Post by EtherealNoire on Jul 10, 2019 20:49:07 GMT -8
Air whisked past as Talea slipped inside the chamber, thick with miasma and must as though the earth itself had awaken to find its nightmares reborn. For even as her eyes alighted on cobwebs, and splintered jaspé glass, and marble tombs mottled under melted candle wax, the darkness loomed. It dripped from the ceiling, oozing through her bones till every inhale tasted of rot. And from the far wall where the ground crumpled into dusk below, a ravenous maw of stone drew its first unholy breath.
She feared it. Her blood shuddered with each heaving gasp against its chill and on measured steps, she crossed the threshold. Twin sentries marked her behind blinded eyes, turning their granite faces as rose petals crumbled to ash beneath her toes. They all bore the same message. He awaited her.
Scarcely had Talea passed their guard when the door slammed shut.
Whispers gagged on their hatred. And one by one, though she whirled to chase it, the moonlight through the windows faded to black.
Talea couldn't move. She could only stare after its dwindled light, as talons screeched against stone. Their voices brushed along her neck, and her skin itched where it caught in her hair.
He was coming. Join them. Join us!
No! She tore herself free, but as another pair slithered around her ankles, the ground below them erupted. And Talea too fell before its styigan tide.
The darkness boiled, writhing and hissing towards the ceiling in the shape of something neither bones nor beast. Her pulse hammered in her throat. A warning that came too late as she clawed against their grasp.
Eyes flashed. Hands raked against her legs and their fingers caught in the fleshless ribs towering above her. Their voices wailed, shredded by claws keen as knives, and those that dared snare further in the barbed fur sweeping overhead were rent into pools of carnage beneath a maw of bone.
None withstood it, none could face it. Not even she could swallow the terror in her throat. Shrouded in a web of thorns and shadows, it devoured every thought but one: Run.
Talea lay in their bloodied remains, her eyes tracing the light gleaming off his blackened flesh as if it were repelled. She longed to look away, yet his presence kept her frozen long before his focus stooped to hers. And deep within the hollows of his skull, the glint of hunger remained.
"Thou dost well to join me here."
Thorns circled her neck and arms, drawing her upwards as it drew sibilating gasps from her lips. There was no halting her trembles where his darkness caressed her. Instead, she hung limp in his grasp. He studied her, fangs dripping ebony on the splattered stones, before trailing a single claw down her quaking chest.
"Quell thy fear."
And beneath his touch, her heart ceased beating.
Ice shot through her, maddening, numbing. She heaved against earth, ash flooded her mouth. The world pressed down upon her and although she yearned to resist it, it pervaded her mind until her ears rang requiems of sleep. She could almost feel her soul beyond her leaden eyes. So close… Tranquil… yet Night had not relinquished her so easily.
Past the closing fog, his hold abated.
It was the sting that welcomed her first. A slowly sweeping fire that lapped at her limbs and thighs. Then her trepid heartbeat stuttered awake.
She swallowed, and her body shivered at the familiar taste of his aura coating her tongue. Had he been watching her?
Though her eyes scarcely lifted, his gaze ne'er wavered from her visage. At last, after her head bowed in acquired silence, Night granted she stand.
"An era of corruption descends upon this realm." He warned, watching her stagger when his thorns lashed back into the darkness warring below his waist.
"One from which thou cannot flee. Heed this. Dost thou know the extent of their presumptions?"
His gazed seared her cheek, and she swayed beneath it. And still deeper within the shaded fissures, the shadows began to stir. She heard them before she saw them: the rustle of petals and their dried flesh. Surely Night also caught the stench that shrouded them, cloying in the back of her throat. Yet he desired answers.
She stared past him, through him, her mouth dry from the acerbic sapor of her knowledge. How did he expect her to speak when her own body choked on the words?
Yet the shriek of bone across plafond was enough to make her swallow.
"Thrice these toxins raged in vain, controlled by two whom stir the ancient tides of souls. They crave power. Yea there is another that dwells within the realms of man, howbeit, tarries to fight; a watcher in the form of raptors. Their wars... nay..."
Somewhere further in the wind, a cry stole her words and as one, the voices joined it. Was it their union that made the glass whine. Or bruised the stars violet?
He cared for neither as he grabbed her.
His thorns clawed through her hair, hands raked her skin where two more plucked at her jacket's chords and sent shivers swirling down her spin. His body was so near to her she could feel his breath in her lungs; Taste its stinging chill.
