Post by sidonia on Apr 2, 2010 20:11:43 GMT -5
[[NOTE: This is an old, old, old rp. Obviously. Truly, it's the real beginning of Sid's story. So here it is, from long ago: Sid's turning by the King of the Roads.
PS: There were other people about and a multitude of other things happening in the tavern at the time. I just cut most of it out for the sake of my sanity. Sorries.]][/b]
The Hanging Corpse, Vailkrin.
Sidonia walks into the tavern quietly, her pale eyes peering around the room. Nodding at the patrons, she notes that she is the only staff member here and so tends to her duty, making her way behind the bar with a quick, graceful step.
Pania sighs rather loudly and stretches slightly, before looking to Sidonia. "Cinnamon Schnapps?" she calls, raising a brow slightly.
Cerebus appears from the north.
Pania chuckles at the appearance of Cerebus, running a gloved hand through her hair slowly.
Sidonia nods at the dragon, reaching behind the bar and filling a clean glass with the drink. Making her way around tables and chairs, she soon sets the drink in front of Pania with a smile.
Pania gave 1 gold to Sidonia.
Sidonia bobs a quick curtsy to Pania in thanks before turning to Xunaufein. Quietly approaching the man, she allows a friendly smile. "Is there anything I could get you, sir?"
Pania nods in thanks to Sidonia, smiling slightly. She then makes a gesture to Cerebus, accompanied by her whisper, toward a chair nearby her.
Xunaufein settles into a seat wearing the shadows as though they were a cloak of his own before noting the mistress whom had presented herself before him. The elf's tender lips part gracing Sidonia with a melodic stream of words that spill forth from his orifice, "Nay, I'm here but only briefly."
Cerebus quietly takes a seat next to Pania, his eyes shift from side to side as he looks around the tavern. Memories of this place fill his mind as his gaze finally places itself upon Pania he smiles a bit, "It has been to long since I've been here." He chuckles softly, "I almost got lost trying to find my way here."
Sidonia accepts his refusal with a nod and another smile before turning away and walking back to Pania, this time addressing her companion Cerebus. "And you, sir? Is there anything I could get you?"
Cerebus gives the female a shake of his head as if to say no as well.
Pania chuckles slightly at Cerebus' words as she sips her drink. She nods slowly. "As did I, recently, when I began to grace these walls again. Many, many memories of this place, before it changed so drastically, still swim in my mind as I sit here, even now." she sighs slightly and reaches out to pat Cerebus on his massive shoulder. "How have you been?"
Cerebus chuckles, "Eh, lately I've been traveling. I only venture here every once in a while and I stop to see how much it has changed...It seems like just the other day I was speaking to Lionel and now I don't even know anymore.."
Sidonia smiles and backs away from the giant. Going around to each table, she asks each patron if they need anything.
Xunaufein 's deep cerulean eyes fixate upon the form of Cerebus as though anticipating something from the man as Sidonia approaches offering to him assistance with similar words to those offered towards himself.
Sidonia glances over the tavern again. Since no one seems to need anything, at the time, she eyes the piano for a moment-- it's been so long since she's played, and she's missed it. Finally she walks over, though not before casting a wary eye on Darian, asleep in the rafters. Sitting, the ebony velvet falling onto the piano bench and floor, she runs a slender finger over the mahogany wood. At last putting her hands to the ivory keys, the white color matching that of her skin, the pianist begins to play. All at once the song that emits from the instrument changes the sense of the room. Perhaps roses adorn the tables, or a candelabra graces the ceiling. The very nature of the song, the sensuality that it emanates, paints a picture for all, and the notes dance upon the air like lovers embraced.
Pania nods to Cerebus sadly. "Sebias and I sat in here once. Once we talked here when nothing was wrong and the world outside seemed right." she chuckles darkly, then hears the song and turns to look at Sidonia for a moment. She smiles in a somewhat different way than she had in a very long time. She looks back to Cerebus and sighs. "It's been a very long time since the world was right, my friend. I'm sure you've noticed it as much as I have, if not more."
Cerebus chuckles, "Sebias...Now that is a name I haven't heard in a very long time...Now he was a fighter."
Xunaufein leans back in his chair relaxing to the enchanting tune played by Sidonia. The graceful tune assaulting his audible senses rather comforting in a sense as heavy lids close around saphiric orbs permitting rest to overtake the exhaustion from a rather large journey.
