"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
It had been almost romantic, you see.
Coiled to her like a snake to a mouse, bringing her vision forth. Truth was, he’d meant for it to be quicker, for her to only have a glimpse of sight. But the way she’d reacted, the excitement he’d felt from her, had changed his mind, had led him to think of other things.
A long game, then. More interesting. It’s not as if they lacked the time.
So they parted, her newly sighted and he newly intrigued, with a promise (his) to meet again.
He comes to fulfill that promise now, and he finds her easily enough. She’s no longer so weighed with her children, which pleases him – he is above so many mortal things, but the base desire to reproduce remains, and so there’s been something instinctual and unsettling about her stomach swollen with children that were not his.
“Such a pleasure to see you again,” he says, meeting her eyes, and then his muzzle strokes across her neck. The place where his teeth had raked is scabbed over, nearly healed, and he seeks out other places he might wound.
Not yet, though.
“I gave you sight,” he says. The fact he once also took it away goes unmentioned, “and you yourself said I do not give freely.”
He still touches her, lips moving over familiar places.
(It’s almost romantic.)
“All I ask,” he continues, “is a bit of your company. Not here, though. It’s too crowded. Too…common. But I know a place.”
He could make them invisible, of course, could barricade off this little space. But he is too curious to see how she might look, the stark white of her set against the backdrop of his cave. He has gone unoccupied for far too long, that place, he had not found anyone whose company he wanted for more than a moment or two.
Perhaps she is different.
He waits, patient, for her reply.
01-13-2019, 11:40 PM (This post was last modified: 01-13-2019, 11:40 PM by Ryatah.)
ryatah
hell is empty and all the devils are here
She never doubted that he wouldn’t make good on his promise, but she wasn’t sure how quickly it would be.
He had been vague on what his intentions were, and she doesn’t let herself wonder on it. She doesn’t have to. She has enough of an idea – enough to bring that apprehension and tension that she has been carrying around for far too long to a slow boil, where it simmers with a volatile heat under her skin. It will spill over, eventually. Something – someone – will break her, and she can’t even fool herself into thinking it won’t be him.
This time when he comes, she is prepared. The intensity of her almost-black eyes flicker to his face as he seemingly manifests alongside of her, regarding him with something that is like both fear and reverence. ”Likewise,” And it is said with a slow smile, with a lilt that is similar to a hidden laugh. He had given her sight, just as he had taken it; she isn’t naive enough to think he won’t do it again, but something about that unknown factor is what keeps her here.
His lips against the mark he had left previously sends a tremble along the ridge of her spine, but instead of pulling away it brings her closer, with a slow exhale against the slope of his shoulder. A part of her had known that what he says next, is what was going to come; or maybe it was a sadistic part of her that had hoped it would come. That same part of her that had been abandoned when Dhumin left, that part of her that fed off being controlled and not having a choice in what happened to her. She’d never been good with freedom, and she’s had too much of it lately. That part of her is what has been begging to be broken, and it slowly begins to stir, and there is something almost ravenous in the way her lips trail against his neck, brimming in her voice as she says into his skin, ”I’ll go wherever you want me to.” And the part that frightens her the most, is she's not even faking it.
He had wondered if she would resist, the way she had hesitated to ask. But she is more pliant now, hot beneath his touch, and she agrees to go with him. He had been prepared to convince her – either by a few more sweet words, or something stronger – but he is pleased to know he can save such energies.
“Excellent,” he purrs, and he wastes no time – still touching her, shadows reach up, wrap like shackles around her ankles. There are a hundred ways to take them to his lair, but he goes, as always, for the theatrical.
The shadows fasten tighter around her ankles, binding her. He disengages, and looks at her – the dark eyes suit her, he thinks, though there was a certain pleasure in the previous scarred, white nothingness of her features.
With no warning, she is yanked down, seemingly through the earth, down into the pits of hell. It’s all an illusion – his theatrics don’t reach quite that far – and where he really takes her is his cave, the place where he keeps them, the ones who have caught his eye.
He keeps her in blackness, mutes her infrared vision. He unfurls the shadows that had been around her ankles.
She’s caged, though she won’t know it, yet – the space is wide enough that she will not feel the walls unless she chooses to run. The blackness is thick around him, and he is quiet, savoring it for a moment before he adjusts his own vision so that he may see her, a pale white specter in the gloom.
