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Post by libellule on Jul 29, 2011 23:32:12 GMT -6
She never felt the ground when it hit her back. She didn’t hear the sharpness the left her as the air was stolen from her lungs. She didn’t feel the blood that coated her lips and trickled down her chin from when it spewed from her throat when she was standing.
The world had gone mute, Danalli couldn’t hear the faintest sound. She felt detached as she collided with the ground she could have mistaken for any surface, the twisted reverie spinning its dark foreboding web. Even Zanen’s arms when they touched her couldn’t break the spell as her almost dead eyes laid wearily on them.
They stood before her… as if waiting for her. A woman sat on a beautiful mare, whose wings only added to the majesty of her rider. They say Pegasus’ only allowed the purest of souls to bond with them, surely this powerful warrior was not excluded. The woman made Danalli forget about pain, she made her feel strong. She resonated a hidden strength, a familiar strength, within her. She seemed so familiar… The cloak that draped over the lightly armored white haired woman covered half of her face. Danalli couldn’t make out her eyes… they were lost in the shadows of her cloak… But strangely she wore a smile as she turned her attention to the dying Dellavis. As if she wanted her demise to come sooner. “Priestess,” she cooed enchantingly to the dying mortal. A strand of red hair escaped the confines of her cloak. Danalli knew that symbol. Baelli…
He materialized in front of her. A man, who looked as young as a demon would be within his first half century. Danalli could only assume he was the rider’s bodyguard, he seemed strong enough. Those eyes… She felt her breath catch. They were Zanen’s eyes… She knew him. She had never seen him before, she had only felt him stir within her. “Zane,” she croaked in a broken, blood filled tone it was barely a whisper. She saw the concern flash over him. Then she saw the rage boil in those beautiful amethyst eyes as he noticed the red that draped itself across her. His eyes swirled to crimson, vibrant crimson as she heard his deafening roar and felt his hopelessness and agony within her. Her son.
Bijou’s darkened amused persona was lost to her as she saw him, her limp blood drenched hand sliding up against the dirt as the other cradled her stomach, trying to reach him. With her arm out stretched to them, to him she began to weep. Her body shook in terrifying horror as each sob wretched from her dying body left an agony that began to obliterate her. She wept because he would not live. She wept because she felt his pain. She wept because she was hopeless to stop it; she was too weak to even prevent her unborn son from his death. Her weak grip tried to tighten around her stomach as her lips quiver. Her silent wails were gurgles as the blood flooded from her throat and her tears were tainted red. She was so cold she couldn’t stop shivering…
She was in Zanen’s arms now, they were the only thing grounding her from the icy cold embrace and her take on reality. They were the only thing keeping her from falling asleep. She was so tired and couldn’t feel a thing. Why was everything getting so dark?
Zane collapsed next to them. Though he wasn’t real she could feel him. She hadn’t taken her eyes off of him. He was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. He looked ageless. The muscles that toned his body were just like Zanen’s build. His father would have taught him so well… His silver white hair made her croak as the pain in her womb only intensified. His eyes were flooded with tears as the red died into agony and sadness. “Tell him,” he spoke with such softness as his hand caressed her face, his voice sounded like it was going to crack.
She wheezed in a shuddering breath and turned her into Zanen’s embrace, looking into her mate’s eyes. “Z..zanen,” her voice was barely above a whisper as her tears only came faster, “I..I wanted… to s..surprise you.” Her words were barely above an audible note. She shook in his arms, pain blooming in her stomach. “Oh Zanen,” she spoke through weak bloodstained lips as she found his hand and placed in on her abdomen, “He would have been perfect… He’s so beautiful…” Her grip loosened on his and her chocolate eyes seemed to fade into a dull, dead brown.
”MOTHER!” It was shrill, it was outraged, it was destruction… It was utter desolate hysteria. It too seemed to fade with her dead eyes.
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Post by Willow on Aug 27, 2011 16:38:45 GMT -6
What happened next was a series of events that almost seemed to go in slow motion despite them happening so fast. It was like living in two different dimensions at the same time. In one, Danalli slowly wilted, her body going limp muscle by muscle as she fell. Degree by degree her flesh grew cool, the blood flowed slower, her eyes dimmed. It was an agonizingly slow process, one that was impossible to stop and impossible to predict. It was something otherworldly in its horror and something that Zanen had no control over. It was something that he could not touch, even though she was in his arms, something that he could not see, even though she was right before his eyes.
He was the Oracle. He was the Oracle. The ORACLE [/b]! But he had not seen it coming. He had the power of the Seal, the power of his shadows, and he could not protect her. She was right before him, And he could not touch her. Her skin grew slowly colder, bit by bit, and he could do nothing to warm her. Slowly, horrifically, his world crumbled. Yet it happened so fast. One moment she was there. And the next… But both dimensions of perspective had at least one thing in common. No matter how slow or how impossibly quick it all happened, the moment when she gripped her abdomen and looked at him. Even if she hadn’t spoken he would have understood what had just happened. Perhaps it was the ethereal shift in the air, as if there was another soul there with them, another dying soul, another piece of his kin, one so intimate that he felt it resound in the cavity of his chest where Danalli used to reign, but he knew. He knew that in that moment he not only lost his mate, he lost his son. He shook. The world held still. Nothing moved, nothing breathed, or at least nothing as far as Zanen was concerned. Because nothing would be breathing for very much longer. This was a quick switch. There was no split dimensions, there was just the break of tension as Zanen gently lifted Danalli and carried her slightly away toward Necromancer. The black stallion did not seem to need to be told that he was to guard her… body, as if she were the life that she once was. When he turned back to face the rest of those gathered, those deep violet eyes had changed to a deep, bright crimson with slit pupils like the dragons that were his ancestors. He was no longer wearing the veils over his face. Where they had gone and when he had removed them was unknown, just that the light now touched his face, etched in a mask of pure demonic rage. He moved with a slow, deadly stroll toward Bijou, his gate seeming different, almost as if he had suddenly gained a few extra joins and a few more inches of height. He did not speak. He just moved. A flash of darkness streaking toward the woman who had destroyed his light. Fine. If she wanted to fuck with the shadows, she would get exactly what she bargained for. [/center][/size]
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Post by libellule on Aug 28, 2011 0:01:04 GMT -6
Her face felt warm as she stirred. The delavis awoke to the sounds of soft waves on a sandy shore. The sun was magical and so beautifully bright, but strangely she did not squint and the brilliance did not hurt her eyes. She was in a beautifully white stone room that was open to the beautiful shore and its teal waters. Sheer curtains danced in the light ocean breeze as she slipped from the covers of her luxurious bed.
A soft silken white dress hung snug and airily on her as her already combed hair fell untied to her calves, tendrils floating about in the wind. She padded down an open doorway to stairs that led to the soft white sand. She was not alone…
A soft innocent giggle made her turn with questioning eyes.
Mama!
She gasped at the sight before her. A child with her hair and beautiful amethyst eyes was covered in sand at her feet. Her son. Zane. His eyes made her cock her head to the side as he ran to her, hugging her legs and grinning up at her. They were so beautiful and bright. She had never seen such a hue before… It was so exotic. She had brown eyes. Where could he have possibly gotten that color…?
“My little munchkin,” she shouted excitedly and threw him in her arms and twirled him about. His laughter made her feel warmer. Why did she feel a strange feeling that she was missing something? Something rather important? She’d completely forgotten how she’d gotten here, just that she was here with her son and he was there with her. Part of her cooed to pursue that displacement, but her better judgment objected. She had her happiness, and her son had his.
But something, something was tugging at her. ~
The days seems to linger and the shadows, the nights, rose and fell so quickly. They always cooed something so beautiful to her those dark shades… Ask if they knew her personally. They enchanted her with mystery and strange sense of longing, but before she could ask their soft whispers the sun would rise once more.
Finally a day came when a lone woman strolled down those white sandy shores, encroaching on the pair’s private time together. Her hair was long and beautiful as her smile was warm and motherly. Luscious vermillion tresses cascaded and danced in the wind, golden chains and breathtaking jewels lined her face. The woman was tall and graceful, lithe and captured a beauty so divine Danalli felt her own breathe catch. She felt no danger as the woman walked slowly, quietly, to stand before the delavis and her son, whose hand held hers lightly.
My my beautiful priestess… What a hard creature you are to find in this realm.
Her eyes… they spellbound Danalli. Her optics glittered a harnessed inferno that blossomed into a fireburst of golds, oranges, and rouge. Danalli curtsied softly as Zane attempted to copy her, receiving a beautiful chuckle from the mysterious woman. “Pretty lady,” he cooed softly.
“You have been looking for us, my lady,” the silver haired woman asked. Yes, Lady Danalli. I have been waiting for you and Zane for a very long time… Have you ever wondered how you came to be here? Ever wondered of the life you had before this portion of it? The unveiled goddess spoke in a soft easing voice, paying close attention to the sparks that began to glitter across the delavis’ face.
“I..” Danalli struggled, “I cannot remember. But they /speak/ to me. Beautiful Shadows in the night. As if they know me. They tell me stories… Stories of Light and Shadow and the everlasting love that is shared and bound to them, made for them. But tell me, my lady. How… how can two opposites ever coexist with the other?”
An enchanting laughter beset the trio. After all of this and they’ve still found you, come to you, wrap themselves about you to… protect you. My my… Zane has so much of him. So much… She paused, shifting her attention to the child at the woman’s feet and crouching down. Zane let go of her mother’s hand and walked slowly to Baelli, who cradled him in her arms before standing with him. How do opposites exist with each other my beautiful child, my daughter of light? The goddess nuzzled Zane’s cheek as he giggled innocently. Why they create balance. Some in the form of peace and others in the form of life. Like Saeliir and myself… like you, my Light, and your precious shadows, your Oracle, Zanen…
“Zanen…” her voice croaked as tears brimmed instantly as she finally recognized the woman before her as the Sun Goddess, the Mother of Light.
The spell had been broken. She could hear a mental chain link snap, the echo was deafening as the delavis remembered. Danalli remembered. The delavis heritage inside her was ripped from her, tearing an onslaught of torture into her soul. The delavis was an protective enchantment, hiding what she truly was underneath its folds.
The chains that bound her true spirit, her true memory and heritage crumbled, their hold around her mind withering. It was almost unbearable as an emptiness began to fill her. She lost a sense of herself as the creature she was labeled to be, left her leaving her soul hollow and darkened. Without thinking, Danalli pleaded for ‘her’ shadows, not for darkness, just for shadows. For Zanen’s Shadows, his nuturing protective embrace. She pleaded to feel his soul bind to hers and protect her, protect his son. His son….
Those whispers, those stories surged and filled her. Only they weren’t words of myth, they were words of memories, her memories.
It started at her last thought, her death and Bijou… She relived the pain and the agony. She felt the wind leave her at the news of her pregnancy, of Zane. Her memories continued to flood her, bringing her to Zanen once more and the armor he surrounded her with as his lips caressed hers for the first time when the sun kissed the sky and bid the moon good day. Further back they went, to her first steps into Tekania.
And then… They went even past that, far in the reaches of her mind to her days of dancing and fire. To the days of gypsy camps and her fragile relationship with Szchnelli, when she was called Raijah. Further back they went into the ancient world of the raves and the powers she wielded as the high priestess of MorningStar, her father’s rave clan. Into the world of old and her valkyrie legions… Ghatreg, Ciel, Zanen, Asina, Estelle, Kelik, Laruu, Noir… The list grew and grew and grew. Her memories swam and solidified until finally they soaked into her mind. It wasn’t until the lapse coaxed her back to the ‘present’ and she found herself on her knees before her goddess, unable to catch her breathe, unable to stop her tears, her realization finally dawned on her. The emotions of her past and present overwhelmed her and Danalli almost broke.
“Baelli,” she wailed as the woman fell to her height and pulled her into her arms, “Mother… What am I to do… I am dead. I AM /DEAD!/” Her sobs were muffled into the ancient’s shoulder who only hugged her fiercely.
It is almost through... You are to do a task that requires a sacrifice. You soul does not belong here… not yet. I will always welcome you with open arms, my Light… But not like this. Your lifestone has not been cast into the depths of eternity; fate has too much for you… I will grant you such an unfeasible prayer. But the sacrifice is not of your choosing…
Danalli felt it within seconds. The cool, smooth essence that surged her and chased the emptiness away. A burning sensation laced her forearm and biceps before the cool hushed it away. Her golden marks had returned to her. Her sense of self returned to her. Her brown eyes fluttered shut as her millennium old soul filled her to the brim. Her lips trembled as it settled about her without weight or mystery. For once in over a thousand years… Danalli was whole again.
The ghostly blue tainted eyes of her aeon spirit opened. “Mother.” It was a voice the resonated a power that skimmed ripples of chills off of any unsuspecting creature. It brought a mystical glitter to the air the almost spoke of light. A pure white essence that was just that. Perfected purity. A brilliance so bright it was a beacon of shinning hope. It danced and whispered those promises. This was the power… that whirled whimsically in her newborn immortal eyes.
Eyes of a pureblood Aeon.
Come now Raijah… This is your time now. I will take care of Zane until he is born into your arms. The goddess stood with the now sleeping infant, tucked into her arms. The woman outstretched her hand to the newborn Aeon, offering to help her up. You may refuse this offer, daughter. You can stay in this beautiful place for as long as you see fit. You and Zane for eternity, my dear… Without sacrifice, without mortality and pain…
Without Zanen…
Danalli shook her head through her tears, her lips trembling as she watched her sleeping son. “This will be agony and sacrifice, Mother,” she poke softly, “To live here for eternity without him. To live a life without my Shadow is to live a life of unhappiness in a paradise that will never be enough. I must decline that offer. If he awaits me on the otherside any sacrifice will be worth that life… with us together…”
So be it, Baelli purred softly, You are truly devoted to this creature. I was right to gift him with such a beautiful untainted light. A word of caution however, daughter. A road of hardships follow you after this day. Do not lose yourself, do not lose your heart. This gift is not given without sacrifice. Your life is not restored without debt. I will not heed to tell you that it is not something you would hope to give up. Do not forget…
“I will not, Mother,” Danalli’s new voice echoed a soft humming power as she finally reached out and grasped the goddess’s outstretched hand, that pulled her up...
Breathe… - Little by little, she felt the burning, the poison that had lit her mortal body on fire recede as a panic shot through her. It was a pain in her lungs, it made her chest spasm and her arms twitch violently. The poison died away as a new agony engulfed her body. Her nails dug into the dirt of where she had been laid. No air… there was no air.
Breathe..
