she couldn't bring herself to say, and only hung her head, liquorice-hued hair trailing on the tops of pale thighs. "There's no other way."
Caedan sighed, and indecisively lowered herself into a balanced crouch at the woman's side, still well-prepared for flight or fight, though she'd likely resort to the latter far before the former. The still water was regarded suspiciously; it was far too quiet for her liking, far more quiet than it had been in her dreams, nightmares, perhaps. A slate-blue stare returned to the stooped vampiress, and the teen would lift a hand and allow it to hover near the woman's forehead, before seeking to poke her -- once, and rather harshly. "It's in here. The water is. What it wants. Wants to spin you about. Make you what you are not. Make you not feel. But you do. You feel for him. You feel for your ... the ones that you call your own." She paused, and searched for words that would find a more ready comprehension. They wouldn't come, so she moved on to the next topic, with little segue; those having spent any time with her would be used to it, by now. "Sees things. It does. I do. You aren't angry?" It was odd, her needing to be reassured. The selfish creature rarely cared for any other's opinion, and relied not upon any need for a reputable reputation.
Demont had watched this simple exchange between woman and girl for a moment, their words to him mute. A step would be taken to garner a better view of the going-ons, and in doing so this stealthy, battle-weathered creature would make a mistake. A loose stone still underfoot in that simple movement, the vibrations felt up though his leg; a barely audible 'damn it' would be sounded from his lips in the process of spinning and flattening himself to the outside of the place. Damn himself for this clumsiness. He would breath and wonder what in the world was going on in there, what that pool was, and what had apparently seemed to halt Tenebrae’s words, a sight he had not seen till now.
Peridot eyes, cold as arctic tundra, though their chill did not belong to the unbalanced girl before her, bore into Caedan's own steely-hued gaze. "I'm not angry." She'd look down at hands that were held palm-up before her. "Glad, in a way. And yes, you're right, it does see things. For a price." It wouldn't occur to her now, but later perhaps, in a quiet moment, she'd think about the significance of what had been said regarding 'him'.. she supposed that could only be Leo .. and the Pool. But in the immediate moment, the vampiress could only feel the void that ate at the pit her stomach.. no, the pits of her very being. It felt as though something was inside her, nibbling at the edges of what passed for her soul; fraying it, depleting it in increments every moment she was without the pall of living Darkness that had had been her companion since before she could remember. Tene stilled, even further; tensed, as something else entirely came to mind " Terra... Terra told me about the Nightmares, Caedan. About the bones, and the fire. And how others get drawn in, like they do the Pool." All this was spoken in a gentle flurry of words, pitched to the exact tone that would provide a sense of calm in the listener. Her predator skills were honed sharp, after three centuries of hard practise. With a bit of luck, the girl would be lulled, just long enough to.. Tene's hands flew to either side of the deranged teenager's head and, did she not pull back hard or otherwise avoid or dislodge the grip, Caedan would find the vampiress' rose-hued mouth abruptly before her own. To any observers, it'd look very like Tenebrae was attempting to kiss the girl. And, were that vice-like grip to continue to hold, the elder woman would mutter a few hasty and strangled-sounding phrases, open her lips to an 'o' and... inhale. The first thin tendrils of the Darkness within Caedan, ribboning like smoke, might rise from her lips, toward Tene's own. Not even the sound of that foot-loosed stone would tear her from her desperate 'meal'.
Caedan cocked her head, the slightest scuffle somewhere along the perimeter of the building capturing her interest for the briefest of moments. A smile soon followed, and she touched a feather left wayward in tangled hair, one that was at one time stuck behind her ear. Tenebrae's voice dragged her back to the present, her head still comically tilted at an angle, as if in constant question. Features fell, however, when the conversation turned towards the nightmares, and the horrific development of her sudden ability to drag people into them. The deliberate lull of her words took effect immediately, and she expelled a tired sigh, while mumbling a sleepy, "I'm sorr--" Whatever apology she had began to make was abruptly cut off. Strong, unyielding hands found either side of her head, and she was too stunned to react in any sort of retaliatory fashion. The twin daggers that lie encased in the suede of her boots would not be reached for, though they were enticingly close. Her own lips pursed, as soon as those of the vampiress' neared. The psychic resisted, attempting to shrink back as soon as she caught sight of that inky blackness seeping from slightly parted lips into Tenebrae's dark kiss. Though eventually, she stilled, and allowed sooty lashes to fall shut. A weight that pressed in the back of a shattered mind was being lifted, and she did nothing to fight against it. As the first of a life-long accruement of sins began to exit her body and feed the vampire's own, something undefinable began to take it's place. A warmth, perhaps, accompanied by a rather weighty sense of physical discomfort. It was an odd feeling, regardless, one she didn't fight. For the time being.