Sidonia closes her eyes as the melody goes on, easing into the familiar notes and rhythm. It’s almost effortless, to play this tune, and her fingers instinctively recall a sharp here, a pause there. When she opens them she can see Xunaufein’s serene expression and Pania’s grin, and both bring a small smile to her own delicate features. For indeed the girl loves to play-- with all her heart-- but almost more than that she loves to be listened to, especially if it brings her audience pleasure or peace. Soon the song is over, however, and she ends it on a chord. Letting the notes fade, she basks a little in their echo before selecting another piece and starting again, this new air uplifting. But it still bends and sighs, continuing the tranquility of the first piece. Her right hand trills delicately up the scale while her left holds a lone note, and the combination of the two produces a pretty sound that lingers for a moment in the stillness. Though it seems to last an eternity, in actuality the only time that passes is that it takes to blink an eye, before Sidonia flows into the melody again. A hum runs through her, though it wouldn’t be heard over the sound of the keys, and she smiles with the thrill of the song
Darian had fluttered lightly at the first keypress to fly wayward to his lofty ear, lashes intermingling over the slatish vision of his eyes, like interlacing fingers and hairs that tangle together after a Night spent in a lilac bower with the moon wailing her elegy for freedom from a cell of lilypads and algae in the pond's mirroring recesses, two lovers imbibing her song shoreside like an anthem for touch and kiss and hold and memorize the look in your partner's eyes. Blinking slightly, Darian tilted left, cleaving the air with his wisping lapels and razoring swathe of darkling tresses, catching his arm on the pick-axe lodged in the wall, his weight slowly pulling it out, his form dropping easily with the oxidized weapon in hand - like a pantheric shade darting evasively through or around the moonbeams when descending the girth of a jungle trunk. Every loose and flowing bit of his features, his long jacket, his drapery of impenetrable Void fashioned one hair at a time his scalp - both swaying with the tocking of his hips as his feet eased padfalls through the dust, eyes on the pianist. When at last he arrived, eyewhites leaking into the pupils of Sidonia, bent on the side of his Baby with his arms limply crossed upon her, pick-axe tapping the beat on the edge, he listened to her play like a howling wolf would the morning tune of the Robin as he slithers to his daylight hovel - the wolf ripples every hair on his frame in a clash of grayed whitecaps to the song, ceasing in the sunlight to eye the bird wailing in its bough with a blinkless set of lids. The pick-axe kept tapping.
Senzal appears from the north.
Demont wakes from a fitful sleep at the bar, head lying upon a once clean towel, now stained with ash and grime from the Avian earlier in the eve when he had used it to clean himself. Head up now, calloused, soulless eyes peer about seeking one in particular and finds she is not there, but those eyes do fall upon Nemisis who is appropriately offered a sneer and spit from the hellish creature.
Cerebus vanished before your eyes, perhaps never to be seen again.
.
Nemisis’ blood shot eyes lock onto Demont's form to see his petty actions. At first he flares his nostrils at the man while allowing some steam to exit at the same time. As his memories on the past day retrieve his anger from deep within, he seizes the emotion and decides to continue enjoying Sidonia's playing. Not putting any more thought into the past, he pictures the event once more before leaving a smirk upon his face and his eyes directed somewhere else.
Demont said, "Figures."
Pania frowns at this elven man who so arrogantly describes to her the demise of her family's legacy. She snarls at him and simply stands, pointing at him. "You were not invited to sit with me, nor are you welcomed. Go back to your corner." she snaps viciously, her artically hued eyes narrowed to slits and what appears to be smoke emitting from her delicate nose.
Nemisis said, "Pfft."
Sidonia looks up in surprise as Darian nears the piano though the song continues, unaffected. Perhaps it is the warning Jolie had once given the girl, or maybe the way the vampire seems to eye her as a predator would, but soon she is filled with unease. However, the girl grants a gracious smile, as well as a nod of her head. Remembering the times when she’s heard Darian take a hand to the ivories himself, she thinks for a moment after ending the song, her mind racing over what she could possibly play that would please him. Finally deciding on a piece, the one she plays best, the pianist starts slowly, almost hesitantly, as if unsure whether or not this is the right path. But the notes grow louder as it goes on, and an ancient lullaby emerges from the instrument. The notes twist and turn in a fragile manner, as if the slightest disturbance would break the exotic line. Her head bowed, the black locks frame the pale face and eyes in the candlelight, and she resists the urge to lift her voice in accompaniment to the piano, for though she enjoys music in all forms of its splendor she knows she is no singer.
Darian had ceased tapping when the new song arose from her fingertips, his wolfish curiosity lending a songbird his ears. It was one of those moments that someone will recall to pass the time when Dead in the grave - rather than ponder how that razor might've find their throat. As Sidonia gave way to the inexorable pulse and sway of her own tonality, her focus sifting from his form, Darian kept his hips in time as he walked to behind her form, his pick-axe extended on one arm, the only locked joint on his lackluster, loose assortment of limbs. The blunt edge gnawed slightly at Sidonia's throat, touching and holding its posture, like the sun might when it rises the Death of a Silhouette and freezes in the sky to savor the moment. Darian listened, his eyes on Sidonia's finger over her shoulder like a mariner on a quay and parting the depths with his mottled, sea-slicked irises. Darian listened, he hummed where he might. He kept his eyes on every knuckle-bend in the song.
Sidonia goes nearly rigid as Darian slips behind her, only her hands moving as he holds the pick-axe at her throat. Wondering if perhaps she should stop the song, pause the lullaby as it swings and breathes through verse and refrain, the pale blue eyes are lifted from the keys to stare straight ahead. But she decides against it and the piece continues without break, though her breathing is becoming ragged in her chest. “Sir…?” she begins, her voice shaking only the slightest bit, like a feather would quiver in the wind. But then she hears him humming, and feels the pulse that goes through him in tune with the song, and falls silent again. Swallowing, she can feel the pale skin at her throat scrape against the rusted pick-axe. She can’t help but wonder why the man would hold it there: is it to merely hold her in place, or to spill her blood like so many rubies in a mine?
Darian slowly lowered his skull to the neck-crook of one Sidonia, listening for every artery that was to pivot and yearn at the pace of her own fingerings, intaking how each of her natural ministries aligned themselves to her song as though the music itself was all that was needed to keep life pulsing for the dark-haired half-elf. He breathed deeply her scent like dead hummingbird raised from its grassy tomb to suck the redolence of carnations, the dewful innards of roses, the pollenic film of dandelions. His hair fell from his shoulder as it dipped, unfurled against Sidonia like the nighttide banner, flecked with starry souls that illumine the undersides of every nighthawk with an upturned gaze's heart. The hair curled onto her arm, against her chest, his eyes like arctic glass muted with snow. He shiftily shivered his wrist where a slight and sanguine crease should be unfolding in her neck - where illusory petals should poor from the grazing as though a rose was in a highdive from a towertop above the lonesome ocean, dissimilating petal by petal, each one wreathed in salt as it lands to waft and billow on the surge of the riptide against the cliff - the crease should poor petals like a brook that trickles down a nimbus-crowned mountainface. There would be petals in her lap, petals interwoven in the length of his darkling tresses, petals capering along the keys as she presses them - a legion of hummingbirds that would come to rest within her hair, sip the blood that should cool lightly in its rivulet down her throat. Darian would then hum in her ear an echo of her own song.