A gasp turned into a heave as her brown eye fluttered open to the blue sky, black dots swirling into the lines of her vision. Her head swirled as she breathed and coughed. Heaving gusts gushed in and out as she rolled to her side slowly, a dizzy spell, her hands clenching the dirt as she lay. Another cough ushered through her as she was on her hands and knees. Tears were blinding her vision as she stared are the ground beneath her. The grass,,, the dirt… She was… she was…
‘Alive…’ It was a unspoken whisper. -
Protect me… like you used to? When those hordes desecrated our village? Do you remember when we fought… bathed in their blood, precious Sky?
The blood in her eyes enveloped him whole. They brought him into a world he’d long forgotten, misplaced and lost on purpose. She always did bring out the worst in him. But he had missed her… his gem, his enchantress, his witch.
Laruu.
“Yes,” he promised with an empty monotonous voice to Bijou’s deceptive web, “I will entirely… I promise you.”
He felt the graze of her palm make his heart skip as the dig of her nails brought shiver down his spine. So lost in his dream world that was tied entirely to his soul and heartstrings, Ciel failed to notice Danalli’s death. He had not heard her shrieks, had not felt Zanen’s rage, had not heard his mate’s growls.
The glamour Bijou doused him in intoxicated his senses and unlatched every door, cracked every lock. ‘Laruu’ laced both of her hands on either side of his, trailing down to rest on his shackle. He felt a twinge of disruption as the shackle tightened. “They’re coming for us you know,” the powerful woman spoken in a frightened tone, putting him on alert, “She comes to take you away from me and leave me to die… He plans to kill me…”
Who dared instill fear into his woman, his mate?! A bloodthirsty zephyr turned to face that of his kin, his eyes easily matching Zanen’s. But Zanen was not recognized, he was only seen a an obstacle and a creature that had come to kill /his/ mate. An enraged roar left the snarling lips of the enchanted zephyr as he crouched, his claws outstretched menacingly. He seethed with an untamed fury, ‘I will rip him apart…’
Ciel stepped forward, closing the gap between him and the Oracle. His mind was so blinded by the enchantment even Asina was lost to his thoughts. His parallel.
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Post by Willow on Oct 1, 2011 20:10:27 GMT -6
There was something in the air. Something electric. Something wrong. She’d known it the moment they’d entered the clearing, the moment they’d been approached, the moment that woman had spoken. Perhaps if she had walked into the situation with her senses open and her power at the ready, she would have seen it all coming. Maybe she would have tasted destiny on the wind as she was sometimes wont to do, maybe she could have done something about everything that was to happen.
But she hadn’t.
Asina had entered the clearing aware of those in her party but not aware of fate. And she could do nothing when Danalli dropped down dead.
Nothing.
There have been times before, in battle and out of it, where she had been helpless to the death of another. Helpless and completely useless. There was nothing she could have done, no magic she could have worked fast enough to be able to stop the death of the pretty delavis or the crushing of her brother’s heart. Oh, and she could almost hear it shatter. There would be no one left unscarred from this moment, no one in the world if Zanen ShadowSpawn had anything to do about it. He would rip the world in two for the death of his heart. He would shatter reality for being unable to protect her. He had put his seal on her, infused her with one of the deepest magics known to a demon, and he had been unable to save her. Before his eyes, before all of their eyes, she had just gone down…
Destiny?
The rage that was swelling inside of her was a quick and ferocious beast. And it was more than hungry. Oh no, it was ravenous, thirsting for vengeance, craving the blood of an enemy – the only thing that would come near to sating this horrific need. The monster inside of her was awakened, and then it began to grow, tearing its way closer to the surface, grating at the gates to be released completely. It was not just the death of Danalli, a dear friend, that was sharpening the Demon Queen’s claws and causing her vicious mount to paw angrily at the dirt. No, Asina was also feeding off of the rage of another demon, swallowing up the sorrow of a friend, the anguish of a brother. She could feel him in the darkest corners of her savage soul.
He was crying in there. Dying. Screaming.
As a sister she responded, as a queen she was forced to measure herself. She dismounted Nightmare and was standing beside Zanen in a moment, her claws out and her eyes melting to liquid gold.
But before she could do anything more, something else caught her attention. Zanen was carrying a breathless, lifeless Danalli over to Necromancer, who would guard her with his life, but there was other activity going on. The world had not stopped when Danalli died, slaughtering her brother’s heart. Oh no, the torment had only begun.
That foul, loathsome little bitch was rubbing against her mate, dripping poisons into his ear. She could feel the tug of some sort of powerful magic on him, and realized after half a second that it had been slowly working into his mind from the moment they had entered the clearing, but it had been so under the radar that she’d just put it off as the usual magic that was just floating around a gypsy encampment. It hadn’t had the flavor of anything menacing. It was only glamour magic.
Glamour. That which bewitches the mind and confuses the senses. Zanen was a master at it himself. His illusions had even fooled her, had brought her back in time to the worst moment of her life. Looking at Ciel, she saw him trapped, and a new level of pure and unadulterated rage began to swim through her. Not the rage of a queen or a sister, oh no… this was something much more potent. Greater than the rage of a mere lover, this was the rage of a mate and a Parallel in one.
A feral snarl ripped from Asina’s throat as Zanen charged toward Bijou. He did not stop when Ciel stepped up to intercept him. Oh no, he would decimate anyone that was in his way, and to see Ciel’s snarling face blocking him from his target fueled him all the more. He would kill his kin to get to that murderous swine. He would destroy him. Zanen moved fast, power behind every muscle moving to attain one goal and one goal only. He slashed and snarled, aiming every shot to kill. Sorrow and rage fueled every single one of his motions, and he howled with that pain. She had stolen something from him, taken it away, and Ciel DARED to try and stop him?
Asina’s power welled, and she let it. But it was not the power of the gods that she could access when she decided to cross through those gates and bare herself to the abuse of such power. No, this was not that power. This was a different, more intimate power. This was the power of the great dragons, whose blood flowed so utterly and completely through her veins as well as through the veins of every zephyr and every aeon. It was the power that had forged a bond of Parallel, and it was that power that she let well within her and spill out.
“Ciel,” she murmured quietly. Then, when the claws of her brother and beloved clashed, she shrieked it, screamed it.
“CIEL!” [/b] [/center] [/size]
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Post by libellule on Oct 1, 2011 22:07:56 GMT -6
Danalli’s, now dried, blood drenched hand slid across the ground, the sensation of feeling alerted her heightened senses. Her soul croaked at the old familiar sense of the pulse of the pulse in the ground, from the earth itself. She could barely swallow as her tears flowed freely. She could smell the taste of her blood that had already fed the ground. She could feel its sorrow and loss at the death of one of Baelli’s children. A warmth surged her, a comfort as she looked down to her arms, that were shaking. There they lay, beautiful markings, gold encrusted tattoos that marked her. They wrapped a warm confident golden aura about her, glimmer brightly as she rocked back to her heels to stand. A deep luscious breathe filled her as she closed her eyes to the sky, her body felt stronger, more toned… more vicious.
There was something sharp and toxic in the air as she slowly opened her eyes Nercomancer. Her tear-streaked face turned to her closest companion as she slowly rose a shaking hand to his nose, her arms littered with Baelli’s golden runes. Her lips trembled as she sucked in an emotional breath, her now-lightening eyes locking with his red tinted ones. The touch was almost electric as she held in her sob. “It’s all right,” she found herself cooing to him, the demon mount who needed no comfort, “Everything… will be all right.”
It was more of an assurance for her. That Baelli had not tricked her. Danalli finally turned her attention to the fire that brushed against her senses, her head snapping swiftly to the side. Her heart stopped in that moment as a another sob filled her throat and she felt her posture cave. His back was turned to her, he was only a few feet from her, moving so fast, lost in his rage. She couldn’t reach him in time…
He and Ciel flew into each other, clashing. Again and again. Asina’s wail cut into her heart. So much rage, so much blind hatred directed in all of the wrong directions…
/She/ would make this right. Her past had come to find her… She would allow it to destroy her family no longer.
Something of a soft hum snarled from her throat. It had been so long since her had felt those fangs grow in and that cool blissful focus drape her in a cool vicious embrace. She almost groaned against her long lost power, fueling her, pushing. Her brown eyes were a full ghost blue. Without looking down she could feel a sizzling from the runes on her forearms.
Her heart lurched as Ciel swiped close to Zanen. She had to stop this, Ciel had crossed a line she refused to let go by without punishment. He had backed off for a fraction of a second only to lunge again… She had one shot.
Her form blurred into motion. -
He had never felt such darkness, such rage in such long time. He could not remember the reason, just that it was a good one. Some piece of him sensed wrong, but he could not think of a good reason, just destroying his obstacle, an unrecognizable shadow… He was so lost.
But then…
she did it again. She pulled him from the darkness of himself. She was so good at allowing him to make right of his wrong… Every single time. Ever mistake. Salve, coolant to the vicious fire that was his rage and wrong doing. Her presence, her cool lovely aura, alerted him of every in this situation that was wrong. Then he felt that power that forced itself through to him, His Parallel’s call, her pain, his mistake…
Pieces of seconds had passed before Ciel made his move, planning to slash into Zanen’s unmasked face.
Through the red haze he found /her/ eyes staring back at him. Eyes so mysterious and captivating he could never forget them. He never had. Even the first moment he laid eyes on them when it had been her face he was slashing for…
’CIEL!
ASINA! He wanted to call. He felt a crack in this hazy darkness and soft clearing in the seductive glamour. ‘Laruu’ started to warp and he instantly knew he had been tricked. Laruu, he remembered correctly, was slaughtered by his hand six hundred years ago. How did this woman know of his past…? Asina! He had to get to her, but he could not sense, not in this enchanted darkness. The shadow he’d been fighting slowly took in the form of Zanen as his stomach instinctively dropped. His mistake… He had to get to Asina, he had to protect her, he had to- Something else had stood in his way, something had stopped his attack and now his thought process…
His claw was curled into the binds of fingers as they tightened their grip, snapping bones and crushing his. He groaned as the power forced him to a knee, the red in his eyes softening as he looked up and he felt his breathe catch in horrifying shock.
“I know you,” he breathed in a hush haggard whisper, struggling, fighting against Bijou’s spell, “R..raijah.” That name… it broke through to him and ‘Laruu’ fell from him in an instant. His shackle emitted a ghostly cold embrace that brought chills of warm bliss against his skin. He could feel those luscious zaps under the pressure of her skin, a shuddered breath fell from him.
Then piece by piece, his forgotten years were filled with the memories of his lady, this woman before him. Raijah, Sun and he, Szchnelli, Sky. The inseparable pair, allies to the end, friends far beyond that.
“You… you’re alive,” he spoke, astonished, observing the old world beauty of ‘Nalli, “All of this time… You were right here… What… what have I done?”
Asina… he had to balance himself, this dark magic had him delirious, confused, hazy and drained. Bijou had sucked, leeched, from his memories and he had responded honestly in a way he would have long ago. But that was long ago. So long ago. “Asina,” he whispered his mind clarified.
-
She let him get a grasp of what was happening before his eyes after she’d stopped him from attacking her mate. He’d been so close to Zanen.
No one was going to touch him until she did first. No one. Not anymore.
Her elbow was locked straight and her fist’s grip was crushing. Her heels had barely dug into the ground to stop him. Ciel’s manic ramblings ceased as he looked into her eyes, truly, for the first time in hundreds of years. Her greatest ally, crushed beneath her fist. Bijou would pay for this… dearly. Saeliir would be please with the soul she’d be sending her… But first.
“I told you a long… /long/ time ago,” Danalli spoke in a voice so soft and mystic, the emphasis on her words brought out a humming purr, a speakable magic dancing across her lips, “That I would not hesitate to make you realize the fatal mistake of trying to harm that which is mine…” Her tone ended harshly as her fist jerked back, pulling Ciel’s massive body to his feet.
Her fist slid across his chin in perfect execution. A slice broke out swiftly against his high cheekbone as he stumbled and wavered to the side. But Danalli’s other fist had swung gracefully around to realign him… and finding his side and a few ribs to crack. He tumbled to the ground before her, weezing, his lips and chin covered in beautiful scarlet.
“Let this be a lesson revisited, Szchnelli,” Her tone was standoffishly ominous as her aura surged, her attention rising to the perpetrator of this wondrous play. A smile dotted the once docile creatures lips as she stepped over Ciel’s grounded body, her prize was in sight. Bijou’s head.
She paused as she felt him behind her. Danalli turned her chin to her shoulder, her once dark eyes, lightened with such enigmatic power as she finally looked up to him.
Zanen.
His lips were set in the most beautiful of snarls as his eyes held a draconic anger so raw and vicious her opposing soul’s draconic heritage pleaded to entangle herself into it, to feed off of it, to bask in the glory that his everlasting love, to dance in the darkness of the night and the light of the moon glow. Her dragon, her beautiful ShadowSpawn.
He would not think her so weak now… -
“Well, well,” a coy voice spurted from the quieted clearing as she watched the risen delavis step gracefully towards her, ready, “If I had known any better I would say you’re favorited little ‘precious’ pony of mine… Tell me… what does heaven look like? Did you see that wretched goddess of yours and did she promise you wondrous bliss to the end of eternity?”
“If I had known better, Shiv’rae Witch…” Danalli cooed softly, “I’d say you were bitter, but really enchantress… was killing me honestly needed to prove your jealousy? Saeliir has fallen numb and deaf to your pleas. Those who defy Baelli are lost souls and meals to be devoured when they are caught in snares almost as bewitching and tumultuous as your claws…”
A dark smirk flitted about on the Aeon’s visage as the red that darkened on Bijou’s eyes as annoyance filled her aura. But it soon receded. Bijou had recovered. This witch had cards… too many to count. “I must say, Raijah, I didn’t know he meant this much to you… That you would do all of this,” Bijou raised her hand in gesture to the souls behind her, “For one measly, puntsy soul. Is it true… that he sacrificed an entire race for you? Surely you should’ve wanted to kill him on the spot, but you hid him, protected him. “I never thought you’d carry out this promise. A thousand years is a bit much to get the royalty of Tekania to trust you… Then you not only slept with the second most powerful creature in the land, you’re bearing his son. Claiming and glamouring yourself to have amnesia was sheer genius. Any Aeon could have done it. Why you’re almost as vicious as the High Queen herself-“
Bijou had been cut off as a hand surrounded her dainty throat. “Your lies are beginning to anger me, witch. And your glamour is most disgusting and potent. Show them, Bijou. Show them what hides under your protective armor… daughter of Ciel, spawn of Lilani’s High General… Laruu.
High Commander Noir Ahniraeh… of Holden.”