"Their wars are as worms to us." He chided, and his displeasure burned. It needled through the leather at her legs and waist as though they were fog, holding her steady where she knew fear would rent her asunder. But so too did it conceal another aim, one she learned only when her lungs echoed those that whispered at the room’s darkened edges.
"We harbor a greater purpose. Fret not their susurrations."
With each muted whimper, the hunger in his gaze darkened, replaced by some primal desire she dared not face. Instead her eyes leveled on his fissured ribs even whilst he pulled the jacket from her shoulders and frost nipped greedily at her fragile skin.
This was what he was. What they were. He paced around her, calculating.
How often had he pinioned her against those ivory blades?
"The time draws nigh when I must once more partake of mortal flesh."
His claw lingered against her pulse, savoring its quaking beat like a dove grounded by an arrow, before trailing ever so slowly up her neck. She shied away as it circled her throat, yet somewhere betwixt pleasure and terror, her mind was lost.
"Thou shalt seek a willing soma, one from light to fuel the darkness. Yet for now, where dusk wax strongest.." He dipped forward, canines scraping her veins. "thy blood shall sustain this form."
She inhaled as he bit into her. Saliva slick as ice coiled about her neck and pooled between the peaks of her collar bones.
She couldn't swallow. He knew. Craved it.
She felt it in his hands clenched about her shoulders, her waist, in her hair. He would devour her till she was nothing but ferric sweetness on his tongue, yet the taste that halted those forked edges against her throat was naught but the taint of scars.
Outside, the wails ceased mid-breath.
"This mark was wrought by mortal might." Night hissed, jerking her head upwards to face him. His gaze fixed on the slash at her chin and her severed lock where the fire spinner had tried to destroy her.
"Thy complacency nigh cost us our advances this moon cycle. Near ended thy mortal frame I have come to favor."
Like a serpent's vice, his grip tightened around her jaw. Claws circled her glossy orbs so flooded with fear that she could see it reflected on his hooked and moonlit horns. "This blasphemy is on thy hands."
And as one nail traced the stain down her eye, she balked.
"Master, I--"
"Call me not that appellation."
She winced as warmth dripped into her lashes.
"Thou exists to bear my mark alone. Yea, whilst these memories remain, they corrupt thee. I will remove their rot."
Her feet left the ground seconds before her mind grasped her weightlessness. There was no warning, only howling before she slammed into a marble tomb.
The sky erupted. Her lungs blazed. She scrambled blindly, yet her limbs would not obey. His fingers snaked around her wrists to bind her beneath his growing form while the sounds of the shadow's laughter pealed from every crevice of the room.
Between pulses of fangs and darkness, she found her voice enough to scream.
Cold tendrils of sensation crawled up her legs where his darkness met her waist. She couldn't escape him! It oozed beneath her clothes, viscous and gelid until she pleaded for him to stop. Yet he pinned her tighter beneath his claws.
He had to let go! She struggled to break free. But as she strained to lift her head, he pressed her back down again with one hand crushing her throat.
"Relent to me! Only then shall thy pain abate."
The damned were growing bolder with her cries. They slunk from every corner and cracked tomb in morbid glee, bubbling up from the room’s gaping maw in a twisted mass that frothed and cackled at the edges of her vision. Leering, fingers tickled the hairs along her skin. And when she did not flee, their hands slithered over every inch of her body. She screamed and begged, writhing beneath them, before the renting squeal of flesh flooded her mouth with gore.
It dripped from Night’s jaws as he leaned towards her, bathing them both in carnage.
"No!!!" Her voice tore through the twilight and a thousand voices screamed with her. "Please, it hurts!"
Snatches of memories raced past her eyes and he clawed through them mercilessly. They bled into a darkness so thick she couldn't recall what lay beyond them, for she was nothing without his grasp.
In ruins, they had seeped the fire spinner in his own scarlet defeat. They were unified. She had embraced his jagged thorns, borne his mark with pride.
And below the siren pool where longings played, he had found her at its depths. She had craved him, needed him. Never was she trapped like they in deluded visions of another life. Only Night had been her desire.
As his shadows crept up her waist, inching towards her neck, she found her struggles failing. What reason had compelled her to fight? To resist the thorns that coiled as tight as a lover around her arched spine.
He thrust her chest up against his until his ribs dug into her dress and grazed her beating heart. Soon, she knew, no barrier would keep him out.