Sidonia remains a statue as Darian places his skin on hers, and her shaking hands continue the lullaby, for she does not want to break the spell of calmness on the vampire. As the ancient tune unfurls around her so does his hair, the locks blending with her own raven curls. She can hear the blood throbbing in her temples, pounding with the music that seemed to play itself now, as if her fingers were no longer needed. The pale eyes close after a moment of such an embrace, as if trying to shut out the fear; the world. Old memories arise, the demons of her past swirling about her. But for now they’re the lesser fear, as she has not forgotten the blade against her skin. Just as she begins to be at peace with the idea of him listening to the music in such a fashion-- though ever muscle and bone in her body is still tense with fright-- the pick-axe against her neck is shifted to cut, if only the slightest wound. At this she gasps, though the song plays on and the familiar words of escapism pound in her head. The vampire’s wine does indeed flow down her front in a creek of crimson, falling into the velvet at her chest or dripping onto the white keys she plays. Ivories, they’re called; played by ivories, perhaps, as her quaking fingers are now also ghostly white. Her eyes closing, an elfin ear senses the humming of Darian and she marvels at the being who at once brings such fear in his actions and beauty in his music. Though even the concept of forming words is quite beyond Sidonia’s capabilities at this point, she hums as well, the song as familiar and comforting as an old blanket or dear friend. She hums for him, to hopefully please, and for herself, to bring even the slightest bit of respite.
Darian growls, and somewhere in the Darkness a ghost is set to shivering the dust from epitaph. The beatific, petalous array swirls into nothingness as his lips brush her earlobes while his voice rends the air like a rockslide burying a sleepy village in an earth-wrought tomb as the sun crests the horizon and Thunder is the mountain's voice. Wolf at the robin's throat, fingertips smearing her own blood against her flesh. "These keys have born your scent to my nostrils for weeks on end. You will never again touch this piano before us -" here pausing to slip an overlong fingernail in the grazing at her throat "-and find that your music coincides with possessing a pulse - not unless the two have been intermingled at My behest." he raked his fangs along throat and growled the ghosts to fleeing and the moon glossing over.
Sidonia abruptly takes her hands off the keys at Darian’s words, though a foot is still on the pedal to let the chord fade into silence. The slender fingers and small palms lie shaking in her lap, the rose-red of the blood that had fallen onto them standing out brilliantly against the marble of her skin. Suppressing a scream as the vampire puts a fingernail in her skin, she then removes her foot from the instrument as well, not wanting to touch any part of it in Darian’s presence. Sidonia shudders as a fang is touched to her skin, and though she has no faith in any higher being she suddenly finds herself praying. Thinking that she should affirm the man of her acquiescence in some way, she whispers, “Of course, sir.” Her voice is shaking, though; quaking and quivering in such a way that it can barely be heard, or understood.
Darian drizzled his opaque swathe of hair across Sidonia like a morning of a dreamy weather as he slipped an arm around her legs, lifting her into his arms like the ocean gales heft a churning, mast-tattered vessel, setting his form on the piano bench in her place while holding her to his chest, easing her into his lap like a moth perching on a flickering candlewick and incapacitated by its beauteous demise. His fangs rent her neck like lightning rends the sea into shards and scatters the heavens in shedding fragments of cacophonous sing-song. He brought one arm up and brushed her cheek like a rainbow sliding through a wisp of cloud, his lips chilling her skin, his lungs pulling air and blood down his throat as his hair shrouded her trembling hands like a flock of blackened butterflies a battle-stained field of corpses and crows. He hummed, still, into her throat, the tune of her own lullaby. An exchange of sustenance for song - Darian ran his tongue along the trickling slit and kissed a scarlet lipprint on her forehead as he took her up, removed the peg from the Baby, and lay her on its closed lid - as though he'd lay an apple-blossom on a black-water pool just to watch it ripple and soak to death. Trailing his fingers along her cheeks, through her hair, he scythed a grin down upon her - his eyes like craters in moondust returning the gaze of a nightwatcher ready to stay beneath the stars until she died or awoke.
Sidonia instinctively struggles as Darian lifts her, but the throes of protest are weak and ultimately without point; they do little that would hinder the vampire. Upon being perched upon his lap, however, she falls nearly limp, the memories that had been dragging at her mind for a long while this night finally consuming it. Though her eyes are open they see nothing-- at least, nothing that’s in front of them in the present. But the hold on her mind is abruptly broken as Darian’s fangs break her skin and slide into flesh. A small yelp is then given and her eyes press tightly closed. The sound of her own blood being stolen from her-- sucked into Darian’s needing mouth-- horrifies her, and she wishes with all her heart that she was deaf but for the melody he hums. She does not struggle; no, the pianist is in no condition for that. But instead Sidonia slips away, the combination of blood loss and secrets and fear being the perfect sleeping draft. The bloody mark kissed to her forehead appears as a rose petal on the pale skin, though it can be supposed that petals do not drip onto eyelids. As Darian lays her down on the piano, the black velvet drapes across it, cascading over the side in a waterfall of material. Her hair cushions around her head, the blood from her neck flowing onto it and staining the skin. The girl remains still with her eyes closed. Her skin, which had always been pale, now seems like that of a corpse, bordering on granite’s hue. So still and frail lying there; a porcelain doll about to be broken.