No one had known her name, no one could break the powerful spell without speaking it, but she had known. The hatred Noir had cultivated for this wretched Aeon had just exponentially jumped. The creamy tan skin and exotic silver tresses melted off, become a pile of dust and glitter as Danalli shoved her back and Noir dusted herself off. Her eyes were malicious rouge and her complexion was a hollow pale white. She was shorter, but lithe and her curly black hair fell to her shoulders.
“You are becoming such a pest, Raijah,” the demon witch seethed.
A snarl of untamed raw anger lit up Noir’s face. Danalli was posed to attack, her muscles flexed and her aura surging. Noir pointed a clawed finger to the light priestess. “A promise in a promise, bound to the Shiv’rae until it is served out.” A scarred slit burned into the inside of Danalli’s wrist as the Aeon instantly gripped it and crumbled to her knees her teeth grinding against each other. “No,” she gushed breathlessly, the smell of burning flesh filling her nose, “He is dead…” Her eyes were deadly as her power welled. “I /watched/ her kill him!”
“Did you…” Noir chuckled, the back of her hand covering her lips, daintily, “You see Lilani kept him for insurance… That immortal fire priest. To insure your… cooperation. So you see… you /did/ keep you promise just like you intended a thousand years ago for the life of your devoted traitor of a father. And he… gave us so much more for your life…” Danalli was on her knees, rigid, her wrist still trembling from the burn, the mark of her blood oath a thousand years ago when they tricked her… Deceived her into thinking she was saving Ghatreg, when he had already given them the Raves for her soul…
“No,” she whispered in a dazed broken voice.
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Post by Willow on Oct 2, 2011 18:25:47 GMT -6
The clash of claws and rage was deliciously enticing. He could feel the clench of his rival’s muscles, the release of energy as they completely unleashed themselves upon each other. Oh, he could hardly see anything through the red haze of berserker, but he didn’t need to. The world spoke to him, guided him, for Zanen was a child of the World. He was the Oracle, the Seer of Secrets. He was ShadowSpawn, the Son of the Blackness, and nothing would stop him from fulfilling his bloodlust. And this was a bloodlust that only began with the gypsy wretch that stole his love, his heart, his breath, his Light. Yes, she was only the beginning in what would be a mass execution of every factor that had ever contributed in Danalli’s death. He could feel this purpose burning in him like the fire that had once been where his flower danced. It pushed him, drove him, inspired him to massacre. Nothing would satisfy, but the blood of the unworthy was as close as he was going to be able to get. He would slaughter all that stood in his way, and would relish in the bloodletting of the miscreants he actually took the time to carve up.
Because he would. He would take the time. He would draw out every last drop of agony before finally sending their souls to the Abyss. Not to the gods, but to the Abyss. It was a dark and powerful magic, forbidden even to the demons of the darkest natures, but he would do it. He would send that slick and oily soul straight to eternal torment and give her no chance to plead at trial with the gods. He had made a deal with a goddess to gain the power to perform such a rite. It was something that he would be able to do only once unless he wanted to send his own soul to the Abyss as well, and he had been saving it for a thousand years to use on someone else - but he may damn his soul to suffer this bitch for eternity. It would be worth it. To know that she would pay forever for what she had done, it would be worth it. He would suffer beside her, roiling with the other damned souls until the end of time, but it would be worth it.
Dark and malicious power brewed beneath his skin. His eyes went from crimson to inky black, a sickly, soulless hue that burned with Abyssal magic. He would do it. He would send her to the Abyss. Her and anyone that got in his way. If it weren’t for the oath he had given a thousand years ago, he would depart into the Abyss himself after that, but that oath’s magic would keep him in this world until he struck down the soul that sacrificed the Raves.
The demon he was fighting, the zephyr that was his kin and his ally until a few moments ago, seemed to be waning. He was distracted by something. There. That was his opening. Abyssal power pooled in the palm of his hand. One touch in the right place and his soul would be sent shrieking to the Abyss…
---
Something was wrong. She knew it the moment his demeanor shifted. No one knew Zanen better than she did. She’d known him ever since she was a child, had grown up on his shoulders and in his shadows. He had trained her, raised her, protected her, guided her. He’d held her when she’d cried as a child and had been a steady wall when she’d mourned as a woman. When her father had been murdered by the woman he loved over a daughter that had been driven mad by the power she had taken into herself, they both remained strong together. He held her back when she needed someone else to be her reason while she gave in to the darker side of her nature, a side that she constantly had to hold locked inside of herself lest she tap into a power she didn’t want to unleash. He had been her sword and shield, her closest friend and confidant. Her brother.
And she had been his sister. The one who pushed at him, made sure that he had a life and that he lived it. She had forced him to be warm even when all he knew was the ice of loss and betrayal. She’d helped him hold on, had pushed him to be the man that he was today. She had always known the kind of man that he was, the kind of man that he had the potential of being. A good man. A great one. But he also had the other side of that coin. Like her, he was as dark as he could be with that single pool of light. His light had been the Raves. His people. Then they had been taken away. But he held on. His light had been his family, her and Ryell, his mate. But then the zephyrs had vanished, and with them Ryell. They had both suffered that loss greatly, had felt the echoing wails of that pain for centuries. She personally knew that she’d felt it like a deep crevice in her chest up until the moment that the cheeky woman had returned with that wayward grin of hers. Zanen… he had felt it up until he had met Danalli. His Light. In her he had regained almost everything that he had lost. The Raves, love, family… She had been with child. A son. Zanen had been going to be a father.
He would have made a wonderful father, Asina had always known that. She was sure Danalli had too.
But now… She could feel the wrongness in the air surge to a climax and she knew exactly what had happened. One thousand years ago, on the day that became known as the Day of Vanishing Souls, all the Raves became unknown to each other. Unless they were exceedingly powerful, even if they looked at their mate or their child, they would see nothing but a stranger. No longer did their hearts beat as one every morning with the rise of the sun, attuning to the collective rhythm of their being. Zanen had felt this loss more deeply than she ever could have fathomed. There had been a moment when he’d looked at Ryell and hadn’t known her, nor she him. Then he’d grasped and forced that connection to remain. Together, they had been able to save Ryell from losing him, but the rest of the Raves… Gone. It had been devastating to all of them. Even Asina, who wasn’t a Rave at all, had felt the loss. Perhaps because she was as in tune with the World as the Raves were, just in a different way.
Zanen had come to her one night. He begged her for an audience with a goddess of darkness, someone who could give his shadows access to another doorway – one that had been otherwise closed to him… One that he’d had no desire to open until now. The Abyss. She had looked at him, and could not refuse him. She should have, but she couldn’t. In all her life, she had never seen Zanen like he had been that night, and she hadn’t seen him like that since – not even when the zephyrs all vanished. He had been destroyed. Mortally wounded in a place that no healing magic could touch. His very soul was crying out to her, and she could not turn him away. Not even for what he asked. So she had granted him an audience with the goddess she was most intimate with, the goddess that had watched over both her and Zanen all their lives. Saeliir. She didn’t know what had happened between the two of them during the audience, as she had granted them their privacy and bowed out of attendance. This was personal, between Zanen and his goddess. And the Raves. This was his personal vengeance. Even though she knew what he was asking, and she knew when he returned by the feel of his power, how it had grown to a much deeper, more sinister depth, that it had been granted to him, she never once asked him.
But now, she knew that he was calling that dark power. And she knew that he was calling it too soon. He was breaking the contract he’d made with a goddess. And even Saeliir, who loved him dearly, would not forgive this. Nor would Asina, even though she empathized his pain. Because it was her mate, her Parallel, her Ciel, who was in the path of that Abyssal claw.
So she did the only thing she could think to do. In a streak of black and gold, she slammed into him, a vicious snarl rumbling in her throat. They tumbled to the ground in a flurry of limbs and power that scorched the earth beneath them, killing everything they touched. They rolled and scrapped like a pair of wild, savage dogs. Zanen was blind in his berserker, unaware that it was his queen that had attacked him. The Abyssal power was still burning, and it hungrily licked out at Asina, tasting the power and the darkness of her being, the purity within that ached with the potential to corrupt. It reached for her and she drove his hand as far away from her as she could, into the ground while she struggled with the much larger, stronger demon. She had the power of the gods behind her, but he was still physically stronger than her, and it was only a matter of time before he overpowered her unless she was willing to unleash that ungodly power unto him. “ZAY! LOOK AT ME!” she screamed in his face, praying to whatever gods that were watching that they would push him right. The hand that held the Abyss touched her left arm and she shrieked with a flood of pain before she felt the arm go numb. If he touched her chest it would be over. It wouldn’t matter how powerful she was, if he touched her chest her body would die and her soul would immediately get sucked into the Abyss. Forever.
Then she saw it, out of the corner of her eye.
They must have both moved at the same moment, each rushing to protect their mates and save their dear friends from making a horrible mistake. Asina didn’t have time to process what had happened, how, or why. All she could do was act. She swung around, her left arm flailing limply at her side as she latched onto Zanen’s back and yanked his head back with a fistful of hair in her right hand, forcing him to watch the other scene that was taking place just a few yards away.
---
It only took one moment. One sight. Abyssal eyes faded to red, and after a tentative moment, that crimson seeped away to leave only a bare and stricken violet. “D-Danalli?” The iron grip around his waist and the fist in his hair loosened slightly, and when he didn’t do anything released him completely. While Asina slid off his back and dragged herself back a few paces and up to her feet, clutching her limp arm close to her body with her good hand, Zanen watched as Danalli, bright with some new old power, subdued Ciel as if it were something she did every day. Was this some kind of trick or illusion? Had that vile creature that had taken away his Light done this to further his pain? Was he going to have to watch her die again before his eyes and be completely helpless to stop it? There was a cool, midnight touch to his mind, and he knew that wasn’t so. He knew that Danalli truly stood before him. Bright, alive, and dripping with the power of an aeon come into her power. That knowledge fulfilled something inside of him. Something that had been curious and questioning, something that had been searching for an answer, searching for something missing. It all fell into place and he knew. Knew. Danalli. The Light to his Shadow. A Rave to his Rave. An aeon to his zephyr. His mate. His love.
The mother of his child.
That midnight touch reassured him again, and he knew that his son was safe still, safe within his mother’s womb until the day he would come into the world and rest within his father’s arms. His. His arms.
Zanen was allowed one brief moment to admire the creature his sweet Danalli truly was, and he took it as he pushed himself to his feet and closed the distance between himself and the rest of the scene going on. He stepped up beside Danalli. They would take out this adversary together, then. He would let her strike the blow, but he would be there for support, for backup if she needed it, and to relish in the death of the one who had almost stolen everything from him.
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“Just don’t do anything that stupid ever again, brother,” Asina hissed under her breath as she steadied herself with a shoulder against Nightmare, who had come up to support and defend her should she need it. Zanen was deaf to her but she didn’t care at the moment. Her left arm was black from shoulder to fingertips and hung cold and limp at her side. The limb was dead, and for now it was useless. Asina couldn’t spare too much thought to that just yet though. She warded her shoulder in case it was like an infection that would start to spread, but until this little debacle was over and settled, she would have to rely on her right arm and just hope that her left could be saved at a later time.
Once her shoulder was warded and she was confident that the rest of her body would remain able should a fight break out, she pushed away from Nightmare and a short sword appeared in her right hand. It was double-bladed and sharpened to a deadly edge. Her eyes were still gleaming gold with power, and she let that power fill the clearing with a an electric aura. Even a senseless idiot and an arrogant fool would know that should she wish it, she could fry every single person standing and all that would be left would be ashes should she wish it so.
She would probably pass out afterwards, as it would be a huge exertion of power, but a layman wouldn’t know that, so the intimidation factor remained.
’Show them what hides under your protective armor… daughter of Ciel, spawn of Lilani’s High General… Laruu. High Commander Noir Ahniraeh… of Holden.’
Well. That caught her attention.
…daughter of Ciel, spawn of Lilani’s High General… Laruu…
Something like pain hit her in the center of her chest, but it didn’t really register just yet. She was in battle mode, a warrior ready for another fight. She couldn’t be a woman right now. Somewhere in the back of her head she heard a baby cry that had never been allowed to be born, but she slammed a door down before the sound could reach her. She knew the name Laruu, one of her bitch sister’s favorites some centuries ago. The woman was killed a few hundred years ago, but Asina hadn’t known or cared why or how.
Golden eyes landed on the unmasked face that was Noir Ahniraeh, Ciel’s daughter, and dammit… she could see him in the smooth lines of her wretched face. Before she could stop herself, she found herself looking to Ciel. She’d known that he’d been keeping something from her and she’d never pried but…
No. No, she couldn’t be a woman right now. She couldn’t even be a demon. She had to be a warrior and a queen.
So she held her tongue, held her breath, held her heart as she tensed for this encounter to clear itself. But of course, it wouldn’t be that easy, would it? No, it had to take another turn. Some other disaster had to drop from the sky. That bitch Noir sneered and seemed much too delighted. A moment later, the rest of them were filled in as to why, and Asina readied herself once again, because she saw it the moment he understood what that little cunt was saying. She saw him understand, and she knew that there would be no shocking him out of it this time. Blood would boil, power would rise, and Hel would be paid.
---
‘Is it true… that he sacrificed an entire race for you?’
Zanen didn’t even think of it. Not right away, not at that. Danalli was at his side, brimming with power, alive and pregnant with his child. All would be well. He would see to it. He didn’t react to the witch’s words because Danalli didn’t. She called her a liar, and so a liar she was. There was nothing more to it. He didn’t connect the dots just then. He didn’t put it all together until something changed with Danalli. It was right after the glamour had been broken. The witch did something, and Danalli went down.
A snarl rolled from the deepest caverns of his chest, but something stopped him from attacking the witch, from tearing her head clean off her shoulders with one swipe.
Danalli wasn’t really hurt, not physically. It raised his hackles that she was brought to her knees by something this bitch creature did, and that alone was enough to inspire him to end her but… but the dots became little droplets of blood that were finally beginning to connect.
The air went still. Zanen looked to Danalli with something like pain in his eyes. “Danalli. Tell me what is going on. Now, Danalli, so I can remove this witch’s head from her shoulders and we can go home.” Deep amethyst eyes begged for a truth different than the one he knew he was about to receive.
---
Looking into her Seeing Pool, the goddess sighed, her chest aching for her shadow-blessed son. [/center]
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Post by libellule on Oct 11, 2011 17:17:02 GMT -6
“Ghatreg…” she whispered to the unseen man, the absent man. The light of her power slowly began to dim as the realization dawned on her, fully. Slowly, she felt the world freeze as she looked up to her mate, her true other half, her unnatural eyes wavering, their light dimming, cracking as the weight of the truth pierced her with a pain more devastating then her agonizing last, blood-filled breath.