While her screams subsided to mewls, Night toyed with one final image. Glimpses of her baren form burned in her mind, amidst moonlight, and the tart yet novel scent of wine. She didn't want it to change. Not this.
His tongue lapped at her temple, impossibly frigid, watching her squirm like a baited fish.
“Tell me… amidst those who slave to the light, thou hast found thyself a companion?”
She knew his possession long before his claws sank into her arms and tore his name from her parched lips. She was his and his alone.
"Yes..."
He let the memory linger when he withdrew from her, leaving her panting upon the marble slab. But though she toiled against the cold that drilled into her mind, she could not recall the Light-dweller’s... Adeney’s... face.
“If thou truly dost desire this mortal's shell, so then shall he become our tribute. With each elapsing hour, our adversaries circle nigh these caliginous realms. We cannot grant them time to congregate. A corporeal body must yet be found, though I suspect this... human thou favors hast suffered nay the anguish needed to fulfill such bond." He watched her ease herself upwards on trembling arms, inclined neither to offer aid nor injury but rather hunt those that stalked just beyond the walls.
She eyed their coiled forms through mosaic frames and beseeched the dusk to hold them at bay. For where light waned darkest, they could not follow.
"Find this mortal. Captivate him however thou chooses, and when the hour of our union draws nigh, bring him to me. Together we shall transcend to where darkness names its apogee."
Though twilight swallowed all but the glint of his skull, still she could feel his gaze raking her body, lingering on the traces of scarlet laced across her exposed flesh. And even the earth trembled beneath his hunger.
"Come..." A claw dragged beneath her chin, commanding as he pooled into the darkness, before spiraling down into the abyss below.
"Thou shalt abide with me this eve."
Scarcely had his words faded when the shadows erupted in a shower of glass. Jagged shards splintered against the tombs, petals fell like specks of blood, and through the sound of roaring wind, his thorns yanked her to her feet.
Talea fought those that lashed around her wrists and waist. Terror caught in her throat as sharp as the barbs snagged in her tresses, and growing sharper when he pulled her towards his descent.
"Night! I cannot descend with thee! Thy path--" her protest drowned beneath shrieks of laughter even whilst she strained backwards towards the door.
The thorns bit deeper, talons reached for her, and her feet seared where stones scoured against her soles.
She teetered on the edge, her hand stretching towards the last prick of light beyond the writhing damned and their opal eyes when a final chord of fire ripped through her neck. As her body tipped backwards into the crimson void and the shadows howled in wrath, her screams painted the darkness.
Then there was silence, still as the fallen, before even that too faded into the Night.
She feared it. Her blood shuddered with each heaving gasp against its chill and on measured steps, she crossed the threshold. Twin sentries marked her behind blinded eyes, turning their granite faces as rose petals crumbled to ash beneath her toes. They all bore the same message. He awaited her.
Scarcely had Talea passed their guard when the door slammed shut.
Whispers gagged on their hatred. And one by one, though she whirled to chase it, the moonlight through the windows faded to black.
Talea couldn't move. She could only stare after its dwindled light, as talons screeched against stone. Their voices brushed along her neck, and her skin itched where it caught in her hair.
He was coming. Join them. Join us!
No! She tore herself free, but as another pair slithered around her ankles, the ground below them erupted. And Talea too fell before its styigan tide.
The darkness boiled, writhing and hissing towards the ceiling in the shape of something neither bones nor beast. Her pulse hammered in her throat. A warning that came too late as she clawed against their grasp.
Eyes flashed. Hands raked against her legs and their fingers caught in the fleshless ribs towering above her. Their voices wailed, shredded by claws keen as knives, and those that dared snare further in the barbed fur sweeping overhead were rent into pools of carnage beneath a maw of bone.
None withstood it, none could face it. Not even she could swallow the terror in her throat. Shrouded in a web of thorns and shadows, it devoured every thought but one: Run.
Talea lay in their bloodied remains, her eyes tracing the light gleaming off his blackened flesh as if it were repelled. She longed to look away, yet his presence kept her frozen long before his focus stooped to hers. And deep within the hollows of his skull, the glint of hunger remained.
"Thou dost well to join me here."
Thorns circled her neck and arms, drawing her upwards as it drew sibilating gasps from her lips. There was no halting her trembles where his darkness caressed her. Instead, she hung limp in his grasp. He studied her, fangs dripping ebony on the splattered stones, before trailing a single claw down her quaking chest.
"Quell thy fear."
And beneath his touch, her heart ceased beating.