Darian slid a fang along his wrist like a volcanic slit in the throat of the Earth seen from a lofty distance by a bird on wing. The blood trickled to Sidonia's lips as her hair was stroked. Darian waited for her to lurch at his wrist in bloodless furor like a scaly desert pines for thundersqualls and caked sands that had forgotten what it meant to not feel the sun upon them.
Sidonia still lies on the piano for a moment, as still as death itself, when Darian’s blood first trickles past pink lips. The crimson liquid stains mouth and chin, then pale cheeks. Blue eyes flutter open and the girl raises a hand to clutch the wrist to her, suddenly needing the blood as she would need air or spirit or song. As she sucks, so thirsty and so needing, her mind is cloaked in the desire of it and she knows not what she does.
Darian spent long moments being thus drained, his stare descending upon her eyelids like a murder of crows to body discarded by the sea on an endless shore. When the blue sputters within its own hue, shifts, iridesces and pales - when her fervent Need is at its greatest and Darian's tendons are strained with her the press of her fangs, he clubs her on the forehead with his pickaxe and pulls his wrist from lips that might be unconscious but certainly not so bloodless. Vampires had this nagging tendency of not dying - even newborns. She lay like snow acrued on a horse half submerged in a frozen lake and shivering his pulse from his body.
Sidonia suddenly falls limp as Darian thumps the pick-axe upon her head, a musical ripple of sound reporting from the piano as the back of her skull abruptly descends upon the lid. Lying still once again, the blush of new blood in her cheeks and smeared around her mouth, the eyelids flutter before closing at last, long dark lashes sweeping over the pale skin. New fangs can be glimpsed, white and sharp, through the slightly open mouth, and her hair is fanned out against the table, smoothed from the way Darian had stroked it earlier.
Darian left the form of Sidonia in a flourish of darkness, his hair trailing behind him, flecked with her blood. His hips tocked as his stalked the blood on the other side of the room. His wrist had leaked his vampiric contagion across the room, slurred it onto the bodice of Terra as he gripped her, raised her into his arms - the shadows flickering across her face as though the hearth could sense and project the coming varieties of Darkness that rapped on the doorstep of her Soul. In his winding saunter the cellar latch was attained. Darian shot his arctic glass eyes at Veszmurss before indicating the hole which he'd just made by lifting the door with his aplomb foot, just as he had for Terra days ago. He descended with her in his arms and the wolves circling the tavern at the scent of spilled blood and dying flesh.
Tenebrae descended the stairs wearing about her the look of a woman with much on her mind. Ducking to gain clear view of the tavern's interior before she might be noticed, her lower lip would drop in dismay at the sight of one girl draped on Darian's piano - she'd see him, then, and wonder whether Sidonia was dead - as well as the crumpled form of Terra, supine in the arms of the Wander as he descended the trapdoor below. Things were never quiet, at the Corpse... She sighed, wiped her hands down the untidy apron she wore over her skirts, and hurried her pace downwards.
Tenebrae snapped her face toward Veszmurss. "What's going on here?" Her tone was stony. "And mind your manners with the customers."
Tenebrae had headed directly for the girl lain funereally on the piano, puzzled frown at those surrounding; it -was- a pub in the Dark lands, but surely a dead girl adorning the instrument might garner some attention? At least, she looked dead, such was her pallor. Tene would lay a hand on a cooling forehead, and couldn't help but note the bloodspatter. "Damn, she was a good pianist," was the mutter that escaped her lips.
Veszmurss chuckles at Joliette, a hand placed on the boy's shoulder, "Come on now Jolie, just mages poking some fun with other mages eh?" He grabs the gold, "Thanks boy." He notes Akoraer's stance yet for some reason he walks on, he had in fact told her he may not be ready. His handiwork, was something he was going to see. He walks past Joliette, "Terra somehow got herself near killed. So I threw her at Darian after he sired Sidonia." He nods and heads to the cellar.
Sidonia stirs a bit and sighs as the one she calls Jolie puts a hand to her head. She is not dead, simply knocked out-- physically forced into sleep, if you will. But it's not simply the darkness that keeps the girl's lids closed-- it's also sleep, and she looks nearly peaceful. Excepting the blood that covers her shoulders and chest and paints her lips and forehead, of course.
Tenebrae blinks, stutters something at the drow who was already pacing down the stairs, and peered at Sidonia. "Sired...?" The vampiress smiled. "Oh good, at least you're not dead, sweet." This to Sidonia, though she didn't really expect reply. "A youngling couldn't wish a better sire, to my thinking. His blood is... strong. Tastes of power." She would tuck a stray strand of hair from the woman's face. "You'll be needing a meal, soon."
Tenebrae walked to the fireside, lifting one of the small knitted blankets that were lain across a chair-back for the sake of weary travelers, and brought it to the woman. Less for her comfort, than obscuring some of that blood, but the gesture would appear a caring one. Tucking this around Sidonia, she'd smile again, and turn her tread toward the cellar.
Sidonia's eyelids open a little, the pale blue irises meeting Tenebrae's through the slits. "Jolie...?" she breathes softly. The eyes open wider, though the light only accentuates the pounding in her head, and she gasps as she looks around the tavern she knows. It's the Hanging Corpse, she has no doubt of it, but the perception of the place is different. And so is her perception of herself.