” Tell me what is going on. Now, Danalli, so I can remove this witch’s head from her shoulders and we can go home.”
Home… True home… But that home was not necessarily Tekania. She didn’t want to go there. She wanted to go back, back far in time with her family, with her clan, and her people. With her father… But she couldn’t turn away. Not now. Could he really be alive? She /had/ to know.
It had been her that had caused Zanen’s torment. All of these years, the darkness he allowed to collapse around him, to protect him… The solitude and the macabre that was his suffering and loneliness. Was /all/ her fault. She was the reason the Raves disappeared, because of a father’s love and ultimate sacrifice…
She was still alive.
How could she explain the difference? How could she tell the truth without mentioning her utter devotion to saving her father’s life… as he had hers? How could she tell Zanen, at one point in time, that she would have given anything to save this man? That she had bound herself to protect Ghatreg, planned a demise that involved Zanen before she even knew who he was…
He had been everything to her. He had been her guide, her mentor, her friend… Her father. That was what the haze had refused to lift. The reason why he had remained within her mind, glamouring himself as just her mentor and teacher. But he had held her in his arms from the first breath she’d taken. He had protected her and gifted her with Dance and magicks thought to be long vanquished. Her father, Ghatreg, High Fire Priest of MorningStar, the rave clan dedicated to the Sun and all of its wonders. Baelli was her mother, all that she’d known since the first train of thought rolled through her.
Her blank stare dropped from Zanen and stared past Bijou for a fraction of a second and her breath held. There was a memory that painted emotions before her very eyes… - “It seems even the most brightest of lights can still have a dark past,” her voice that had once been soft and sweet, had altered into a snarly, biting pitch. A witch’s tenor. The voice she had missed for a few hundred years. A voice she had held onto for this one moment.
She had aged with the beauty of her mother. Her eyes were born a luscious darkened crimson and her figure formed to mimic Laruu entirely. Ciel’s features were almost obsolete from her, save for a few tiny flecks of gold in her eyes and the muscular build in her would be slender arms and frail body. A Shiv’rae witch was not known for her strength, only her glamour. It was their only defense, only offense. Laruu changed that with her lineage, she made a name for her people. A wicked enchantress that slaughter many with her grace. Her exploits and murderous takeovers were legendary and so victorious.
She felt the eyes of the sovereign, the heated that brushed roughly against her. A sardonic smirk bloomed across her face. “Surprise,” she curtsied mockingly, before turning her attention to her grounded father who was beginning to pick himself off of the ground, the re-cracking of his ribs, alerting her of his self healing. His eyes held no red, but brilliant gold. Shock and disbelief. “N..noir,” he stumbled over his words and her name like an infant, “You’re supposed to be…”
“Dead… yes you were only hoping so,” she growled back, watching his facial expression shift slightly, “This is all because of what you did!” She pointed a clawed finger in his direction in outrage. “I pledged my soul so that you and your /pathetic/ aeon will suffer the rest of your existence in this world! Does she know? Perhaps you will find a way to murder her too when you become too bored with her around…” “Noir,” the zephyr growled a dark warning.
She laughed darkly. “Ha! Your warnings will not be heeded… this will be over soon for me. You, however… Does your mated sovereign know of the woman you loved? The woman you devoted yourself too? Lilani’s High General Laruu… MY MOTHER! Does she know you knew of this woman’s lineage and rank and loved her anyway?!” Her voice had grown shrill as her eyes had grown with a bright demi-zephyr rage, a rage he had given her… “Did you tell her how you slaughtered her without mercy…?”
“That is enough, Noir.” It was crisp voice, fueled with its own cool rage that sliced through her with surprise. Danalli… Her bright eyes sifted through the red haze to find her second most hated creature. Her life would not be spared, she would not find peace. Noir knew this fate when she came forward to Lilani. She knew when she unveiled her true identity to the golden queen and the pledge she gave that her life would not last long in this world.
But the thought of bringing her murderous father to his knees… if it meant corrupting the brightest, most innocent creature in Asina’s courts. It if meant destroying those who had aided in the slaughter of her people, her family.
It was worth her torment in the Otherworld.
A sickly smirk dotted her features as she took a step forward, refocusing, remembering Zanen’s words. “Yes, my /lovely/ priestess of light…” she spat darkly, “Tell him the truth. The real one this time… Tell him just how important he really is to you…”
The reborn aeon snarled darkly… much too darkly.
- Ciel could not begin to understand the amount of events that were swirling about him. One side he was reunited with his oldest ally. His dearest friend. A woman who was so opposite of himself, but fit his prime companion in the best of ways. He met her so long ago… Raijah, the sun and she gifted him the name of the sun’s closest friend and accomplice, Szchnelli, the sky. Her brightness had attracted his dark aura, like a moth to fire. She helped him sift through his rage… brought the purity of zephyr through to him, not just demonic power.
Then there was Asina, his dearest possession, taking out the malicious blood driven Zanen… His hand was so dark. But then Danalli had grounded him, blocking his sight. A few ribs had cracked, nothing permanent, just a nuisance. There was a stumble behind him as he had picked himself up. Asina… before he even had a chance to offer a sound of apology, an explanation through his eyes. Her dead black limb drove an icy stake through his spine as his rage couldn’t keep up with his shock. It was fear that pitted in his stomach, icy and vicious. And then…
“…daughter of Ciel, spawn of Lilani’s High General… Laruu. High Commander Noir Ahniraeh… of Holden”
His daughter… was alive and in league with Lilani? This couldn’t be true. Ciel turned fast to lock his eyes with his daughter with steadfast emotion. He had destroyed them all hundreds of years before because of her death. Laruu told him she had killed Noir to protect her from him. To protect her from the world. But life with sacred… life was rare. He lost himself in his rage and tore into the people he’d come to love and cherish for the loss of his child and the betrayal of his mate, the woman he’d come to adore.
And now… the very thing that he had fought so valiantly to avenge had come to see his demise and outcast. She began to snarl out lies, and truths, each too synced with the others to be called out without explanation. Her plan. Noir wasn’t here to talk she was here to play on emotions… deep emotions and turn them all on each other.
“Noir,” he threatened…
But she continued her onslaught as his anger, along with his concern for Asina rose. He step backward towards, feeling his claws lengthening with the need to protect her, to make sure she was ok. Did you tell her how you slaughtered her without mercy?
His roar was pitched low with a growl that was corked quickly as Danalli stepped in, covering his back. Pulling her claws out of him.
He turned to his mate, her golden eyes and dropped his to her arm, his jaw clenching as his fists began to shake. He… he didn’t know what to do. -
It had been such a cold winter that year… so many centuries ago. She had barely past her first decade, a small infant cradled in his massive arms. Wrapped in soft wolf pelts, he brought her to the shores just outside of their clan in the dark of night, humming a mystical lullaby that went on to warm her, even though his very body was an ember in itself. It was dusk on that sandy shore, the light of the world slowly ascending. Danalli had been in and out of sleep until she noticed the blue in the sky that turned to pink slowly, gracefully.
His feet slowly took on steps of fluid movements, her small body still held tightly in his arms. His lullaby morphed into an archaic chant and she swore she saw flecks of gold embers land on him, dusting onto her.
It did not hurt when those golden pieces of fire slipped into the tightly wrapped pelts to her body beneath and became a part of her skin, the very same runes on her arms now. If only she had registered the magnitude of his gift by blessing her under Baelli’s careful watch as the sun rose into the day.
If only she’d known then perhaps she could have done something about it before he fully pledged his soul before their goddess, his existence to protecting her. His ‘Soul Oath’ would never falter in any piece of his life. But he had gone too far. Too obsessive. She had not been worth a race of mystics and miracles. She would have died valiantly to save her race. /Her/ people. But Ghatreg did not agree… And it had meant her downfall and his. One much long after the other.
“I am sorry, Shadow, but you cannot. She has something of mine. Something Laruu took from me… many years ago… And I want it back!” Her voice held the tiniest of a tremor, but it was unclear if those emotions were that of sorrow and fear… or rage and hostility. Her blue eyes were locked with Noir’s crimson
She could taste his joy, his pride, his realization. She could almost feel his arms around her, his breath at his mark, waiting for her to kill this witch so he could focus on more important things. She felt all… Up until the point when Noir uttered those statements. She could not look at Zanen again, she could not see the pain in his eyes when he realized that it was her, she was the life that was spared. The reason their people were wiped out, the aid to the disappearance of anyone and everyone she loved. She was not worth it. She was no goddess, no golden child born free of darkness. She was susceptible to temptation just like any other soul.
She agreed to this oath only to protect Ghatreg, only to save him and they tricked her. They /tricked/ her!!! The shudder in her voice hummed lowly in her ears, rising. She could feel her body temperature get hotter. They used her and killed him before her very eyes… And now… this heartless shrew was toying with her love’s heart, her mate, /her/ Shadow. Spewing lies tucked into the distorted truth, trying to turn him, to turn all of them, against her… Laruu would not get her peace… Ciel sent her to Hell; it only seemed fitting she send his bastard child to the depths where they could rot together. The blackness she felt from this witch before her brought about a darkness that bloomed viciously in her. Darkness she had not felt in over a thousand years… Hatred. Seething, writhing, wicked loathe that pulsed through her veins and shook her as she finally took her hand away from the scar, bearing it for all to see, lifting her raging body to stand from her knees. This would /not/ go the way Noir had intended. She would rather die before this witch got her solace before the dark eternity Danalli was about to send her.
Darkness was not an aura she felt often, she refused to allow it near her, it warped her focus, deteriorated her reason. It brought her to a delicious, bloodlusting world and it was so… unnatural… But she let it devour her, just this once… It coiled about her, brought prickles into her skin, and a seductive chill down her spine. It braided itself into the folds of her as she slowly closed her light eyes against its crooning.
There was a truth, an end to this story. She was about to relive it.
The answers to his questions were rearranged and faded into the outskirts of her focus. Noir… Her blood red eyes that had not deserved existence, had not deserved breath. Her time was almost up. Danalli was not going to let her take control.
“Tell them, priestess,” the witch had been staring at her with such an accusation, “Tell them who really caused the fall of a nation. Whose life was worth… thousands.”
“There was a time,” she began in a low voice that had an electric undercurrent that was sure to singe anything weak and rise the temperature of any creature nearby, “When I would allow your lies to conjure up unneeded emotions, Laruu.” She spoke to Noir as if she was indeed Lilani’s ‘legendary general’ and with her words… her power grew, violently lashing at anything. “Because it was your lies that have kept me, bound to your blood oath I made so long ago.” Those crackles and golden lashes of light, they slithered up her skin, caressing her longing to destroy. Her defense mechanism. Her Aeon spirit, soul. It had been locked away from her when she was delavis, only surfacing to protect her when danger had been much too close.
She could not evade his questions. Danalli fully extended her forearm, palm opened up, a light pink scar neatly marking her wrist. “I am the maiden spared from slaughter. /I/ am the one the Raves were sacrificed for… handed over for.” Had the fury and odium for the creature before her not been apparent before… the shudders and quakes in Danalli’s figure and lengthening of her nails, the hot air, the golden bolts whirring and crackling about her it certainly was now.
“It was a clever plan, Shiv’rae,” the priestess purred darkly, dropping her arm, taking a step towards the witch, whose face had almost drained in color as she noted the swell of power, the height of it. She had underestimated her…greatly, “Toying with a young girl, whose world had revolved around one man, and using him against her. Having your soldiers beat her, break her and ravage her, again and again… order them to rip any free spirit out of her until she gave them anything they wanted to get them to stop… A contract to get as close to officials of Tekania and an entire race, a beautiful magical race… for one pitiful young soul. A dual blackmail to ensure cooperation on both parties and a blood oath to bind them eternally. Because you knew… didn’t you, /wretched/ harlot?!”
With each tiny, foreboding step, the darkness about her grew and grew, her dainty fingernails became thin, long silver claws as her voice transitioned from soft and mystic to bone-cutting and incredibly malicious… Rising in emphasis and decibel. Soon her rage had engulfed her, her chest rising and falling with each quick fiery breath, and tunneled on Noir, who was all she saw, all she cared about, whose facial expression was becoming a shade much closer to what it should have been from the beginning… Fear. “You knew,” Danalli stated icily, calmer now, quieter, “That he bound himself before the sun, to Her, to protect this girl from anything, from individuals… to thousands. From the heavens to the Abyss. Which is why we were attacked first, ensnared first by your legions… It was only us you cared about. All you needed. We were your first mark, once you had us, you had all of us.”
MorningStar… her home. Her sunlit clan that bordered closest to the sunrise on land. They had danced every morn to bask in the warmth and light of the sun, to welcome Her and energize Her to begin Her journey through the day. It was a purpose they served to Baelli, a purpose that had morphed and transformed into a love and adoration. Ghatreg knew it every morning; she could almost smell it on his skin.
Then she came with Lilani’s forces. Laruu. Then… it was nothing. Burnt to the ground and infiltrated by scouts and platoons. They had decimated their small clan, slaughtering escapees by the perimeter created. No one got out, no one got word, no one knew… until it was too late. She had been abducted separately from Ghatreg, who had already agreed to give Laruu the demise of the demons for her soul. Naïve and terrified, she sobbed when they told her they would kill him unless… unless she agreed to carry out a promise. A blood oath, engraved with the notion of gaining the trust of Tekania and undermining them from the inside.
Bruised, beaten, broken, the men of Laruu’s platoon had dropped her limp body next to the unconscious one of Ghatreg’s, and finally left them. She had saved him, all of her torment was worth it… She had saved him. Against her pain, she had crawled to him, cradled him in her arms, enjoying the moment that she had saved his life…
until he awoke and whispered that he had saved hers. That Laruu bargained the demons against her soul and he gave them to her. Gave Lilani the end of the demons, which had only transitioned into the end of Raves.
Danalli had frozen Noir with fear as she reached the witch and encircled her throat with one hand and lifted her. “Your lies have brought up too much emotion. Much more than your life is worth. He’s not alive. He never was alive. They killed him. I /watched/ him die. Call your bluff, wretched creature.”
Noir legs had begun to kick and thrash as she grasped for air as she raised an arm, gnarled as the other clawed at Danalli's extended forearm. A presence brushed against Danalli’s aura, someone else had arrived. Someone had been unveiled. Someone she knew.
This was no bluff.
A scent familiar, a power even more so. A warmth… A fire. Noir's triumphant smirk made her eyes widen and her throat grow tight. She couldn't remember how to breathe.
