"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
05-28-2017, 10:02 PM (This post was last modified: 05-29-2017, 12:30 PM by kahzie.)
-Raeg'n-
It didn't matter how her body was tossed and battered in the ocean's undertow, beaten like a ragdoll against rock and sharp coral alike with her bones snapping and fracturing, and stinging wounds briefly spilling her blue blood into the sea. No part of her remained untouched or protected from scrapes and bruises and lacerations, flesh ripped and limbs brutally mangled in multiple places. It didn't matter.
Because she still washed ashore in perfect health, her twilight-blue skin once again flawless and shimmering with bright flecks that caught the sunlight like embedded little stars, and bones mended completely. Her fire-orange hair, though drenched, was still bright and glaring like a beacon when she rose to her feet halfway out to sea to wade through gentle waves the rest of the way, sunlight glittering across the damp of her skin. That hair, so bold, so loud, was shouting her location with the visible voice of a volcanic fury. Here I am, it bellowed.
And bring it on.
Naturally, the first thing she did was scan the area, amber-gold eyes searching the rolling waves and desolate beach for the silver-gray body of her charge, the boy she was sworn to protect.
Ruan! It wasn’t his real name, so the demon had told her, but it was the one he’d chosen for himself, the one he’d given to her and so it would be his name until he offered his real name himself. Ruan, she called again for him, her voice sharp with authority and tight with worry. There was a sourness in her gut, a fear that she had already failed him and it wasn’t even his enemy that she’d lost him to. Or was it?
Fury began burning hotter in her blood. No, she did not fail him. She would not. It wasn’t acceptable. Deimos must be here, he must have done this to distract her so he could take the boy away from her protection. Her jaws clenched tight and her eyes flared impossibly bright, seething and fuming and royally pissed.
DEMON!!!
She roared loudly from deep in her chest, pushing each syllable full of her young wrath. You bring him BACK!! NOW!! Her eyes still scanned, but it didn’t matter that she couldn’t see the beast. He had his ways. He would hear her. Sinking an entire land into the ocean was rather dramatic of him just to steal a boy, but she wouldn’t put it passed him. He was ruthless and no task was too large. Not even the decimation of a kingdom.
He knew she’d come this way. He knew all too well that she would not do as she was told. Bad little girl, that one. She was a hussy. He liked hussies.
And she liked dangerous men with a penchant for power.
The scent of her reeked the trees as she moved through here, the boy and another in her wake. Quite possibly spouting out his name and cursing him to the Devil. He was the Devil.
And she liked it.
He had called for them in Pangea. She had not come. Cheeky thing. He had waited there, while the randy bitches and horny cocks ran around chasing tail and filling those slippery holes. And still she did not come.
And so he did what he promised he would do. He set off to find her.
He had gone off, called in the direction of love and lust—he followed his blood, and that meant he followed his cock. He groaned with the scent that his little angel reeked of. Anything to be away from her, to get a sense of his own sanity once again. For she was the first in a long line of things he’d known… that could do the one thing he had never done before.
She made him laugh.
That ugly black thing in his chest that pulsed every time he was near her… he laughed at her insanity. Her fanatical delusions of grandeur. She believed herself to be of the light.
And he would have so much fun dragging her into the broom closet. Into the dark, where she belonged.
With him.
But, business took him elsewhere—plans that had literally been washed away from him when his home, if you could call it that—wasteland that it was—was washed away from them all. Plans that he had made, webs that he had woven. All was washed away. Dragged away by the dirty fingers of fate. He would start fresh, and he would start with her.
All he had to do was follow her fanaticism.
And surely, his little femme fatale had gone to the one place where she was sure to be accepted by other femme-bots like her… The Amazons.
No, not them any longer… The Nerinians. He cursed under his breath. Gods. He should have been so unlucky.
But find her he eventually did, rubbing that fine, fat ass against a tree trunk as her winter coat was falling out. You know what you do to me, you little tease.
Deimos was an evil sort but he does not enjoy the feeling of a dead or bleeding body underneath him. He likes to feel them squirm. He gets off knowing they do too. He would leave the maiming for others. This little nun was not so innocent.
She wore a hot pink thong underneath her habit of innocence.
He purrs, approaching her slowly, his tongue thickening—like other parts of him—for the intoxicating smell of her. He is quiet, magic covering his shadow and dampening the sound of his step. His whispers are hot and heavy as he lays thick his drug…He would have her.
You called? You know, Raeg’n, You are so fucking hot when you’re angry.
But outloud, he merely sides up against her, running his hips along hers, drawing her into his heat. He had to get her out of here before she could be introduced to the crazy locals.
Feminists…Fuck.
He smiles at her darkly, his red eyes rolling over her body as he speaks. “’Fraid I can’t take credit for this one, sexpot. Those fucking fairies…Their little joke on your dearly departed daddy has finally cast that wasteland into the sea where it belongs. The wolfpup will probably survive, but the others… I would not count on it.”
She could nearly feel his blackened stench fill the air, and though she had half-expected him to show, her gut soured and roiled in anxiety. She was fearless, sometimes foolishly so, but he was all-powerful. Her magic could heal her, instantaneous and involuntary, invincible, and yet she was nearly helpless when it came to Deimos. Because he fought her in ways she hadn’t been trained for. He didn’t deliver blows, or snap his jaws at her flesh. He didn’t break bones or threaten to hurt her at all. Not since that first day when he learned of her magic, had tasted it for himself.