PS: There were other people about and a multitude of other things happening in the tavern at the time. I just cut most of it out for the sake of my sanity. Sorries.]][/b]
The Hanging Corpse, Vailkrin.
Sidonia walks into the tavern quietly, her pale eyes peering around the room. Nodding at the patrons, she notes that she is the only staff member here and so tends to her duty, making her way behind the bar with a quick, graceful step.
Pania sighs rather loudly and stretches slightly, before looking to Sidonia. "Cinnamon Schnapps?" she calls, raising a brow slightly.
Cerebus appears from the north.
Pania chuckles at the appearance of Cerebus, running a gloved hand through her hair slowly.
Sidonia nods at the dragon, reaching behind the bar and filling a clean glass with the drink. Making her way around tables and chairs, she soon sets the drink in front of Pania with a smile.
Pania gave 1 gold to Sidonia.
Sidonia bobs a quick curtsy to Pania in thanks before turning to Xunaufein. Quietly approaching the man, she allows a friendly smile. "Is there anything I could get you, sir?"
Pania nods in thanks to Sidonia, smiling slightly. She then makes a gesture to Cerebus, accompanied by her whisper, toward a chair nearby her.
Xunaufein settles into a seat wearing the shadows as though they were a cloak of his own before noting the mistress whom had presented herself before him. The elf's tender lips part gracing Sidonia with a melodic stream of words that spill forth from his orifice, "Nay, I'm here but only briefly."
Cerebus quietly takes a seat next to Pania, his eyes shift from side to side as he looks around the tavern. Memories of this place fill his mind as his gaze finally places itself upon Pania he smiles a bit, "It has been to long since I've been here." He chuckles softly, "I almost got lost trying to find my way here."
Sidonia accepts his refusal with a nod and another smile before turning away and walking back to Pania, this time addressing her companion Cerebus. "And you, sir? Is there anything I could get you?"
Cerebus gives the female a shake of his head as if to say no as well.
Pania chuckles slightly at Cerebus' words as she sips her drink. She nods slowly. "As did I, recently, when I began to grace these walls again. Many, many memories of this place, before it changed so drastically, still swim in my mind as I sit here, even now." she sighs slightly and reaches out to pat Cerebus on his massive shoulder. "How have you been?"
Cerebus chuckles, "Eh, lately I've been traveling. I only venture here every once in a while and I stop to see how much it has changed...It seems like just the other day I was speaking to Lionel and now I don't even know anymore.."
Sidonia smiles and backs away from the giant. Going around to each table, she asks each patron if they need anything.
Xunaufein 's deep cerulean eyes fixate upon the form of Cerebus as though anticipating something from the man as Sidonia approaches offering to him assistance with similar words to those offered towards himself.
Sidonia glances over the tavern again. Since no one seems to need anything, at the time, she eyes the piano for a moment-- it's been so long since she's played, and she's missed it. Finally she walks over, though not before casting a wary eye on Darian, asleep in the rafters. Sitting, the ebony velvet falling onto the piano bench and floor, she runs a slender finger over the mahogany wood. At last putting her hands to the ivory keys, the white color matching that of her skin, the pianist begins to play. All at once the song that emits from the instrument changes the sense of the room. Perhaps roses adorn the tables, or a candelabra graces the ceiling. The very nature of the song, the sensuality that it emanates, paints a picture for all, and the notes dance upon the air like lovers embraced.
Pania nods to Cerebus sadly. "Sebias and I sat in here once. Once we talked here when nothing was wrong and the world outside seemed right." she chuckles darkly, then hears the song and turns to look at Sidonia for a moment. She smiles in a somewhat different way than she had in a very long time. She looks back to Cerebus and sighs. "It's been a very long time since the world was right, my friend. I'm sure you've noticed it as much as I have, if not more."
Cerebus chuckles, "Sebias...Now that is a name I haven't heard in a very long time...Now he was a fighter."
Xunaufein leans back in his chair relaxing to the enchanting tune played by Sidonia. The graceful tune assaulting his audible senses rather comforting in a sense as heavy lids close around saphiric orbs permitting rest to overtake the exhaustion from a rather large journey.
Sidonia closes her eyes as the melody goes on, easing into the familiar notes and rhythm. It’s almost effortless, to play this tune, and her fingers instinctively recall a sharp here, a pause there. When she opens them she can see Xunaufein’s serene expression and Pania’s grin, and both bring a small smile to her own delicate features. For indeed the girl loves to play-- with all her heart-- but almost more than that she loves to be listened to, especially if it brings her audience pleasure or peace. Soon the song is over, however, and she ends it on a chord. Letting the notes fade, she basks a little in their echo before selecting another piece and starting again, this new air uplifting. But it still bends and sighs, continuing the tranquility of the first piece. Her right hand trills delicately up the scale while her left holds a lone note, and the combination of the two produces a pretty sound that lingers for a moment in the stillness. Though it seems to last an eternity, in actuality the only time that passes is that it takes to blink an eye, before Sidonia flows into the melody again. A hum runs through her, though it wouldn’t be heard over the sound of the keys, and she smiles with the thrill of the song
Darian had fluttered lightly at the first keypress to fly wayward to his lofty ear, lashes intermingling over the slatish vision of his eyes, like interlacing fingers and hairs that tangle together after a Night spent in a lilac bower with the moon wailing her elegy for freedom from a cell of lilypads and algae in the pond's mirroring recesses, two lovers imbibing her song shoreside like an anthem for touch and kiss and hold and memorize the look in your partner's eyes. Blinking slightly, Darian tilted left, cleaving the air with his wisping lapels and razoring swathe of darkling tresses, catching his arm on the pick-axe lodged in the wall, his weight slowly pulling it out, his form dropping easily with the oxidized weapon in hand - like a pantheric shade darting evasively through or around the moonbeams when descending the girth of a jungle trunk. Every loose and flowing bit of his features, his long jacket, his drapery of impenetrable Void fashioned one hair at a time his scalp - both swaying with the tocking of his hips as his feet eased padfalls through the dust, eyes on the pianist. When at last he arrived, eyewhites leaking into the pupils of Sidonia, bent on the side of his Baby with his arms limply crossed upon her, pick-axe tapping the beat on the edge, he listened to her play like a howling wolf would the morning tune of the Robin as he slithers to his daylight hovel - the wolf ripples every hair on his frame in a clash of grayed whitecaps to the song, ceasing in the sunlight to eye the bird wailing in its bough with a blinkless set of lids. The pick-axe kept tapping.