Her blue eyes turned immediately, her head snapping to focus on him.
There he stood before her, directly between her and Zanen, facing her, tall and proud. His long red hair falling over his shoulders, his once tan skin had been subdued to an ashen pale white. Where his skin had once been unblemished and beautiful, white and pink slashes and scar lines of multiple years of pain and torture remained. He was a ghost of his former self, thinner and incredibly malnourished. But his soul was stronger and his spirit was bright. She could recognize him anywhere. Her savior...
“Ghatreg,” she whispered in a sob filled voice, feeling those tears fall slowly. It was so hoarse. She had dropped Noir, forgetting her altogether as red eyes filled her vision. Red eyes that had scolded her, adored her, protected her. Eyes she could never forget, never wanted to. Her lip trembled as his features softened for her. “Father…”
”MorningStar… My beautiful Danalli."
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Post by Willow on Oct 13, 2011 16:54:14 GMT -6
If she had been an ordinary woman, this would have been too much. Too much, too soon. Too much pain spread around those she held dearest, so much confusion in the face of such danger. Too much vulnerability, too much exposure. These were things best taken slowly and digested. These were things best admitted in confidence, things best divulged between the involved parties alone. These were things best planned for. Of course, things never go as planned, and we are all designed to be able to take surprised –even the earth-shattering ones. We just aren’t meant to take a hundred of them at once. Because that would be too much. Much too much. And if she were an ordinary woman, the sudden eruption of everyone else’s dark pasts might have crippled her, might have frozen her solid or dropped her to her knees.
If she were an ordinary woman. But Asina was not an ordinary woman.
”There will come a time, child, when the world itself will seem to shatter around you. It will happen over and over again, I can guarantee that. Every time you rebuild, it will crumble again, and it will all seem in vain. It will seem worthless, pointless.”
Back then she had nodded solemnly but internally rolled her eyes. She had been young and foolish, as the young are prone to be. Then the first blow had been dealt, and she began to understand.
”They just kept falling. I could do nothing. Nothing… but I am still here. I didn’t die. THEY did! WHY!?” She had been so terribly angry, and hurt. Scarred. And scared.
But Silus BloodSinger, the High King, her father, had pulled her close and held her tightly as he whispered truths in her ear that she would never forget for the rest of her life. “Because even the gods can be helpless to things, daughter. And we are not gods. We are powerful, so terribly powerful that we seem like gods to those who don’t know better, but we are not gods and if even the gods can be helpless to things, then we who are not gods have no choice but to accept that things have happened. But just because they have happened does not mean that we don’t have a chance to make things right.”
There was too much going on for an ordinary woman to have handled.
”We always have a chance to make things right.”
But Asina was not an ordinary woman. No daughter of the High King ever could be. Not because of who he was as a demon and a king. Not because of his power. Not because of who he was as a tarrying force to be reckoned with. Not because of any of that, but because of who he was as a father. Her father.
So as the world began to shatter and become unfocused, as her dead limb grew cold and heavy at her side, Asina centered herself, adjusted the grip on her weapon, and kept herself steady.
”And when the world grows hazy, always remember that chaos is never spawned in a vacuum. There will be a source of all the confusion, a central point, and if you get to that and destroy it, all will become clear enough to sort out.”
---
Zanen watched Danalli and knew that something was wrong the moment that she looked away from him. That little seed of darkness was planted the moment she began to respond to that wretched witch, and as the moments ticked by, as he felt Danalli, his Light, draw away from him, he knew. Something was wrong.
Something was terribly, obscenely wrong.
---
”N..noir…”
She listened as a warrior, not a woman. As a sovereign, not a mate. But there was nothing she could do not to listen as a Parallel, not to feel as a Parallel. There was just too much there, and there are just some things that one does not ignore, cannot ignore, and has every right to acknowledge when it is regarding their Parallel. That was a bond that was just too deep.
And because of that bond, there was no ignoring the sense of kin between Noir and Ciel. There were no bluffs here, no lies, no illusions. Noir was Ciel’s daughter, back from the dead. His offspring who followed in the image of the woman he had once loved. A woman he had once loved and slaughtered. Without mercy.
But a demon scorned does not have any mercy. A berserker zephyr knows no mercy, knows only pain and suffering. Knows only blood and death, and retribution.
He’d slaughtered her, the woman he’d loved. Because he’d loved her?
Was that why he’d gone too far? Because he’d loved her so much, too much. Was that why his child hated him so much? Because he’d loved her so much that he’d gone too far?
”I pledged my soul so that you and your /pathetic/ aeon will suffer the rest of your existence in this world!” /Precious/ aeon?
Danalli.
She had not missed the feelings that had welled within Ciel when Danalli had returned, when she proved to be alive. When she’d subdued him and returned to him what had been nothing but a haze for as long as she had known him. Had Danalli not only taken everything from Ryell, but from her as well? After this was over and someone finally beheaded that jabbering wretch, would she be finding herself three steps back. Back where she was after Merik betrayed her? Once again the source of something too dark to be embraced? Was that it? Was it because she wasn’t bright, wasn’t filled with fire and life. Barren. Cold, dark, barren. Evil. Was that really what she was? Evil?
And if she was?
Inside her, the woman began to scream and the demon raged, wanting to rise to that berserker and shred apart anything and everything that was causing this inner turmoil, all of this pain. She wanted to rip and tear. Slaughter. A weaker part of her wanted to weep, wanted to plead, wanted to try to take that little pool of light inside of her that was her ability to care and cherish so deeply that it was a detriment to herself and expose it. Reveal herself. The part that allowed her to get hurt over and over again because after almost two thousand years, she still loved.
But the queen in her snarled and grabbed the reigns. The queen in her chained the demon and smacked the woman so she could get a hold of herself. The queen in her reacted the second she began to waver and shut down all parts of her that felt or exuded emotion. Because now was not the time. Now was now her time. This was between Noir and Ciel. This was between Noir and Danalli. This was between Ciel and Danalli. This was between Danalli and Zanen. Between Zanen and the man who by being willing to sacrifice every demon in existence sacrificed the raves. This was between Danalli and her father.
All Asina could do, was watch. Helpless, but not unable to make it right when her time would come. And it would come.
So she retained herself a queen, but the feelings of the woman so deeply buried within were still too strong to allow her to meet Ciel’s eyes.
---
”I am sorry, Shadow…”
Her voice had trembled. Something was wrong. If this wretch was spewing lies, then Danalli shouldn’t be reacting like this. When Danalli had just been his sweet equine, perhaps. But Zanen held an aeon to a much different standard than a delavis, because the strength of will between the two creatures was as different as the depth of power. That isn’t saying that a delavis couldn’t be as strong-willed as an aeon, but it came with the territory being a celeste-dragon descendent to have that resolve as an aeon just as it did with the zephyrs being demon-dragon descendents.
Because it was in the power, it was in the blood. That strength and fury was there, and would never allow a simple little witch to speak such fallacies. Especially like this.
But Danalli’s voice trembled, which meant the witch was getting to her. Which meant that there was some truth in her words. Enough truth.
And none of what Noir was saying was a permissible truth. None of it.
Danalli turned to him then, and not since the loss of Ryell had he felt his heart hurt this much. It was sharp and immediate, a pain that cut deep and began to fester. When he’d thought Danalli had died –no, when she did die, he’d gone straight into that berserker, ready to kill and slaughter the source of his impending pain. The heartache he wouldn’t have begun to feel until after he had come out of the rage. Then he would have felt the suffering for a thousand years. But now? Now he felt it immediately, and it was a lot like when Ryell vanished. A slow realization that she was never coming back, that along with everyone else that he had loved save Asina, his family, friends… she was gone. He’d felt his heart break off piece by piece and dissolve into nothingness. Because he’d had the raves, then they were gone but he’d still had Ryell and his family… and then he had nothing. That’s what it felt like now. A slow and impending break. A painful annex of little parts of his heart, and it seemed like it hurt even more because the breaking parts were pink and new, just beginning to reform with the finding of his Light, the return of an old friend, the sudden changes today with Danalli returning to him and being pregnant with is child.
Pregnant. She was pregnant. It was a concept that struck him with such mixed feelings at the moment that it felt like a knife in his gut because this was his mate and child. His mate and child. He shouldn’t be having any sort of mixed feelings about his mate and child. But he was, and that hurt.
”A contract to get as close to officials of Tekania and an entire race... for one pitiful young soul…”
She’d been following her contract this whole time, blindly following it through the blood oath even when her memories were jumbled. Had they even been jumbled? Had he just been betrayed? Betrayed by the woman he loved, the woman he’d marked and made his mate, the woman he’d given his Seal, the mother of his unborn child?
There were so many questions and uncertainties swarming in his head right now he didn’t even know where to begin or what to think. The pain was a growing wake, slowly drowning him, the icy breath of it stealing away his lucidity one heartbeat at a time. But he was able to maintain himself. Not because of anything grand or because he was blessed with a power to defy his nature and not go berserk, as any zephyr would at this point, but because the would-be subject of his berserker was his mate. The would-be subject of his massacre held his Seal, which flavored her aura with what was almost a sedative to his wrath. It calmed him and subdued him in a forever balance with his own power. A constant ebb and flow. Because that was how the Kekenc Seal worked. Like opposing magnets that could adjust the strength of their magnetic fields according to each other’s. It was how demons could still scrimmage with each other, still cause pain to one another, yet be protected. If the bearer of the Seal isn’t actually in danger, it wouldn’t flare, but if the demon whom the seal had come from was near that edge, it would activate and keep the bearer safe.
The Seal was flaring now, and with the nature of the power, the only ones who would know it were Asina and Zanen himself.
Danalli was in her own world now, dealing with her own grievances with this Shiv’rae witch, sorrows that had to do with her dead father that Noir claimed was alive. Danalli’s dead father who was also the man who enabled that bitch to not only destroy the raves, but vanish the zephyrs and the aeons as well… because it was a variation on that ritual that had lead to it. A ritual he had given the enemy and performed to the beat of a hundred-thousand breaking hearts.
Her father was responsible for the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people, of innocents. Together, the two of them were the cause of the two major heartbreaks in his own life, and she was snarling at the witch for using them? Pregnant with his child, bearing his mark, the vessel for his Seal, and she thrusts her arm out to him and admits with fury on her tongue that she was the one: she was the one that /everything/ had been sacrificed for.
Zanen looked to the only person he could, and locked eyes with Asina –his Queen, his sister– and knew now what it felt like. Perhaps the situations were different, perhaps Danalli was spared the sin because she had been ignorant of it when he’d fallen in love with her, but it did not erase the hurt. Of finding out that all this time, he’d been sleeping with the enemy.
---
Asina saw it the moment his heart broke. Zanen’s eyes met her own, and she knew that now he understood her just a fraction of a bit more. Her previous mate had joined sides with her enemy and ripped the unborn child out of her belly. His current one was the daughter and defender of his sworn enemy –and was also currently carrying his son, a hostage in her womb.
---
He could do nothing, say nothing, until the Shiv’rae witch was dead and out of the way, because in his forcefully clear mind he understood that this was a private matter, one that he and Danalli needed to sort out in their own time. They needed to talk, and being a politician aided the contrary to his demon aversion to ‘just talking’.
But Danalli didn’t kill the witch. She let her fall to the ground as someone else appeared in the clearing.
Because Zanen was looking at Danalli, he knew who this man was even before she spoke his name, knew him even before the Abyss and his oath to a goddess flared with recognition. The power in his hand knew the flavor of his target, a part of the bargain he had struck a thousand years before, but it was the way Danalli’s face melted when she saw him that gave Zanen utter certainty as to who this man was. Who he was, and what he had done.
Danalli might have been protected by his Seal, but Ghatreg was not, and it was not Danalli he was thinking of when the realization clicked and he began to move forward.
No, he was not thinking of his mate. He was thinking of Razzi, the little avian girl who had been so young, so fresh, a new rave who had stumbled her way to him completely on accident. He was thinking of Jonas, the drunk bastard with the grace of the god of the rolling hills. He was thinking of all the lives that had been destroyed. He was thinking of vengeance.
The Abyss bloomed in his hand and he stepped forward. “You owe a debt, traitor,” he growled. “And it is time to pay your dues.”
And by the vow he had made a thousand years ago, all dues would be paid. [/center]
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Post by libellule on Oct 14, 2011 1:01:57 GMT -6
He watched, impassively as Danalli gripped the throat of Noir. She had been dead to him for too long for any of his emotions to resurface… To crave the want to protect her. She was a soldier of Liazh and she was his enemy. She was nothing to him now, whether life was considered sacred or not. He saw her as a threat, however shocking her being alive was. He had other priorities that outranked her tenfold. He had also weighed out any sort of rekindling the second she glamoured him, to manipulate him, to get deep down to his heart, to Asina. And she had succeeded. No he felt nothing for this witch who was bent or uprooted everything he’d come to love. She was no daughter of his…
It had been a little under a thousand years. Perhaps nine hundred… seven hundred. He couldn’t remember correctly. When he met them. Both Danalli and Ghatreg. He had never witnessed a bond of father and daughter so strong. And now… he had finally come to see why… This man gave everything for her. To see her live a life he had ‘saved.’ To give her a life he had greedily kept safe. Ciel could never do something like that for Noir. Never could he fathom giving his heritage for his own blood. But from the looks of it. Ghatreg had done it, with or without thinking, without consideration of the thousands… hundreds of thousands.
He remembered the tears he had shed one night when she told him the very story after Ghatreg had been taken, ‘killed.’ Before her memories faded altogether and they forgot each other entirely. To know that he belonged to many, /many/ others. He did not feel any rage for once in his life, just sorrow. He lost count of the hours they had held each other for the loss neither of them truly understood. The sheer magnitude of destruction Ghatreg had caused for her… Danalli’s wails and anguish that night they struck his own heart and it was all he could do but hold her close as the wracking of her body seemed endless.
They came… to find Danalli to ensure she would finish the job as Ghatreg had with his own. He had them on the move for decades, changing their location until finally… the scouts found them. And as Ghatreg turned to face the horde that aimed to take them, Ciel remembered what he had said.
Protect her, Ciel… Protect Raijah, my daughter.
And he turned to the warriors of Liazh, Ciel dragged her away, on horseback and fled. The only retreat he’d made in his existence. And it had not been an easy one, not with Danalli fighting every tooth and nail to get back to Ghatreg, to fight with him. They’d gotten so far by nightfall, when Danalli told him why they were being followed, why Ghatreg had been killed. Then when the sun broke that day, they looked at each other like strangers, memories wiped of the years prior and Danalli’s aura read clear delavis as her gender had. Noir was bluffing, Danalli didn’t have the collective power to erase her own mind and his… It was Ghatreg, perhaps before he was captured, to protect them. It was always Ghatreg.