Ice shot through her, maddening, numbing. She heaved against earth, ash flooded her mouth. The world pressed down upon her and although she yearned to resist it, it pervaded her mind until her ears rang requiems of sleep. She could almost feel her soul beyond her leaden eyes. So close… Tranquil… yet Night had not relinquished her so easily.
Past the closing fog, his hold abated.
It was the sting that welcomed her first. A slowly sweeping fire that lapped at her limbs and thighs. Then her trepid heartbeat stuttered awake.
She swallowed, and her body shivered at the familiar taste of his aura coating her tongue. Had he been watching her?
Though her eyes scarcely lifted, his gaze ne'er wavered from her visage. At last, after her head bowed in acquired silence, Night granted she stand.
"An era of corruption descends upon this realm." He warned, watching her stagger when his thorns lashed back into the darkness warring below his waist.
"One from which thou cannot flee. Heed this. Dost thou know the extent of their presumptions?"
His gazed seared her cheek, and she swayed beneath it. And still deeper within the shaded fissures, the shadows began to stir. She heard them before she saw them: the rustle of petals and their dried flesh. Surely Night also caught the stench that shrouded them, cloying in the back of her throat. Yet he desired answers.
She stared past him, through him, her mouth dry from the acerbic sapor of her knowledge. How did he expect her to speak when her own body choked on the words?
Yet the shriek of bone across plafond was enough to make her swallow.
"Thrice these toxins raged in vain, controlled by two whom stir the ancient tides of souls. They crave power. Yea there is another that dwells within the realms of man, howbeit, tarries to fight; a watcher in the form of raptors. Their wars... nay..."
Somewhere further in the wind, a cry stole her words and as one, the voices joined it. Was it their union that made the glass whine. Or bruised the stars violet?
He cared for neither as he grabbed her.
His thorns clawed through her hair, hands raked her skin where two more plucked at her jacket's chords and sent shivers swirling down her spin. His body was so near to her she could feel his breath in her lungs; Taste its stinging chill.
"Their wars are as worms to us." He chided, and his displeasure burned. It needled through the leather at her legs and waist as though they were fog, holding her steady where she knew fear would rent her asunder. But so too did it conceal another aim, one she learned only when her lungs echoed those that whispered at the room’s darkened edges.
"We harbor a greater purpose. Fret not their susurrations."
With each muted whimper, the hunger in his gaze darkened, replaced by some primal desire she dared not face. Instead her eyes leveled on his fissured ribs even whilst he pulled the jacket from her shoulders and frost nipped greedily at her fragile skin.
This was what he was. What they were. He paced around her, calculating.
How often had he pinioned her against those ivory blades?
"The time draws nigh when I must once more partake of mortal flesh."
His claw lingered against her pulse, savoring its quaking beat like a dove grounded by an arrow, before trailing ever so slowly up her neck. She shied away as it circled her throat, yet somewhere betwixt pleasure and terror, her mind was lost.
"Thou shalt seek a willing soma, one from light to fuel the darkness. Yet for now, where dusk wax strongest.." He dipped forward, canines scraping her veins. "thy blood shall sustain this form."
She inhaled as he bit into her. Saliva slick as ice coiled about her neck and pooled between the peaks of her collar bones.
She couldn't swallow. He knew. Craved it.
She felt it in his hands clenched about her shoulders, her waist, in her hair. He would devour her till she was nothing but ferric sweetness on his tongue, yet the taste that halted those forked edges against her throat was naught but the taint of scars.
Outside, the wails ceased mid-breath.
"This mark was wrought by mortal might." Night hissed, jerking her head upwards to face him. His gaze fixed on the slash at her chin and her severed lock where the fire spinner had tried to destroy her.
"Thy complacency nigh cost us our advances this moon cycle. Near ended thy mortal frame I have come to favor."
Like a serpent's vice, his grip tightened around her jaw. Claws circled her glossy orbs so flooded with fear that she could see it reflected on his hooked and moonlit horns. "This blasphemy is on thy hands."
And as one nail traced the stain down her eye, she balked.
"Master, I--"
"Call me not that appellation."
She winced as warmth dripped into her lashes.
"Thou exists to bear my mark alone. Yea, whilst these memories remain, they corrupt thee. I will remove their rot."
Her feet left the ground seconds before her mind grasped her weightlessness. There was no warning, only howling before she slammed into a marble tomb.
The sky erupted. Her lungs blazed. She scrambled blindly, yet her limbs would not obey. His fingers snaked around her wrists to bind her beneath his growing form while the sounds of the shadow's laughter pealed from every crevice of the room.