Like one walking on the unsteady ice over a frozen pond, coming to realize it was a mistake at the first whip-crack of breaking ground underfoot, when that pit of ice fills your stomach before you fall into water that feels to be more like pins than a life sustaining force, is how Demont felt when, from the corner of his silvery eye, he saw Tenebrae take hold on Caedan in a brutal fashion. That ball of ice within him grew into a glacier, with a foreboding sense that something was wrong, spurring the spying creature to vacate that hiding place to leap into the cavernous space towards the pair. As it had the previous night, time stilled, each fall of his booted feet ringing out in defiance as he tried to push faster towards them, an arm outstretched, reaching but never grasping as one tries to reach for the blazing stars above, knowing they are there and if only you could stretch a little further, you’d hold the heavens in your hand. Eyes wide upon a pale face caught in distress, knowing he would not reach his beloved in time, he knew not what was happing but wanted to halt it. However, those two stray droplets of the obsidian pool nearby would instead halt him as they took on a life of their own, squirming and slithering with an unimaginable speed towards the feathered being. They would leap, with a hellish intent to latch to him and such was granted as the Avian made to veer away, in result catching the edge of a stone to send him tumbling roughly, each liquid ‘leech’ finding a spot on his bare chest to settle in. What did he fear, he wondered in the midst of lifting himself from the floor, they were nothing but liquid…A strange one, but they only lay there on him, until then his breath seizes, his thoughts and the world around him tumble and spiral into a whirlpool. There he sees a girl, the girl he had just been seeking, and chases after to save her from whatever fate the woman he had somewhat come to trust was leading her to; that girl appearing in a field of tall grasses, spinning about carefree in attire that suited her beautiful-in-a-plain-way form, singing to the flowers that seemed to bend towards her, captivated like an audience wanting more. He saw her, free of all that had troubled her, no longer raving of visions that plagued her while awake, or while asleep. This girl, Caedan, he could reach, or so he thought. The world came crashing back down and, thrown to the hard floor, he reeled backwards to arch in quiet agony as something left him. Something cold that had always been within him, since a child, the wrath and anger that caused him the scars littering his body, the reputation as a creature not to cross…It had vanished, these slimy creatures seeming to have granted that much to him, or perhaps it was a loss.. What was he now? He didn’t know, or care, savoring the sight of a girl free from the ravaging torment she had been placed under. This was his most wanted desire in all of the planes of existence. So there he lay, yards from her as she was drawn to that ‘kiss’, unable, or unwilling to break free and all he could do was watch, with a smile that reached to those eyes of silver.
Tenebrae’s lips widened, to allow the spill of shadowy tendrils that poured from Caedan's lips in increasing volume once the girl seemed to concede the battle; the vampiress, too, closed her eyes, heedless of the sound of Demont's feather-rustled fall, as the visions came... Each and every sinful act that had, over the other's few short years alive, accrued to stain her soul and that was now being drawn into Tene, carried with it memories and to her it would seem as though she was, herself, experiencing every single one. Blood.. so much blood, runnelling, in washes and gouts from mutilated flesh. She felt knives in fingers' grip, heard screams and dying pleas for mercy. Tene knew the madness of that young soul, and somewhere inside her own mind threw her head back and laughed. On and on, the black pall came, and it felt as though she were weighted with lead, hardly able to keep her grasp on who she was, let alone the teenager's face. A child's piteous and fading scream.. she'd peer over a cliff, and suck down all the horrendous guilt, the deep-driven shame of that act in a swallow that could be likened to a gutful of chill and lumpish gruel. On it went, swallow after hideous swallow, murder after murder.. And as Caedan's burden lifted, so it was transferred to Tenebrae, who, her jaw still wide and taking in the Darkness, was wracked with great and ragged sobs that shook her slender shoulders and sent sanguine-tainted tears running to stain the porcelain white of her cheeks. She might have wondered how one so young could accumulate such dire sins, but her mind was still reeling with Death... the sin-eater’s 'kiss' was not meant for the living; an incarnate soul was not meant to be purged of what made it mortal in its heart, what kept it from plunging back to the white fields of pure Creation it sprang from. So, if it happened that nothing were to stop Tenebrae taking more of Caedan's sins, the girl would quite rapidly become a very pretty, very innocent, and ecstatically happy vegetable.