Senzal appears from the north.
Demont wakes from a fitful sleep at the bar, head lying upon a once clean towel, now stained with ash and grime from the Avian earlier in the eve when he had used it to clean himself. Head up now, calloused, soulless eyes peer about seeking one in particular and finds she is not there, but those eyes do fall upon Nemisis who is appropriately offered a sneer and spit from the hellish creature.
Cerebus vanished before your eyes, perhaps never to be seen again.
.
Nemisis’ blood shot eyes lock onto Demont's form to see his petty actions. At first he flares his nostrils at the man while allowing some steam to exit at the same time. As his memories on the past day retrieve his anger from deep within, he seizes the emotion and decides to continue enjoying Sidonia's playing. Not putting any more thought into the past, he pictures the event once more before leaving a smirk upon his face and his eyes directed somewhere else.
Demont said, "Figures."
Pania frowns at this elven man who so arrogantly describes to her the demise of her family's legacy. She snarls at him and simply stands, pointing at him. "You were not invited to sit with me, nor are you welcomed. Go back to your corner." she snaps viciously, her artically hued eyes narrowed to slits and what appears to be smoke emitting from her delicate nose.
Nemisis said, "Pfft."
Sidonia looks up in surprise as Darian nears the piano though the song continues, unaffected. Perhaps it is the warning Jolie had once given the girl, or maybe the way the vampire seems to eye her as a predator would, but soon she is filled with unease. However, the girl grants a gracious smile, as well as a nod of her head. Remembering the times when she’s heard Darian take a hand to the ivories himself, she thinks for a moment after ending the song, her mind racing over what she could possibly play that would please him. Finally deciding on a piece, the one she plays best, the pianist starts slowly, almost hesitantly, as if unsure whether or not this is the right path. But the notes grow louder as it goes on, and an ancient lullaby emerges from the instrument. The notes twist and turn in a fragile manner, as if the slightest disturbance would break the exotic line. Her head bowed, the black locks frame the pale face and eyes in the candlelight, and she resists the urge to lift her voice in accompaniment to the piano, for though she enjoys music in all forms of its splendor she knows she is no singer.
Darian had ceased tapping when the new song arose from her fingertips, his wolfish curiosity lending a songbird his ears. It was one of those moments that someone will recall to pass the time when Dead in the grave - rather than ponder how that razor might've find their throat. As Sidonia gave way to the inexorable pulse and sway of her own tonality, her focus sifting from his form, Darian kept his hips in time as he walked to behind her form, his pick-axe extended on one arm, the only locked joint on his lackluster, loose assortment of limbs. The blunt edge gnawed slightly at Sidonia's throat, touching and holding its posture, like the sun might when it rises the Death of a Silhouette and freezes in the sky to savor the moment. Darian listened, his eyes on Sidonia's finger over her shoulder like a mariner on a quay and parting the depths with his mottled, sea-slicked irises. Darian listened, he hummed where he might. He kept his eyes on every knuckle-bend in the song.
Sidonia goes nearly rigid as Darian slips behind her, only her hands moving as he holds the pick-axe at her throat. Wondering if perhaps she should stop the song, pause the lullaby as it swings and breathes through verse and refrain, the pale blue eyes are lifted from the keys to stare straight ahead. But she decides against it and the piece continues without break, though her breathing is becoming ragged in her chest. “Sir…?” she begins, her voice shaking only the slightest bit, like a feather would quiver in the wind. But then she hears him humming, and feels the pulse that goes through him in tune with the song, and falls silent again. Swallowing, she can feel the pale skin at her throat scrape against the rusted pick-axe. She can’t help but wonder why the man would hold it there: is it to merely hold her in place, or to spill her blood like so many rubies in a mine?
Darian slowly lowered his skull to the neck-crook of one Sidonia, listening for every artery that was to pivot and yearn at the pace of her own fingerings, intaking how each of her natural ministries aligned themselves to her song as though the music itself was all that was needed to keep life pulsing for the dark-haired half-elf. He breathed deeply her scent like dead hummingbird raised from its grassy tomb to suck the redolence of carnations, the dewful innards of roses, the pollenic film of dandelions. His hair fell from his shoulder as it dipped, unfurled against Sidonia like the nighttide banner, flecked with starry souls that illumine the undersides of every nighthawk with an upturned gaze's heart. The hair curled onto her arm, against her chest, his eyes like arctic glass muted with snow. He shiftily shivered his wrist where a slight and sanguine crease should be unfolding in her neck - where illusory petals should poor from the grazing as though a rose was in a highdive from a towertop above the lonesome ocean, dissimilating petal by petal, each one wreathed in salt as it lands to waft and billow on the surge of the riptide against the cliff - the crease should poor petals like a brook that trickles down a nimbus-crowned mountainface. There would be petals in her lap, petals interwoven in the length of his darkling tresses, petals capering along the keys as she presses them - a legion of hummingbirds that would come to rest within her hair, sip the blood that should cool lightly in its rivulet down her throat. Darian would then hum in her ear an echo of her own song.