Between pulses of fangs and darkness, she found her voice enough to scream.
Cold tendrils of sensation crawled up her legs where his darkness met her waist. She couldn't escape him! It oozed beneath her clothes, viscous and gelid until she pleaded for him to stop. Yet he pinned her tighter beneath his claws.
He had to let go! She struggled to break free. But as she strained to lift her head, he pressed her back down again with one hand crushing her throat.
"Relent to me! Only then shall thy pain abate."
The damned were growing bolder with her cries. They slunk from every corner and cracked tomb in morbid glee, bubbling up from the room’s gaping maw in a twisted mass that frothed and cackled at the edges of her vision. Leering, fingers tickled the hairs along her skin. And when she did not flee, their hands slithered over every inch of her body. She screamed and begged, writhing beneath them, before the renting squeal of flesh flooded her mouth with gore.
It dripped from Night’s jaws as he leaned towards her, bathing them both in carnage.
"No!!!" Her voice tore through the twilight and a thousand voices screamed with her. "Please, it hurts!"
Snatches of memories raced past her eyes and he clawed through them mercilessly. They bled into a darkness so thick she couldn't recall what lay beyond them, for she was nothing without his grasp.
In ruins, they had seeped the fire spinner in his own scarlet defeat. They were unified. She had embraced his jagged thorns, borne his mark with pride.
And below the siren pool where longings played, he had found her at its depths. She had craved him, needed him. Never was she trapped like they in deluded visions of another life. Only Night had been her desire.
As his shadows crept up her waist, inching towards her neck, she found her struggles failing. What reason had compelled her to fight? To resist the thorns that coiled as tight as a lover around her arched spine.
He thrust her chest up against his until his ribs dug into her dress and grazed her beating heart. Soon, she knew, no barrier would keep him out.
While her screams subsided to mewls, Night toyed with one final image. Glimpses of her baren form burned in her mind, amidst moonlight, and the tart yet novel scent of wine. She didn't want it to change. Not this.
His tongue lapped at her temple, impossibly frigid, watching her squirm like a baited fish.
“Tell me… amidst those who slave to the light, thou hast found thyself a companion?”
She knew his possession long before his claws sank into her arms and tore his name from her parched lips. She was his and his alone.
"Yes..."
He let the memory linger when he withdrew from her, leaving her panting upon the marble slab. But though she toiled against the cold that drilled into her mind, she could not recall the Light-dweller’s... Adeney’s... face.
“If thou truly dost desire this mortal's shell, so then shall he become our tribute. With each elapsing hour, our adversaries circle nigh these caliginous realms. We cannot grant them time to congregate. A corporeal body must yet be found, though I suspect this... human thou favors hast suffered nay the anguish needed to fulfill such bond." He watched her ease herself upwards on trembling arms, inclined neither to offer aid nor injury but rather hunt those that stalked just beyond the walls.
She eyed their coiled forms through mosaic frames and beseeched the dusk to hold them at bay. For where light waned darkest, they could not follow.
"Find this mortal. Captivate him however thou chooses, and when the hour of our union draws nigh, bring him to me. Together we shall transcend to where darkness names its apogee."
Though twilight swallowed all but the glint of his skull, still she could feel his gaze raking her body, lingering on the traces of scarlet laced across her exposed flesh. And even the earth trembled beneath his hunger.
"Come..." A claw dragged beneath her chin, commanding as he pooled into the darkness, before spiraling down into the abyss below.
"Thou shalt abide with me this eve."
Scarcely had his words faded when the shadows erupted in a shower of glass. Jagged shards splintered against the tombs, petals fell like specks of blood, and through the sound of roaring wind, his thorns yanked her to her feet.
Talea fought those that lashed around her wrists and waist. Terror caught in her throat as sharp as the barbs snagged in her tresses, and growing sharper when he pulled her towards his descent.
"Night! I cannot descend with thee! Thy path--" her protest drowned beneath shrieks of laughter even whilst she strained backwards towards the door.
The thorns bit deeper, talons reached for her, and her feet seared where stones scoured against her soles.
She teetered on the edge, her hand stretching towards the last prick of light beyond the writhing damned and their opal eyes when a final chord of fire ripped through her neck. As her body tipped backwards into the crimson void and the shadows howled in wrath, her screams painted the darkness.
Then there was silence, still as the fallen, before even that too faded into the Night.