And now, crouched beside his silent mate, he pushed back the nervous shiver that snaked down his spine as her limp arm hung limply in his periphral. He could feel his heart lurch and his rage simmer as his concern began to over power his attention. He had to… no he /needed/ to take her aside. To tell her everything. He was partially responsible for this ordeal and he had to make it right… He had to.
There was an opening in the folds of the clearing as a figure appeared. A figure he grew to know as a mentor, as an old friend. Someone who protected his young soul as well. He watched as Danalli registered him instantly and he could almost feel her heart break, because deep in his own chest, his was slowly spiderwebbing. The very man he’d come to look up to had in fact destroyed his race… his kin.
Ghatreg broke his gaze with Danalli, who had seemed to stop breathing, to stare directly into his golden eyes. A sadistic smirk flittered about the sentenced man as he regarded him. “You kept your promise. I knew you would…”
Ciel’s lips began to move, but no words came out and it seemed to Ghatreg that that was amusing. The fire priest turned back to his daughter. -
Eight hundred, seventy three years, thiry nine days, six hours… Since he had seen her face. His kin, his family, his child, his love. The only thing that had mattered to him. The only thing that he had praised the great goddess for, the thanks he gave her with every step of Dance his feet had ever given the ground. His Danalli, /the/ MorningStar.
He had been trapped in the clearing, between illusion and glamour, made to watch the scene unfold. Made to watch Danalli wither and fall, made to watch Noir turn Zanen against her… He watched her work, watched her succeed unable to do anything, even when she released him.
There was rage, oh was there rage. But his body, tormented and torture for centuries could no longer will it to the surface. He had been made weak, though his spirit remained stronger. He doubted he could speak until he saw her face, it gave him hope… Danalli always gave him hope, light, shimmering like a beacon he could always reach. He had held onto the light, held onto the only way he knew she could be safe, away from her promise, away from danger. The enchantment he tucked into her mind, that he’d braided into her thoughts. To hide her and keep her as far away from Tekania until she, herself, could kill the remaining Shiv’Rae and nullify the unfinished bond. But it seemed someone else had brought her close.
Zanen’s words were promising. An eternity of darkness and suffering… He had willingly signed up for it. He had been waiting for it. But for this one moment he ignored them.
“You’re beautiful,” he began with a whisper, watching her flinch, “More than I remember… Don’t you remember what I told you, MorningStar? That when you find him that you should trust him for what he is… he’ll be the greatest, the strongest because that’s what you were made for, destined for…” His voice was soft, barely audible as his gaze held her realizing eyes and her trembling lips. “I should have known you’d find him on your own, by chance, but I thought I was keeping you safe… It was only a matter of time I suppose. It was like keeping you away from your own mind, your own soul…” He chuckled as he watched her drop her head slowly as he knew she understood him. -
Delavis… Amnesia… short term memory loss… her altered past… his cover.
It was all coming together, piece by piece. Ameghda was her home. It had always been her home. She’d been born on its shores centuries ago and danced her soul into its earthen embrace. It was the holder of MorningStar and her people. The love she had for them was unbreakable and unbearably overwhelming. She would never try to destroy, never attempt to make it crumble. Lilani was a treacherous witch that deserved a fate darker than death. A fate she could not even fathom.
Asina… was a woman she saw as a friend, as an ally. As someone she could trust with anything, with her life. She had known this a thousand years ago. She had known all of this, sworn herself to Ameghda entirely. How could she undermine her people? Her beloved kingdom? She couldn’t. Couldn’t bear it. She would have rather been tortured for the days she was, rather been beaten and whipped for hours upon hours as she had been. But then… they put Ghatreg on the chopping block and she felt her heart sink. They couldn’t take him from her and they wouldn’t if she gave a blood oath to Laruu… With the thought of slaughtering every last Shiv’Rae for their treachery, with the thought of protecting her father and her people, with the thought of never learning an official’s name, never coming close to the city of Tekania, Danalli pledged her blood oath. She would kill them all before she could do any damage… and free herself and her father for good. She had saved him…
But then… he’d uttered those words. Those fated words. And she knew… Her plan was going to have to change… And then her memories faded and she found herself in the arms of the most powerful official in Relmalir. Zanen…
’ ‘You will understand why it is so important to let a demon protect his treasure, my dear. He is trained to love you and protect you to the best of his ability… Let him exercise his skill, Morning Star. He will be taught well, because you will only be given the best…’
He knew… She realized as he finally spoke to her, reminding her of this memory. He was the cause of her memories… the loss of them, the hollow emptiness inside of her. He was trying to keep her from Tekania when she had chanced upon fate and found the one she was created for… A shadow for her everlasting light. Ghatreg had known… She dropped her head, taking a deep breath before lifting it up to look at him, but he had regarded Ciel. His gaze returned to her in mere moments.
“I..” she spoke lightly, fragilely, “was not, could never be, could come close-“ He silenced her with a frigid calm tone. “It was not your choice.” What was done had been done and there could be no undoing… - Ghatreg turned to face the obsidian eyes of his executioner, his black lethal hand promising an eternity of anguish, agony, torture, and suffering. The demon that held her heart. He had seen her face. He had smelt her soul for one last time. That had been enough. She would not save him this time, he was no longer the most important being in her life. Her priorities had changed as had her loyalties. The most precious love of his could not save him this time. He knew. This was the way he had wanted it to be.
“I have waited, Oracle,” he said calmly, his eyes kindling a fire one last time, “For your torment for a very long time…” - She watched. She could only watch as he turned, defenseless, to Zanen. To Zanen, whose hand had become a claw so dark and voided it was abyssal in every since. Danalli could attempt to come between them, she could hold off the inevitable and cut Zanen even more than she was certain she already had. She could be selfish and protect Ghatreg, dance with him for one last time and run like they had…
But it was time to face the music. It was time to put an end to suffering and all those who needed to be mourned and avenged. She could not stop this. She could not stop or hold him off as she was certain the Seal would allow her to do. But it was a power she could not evoke. How could she? Zanen was her missing piece, her soul’s mate. She had found him and though her love for her father had been far greater in the past… Things were different now. The Raves were not just Zanen’s people… They were his soul, his livelihood. He had to avenge them. And her devotion and loyalty to the father of her child, of Zane… Her heart’s true love and her true protector… She could not stop him from taking back what was his just as she had just done.
She was spared one last loving glance from him as Ghatreg faced his fate, a fate he’d known the second her made up his mind. Her heart cracked, though her tears never showed and her lips finally stopped trembling. She could not defend him, nor free him. His fate had been decided. This was her sacrifice. This was what Baelli had told her in that space between heaven and life… Ghatreg… she had to give up Ghatreg. A warmth heated the side of her face as a red tendril of hair fluttered into view, one of her silver white locks had been colored a blood crimson, the color of Baelli. This was her payment for life… For Zane. For Zanen.
The death of her father… A sting slid across her bicep before she could react quick enough. A thin sharp blade, cutting deeply into her skin. Noir… “You didn’t forget about me did you…” her hiss was near her ear as her instincts and reflexes took control. The blade had a fiery bite to it and she felt her left arm numb slightly as red thick liquid streamed down her forearm. Poison. Noir had just signed her death contract… permanently. With her right hand, she grabbed Noir’s hand around the hilt of the dagger and pulled it free. In one swift motion, the aeon spun to her right, a beginning of a lethal strike that was almost a dance it was so graceful. The point of the dagger found Noir pristine white neck and embedded it self deep across the width, a gapping slit painting that skin a beautiful vermillion as the surprised witch gurgled helplessly and crumbled to the ground, blood pooling around her and seeping into the dirt.
Danalli discarded the dagger, flipping it into the ground. “May the gods show you no mercy…”
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Post by Willow on Oct 14, 2011 21:03:16 GMT -6
Here appeared the wretched and the damned. There was no mistaking it, the man that had just appeared was the same that she had seen in her vision so many months ago, the one that had inspired her to revoke Zanen’s Seal so that he could give it to Danalli. This was that person.
Oh, but he was so much more than that. He was the one who had been willing to give up everything for one soul. One person. Perhaps it had been a sun-blessed child, the daughter of Baelli, but it was still just one person. He had sacrificed that which was not his to sacrifice. He had stolen lives, loves, power, dreams. Everything, he had done for her. It was as disgusting as it was touching. How many times had Asina sat there and thought that she would give up anything to be able to hold her baby in harms just once. It was a kind of love that was unfathomable to anyone who wasn’t a parent. A kind of love that surpassed all.
But just because it was love didn’t make it right, and as much as she could understand the feeling, she could not find it in herself to forgive that. What he had done was not brave or commendable. It may have been done out of love, but that didn’t change what he had done, nor did it make his choice the slightest bit more forgivable. When Asina looked at him, yes, she saw a father who had protected his child and a demon defending his territory.
What she also saw was a coward and a weakling. She saw someone who only knew how to give up and give in. She saw someone without honor. He loved his daughter, yes, but he was honorless and unworthy. Asina could find nothing to respect about him. A part of her wanted to. A very small part of her that was a mother who had never gotten to hold her baby boy wanted sympathize with him, wanted to understand on that same level. In Ghatreg she saw everything that she hated and despised. She saw an elitist who was not conscious of his sins, someone who thought that he had done ‘the right thing’. She saw a man that was willing to throw away the lives of so many and destroy those of so many more because he couldn’t do more or do better. Because there were other avenues. There were always other avenues, and if he couldn’t find one then he just wasn’t looking hard enough. And even if there were no other options… No, what he had done was most definitely not permissible, and he deserved every droplet of hell that he was about to receive.
Asina took in a deep breath and forced herself to calm, and in that calm found herself realizing that she was more personally involved in this than she had earlier let herself believe. It was him, the one responsible for the suffering of her last remaining family. There was already animosity brewing within her toward this traitor for being the one who’d single-handedly taken down the raves and put her last remaining family into a thousand-year depression, but upon seeing him there –in the flesh– a deeper and more personal hatred began to brew. Perhaps it had been lurking inside of her all this time anyway, but she had never let it touch her before now because she’d always had the main target in mind. Lilani was her enemy, her true enemy, and there was so much hatred there that she just didn’t have the room to aim any of the blame on anyone else.
But when she saw him standing there it hit her so forcefully that she let out a low and rumbling snarl. Ghatreg the Betrayer was the one who enabled the Priestess of Light to enact the Second Purge, an act of genocide that resulted in the imprisonment of all zephyrs and aeons within the Forest of Lost Souls, though until very recently the belief was that they had all been wiped out. The blame that usually fell on him was the loss he had directly cause –that of the raves. But it was his surrender, his working with the enemy, that allowed Lilani and her council to decipher the ancient ceremony and corrupt it.
He corrupted it. He’d committed an act of heresy, polluted his own religion. He’d destroyed his own people, and then because of him, Lilani had nearly destroyed hers. Oh sure, he hadn’t meant to destroy the raves. No, he’d only meant to destroy all demons. All demons.
But this wasn’t between her and Ghatreg. This was between him and Zanen. This was Zanen’s justice, and she would hold her tongue and let him have it. Dammit, he needed this. He deserved it. He deserved to have his justice, his closure, his revenge.
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For a thousand years he had waited for this moment to appear. The moment where he avenged the lives that had been destroyed and those that had been lost because of this traitor. Because the raves had been cut off from each other. The Day of Vanishing Souls. They’d felt the cut the moment it had happened. Almost everyone had at least passed out. For many, the cut was too much and they dropped dead right then and there. For everyone else, the awoke the next morning to find themselves utterly and completely, terrifyingly, alone. Alone in a way that most of them had never been before because for as long as any of them could remember they had always met the sunrise with the beating of thousands of other hearts. And when this happened, mates looked over at each other and found themselves in bed with strangers, feeling an empty and hollow pain of something missing that should be there. A connection that should be there, bringing them together. That hollow ache was enough to drive some of them mad. Many lost all of their memories if all they had known was being a rave. These people became wanderers and vagabonds, able to feel things no one else could but being unable to commune with it. Thanks to Asina he had avoided that pain, but he had also been cursed with the aftermath.
But Zanen was not going to wade in that aftermath any longer. No. Justice would be done, and it would be done right. It would be done now.
Zanen stepped forward with the pure essence of the Abyss pooling eagerly in his right hand. It filled the air with something both hot and cold at the same time, something that seemed to leech the life out of the very air itself and anything connected to it. That which is World and Life cried out at its manifestation, clawing at the senses of anyone with the ability to know it. The wrongness he had conjured seemed to feed off of the anxiety that it had wrought. It thrived not on emotion or energy, but hollowness. It fed on the empty. It swallowed the nothingness that pooled within the hopeless and dragged them deeper into the gravity of the Abyss itself. For a thousand years That-Which-Is-Not had been festering within the deepest and most hidden parts of Zanen’s soul. It had been feeding, waiting for the moment where it would finally be set free, for the moment that it would finally be able to fulfill it’s delicious and most appetizing purpose. Oh yes, the emptiness held its own hunger, a type of terrible voraciousness that could only consume and abolish, leaving nothing in its wake or in its presence. Because the Abyss both existed and didn’t exist.