Sidonia remains a statue as Darian places his skin on hers, and her shaking hands continue the lullaby, for she does not want to break the spell of calmness on the vampire. As the ancient tune unfurls around her so does his hair, the locks blending with her own raven curls. She can hear the blood throbbing in her temples, pounding with the music that seemed to play itself now, as if her fingers were no longer needed. The pale eyes close after a moment of such an embrace, as if trying to shut out the fear; the world. Old memories arise, the demons of her past swirling about her. But for now they’re the lesser fear, as she has not forgotten the blade against her skin. Just as she begins to be at peace with the idea of him listening to the music in such a fashion-- though ever muscle and bone in her body is still tense with fright-- the pick-axe against her neck is shifted to cut, if only the slightest wound. At this she gasps, though the song plays on and the familiar words of escapism pound in her head. The vampire’s wine does indeed flow down her front in a creek of crimson, falling into the velvet at her chest or dripping onto the white keys she plays. Ivories, they’re called; played by ivories, perhaps, as her quaking fingers are now also ghostly white. Her eyes closing, an elfin ear senses the humming of Darian and she marvels at the being who at once brings such fear in his actions and beauty in his music. Though even the concept of forming words is quite beyond Sidonia’s capabilities at this point, she hums as well, the song as familiar and comforting as an old blanket or dear friend. She hums for him, to hopefully please, and for herself, to bring even the slightest bit of respite.
Darian growls, and somewhere in the Darkness a ghost is set to shivering the dust from epitaph. The beatific, petalous array swirls into nothingness as his lips brush her earlobes while his voice rends the air like a rockslide burying a sleepy village in an earth-wrought tomb as the sun crests the horizon and Thunder is the mountain's voice. Wolf at the robin's throat, fingertips smearing her own blood against her flesh. "These keys have born your scent to my nostrils for weeks on end. You will never again touch this piano before us -" here pausing to slip an overlong fingernail in the grazing at her throat "-and find that your music coincides with possessing a pulse - not unless the two have been intermingled at My behest." he raked his fangs along throat and growled the ghosts to fleeing and the moon glossing over.
Sidonia abruptly takes her hands off the keys at Darian’s words, though a foot is still on the pedal to let the chord fade into silence. The slender fingers and small palms lie shaking in her lap, the rose-red of the blood that had fallen onto them standing out brilliantly against the marble of her skin. Suppressing a scream as the vampire puts a fingernail in her skin, she then removes her foot from the instrument as well, not wanting to touch any part of it in Darian’s presence. Sidonia shudders as a fang is touched to her skin, and though she has no faith in any higher being she suddenly finds herself praying. Thinking that she should affirm the man of her acquiescence in some way, she whispers, “Of course, sir.” Her voice is shaking, though; quaking and quivering in such a way that it can barely be heard, or understood.
Darian drizzled his opaque swathe of hair across Sidonia like a morning of a dreamy weather as he slipped an arm around her legs, lifting her into his arms like the ocean gales heft a churning, mast-tattered vessel, setting his form on the piano bench in her place while holding her to his chest, easing her into his lap like a moth perching on a flickering candlewick and incapacitated by its beauteous demise. His fangs rent her neck like lightning rends the sea into shards and scatters the heavens in shedding fragments of cacophonous sing-song. He brought one arm up and brushed her cheek like a rainbow sliding through a wisp of cloud, his lips chilling her skin, his lungs pulling air and blood down his throat as his hair shrouded her trembling hands like a flock of blackened butterflies a battle-stained field of corpses and crows. He hummed, still, into her throat, the tune of her own lullaby. An exchange of sustenance for song - Darian ran his tongue along the trickling slit and kissed a scarlet lipprint on her forehead as he took her up, removed the peg from the Baby, and lay her on its closed lid - as though he'd lay an apple-blossom on a black-water pool just to watch it ripple and soak to death. Trailing his fingers along her cheeks, through her hair, he scythed a grin down upon her - his eyes like craters in moondust returning the gaze of a nightwatcher ready to stay beneath the stars until she died or awoke.
Sidonia instinctively struggles as Darian lifts her, but the throes of protest are weak and ultimately without point; they do little that would hinder the vampire. Upon being perched upon his lap, however, she falls nearly limp, the memories that had been dragging at her mind for a long while this night finally consuming it. Though her eyes are open they see nothing-- at least, nothing that’s in front of them in the present. But the hold on her mind is abruptly broken as Darian’s fangs break her skin and slide into flesh. A small yelp is then given and her eyes press tightly closed. The sound of her own blood being stolen from her-- sucked into Darian’s needing mouth-- horrifies her, and she wishes with all her heart that she was deaf but for the melody he hums. She does not struggle; no, the pianist is in no condition for that. But instead Sidonia slips away, the combination of blood loss and secrets and fear being the perfect sleeping draft. The bloody mark kissed to her forehead appears as a rose petal on the pale skin, though it can be supposed that petals do not drip onto eyelids. As Darian lays her down on the piano, the black velvet drapes across it, cascading over the side in a waterfall of material. Her hair cushions around her head, the blood from her neck flowing onto it and staining the skin. The girl remains still with her eyes closed. Her skin, which had always been pale, now seems like that of a corpse, bordering on granite’s hue. So still and frail lying there; a porcelain doll about to be broken.