“This should feel familiar,” he says, and chuckles to himself, though the joke is easy. He does not touch her, not yet. He watches her carefully, curious to see if she will move, if the pressing darkness will panic her, or soothe her. He stays out of her mind, chooses to guess at it himself.
A little mystery is fun, after all.
Perhaps with anyone else, she would have attempted to bargain, or at least done something to bide her time. When it comes to others, they are easier to influence in another direction — everyone is so tempted by the flesh, and other petty, rather meaningless things. But she is not so unintelligible as to think that that would work in this case. He has had nearly everything offered to him, sometimes served willingly, sometimes taken ruthlessly. It would be futile to try and lure him from what he has decided he wants.
She had long since succumbed to the notion that she would give him anything.
It is hard to not grow tense as the shadows encroach, binding around her. But her eyes don’t waver from his, and she doesn’t resist, even as they tighten; she’s been bound before by things far more invisible and intangible. Her weakness was her mind; simply tapping into her innate need to be controlled would be enough, but she knew it wasn’t going to be that simple with him. He didn’t want to just control her. That would be far too easy, too tame.
The force in which she is torn downwards is enough to rip the breath from her lungs, plummeting through what feels like an endless drop. But it stops, just as suddenly as it had started, and the irony is not lost on her when she realizes she has been plunged once more into darkness. Her eyes blink, but it’s a useless endeavor. Somehow, staring eyes wide open into the black around her is more unnerving than not having eyes at all.
Even without her infrared vision — which, she is not surprised to discover he took from her — it doesn’t take her long to adapt, or at least, to the best of her current ability. She had lived in darkness far longer than she had ever lived in the light, and already, she is listening; to her own pulse as it flutters in her veins, to the distance between his voice and the walls around them. ”So it would seem,” the words are spoken in a wry, but still humored tone, and she takes a cautious step forward in his direction. It is not the dark that makes her uneasy. It’s being on his territory that causes her heart to quiver, that sews the fear through her mind like a needle and thread. ”Where are we?”
He tries to find ways to keep his life interesting.
Boredom is a common thing, for gods, when it is too easy to manipulate the world to whatever whim rises. He has done his fair share of this, true, has broken many knees when they refuses to bend, has taken what was not freely given. There is a savage satisfaction in that, of course, one he will always enjoy. But it is easy, to take by force, when one has as much force as he does.
So he finds ways, he plays games where only he is privy to the rules. Games where he tries to make them bend of their own will, to find the right combination of promises and, sometimes, even sweetness, that will make them acquiescence, to ask for what he would already give.
(Or take, depending.)
Sometimes he does not have to do much. There are some who seemed primed for him. She is one such thing, he thinks, as he watches her in the darkness. She does not panic – her heart quickens, he hears the rapid thud of its beats – but it does not jackhammer against her chest.
All things considered, she is calm.
There are bloodstains on the walls she cannot see from horses less calm, skittish, panicked creatures who threw themselves against the sides of their cage, as if their captor, their god, would be foolish enough to build a place they could escape from.
He keeps the darkness, but moves closer, until he finds her skin again. He increases the weight of the darkness, until it presses against them, something smothering and tangible.
“This is my…workspace,” he says. He’d almost said home, the first word that came to mind, but it was not quite true – he rarely sleeps here. This is a place to hold others, to orchestrate them, to break and uncover them.
He lifts the darkness then, slowly, though his erases the more deplorable parts – hides the bloodstains from her view, the fragments of bone, the bleakness of the rock around them. He softens it, pretties it.
(It’s almost romantic, you see.)
“What do you think?”
She has always been incredibly docile. Put into numerous situations that should have made her panic, or lash out, and the closest she has ever come was that day so many years ago when she had let her tongue develop too much of an edge towards him, of everyone to possibly slip out of character towards, but, she has learned from her mistakes.
It has never been like her to be anything but submissive, and it was no wonder that she repeatedly attracts the same types. Drawn to her like a light, and yet she never did anything to try and illuminate their darkness. She liked them the way they were. There was never some romanticized idea of changing anyone, of the beauty taming the beast. She liked the feelings of fear they induced, she liked when they possessed the power to over take her and break her. She is an easy target, in a sense, and yet still there is a craft to it; she doesn’t fall so willingly into everyone’s trap.