It just was [/b]. Zanen looked at Ghatreg, and he felt a thousand years of hollowness spread within him, suffocating his soul as it fed the Abyssal manifestation congealing in his hand. The eyes that looked at Ghatreg held nothing. No heat, no sympathy, absolutely nothing. He let the Abyss possess him. He let it ride him and use his body as a vessel for its vacuum. He did not tear into the man with his hands. He did not snarl, nor was there red in his eyes. Facing Ghatreg now, the berserker faded so that it was not the demon that destroyed Ghatreg, it was the man. The rave. He reached out and placed that dark hand flat on the man’s chest, and felt the gravity of nothingness rip his soul right out of him. The body, because that’s all it was now, began to blacken and die, spreading out from the chest faster and faster the longer Zanen held his hand there –and Zanen did not remove his hand. Nor did he blink. He wanted to carve every last moment of this wretch’s visible agony into his memory forever. Ghatreg’s body continued to blacken like decay, but the skin became tough and hard and so terribly cold to the touch. Like stone. Heavy and dead, soulless and marred with a taint that could never be scrubbed away. Zanen flexed his hand, digging it into the hard, chipped surface of the dying man’s chest to kept him upright as the process continued. He watched the last bit of awareness in his eyes contort and flicker within his eyes. He drank in that agony, amethyst eyes at once dispassionate and flickering with a vengeful fire as he kept that last sliver of the traitor’s soul in his body so that he could feel it die around him. Watched as that face was carved into a forever expression of sheer agony as the black stone became all that he was. When there was nothing left, Zanen let go and stepped back, watching as the body of a worthless, honorless traitor fell dead to the ground. --- It was almost over. Asina took in a deep breath and steadied herself physically, testing the balance of her gate with the dead arm before she moved slowly toward Zanen. She was about to do something that she wasn’t even sure was in her power. “Zanen.” Her voice was soft and controlled, but it sounded so terribly loud in the suddenly completely silent clearing. When he didn’t respond, only lifted that Abyssal hand of his and looked at it in a strange, considering way, she spoke again. “Zanen.” This time it was louder, and she reached out to touch his shoulder. He jumped and turned to face her so fast that if she hadn’t moved out of the way, he would have smacked her in the face with the Abyss. He didn’t seem to even notice that. He looked dazed, as if he wasn’t all there. Like he was hollow. But Asina smiled at him and shook her head. “Vengeance has been done, brother. It is time to give back that taint. Time to fill up what you allowed to grow hollow and empty. Time to move forward and rebuild.” Zanen was impassive. Motionless. Hollow. Empty. Asina seemed unfazed. Then she reached forward with her good hand and touched the center of his chest. In her head she said a silent prayer. Saeliir, goddess of the moon and all that is sheltered within the glow and shadows of its embrace, please guide me.Her power gathered like an ever-expanding pool of warmth. It was everything that was opposite of the Abyss. It was passion and fire, fear, hatred, love. It was loneliness. It was pain. Asina pushed it into him, forcing it to fill up the space that the Abyss had hollowed out so that it could fester and grow, so that it could deliver the vengeance that would equivocate to what the victim had done. Zanen gave a sudden gasp and the Abyss drained from his hand so fast that it left him unsteady. But the color returned to his face, his eyes became focused. Life returned to him, and the last thing Asina saw as her vision went black and her knees gave out, were the tears and panic on his face, the pain and the fear, as he turned to Danalli. --- “Well, that was a stupid thing to do,” a warm alto murmured in the darkness. “Something’s gotta be said for winging it,” Asina attempted to croak back, but to little avail. The voice still laughed. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. Anyway, expect a visit from me very soon, Asina. There is something I must tell you, but not is not the best of times.” A sigh. Asina sighed, too. With irritation. “Of course there is.” “Hey, don’t you take that tone with me young lady,” the voice returned, and the humor in it made Asina want to smile, but as she wasn’t even sure whether or not she had a body at the moment, she didn’t bother trying. “Okay, /mother/,” Asina retorted in her best snippy-adolescent impression. The voice of the goddess laughed. “Right, now I best be going. But before I do, someone has something to say to you.”
Something to say to her? In a dream? Wait. No, this wasn’t a dream, that’s right… The Abyssal hand, winging it. Asina had poured all of her power into Zanen to evict the Abyss from him without knowing what it would do to her. A goddess had put that power in him, and as a very wise king had once told her, she was not a god.
“Asina.”
That voice. A deep, rich voice. The voice of the woodlands and dark mountains. The voice of fireside laughter and distantly-remembered lullabies.
“I am so proud of you, Asina. I am so very, very proud of you.”
Asina tried to say something back, but having no body, she had no voice. Then, it all faded. Everything just… faded.--- Her body was crumpled and limp on the ground, and for a long moment there was no beat from her. No pulse, no breath of life. Then there was a strong presence, wild and deep. Demon and other, like Asina, but male. The energy in the air seemed to rumble at a low pitch, but no words could be heard. Then Asina took a small breath, then another. A few tears rolled down her cheeks, and her lips parted, trembling, although her consciousness did not return. Then her lips moved and her breath came out as a wheezed whisper, her voice cracked, struggling. “Papa?”[/size][/center]
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Post by libellule on Oct 15, 2011 1:02:38 GMT -6
Why…?
She found herself in constant mystery and misery, slowly swinging between them. A pendulum that only knew back and forth. How could she have been worth it all? A nation. Every darkened, tainted creature… Every raging, firestorming soul.
How could she have been worth it all? She could never come any close.
She would have died for them. She would’ve been honored as they ripped her apart. She would have craved their blades and their torture for the cousins of her heritage. She would have embedded a thousand poison filled daggers into her body, one by one as her strength weakened and her veins were no longer filled with blood, but lethal essence that would have consumed her. For them. For her demons. For Sasha, the most amazing dancer of her clan. For Revae, the first to kiss her and instill fluttery emotions in her. For Ingir, Ferai, Loki, Fenris… Her demons. The loves and fires of her spirit. Her people.
Danalli felt her shoulders shuddered as she remembered their faces as if she’d seen them yesterday as if she awoke to their smiling, coy faces and had sat, played, with them after their daily morning dance to wave their kisses and love to their sun. Then she remembered their cold barren bodies, one by one as they fell, like cattle, to those soldiers. She had been the last one. Fighting until her last breath, broken and weakened… Alone.
The way she saw it, one of their lives was worth ten, a hundred of hers. She would have been more than content dying and being cut down in the line of fire to allow them to survive, to get away. To live one breath longer than her…
Not that anyone knew that truth. No one would believe her now. No one would love her or cherish her. She was outcasted by lies and truths, the two too braided within each other to pull them apart. All this time, from life to death and back again Danalli had fought to appease this hollow emptiness inside of her. This… missing piece that cut her, weakened her, broke her from within. She had it, she had herself again. She had tasted and cried out in the bliss. In what it felt like to be whole again.
In the years, the centuries of mindless wanderings and cataclysmic resets it was what she had been searching for. This feeling of wholeness, of warmth and protection, it was what she fought for, what she killed for, what she forced her self to live for as they beat her and tried to take her spirit. The men that took everything from her. The woman who caused the fall of her clan, her kingdom, her father. It no longer fell just on Noir’s shoulders, nor on Laruu’s. But Lilani’s.
No matter the end result of this day, Danalli knew of all those lost to her. She would start, begin a reign of fire, and crush all those who were involved in this thousand year old plot. She would decimate the souls that had come forth to see the demise of the demons, her most precious friends and family. And she would start with the one person she knew all too well. She would blaze an inferno and she would watch every single one melt within it.
Clear chocolate orbs, had faded from the coolant blue her aeon ascendance bestowed about her. The smell of her own blood drenching her arm never reached her nose, the pain absent. The poison wasn’t strong, her body would reject it in a few hours, but it would hinder the healing for a short while. There was an itch at her wrist, a light scraping of skin as she looked down at it, the mark of her blood oath, the singed scar was slowly dissolving into clear flawless skin. Noir… The Shiv’Rae… she had done it! She had killed the last remaining of those black-hearted witches.
Danalli’s triumph was short lived at she felt a sharp tug on her heart, a rip. Whirling back around, a fist seemed to knock the wind out of her stomach as she wheezed and, once again, crumpled to her knees. It seemed the world had grown silent and slowed, it eerily reminded her of those moments between her life… and her death. Though nothing was spewing a sound, decibels of the world about her couldn’t reach her ears, smells couldn’t be added to her palette and nothing but blackness and death filled her vision. Blackness and death of the one she once held most dear.
His blackened, tarnished form fell, tumbled ungracefully into a heap of sinew and hardened ashen hide. His lungs had taken breath mere moments before to tell her the final truth of his motives… of his feelings. And now…
The last unchained aeon found no words to utter, no emotion to unleash, nothing. Her blank unchanging eyes could only stare at the heap that had once been her closest and dearest ally. Fire, personified. Her energy, her magnitude, her weapon, her beauty. Light bestowed so much energy to the world, but it was peaceful and graceful. It loved and forgave, it gifted, granted warmth and assurance. And its Fire ushered in strength and perseverance. Without Fire… Light was near unarmed, just an ember awaiting its cooling smoke, waiting for Darkness to consume it.
Her right hand had clamped onto her shoulder as her left hand had wrapped protectively around her stomach, a shield, as she dropped her head. There was a pain so absolute, so true, that bloomed from her chest and spread through her body. He was gone this time, his soul already dragged in the dredges of the Abyss, suffering for her. For her! She was not worth it. She should have died. “I..,” she whispered through broken breaths in her black reverie filled with the image of his death over and over, “should have…”
Her shoulders were quaking as the inside of her was breaking apart, shattering into billions of pieces. Alone… all alone. She hadn’t noticed she’d been hyperventilating until a flash of red appeared in her line of vision. That sole tendril, a brilliant contrast to her unsaturated tresses, and behind it… Beautiful amethyst eyes. Zane’s eyes. The eyes of her most beloved creature. The murderer of her father and the father of her unborn son. Her mate, her soul’s other half. The man she had been trying so hard to stay away from, to protect from herself, but was now the weakest he could ever be to her.
His broken visage made every piece inside of her fall harder, break even more and the pain… the agony. How could she start? How could she explain? Would he listen? Would he find a way to kill her before her knew the truth? Would he believe the truth?
“Zanen,” she pleaded brokenly, her voice broke as her wet face bowed to the ground, her soul on her lips, her love on her lips. How could she make him see?
She would not allow her sacrifice to be in vain. Everything was for him, for his son, for her family. She had to make him see…
or everything would be for nothing. -
He watched and tried to not allow emotion to display across his face. He tried not to let it show just what this ‘traitor’ meant to him. He tried to contain his pain and anguish into apathy, into enigmatic observance. But it was useless.
What this man had taught him, what he helped Danalli do… Ciel looked down to his shackle, to the restraints of what had once been a chain to her. From her. How many times had he tried to kill her? How many times had he craved the warm blood on his tongue as her form, her color faded helplessly to his onslaught and rage? Too many that’s what. His emotions and his untamed, unrestrained power could never be matched until… until he met her and her empathy.
He was lost in blood and lost in a shallow meaningful life. She fought through his rage, fought against himself and his bloodlust. They both fought to find him, Ciel, not just a raging demon. And for the years they spent traveling with each other, she found it and his apathy, fell away with ease. Ghatreg never gave up on him, neither did ‘Nalli.
So try as he might to hold back his emotions, his restraints were stronger this time. They were traitors that fell from his eyes. Traitors he had not seen for hundreds of years. Liquid crystals that stained lines on his dirt and blood splattered face.
To watch his mentor fall to the Abyss. To watch his kin suck every piece of life from him. It froze his thoughts. How could he let this happen?
There was movement to his left and soon he smelt blood that had a bite of his own flavor. Noir. Danalli had killed her. Something in his heart stirred as he accepted his child had found her fate, a fate driven by hate and darkness for all of the wrong reasons. What a waste of life.
But though he felt the ground quake, he could not take his eyes off of the blackness that spewed across Ghatreg’s body as he was reduced to nothing but a pile of contorted limbs and an excruciating expression. The Betrayer… The Traitor…
They would speak of him for years, for centuries… He had been made example by those powerful and strong. He had been made ‘weak’ by those that had sought to destroy him. But Ciel could not see him as that. Could not see him as weak or as a heap of withering ashy loam. He watched the death of a strong man, of a creature, who exercised his strength and was caught in the middle of a war, with a weakness that was too bright to miss. A weakness that was too bright to be destroyed.
Asina broke his train of thought as she struggled to walk towards Zanen. Ciel took a step forward, as she reached a hand out to him, the blackened Oracle. A snarl tore from his throat as he pushed everything from him and focused finally, clearly, on her.
Zanen’s hand had almost touched her, sucked the life from her. And then… he felt her power transition and waited for it to stop, waited and pleaded for it to halt and leave something inside of her. His heartbeat quickened as he felt nothing left in her as it filled Zanen into reality, back to reality.
Her body stumbled and he felt his breath catch in his throat and the fear drop into his stomach. The ice… it covered him, doused him in terror as her body hit the ground. He was at her side in moments and her body was cradled in his arms faster than that.
Papa?
He placed his face into the crook of her neck, a soft sob falling from him, his massive arms holding her so tightly. “Asina Asina Asina Asina…,” he mumbled feverishly, manically, rocking her back and forth. There was a presence around her and all he could do was plead for her safety, plead for her life.
For his love.
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Post by Willow on Oct 16, 2011 13:47:53 GMT -6
It was… over?
A thousand years, and it was finally over. He had searched endlessly for the traitor to no avail. For centuries he had been tormented with this, only the thought of vengeance keeping him moving forward. The thought of vengeance, and duty. And then her. Danalli had come into his life, had given him new purpose, a light to his shadow, and suddenly he had been living for more than just revenge. Danalli had brought love into his life again, and she had also brought the raves back into his life. From that first moment when the sun had broken the horizon and he’d been hit full-force with the beat of her heart against his own, she had begun to heal him.
So it had all begun with Danalli. All of it.
The world suddenly stopped, literally frozen in time. He could see Danalli, but she wasn’t moving, and when he turned his head to look down at Asina and Ciel he saw that they, too, were completely motionless. The world had stopped. He didn’t have time enough to wonder why before his questions were answered –at least in a primary capacity. He turned toward a disturbance in the clearing, and for the first time in a thousand years, he laid eyes on a goddess. She was tall and sleek, and there was something feral and almost wolf-like in the way that she stalked forward in slow, graceful strides. Her long silver-white hair almost seemed to glow as it twined around her body, loose and free, and those eyes… an ethereal silver that looked all the way into his soul. They captured him, drew him in, stole his breath, and reminded him with a very fierce clarity that although he was one of the most powerful creatures in the realm, he was no god. The woman that was moving toward him could easily erase him from existence, and then she would drink down his soul as if it were nothing.
A goddess.
“Zanen,” she crooned to him, and there was an undercurrent of a threat in that sensual vocalization of coils of dark silk. “My lady,” he was immediately down on one knee, his head bowed to show reverence. “May I ask what is the occasion that you have chosen to grace us with your presence.”
The silver goddess snarled. “Do not attempt to play the innocent mortal with me, Zanen. You know very well that I am down here for you and only you.” She looked over at the scene of Asina and Ciel and shook her head, giving a small sigh. Now was not that time. She had done what she could for Asina, and her fate would depend on the care of her mate after this. Turning back to Zanen, she straightened herself and brushed her hands down the front of her long white dress. “Do not think that I do not keep an eye on you, ShadowSpawn. Especially now, at such a pinnacle moment for you. You finally got your vengeance, finally served your justice. You also almost got eaten alive by the Abyss that you fed for the past thousand years. Had your queen not acted when she did, you would have joined Ghatreg in the Abyss, per the deal we made a thousand years ago.”
That was right. That was the bargain he had struck. The power to send the traitor into the Abyss, and in return his own soul would meet the same fate.