He attacked through her mind instead.
You called? he purred into her thoughts, a voice so smooth and at war with his physical presence, formidable and dangerous. You know, Raeg’n, You are so fucking hot when you’re angry he continued, sidling casually up to her side and brushing his hip along hers. She locked in place and glared straight ahead, her heart racing with adrenaline and the urge to dodge and fight back. She dearly wished to step away from him, but she forced herself to hold her ground.
His eyes claimed every inch of her and she would swear she could feel it crawling over her like a million eager spiders. ”’Fraid I can’t take credit for this one, sexpot,” he began, aloud this time. Her teeth clamped tighter as if she could crush that disgusting endearment and spit it back in his face. She held her silence instead, her mind already racing to analyze what that meant. If it were true, then he hadn’t taken the boy from her. He may not even know where he was. She had to keep looking.
She needed to get away from him so she could find Kilter, her Ruan.
”Their little joke on your dearly departed daddy…” I don’t have a father, she snapped instantly, only to quiet again in annoyance that he’d gotten a rise out of her. She’d already told him this, and no matter how he insisted otherwise, she would not believe it. She only had a mother, an angel who she concluded had returned to a heaven she herself was not allowed to enter until her task in life was complete. Then she would finally see her mother again. She didn’t have a father, and if she had, he certainly wasn’t the devil as Deimos had claimed.
”The wolfpup will probably survive, but the others… I would not count on it.”
Wolfpup. Why does he call him that? She had never learned the answer. But she didn’t have long to consider it as the rest of what he said sank in. Rocinante. Her heart clenched painfully and her eyes dimmed. The fierce guardian had joined her in protecting the boy, vowing his life to the very same cause just as she had even before he knew what they were up against. Now his death would forever rest on her young shoulders. She swallowed a sudden lump in her throat.
If you don’t have him, then where is he. Her voice was still hard, but confidently firm as she finally turned the gold of her piercing stare to the molten red of his. He was all-powerful, after all. He should know the answer. She only needed to get to him first and keep him safe from this monster.
And just like that, a bomb went off inside his head.
What the fuck was he even doing here?
Babysitting a delusional woman who was intent to destroy him, for his own amusement. What was wrong with him? Had he gone and lost his head?
Apparently he had.
Before Pangea had fallen, his need to taste the flesh of another Magician—one magician in particular—had been on his list. One needed to fully regain his power. His control. By driving her husband insane and taking all she loved away from her—suffering she was, and he found he liked that—he had thought to continue to take on the forests… using the wolfpup. The black wolf had a fondness for him.
But with the passing of time and this annoying woman at his feet begging him not to harm the boy… he’d gone soft… and now, there was no home, and what he had wanted had happened, even if he had not had had a direct hand in it. She would continue on, and so would he. There was no need to continue.
He found he was bored.
So tortuously bored.
So bored that he actually yawned in Raeg’n’s face, turning angry eyes to her before he stepped back from her, narrowing his eyes just a bit, before sending the ground beneath her to sinking around her feet. The pit… let her get out of it as she wished.
He no longer cared.
And so he apparates out in a whisp of black smoke, the echoes of his words haunting her mind.
“Find him if you think he still exists, you stupid waste, but I will not bother with you any longer. Your life is inconsequential. Know that I speak the truth. Your mother is dead, and your father is Hell itself. And that if you ever cross my path again, I will see to it that even your blood cannot save you.”
They’re paddling up to shore, crumbling on the sand, gasping for air. Nayl has noticed how many of the Pangeans are arriving to her borders. They have venom on their tongues, vehemence in their eyes, as though it was her that was their downfall. She looks at them with judgment – a Caesar glaring at the expectant and hopeful gladiators – because she could easily pummel them and eject them from her borders. She could kill them if she was so inclined.
But she has suppressed her agitation, watching idly as they fathom what has happened and peer out to the ocean that has swallowed their desolate wasteland.
The mare is joined by a stallion after a shout demanding for something – someone – back. Nayl listens, her eyes half lidded and her head tilted half-interestedly. Their banter stirs her children from their rest in the cave. A glance behind her confirms they are still curled up together, not budging under the veil of shadows. They hold their silence, as does she, as her fiery eyes roll back to the pair not far ahead. She assumes they will leave, that they have other things on their agenda, but then she watches as the stallion disrupts the sand beneath the woman. It rolls and sinks, creating an uncovered grave.
”Get the fuck out,” she hisses as she steps toward the, now, cloud of black smoke and the mare deep in the hole. Her gaze is unyielding on what had been the obsidian male, her expression painted with disgust. Then she looks down at the mare. The sand shifts and returns to life, but it reaches slowly for the sky, lifting the mare from her tomb and bringing her level with Nayl.
There is no denying the stench of Pangea still trying to desperately hold onto their skin. Who else would mosey into her home uninvited, if not them. ”Your group has officially been weaned from Carnage’s teat. Now you can figure out your own damned lives. Congrats.” Their home had been handed to them, an effortless gift that they didn’t have to work hard for. They nursed from their foundation King, but now they scramble for something new while also trying to recover what they’ve lost.
”You’re in Nerine. Either live here or get the hell out for trespassing.” Her gaze flickers to see if the stallion is still here or if he concluded his brief time of taunting. ”So, what will it be?”