.
Caedan paused outside the ominous building, and immediately blanched, all color draining from already pale cheeks. A whispered, "No I don't want to go ..." was issued as she hesitated, and she refused to enter the structure for a prolonged time, until the urgency of the situation, those terrible visions of reality interspersed with illusion, flickered into consciousness. The image was weeded out, and taken for what it was; the vampiress Tenebrae, kneeling next to a pool of the deepest obsidian. This vision had plagued the deranged creature for some time, and it was this image that had led her to demand Leoxander accompany her to this place, this ominous, horrid place. She hated it instantly. She crossed the foreboding threshold, and steadily moved into the interior of the building, booted feet echoing upon the cool stone. And there she was, at the pool's edge, poisoned chalice at the ready. Caedan advanced, step increasing in pace, until she was close enough to swat at the goblet, and hopefully knock the contents back into the sentient liquid. She made no apology to the vampiress, and instead simply looked towards the pool, as if awaiting the consequence of her action. She shivered, and tried to mask it by folding her arms across her chest. "Swallowing people ... right in ... spitting them out ... taking love away ... sucking it right out ..." She grumbled towards the thing.
Demont had followed Caedan from the Corpse to this...Place, what it was he did not know, nor care, only that his fiancé was here and apparently distressed. Tenebrae was here as well, and a knit brow would serve to signify his confusion as to what events had transpired just moments before his arrival. The wraith did not enter fully into the dark dwelling, but rather slid among the shadows blanketing the outside of the entrance, white wings tucked to his back to give him as much camouflage as possible. Here, he would watch, the urge to step forward and demand to know what was happening nearly overpowering. Yes, he would watch until he felt the need to step forward.
Tenebrae's eyes had snapped open again, at the sound of approaching feet, her head whipping toward the source of the sound, only to find a rapidly-approaching Caedan. The goblet tilted; a few drops of midnight ichor spilled from within, splashing to the floor, before the girl swiped at the vessel hard. "No..." Tene could only stare at her empty hand a moment, before looking to the undulating ripples where the goblet had sunk, out of sight. Snap. Her eyes went back to the Dreamer, haunted and chill as the touch of a day-old winter's corpse. She was about to snarl again, demand to know what in hell the female thought she was doing. But then the words spilled over Caedan's lips, truths about the Pool that she couldn't possibly... "You saw it." The words were spoken in a hushed whisper, ire fading like the taste of some bitter fruit in her throat. "You saw me." Another hurried glance back to the Pool. "It wants..." What, she couldn't bring herself to say, and only hung her head, liquorice-hued hair trailing on the tops of pale thighs. "There's no other way."
Caedan sighed, and indecisively lowered herself into a balanced crouch at the woman's side, still well-prepared for flight or fight, though she'd likely resort to the latter far before the former. The still water was regarded suspiciously; it was far too quiet for her liking, far more quiet than it had been in her dreams, nightmares, perhaps. A slate-blue stare returned to the stooped vampiress, and the teen would lift a hand and allow it to hover near the woman's forehead, before seeking to poke her -- once, and rather harshly. "It's in here. The water is. What it wants. Wants to spin you about. Make you what you are not. Make you not feel. But you do. You feel for him. You feel for your ... the ones that you call your own." She paused, and searched for words that would find a more ready comprehension. They wouldn't come, so she moved on to the next topic, with little segue; those having spent any time with her would be used to it, by now. "Sees things. It does. I do. You aren't angry?" It was odd, her needing to be reassured. The selfish creature rarely cared for any other's opinion, and relied not upon any need for a reputable reputation.