“Aha, so you seem to understand now, don’t you?” She shook her head and gestured to the immobile Asina in the arms of her Parallel. “Your queen near sacrificed herself to save you, do you know why?”
Zanen swallowed and looked from Asina to the goddess, and when she remained silently staring at him he realized that she actually expected him to answer her. “Because she is my family, and a just queen,” he murmured softly.
Saeliir laughed, and it was not a pleasant sound. “Do not tell me you seriously believe that idiocy! Because she is family, yes, she tried to save you. If it were because she were a ‘just queen’ although she is that, she would have let you be dragged into the Abyss as per our bargain. But she did more than just try to save you, little shade, she pushed all of her life into you to banish the Abyss. ‘Winging it’ she calls it…” She shook her head with an exasperated sigh. “That girl…” she grumbled to herself. “No, you want to know why she didn’t stop herself when her power was draining, when her life was draining?”
Zanen could only nod mutely.
Saeliir glided over to where Danalli, looking so stricken and in endless misery, stood frozen in time. Then she gently touched her stomach and as she pulled her hand away a stream of soft golden light followed. That light pooled in her hand and she crossed to Zanen and held out her cupped hands. Floating in the light was an image of an infant baby boy.
“Danalli is not to blame for what happened, Zanen. Ghatreg was. Yes, she loved him, he was her father, as you are to be a father soon as well.” Her voice was more gentle now, kind and understanding, motherly. “Do not throw away your future for the discrepancies of the past.”
Zanen was in shock, and he could not look away from that beautiful baby boy. His son. His and Danalli’s son… And then he understood. When he looked up to thank the goddess, she was gone, and the world returned to life.
The only thing that he could do at that moment was reach out. He enveloped her in his arms and held her tight to his body. “Danalli…” he croaked. “I am so happy you are alive… Do me a favor and never die again. The world would not survive what I would do to get you back…”
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The blackness was heavy and thick, almost suffocating, but it was fading. It was growing lighter, falling away piece by piece as if someone were digging her out of death itself. There was a vague awareness now, the awareness of pain and weakness –which oddly enough made her flutter with relief, because pain and weakness meant life. She was alive.
I swear it Zanen, you are going to be the death of me one of these days… Which she supposed was only fair, as how many times had she almost killed him or caused him to be killed? Too many to count, that was for sure. In the two thousand years that she had known him, especially in all the time that he had had his Seal on her, he had nearly sacrificed his life for her own on so many occasions. She supposed it was about time she paid him back.
But she was still mad at him. If only because it made her feel just a bit stronger.
~At least open your eyes, little queen, you’re going to scare your poor mate into an early deathbed.~ Yes, /mother/. ~I love you too, dear. And don’t be stupid. Let him take care of you for a while, not only your life depends on it…~ What?
There was no response, and her awareness suddenly broadened. Cold, she was so cold… and her body was screaming at her. Before she could try to stop herself she was coughing roughing and violently, blood dotting her lips and all over Ciel, whose arms she now realized her holding her close. She could hear him, too, murmuring her name over and over again. Something in her chest softened and she tried to cling to him with her good arm, but she just didn’t have the strength. All she could do was lean into him.
“C-Ciel…” she croaked. “I…I…” another violent coughing fit “…got… blood all over… you…” Her body was shaking with the force of her coughing and the sudden chill that she was cloaked in. She just wouldn’t stop shaking. “A…shame… I really… like this…shirt…” [/center]
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Post by libellule on Oct 17, 2011 0:20:19 GMT -6
”I am so happy you are alive…”
It had been the first time she felt hands on her that were not father or her enemy in what seem like such a long time. She had died… Her heart had stopped and her soul had ascended to a fold in space and time where space and time didn’t exist, where worlds at war were not welcome and the time of days weren’t recorded.
The home of the gods, the residents of the heavens and celestial paradise.
She had rested and existed on its shores for days, months it seemed. Her and Zane. Their souls grew together as they had died together and she had forgotten what hands around her felt like. Danalli had forgotten Zanen entirely because he did not exist in her paradise, he wouldn’t have been remembered had it not been for Baelli and… his shades. Those shades that comforted her in a cold darkness, shadows that caressed her when he was away. They made her remember in the rare shadows, in her shade filled dreams with her precious little heir tucked into her. A little ShadowSpawn.
He brought them to her, those shades, with the piece of Zanen that was apart of him. They found her because of Zane… And now she felt them fully once again as much as she felt the tiny heartbeat of him in her womb. Her son. Her descendant, the result of her love and sacrifice. Paradise had released two souls back to the world for the price of one to suffer in the Abyss.
It had been too long, through too many emotions and tumultuous endeavors, without him, without his comfort and strength. Her strength, her aeon spirit had returned to her, but her heart was weak and broken, fragile. She felt defenseless against the onslaught Noir had laid before her, before all of them to see and observe, to soak in and allow it to sate unanswered questions and desires. She could not defend the truth, could not explain without hurt without slicing through those she loved.
She had thought that without her explanation, without her reasoning, she would be cast aside, menacing glares and vicious threats at her left and right. But then… in her misery, in her grief, and most importantly, her loneliness there was a light and this time it did not come from her. It came from a warm, protective, loving set of arms. A sweet lull in the darkness, a croon, a caress.
”I am so happy you are /alive/…”
This time she heard it, truly heard it as he whispered, solidly what he would do without her. The floodgates disintegrated. Her guard dropped and the solemn, the misery and the drowning fear at the pit of her stomach fell away… Because he held her, he held her with such a true embrace that she couldn’t control the overwhelming emotions. She couldn’t control her actions. She fell into him, needing to be surrounded by his essence. All of him.
They streamed, those tears, as she wrapped her arms around his neck and the back of his head, burying his face into the side of hers, his mark, finding that flat sinew on his chest she always rested on when she slept. It was an instantaneous movement, like the feel of him; the touch of him was breath and life in her and she had to hold on for fear of it leaving her... again. Hysterical could attempt define the way her body shook, the convolutions that took over her as her grip tightened around him as if she’d never leave him.
She never would.
It was a bittersweet love. She was alive, alive with her mate and her son, safely shielded by her reborn power. Her awoken spirit, bright and writhing from a millennium long nap. But he had taken a life from her, a life that saved her and ensured her existence and the possibility of just being. Against every odd, against every evil that wanted to consume her Light. But she couldn’t save him as he had her, couldn’t protect him against the Shadow, the love, her devoted. But Ghatreg had known… and done all of this anyway. His debt was paid, was being paid, for her to live and be everything she could be… To be a lover, a free spirit, a mother… She could not wallow in darkness or the unbloomed loathe… She could never push Zanen away for his deed, because it was not a selfish act, it was the act of many taken into his sole hand. It was above and beyond her and she would accept it, she had to.
“I would never forsake you,” she whispered through blinded tear-filled eyes, broken chords, between her trembling lips and her sobs, “I would never give you or Asina or any demon to her. I would never give anyone… I would never… I would never… Laruu… Noir… they… I…”
Her words were reduced to out right wails and weeping as she tucked her face into the leather of his armor and shook with grief. She was rambling, pull taught and beginning to unravel. She wanted to explain everything but only syllables and short words came out in the wrong order. -
Her skin was cold, so frozen, when he held her to him. He felt his jaw locked tightly when he could hear a beat, couldn’t feel the flow of her blood under her skin. He couldn’t lose her, couldn’t be without her. She was his other half, his beautiful, ravenous mate, his Parallel.
For everything that had happened, everything that was unveiled and revived from his cold past… For every odd placed against him and the frigid shoulders the celestial beings had given him for his own actions… he pleaded. He asked with every fiber of his being, be his wishes heard or not, for something to breathe life in his maiden, his lady.
He would tell her everything. Now he could without any fuzzy haze, with clear memories. He could explain about Noir and Laruu. He could tell her of those rogue days, filled with Nalli and Ghatreg. Perhaps he wouldn’t talk to much about Ghatreg…
He could tell Asina the true story without lies, without misleading paths meant to rip them apart. Noir had greatly underestimated the bonds of her enemies… It appeared that her gypsy ‘encampment’ had already noted that before things got out of control having already retreated and abandoning her.
There were so many things to reflect on… Too many things that tried to enter his mind that he couldn’t let. Asina was the only thing he could focus clearly on.
Her skin was frozen and then… he felt it. He felt a tremor of light scathe down her skin. He gasped in relief as he sniffed and half-heartedly smirked. His fighter, the perfect woman. She fought through every obstacle, stood tall for all those who couldn’t, and she lived, wrestled against fate itself to live. His Asina.
A cough spurted from her, scarlet painted her pale skin. His thumb came up to brush across her lips, to brush it away. He had her cradled, an arm behind her back and the other on her arm, protectively guarding her useless limb.
Her coughing fits made him frown and that fear of loosing her spiked, filling him with a cold ice. But the strength her body moved with, the hum that was slowly rise with a small simmer, slowed his stuttering heart and silenced his murmurs of a lonely life.
She would overcome this and he would help her, take care of her. Like he promised her he would months before, but silently centuries long before that. Things could happen to his mate, things could happen to him, wounds and gashes, physically and mentally. Hindering things could happen and wonderful life filled things could happen, but death… Death would evade him and her for as long as he could keep it away.
Finally she spoke in a tender, weak voice and he tightened his protective embrace about her as she coughed once again, the taste of her blood and its smell lightly painting him. His skin was warm as he tucked her frozen face into his neck. His love was not lost to paradise, not to the sky, not on this day.
“I would have enjoyed that any other day, my dear. It’s alright,” he whispered in tear streaked tone, with a small twinge of comedic relief, “A shirt can be remade, the life of my Parallel… can not.”
He needed more heat… But he was fearful to let go of her to remove a shirt for fear of her falling back into unconsciousness. He noted Nightmare did not have riding tack at all… but perhaps the demon would radiate as much if not more heat than he did, if h. He may not respond but he could try…
“Nightmare,” he asked in a whisper to the mount, his face now tucked in her shoulder, pushing every bit of open skin to touch her shaking body, “Please help me warm her.”
Help me bring her back entirely.
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Post by Willow on Oct 17, 2011 15:02:22 GMT -6
Zanen would look back at this day as the beginning of a new life. The day the world returned to motion. For a thousand years his world had slowly been spiraling down, and every day that passed had him hanging on by a thinner and thinner thread, more frayed by the second. It had only been a matter of time and his oath, and then Danalli had come into his world and there had been so much more. Suddenly the sky held color again, and he could feel rhythm and fire in his steps when he siphoned himself off to Dance. His Art held flavor again, the sun felt warm.
He could feel the beat of another heart in his chest, and it was like his whole life had been kick-started. And for a while, he had been distracted, but the deep-rooted agony was still there. He couldn’t ignore it for long, and as lovely as his Light was, as much as she fulfilled him, it was only a matter of time before he remembered. Remembered the loss and remembered the suffering. Remembered the oath he had given, the bargain he’d made with a goddess to bring vengeance and serve justice for the raves, and the zephyrs and aeons too that had lost their worlds. One does not heal from a thousand years of pain, isolation, and harboring the Abyss within his own soul, from one encounter or even a few months with returned love –even a love as great as what Danalli had graced him with.
Because she was his. No matter what, she was still his. She brought the sunshine into his shadows. She was so pure, so true, and somehow she was his. There was a part of him that would probably never fully be able to wrap his head around that concept. She would know that he was utterly and completely hers, but that wonder that this magnificent creature, this woman of Light and purity, was his was something that his simple male mind could only be dazzled by. He would covet her, he would growl possession in her ear and mark it on her skin. He would hold her so close as if she could become one with him physically as they were spiritually, but that she was his would still elude him at times.
He snarled softly against her neck, the sound tickling her ear and resounding off the mark of possession on her neck. It was a sound of desperation and grief, a sound of love and possession, a sound of relief. He had almost lost her. Twice today he had almost lost her. Once when she’d… when she’d died, and again when he’d almost laid the blame on her shoulders for what had happened a thousand years ago, when she herself had probably barely come into her own power as an aeon. If the goddess had not interceded, he very well could have caused an irrevocable rift between them. But he hadn’t. The important thing was that he hadn’t, was that he had her now. Safe and whole, alive in his arms. Alive and his. Alive, his, pregnant…
His shoulders shuddered and he gripped her to him tighter if that were even possible. His voice cracked when he spoke. “I thought I’d lost you. Both of you…” He pulled back just enough to look at her face, raising both hands to smooth her hair back and look into those aeon-blue eyes of hers. Then he leaned in and kissed her fiercely, first on the forehead, and then a claim to her lips.
“Come on Danalli, my Light,” he whispered, holding her tight again. “Let’s go home.” And as if the rest of the world didn’t exist, his shadows wrapped themselves around the both of them and carried them away –back to the palace, back to their rooms, back to the shelter of a space they knew. Back to home.
---
Nightmare did not need to be asked twice. He had been hovering ever since Asina’s arm was injured, ready to defend her if she were to go down. When she went all idiot on him and pushed all that was left of herself into that unworthy fool of a demon, he’d nearly leapt forward, but Ciel had reached her first. He’d been further away, but he’d gotten there faster, and he knew that between a bonded stallion, even a demon stallion of his own power grade, and a Parallel, her Parallel would be able to do better help than himself.
So he’d hovered.
But now he moved forward and lowered himself gingerly to the ground beside them. That a monstrous creature of such a lumbering and muscular build was able to lower himself almost daintily, so gracefully, was a wonder all in its own, but he then did more than that. Nightmare curled himself around the two and the heat increased slowly, but not just from his own personal body heat. Nightmare was tied to fire, and could exude heat to various degrees at will.
“Oh… oh look… N-Nightmare… when did you start… start renting… renting yourself out as a p-personal h-hea-heater?” She gave a strangled laugh that only sounded pathetic so she cut it off.
Nightmare snorted and tossed his head in a very displeased fashion. I wouldn’t have to if you didn’t prance around idiotically and throw all your power and /life force/ into random fools. “Pshhhh…” was her only response. Then she turned to Ciel and gave him a weak smile before wincing and trying to suppress some more bloody coughs. “S-Sae told me to… to let you take care of me… You up to th-that boyo? Hate to… to dis-disappoint a g-goddess….” Oh no, wouldn’t want that. Normally, she would contest such weakness, but right now all she wanted to do was sleep. She was just… so tired. If she slept, she could regain her power and feel better. Then maybe she could figure out how to heal her dead arm.
If she couldn’t? Well… she’d deal with that when and if the time came.
She snuggled in closer to the heat of her Parallel and gave a deep sigh. “D-don’t worry, I’m not dying. I’m sleeping…” And she was out before anyone could beg to differ. [/center]
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