Workspace, he says, and that in itself is enough to send a flush of cool anticipation along the length of her spine. She has a small idea of what kind of work he does. He is against her again, but so are the shadows, both heavy and sinister, but when her heartbeat accelerates, it’s not from fear.
When the darkness slowly begins to lift, she releases the breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding. It is still dim, with no discernible exit or entrance, at least, that she can see. That should have sparked alarms in her head, but it doesn’t, because even in a wide open space, there was never any escaping him if he wasn’t ready to let you go. ”It looks exactly like I would expect your...workspace, to look.” Another flicker of a smile, almost amused by the angle he is playing; as if he’s not going to break her apart. She tilts her head towards him, watching him carefully with sable-eyes as she says in her remarkably soft voice, ”You brought me here for a reason.” It is said as a statement, but the question of it lingers, unspoken — why?
He is still unsure precisely what path to take with her.
There are different trajectories, you see, ways to strip them down and remake them (or to leave them destroyed, nerves raw and exposed – you never knew, really, what they were made of. Not until you flayed the skin and looked for yourself). Illusions, things crafted from the own dark recesses of their mind; and the more physical things, fire and ice and everything in between, breaking every bone, leaving every nerve singing in its exposure.
She does not quite ask, but there is a question in her statement.
“I’ve said it before,” he says, “you intrigue me.”
She is nostalgia and newness all at once. The memories of their earlier meetings are mixed with this new discovery, the one the earlier iterations of him had been to rash to realize – that she wants this, in some way, that she is built to be taken apart, that there is something within her that craves it.
(Or so he thinks. So he assumes. Why else would she talk so sweetly, why else would she stay pliant beneath his touch?)
“And my place has been empty for too long,” he says, “it needs some fresh blood.”
Perse had been its last long-term inhabitant. She would have been here still, but he’d cast her out, eventually, bored of her – she was too eager, too worshipful. Too easy.
“Tell me,” he says, “about the first time you died. Were you frightened?”
He touches her mind, light, tries to find the memory, index it for easy reach, should she not be forthcoming. But he suspects she will.
The first time he died was in fire – self-immolation, a cowardly way out. He knew so little, then, and his powers were still nascent. He had felt no fear as the flames licked his throat, there had been something exciting about it. He’d thought, even then, he might return.
The darkness lifts further still, until the lair is well-lit. Yet the walls flicker, the preparation of an illusion, should she offer the proper fodder for it – a visitation of her first death.
c a r n a g e
the lair will slowly start changing into wherever she died first...feel free to carry the illusion on since you know what happened and i don't lol
He says he finds her intriguing, but she doesn’t know why. In her opinion, she has long since passed the point of possibly being interesting. Everything about her was worn smooth; she had no more rough edges, everyone else had already ran their fingers over and through almost every single part of her – across her body, through her mind, and into every corner of her heart. She was used, in almost every sense of the word, having let everyone feed off of her until she was empty. It was her own fault. She never stopped them.
Maybe that was why she would rather be here, than anywhere else. Maybe that’s why when he says the place needs new blood, it makes her skin turn hot, and she wonders if he’ll see the way her eyes flicker with something that almost looks like desire – wondering, hoping, that he’ll actually do it. The closest she has ever felt to being alive, is when he’s been here, stoking that fear that she thrives off of.
It grows lighter, when he asks her of when she died – the first time. ”My daughter killed me,” It is said so simply, as though he had asked her about the weather. She watches, as their surroundings give way to the beach; the smell of salt, mixed with blood and decay. It was so long ago – she had almost forgotten she had gone to the beach because it reminded her of her first home, before here. She had missed the waves, and the sounds of the gulls, but Beqanna’s beach wasn’t like that. It was littered with corpses, and sun-bleached bones scattered across the sands. It’s an illusion – or at least, she thinks it is – but she steps forward anyway, as if she could walk straight into the waves. ”She struck me over the head. I’m not really sure why. I never got the chance to ask her.” It had been sudden – she had hardly had a chance to even utter the name Séduire before she received the deadly blow. It hadn’t stuck – obviously. Death had spit her back out quickly that time, her heart only stopping long enough for the black mare to think she had finished the job, and temporarily wiping her memories.