Demont had watched this simple exchange between woman and girl for a moment, their words to him mute. A step would be taken to garner a better view of the going-ons, and in doing so this stealthy, battle-weathered creature would make a mistake. A loose stone still underfoot in that simple movement, the vibrations felt up though his leg; a barely audible 'damn it' would be sounded from his lips in the process of spinning and flattening himself to the outside of the place. Damn himself for this clumsiness. He would breath and wonder what in the world was going on in there, what that pool was, and what had apparently seemed to halt Tenebrae’s words, a sight he had not seen till now.
Peridot eyes, cold as arctic tundra, though their chill did not belong to the unbalanced girl before her, bore into Caedan's own steely-hued gaze. "I'm not angry." She'd look down at hands that were held palm-up before her. "Glad, in a way. And yes, you're right, it does see things. For a price." It wouldn't occur to her now, but later perhaps, in a quiet moment, she'd think about the significance of what had been said regarding 'him'.. she supposed that could only be Leo .. and the Pool. But in the immediate moment, the vampiress could only feel the void that ate at the pit her stomach.. no, the pits of her very being. It felt as though something was inside her, nibbling at the edges of what passed for her soul; fraying it, depleting it in increments every moment she was without the pall of living Darkness that had had been her companion since before she could remember. Tene stilled, even further; tensed, as something else entirely came to mind " Terra... Terra told me about the Nightmares, Caedan. About the bones, and the fire. And how others get drawn in, like they do the Pool." All this was spoken in a gentle flurry of words, pitched to the exact tone that would provide a sense of calm in the listener. Her predator skills were honed sharp, after three centuries of hard practise. With a bit of luck, the girl would be lulled, just long enough to.. Tene's hands flew to either side of the deranged teenager's head and, did she not pull back hard or otherwise avoid or dislodge the grip, Caedan would find the vampiress' rose-hued mouth abruptly before her own. To any observers, it'd look very like Tenebrae was attempting to kiss the girl. And, were that vice-like grip to continue to hold, the elder woman would mutter a few hasty and strangled-sounding phrases, open her lips to an 'o' and... inhale. The first thin tendrils of the Darkness within Caedan, ribboning like smoke, might rise from her lips, toward Tene's own. Not even the sound of that foot-loosed stone would tear her from her desperate 'meal'.
Caedan cocked her head, the slightest scuffle somewhere along the perimeter of the building capturing her interest for the briefest of moments. A smile soon followed, and she touched a feather left wayward in tangled hair, one that was at one time stuck behind her ear. Tenebrae's voice dragged her back to the present, her head still comically tilted at an angle, as if in constant question. Features fell, however, when the conversation turned towards the nightmares, and the horrific development of her sudden ability to drag people into them. The deliberate lull of her words took effect immediately, and she expelled a tired sigh, while mumbling a sleepy, "I'm sorr--" Whatever apology she had began to make was abruptly cut off. Strong, unyielding hands found either side of her head, and she was too stunned to react in any sort of retaliatory fashion. The twin daggers that lie encased in the suede of her boots would not be reached for, though they were enticingly close. Her own lips pursed, as soon as those of the vampiress' neared. The psychic resisted, attempting to shrink back as soon as she caught sight of that inky blackness seeping from slightly parted lips into Tenebrae's dark kiss. Though eventually, she stilled, and allowed sooty lashes to fall shut. A weight that pressed in the back of a shattered mind was being lifted, and she did nothing to fight against it. As the first of a life-long accruement of sins began to exit her body and feed the vampire's own, something undefinable began to take it's place. A warmth, perhaps, accompanied by a rather weighty sense of physical discomfort. It was an odd feeling, regardless, one she didn't fight. For the time being.