Darian slid a fang along his wrist like a volcanic slit in the throat of the Earth seen from a lofty distance by a bird on wing. The blood trickled to Sidonia's lips as her hair was stroked. Darian waited for her to lurch at his wrist in bloodless furor like a scaly desert pines for thundersqualls and caked sands that had forgotten what it meant to not feel the sun upon them.
Sidonia still lies on the piano for a moment, as still as death itself, when Darian’s blood first trickles past pink lips. The crimson liquid stains mouth and chin, then pale cheeks. Blue eyes flutter open and the girl raises a hand to clutch the wrist to her, suddenly needing the blood as she would need air or spirit or song. As she sucks, so thirsty and so needing, her mind is cloaked in the desire of it and she knows not what she does.
Darian spent long moments being thus drained, his stare descending upon her eyelids like a murder of crows to body discarded by the sea on an endless shore. When the blue sputters within its own hue, shifts, iridesces and pales - when her fervent Need is at its greatest and Darian's tendons are strained with her the press of her fangs, he clubs her on the forehead with his pickaxe and pulls his wrist from lips that might be unconscious but certainly not so bloodless. Vampires had this nagging tendency of not dying - even newborns. She lay like snow acrued on a horse half submerged in a frozen lake and shivering his pulse from his body.
Sidonia suddenly falls limp as Darian thumps the pick-axe upon her head, a musical ripple of sound reporting from the piano as the back of her skull abruptly descends upon the lid. Lying still once again, the blush of new blood in her cheeks and smeared around her mouth, the eyelids flutter before closing at last, long dark lashes sweeping over the pale skin. New fangs can be glimpsed, white and sharp, through the slightly open mouth, and her hair is fanned out against the table, smoothed from the way Darian had stroked it earlier.
Darian left the form of Sidonia in a flourish of darkness, his hair trailing behind him, flecked with her blood. His hips tocked as his stalked the blood on the other side of the room. His wrist had leaked his vampiric contagion across the room, slurred it onto the bodice of Terra as he gripped her, raised her into his arms - the shadows flickering across her face as though the hearth could sense and project the coming varieties of Darkness that rapped on the doorstep of her Soul. In his winding saunter the cellar latch was attained. Darian shot his arctic glass eyes at Veszmurss before indicating the hole which he'd just made by lifting the door with his aplomb foot, just as he had for Terra days ago. He descended with her in his arms and the wolves circling the tavern at the scent of spilled blood and dying flesh.
Tenebrae descended the stairs wearing about her the look of a woman with much on her mind. Ducking to gain clear view of the tavern's interior before she might be noticed, her lower lip would drop in dismay at the sight of one girl draped on Darian's piano - she'd see him, then, and wonder whether Sidonia was dead - as well as the crumpled form of Terra, supine in the arms of the Wander as he descended the trapdoor below. Things were never quiet, at the Corpse... She sighed, wiped her hands down the untidy apron she wore over her skirts, and hurried her pace downwards.
Tenebrae snapped her face toward Veszmurss. "What's going on here?" Her tone was stony. "And mind your manners with the customers."
Tenebrae had headed directly for the girl lain funereally on the piano, puzzled frown at those surrounding; it -was- a pub in the Dark lands, but surely a dead girl adorning the instrument might garner some attention? At least, she looked dead, such was her pallor. Tene would lay a hand on a cooling forehead, and couldn't help but note the bloodspatter. "Damn, she was a good pianist," was the mutter that escaped her lips.
Veszmurss chuckles at Joliette, a hand placed on the boy's shoulder, "Come on now Jolie, just mages poking some fun with other mages eh?" He grabs the gold, "Thanks boy." He notes Akoraer's stance yet for some reason he walks on, he had in fact told her he may not be ready. His handiwork, was something he was going to see. He walks past Joliette, "Terra somehow got herself near killed. So I threw her at Darian after he sired Sidonia." He nods and heads to the cellar.
Sidonia stirs a bit and sighs as the one she calls Jolie puts a hand to her head. She is not dead, simply knocked out-- physically forced into sleep, if you will. But it's not simply the darkness that keeps the girl's lids closed-- it's also sleep, and she looks nearly peaceful. Excepting the blood that covers her shoulders and chest and paints her lips and forehead, of course.
Tenebrae blinks, stutters something at the drow who was already pacing down the stairs, and peered at Sidonia. "Sired...?" The vampiress smiled. "Oh good, at least you're not dead, sweet." This to Sidonia, though she didn't really expect reply. "A youngling couldn't wish a better sire, to my thinking. His blood is... strong. Tastes of power." She would tuck a stray strand of hair from the woman's face. "You'll be needing a meal, soon."
Tenebrae walked to the fireside, lifting one of the small knitted blankets that were lain across a chair-back for the sake of weary travelers, and brought it to the woman. Less for her comfort, than obscuring some of that blood, but the gesture would appear a caring one. Tucking this around Sidonia, she'd smile again, and turn her tread toward the cellar.
Sidonia's eyelids open a little, the pale blue irises meeting Tenebrae's through the slits. "Jolie...?" she breathes softly. The eyes open wider, though the light only accentuates the pounding in her head, and she gasps as she looks around the tavern she knows. It's the Hanging Corpse, she has no doubt of it, but the perception of the place is different. And so is her perception of herself.