But she glances back to him, and slowly she steps around to face him again, the waves at her back. ”I’m not afraid of dying, or of being dead, Carnage.” He is toying with her, she thinks, trying to figure out what ignites the spark in her. Trying to figure out his best way to inflict pain. There is something reckless that flashes in her eyes when she steps towards him, when her pale muzzle touches against his neck, and down his shoulder, her words taut when they leave her tongue, ”I’m afraid of being alive, and not feeling anything.”
He almost laughs, when she answers. Another chord of nostalgia rings in his mind. It had been similar, in his first death, though he had let his own flames consume him before Atrocity could do anything.
She would have killed him, though – of that he has no doubt. There had been such livid hated in her eyes.
(It was a look he would become used to, but then, it had been almost strange, to see such hatred from his own child. Now, it’s almost strange not to see it.)
The world around them changes from lair to beach, the air smelling now of salt and decay, familiar and almost sweet. He lets her shape the illusion, gives his magic to support it, but to her to guide. She may not be aware she’s doing it. He does not peek, does not want to know what’s next, wants to be surprised.
(Though he has a good enough idea of how the story ends. It’s how they all end, isn’t it?)
“She must have hated you,” he says, but whether to himself or to her, it’s not quite clear.
He waits, to see if her daughter will materialize, if they will see this through, but instead she turns her back to the waves, which begin to fade.
Not that, then.
He sighs, and he looks at her. Her statement is an attempt at honesty, or maybe just boldness. It’s a line he’s heard before. Sometimes it’s true.
“Being dead is easy,” he says, “it’s the act of dying that’s often so terrible.”
Being dead was one common state. But dying? There were a hundred different ways, a thousand.
The waves are back, and crashing louder – at his command, this time.
“Are you so above basic instincts, Ryatah, that you would feel no fear in death’s coming?”
He steps back, erects an invisible barrier between them. The waves that had once been so distant rush closer, rushing about her ankles, splashing against the barrier as he watches. He’s tightened the barrier around her, too, confining her to a smaller space. Speeding up the job, though it will take long enough – he wants to offer her the opportunity to realize exactly what’s happening.
“Tide’s coming in,” he says, as if he’s an observer on the beach, a passerby, “but it won’t bother you.”
At her knees, now, the water foams and surges.
Her first daughter had hated her, but the reasoning had never been entirely clear. She wasn’t really good at most things in life, but she was an above average mother, all things considered, and especially in comparison to most. Perhaps it had been spurred on by jealousy of her second born – an almost love-child, for lack of a better term, even though any love shared between her and Dhumin had been twisted and strange. It wasn’t really a secret that she had favored her second daughter over her first (still did, even; she’s had so many children, but Anonya still stood out) . Perhaps she had deserved what had happened that day on the beach.
She flinches at the sudden increase in volume of the waves, and she can feel the spray of it against her back. A sideways glance tells her that they are creeping closer, but her attention returns to him; it was difficult to pick between two dangers, but his voice draws her back in. ”The feeling doesn’t last forever, though.” She wants to retract the words almost as soon as she says them; wishes she would have swallowed them instead of uttering them aloud. She had forgotten, for a moment, that she was speaking to someone that wielded all the necessary power to drag her death out for as long as he pleased.
The water is swirling around her now, but when she steps forward to get away from it, she is stopped by the invisible barrier he has erected. Her dark brown eyes flash to his, then, a flicker of fear registering across her face, even though her voice hardly rises in pitch when she says levelly, ”I find it hard to believe you brought me here just to drown me.” Even though he very well could have – she isn’t entirely convinced, even as she says it. She had been walking on a tight-rope earlier, as though she had been searching for a way to appease him, but the pressing waves that rise now against her sides are slowly wearing away at her nerves. Beneath the coldness of the water her heartbeat has elevated, thrumming in her chest at an erratic pace, and she can taste the salt on her tongue when she finally caves and says, ”Stop,” She is not one for begging, has never been one for pleading, not even with the water dangerously close to being able to spill into her lungs. But there is something similar to desperation that wavers in her eyes and voice when she adds quietly, ”Please, just...stop.”
I changed my mind from what I said earlier, but he can definitely still choose to drown her haha.