Like one walking on the unsteady ice over a frozen pond, coming to realize it was a mistake at the first whip-crack of breaking ground underfoot, when that pit of ice fills your stomach before you fall into water that feels to be more like pins than a life sustaining force, is how Demont felt when, from the corner of his silvery eye, he saw Tenebrae take hold on Caedan in a brutal fashion. That ball of ice within him grew into a glacier, with a foreboding sense that something was wrong, spurring the spying creature to vacate that hiding place to leap into the cavernous space towards the pair. As it had the previous night, time stilled, each fall of his booted feet ringing out in defiance as he tried to push faster towards them, an arm outstretched, reaching but never grasping as one tries to reach for the blazing stars above, knowing they are there and if only you could stretch a little further, you’d hold the heavens in your hand. Eyes wide upon a pale face caught in distress, knowing he would not reach his beloved in time, he knew not what was happing but wanted to halt it. However, those two stray droplets of the obsidian pool nearby would instead halt him as they took on a life of their own, squirming and slithering with an unimaginable speed towards the feathered being. They would leap, with a hellish intent to latch to him and such was granted as the Avian made to veer away, in result catching the edge of a stone to send him tumbling roughly, each liquid ‘leech’ finding a spot on his bare chest to settle in. What did he fear, he wondered in the midst of lifting himself from the floor, they were nothing but liquid…A strange one, but they only lay there on him, until then his breath seizes, his thoughts and the world around him tumble and spiral into a whirlpool. There he sees a girl, the girl he had just been seeking, and chases after to save her from whatever fate the woman he had somewhat come to trust was leading her to; that girl appearing in a field of tall grasses, spinning about carefree in attire that suited her beautiful-in-a-plain-way form, singing to the flowers that seemed to bend towards her, captivated like an audience wanting more. He saw her, free of all that had troubled her, no longer raving of visions that plagued her while awake, or while asleep. This girl, Caedan, he could reach, or so he thought. The world came crashing back down and, thrown to the hard floor, he reeled backwards to arch in quiet agony as something left him. Something cold that had always been within him, since a child, the wrath and anger that caused him the scars littering his body, the reputation as a creature not to cross…It had vanished, these slimy creatures seeming to have granted that much to him, or perhaps it was a loss.. What was he now? He didn’t know, or care, savoring the sight of a girl free from the ravaging torment she had been placed under. This was his most wanted desire in all of the planes of existence. So there he lay, yards from her as she was drawn to that ‘kiss’, unable, or unwilling to break free and all he could do was watch, with a smile that reached to those eyes of silver.
Tenebrae’s lips widened, to allow the spill of shadowy tendrils that poured from Caedan's lips in increasing volume once the girl seemed to concede the battle; the vampiress, too, closed her eyes, heedless of the sound of Demont's feather-rustled fall, as the visions came... Each and every sinful act that had, over the other's few short years alive, accrued to stain her soul and that was now being drawn into Tene, carried with it memories and to her it would seem as though she was, herself, experiencing every single one. Blood.. so much blood, runnelling, in washes and gouts from mutilated flesh. She felt knives in fingers' grip, heard screams and dying pleas for mercy. Tene knew the madness of that young soul, and somewhere inside her own mind threw her head back and laughed. On and on, the black pall came, and it felt as though she were weighted with lead, hardly able to keep her grasp on who she was, let alone the teenager's face. A child's piteous and fading scream.. she'd peer over a cliff, and suck down all the horrendous guilt, the deep-driven shame of that act in a swallow that could be likened to a gutful of chill and lumpish gruel. On it went, swallow after hideous swallow, murder after murder.. And as Caedan's burden lifted, so it was transferred to Tenebrae, who, her jaw still wide and taking in the Darkness, was wracked with great and ragged sobs that shook her slender shoulders and sent sanguine-tainted tears running to stain the porcelain white of her cheeks. She might have wondered how one so young could accumulate such dire sins, but her mind was still reeling with Death... the sin-eater’s 'kiss' was not meant for the living; an incarnate soul was not meant to be purged of what made it mortal in its heart, what kept it from plunging back to the white fields of pure Creation it sprang from. So, if it happened that nothing were to stop Tenebrae taking more of Caedan's sins, the girl would quite rapidly become a very pretty, very innocent, and ecstatically happy vegetable.
.