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  • Beqanna

    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "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


    deliriums and desires; jinn
    #1

    violence


     
    She is bitter.
    She is bitter because she has a sister now – alien, like their father, though with metallic wings that stretch tall. She is everything Violence begged mother to make her – gruesome and terrifying, teeth capable of tearing flesh asunder, mouth clacking that awful alien noises, the bird-like trills of their father.
    And the sister is stupid.
    She does nothing with what she is, she skulks about and is nothing.
    Violence makes her do things, sometimes – settles into her mind, pilots that terrifying vessel about, screeching and tearing. A monster, at least on the outside.
    With this body she can smell their fear, a bitter and tangible scent, and she savors it.
    Sister is good practice for Violence’s other skill. While the necromancy came natural, like breathing, the possession is harder. Dealing with living things always is.
    But she possesses her sister often (mother doesn’t like it, pushes her out when she notices, but Violence is very clever and their mother is not), practices on her weak and malleable mind, and she gets better.
     
    Still, possession is tiring, even on such empty stupid things as her sister. So tonight it’s just Violence – Violence and the bones, the strange misshapen creature she’s created from a piecemeal of bones. She used to make new ones daily, but this one has been with her for weeks, while she perfects it.
    It clacks beside her, tethered, and she stalks the meadow, bitter and bored, til she sees him – a rotting thing, dead but somehow standing, and she is intrigued. Tentative, she reaches out with her necromancy, and feels something - a moment of connection before she is spat back out – and it’s proof enough that he is alive.
    Alive, but also dead.
    She smiles, wide like a shark.
    “You,” she says, “are very interesting.”
     
     

    I’d stay the hand of god, but war is on your lips



    @[insane]. tagging you on purpose this time :p
    Reply
    #2

    I had a dream that we were dead
    and we pretended that we still lived

    In his small piece of the world, the odd, the strange, the abnormal, are decidedly common. He has yet to meet a creature who is not unique in their own weird (and sometimes awful or beautiful) ways. He himself is one such creature. A thing not quite alive, yet not dead either. He had come into this world in death, yet life had fastened its grip upon him and refused to yield. So now, he is here, a creature of two worlds and neither. A thing that should not exist yet does.

    No one is more aware of that fact than he.

    But he ignores it. He ignores it because it holds no purpose, no true meaning for him yet. He is too young yet to realize just how great and terrible such a thing is. No one has taken the time to teach him.

    Perhaps she would though.

    He doesn’t notice her at first, though certainly she does not hide. Not until he feels the tug upon his very soul, the sudden grasp of clawing fingers that is just as quickly released. He doesn’t know what it is, doesn’t realize she can sense him (even if she cannot quite grasp him the way she can her truly dead things) in his living death.

    Blinking eyes of pale, milky blue, her turns to find her coming towards him. Her and something else. A thing of bones that rattles and clanks with each impossible step. He stares at it for a moment, unable to help but note the chilling similarities between he and the dead creature. Until she speaks, her words falling into the air on an eerie tone. He turns to find her grinning the wide toothy grin of a predator, and he wonders.

    He wonders what had brought her to him, bearing such ghastly gifts. Wonders how a girl so plain and unassuming can walk with things so similar to his deathly form (is this why she approaches him? Does she want him walking at her side like this creature of bones?). So he responds in the only way he knows how. ”So are you.”

    He pauses, wondering still. Wondering what comes next. Wondering just what it is she wants. ”I’m Jinn,” he says finally. Anything to break the silence.

    Jinn


    undead son of Tiphon and Elysteria
    Reply
    #3

    violence


    She prefers bones to flesh, usually.
    Flesh is messy, dripping and scattering. She doesn’t like the stench of it, either, the way it floods the nostrils and shuts out all other sensations. She likes her dead things clean, bones polished white and ready to be assembled, a macabre jigsaw puzzle.
    But this.
    Dead, but moving – living – with no help from her, from any other necromancer. And though some decay wafted from him, he wasn’t messy, not in the way the few corpses she’d entertained herself with had been.
    Very interesting, indeed.

    “I know,” she says, when he calls her interesting as well. She is not a humble thing, she knows she is powerful, comes from a powerful family, a woman who brings forth bones and can nestle in their minds.
    He gives her his name – Jinn – and she nods.
    “I’m Violence,” she says, then, stepping closer, curiosity alight in her eyes, “are you dead? You should be, but I can’t control you, not like most things.”
    She could slip into his mind, she supposes, but she is still terribly weak at that power – oh, sister is easy because sister is stupid, but most creatures spit her right back out, and she hates it, hates the feeling of being unsuccessful.
    So, she sticks with the bones. And her questions.

    I’d stay the hand of god, but war is on your lips

    Reply
    #4

    I had a dream that we were dead
    and we pretended that we still lived

    He is an odd thing made even stranger by his unique abilities. An angel's son wearing the body of a devil. He is more than just a creature with a ghastly visage. He too was born of a powerful family, had inherited things still beyond his full understanding.

    The healing is easy. He has done that since the day of his birth. Even now, festering wounds and seeping lesions will sometimes appear on his body. When they do, he fixes them almost without thought, stitching flesh back together to make himself once again whole (he has tried fixing the way his skin stretches tautly over his bones, the way his hair grows in patchy, dull clumps on his skin, but it resists, refusing to be healed by any touch, magical or otherwise).

    But this woman, she is different. He can almost feel the energy radiating from her, the darkness so at odds with his healer's soul.

    Her next words cause a shiver to skitter down his spine, the unspoken truth behind her words disturbing him in a way he cannot quite express. Had she tried? That is his first thought as he remembers that brief tug on his soul when first he had seen her. And for a moment, he's not quite sure how to answer her.

    He's not entirely sure he knows the answer.

    ”No?” It comes out more a question than a statement. In truth, he had never bothered to ask. Finally, his curiosity giving way to hesitation, he asks the question that has been plaguing his mind. ”Did you try?” His voice is soft as he speaks, a faint note of agitation tinging his tone. ”To control me?”

    Jinn


    undead son of Tiphon and Elysteria
    Reply
    #5

    violence


    She is the child of monsters and magicians, though she doesn’t look it. Her father is a feral thing, armored body and alien tongue, and her mother is a magician who has sharpened every feature until she is only passably equine. And though Violence has begged, again and again, for mother to shape her, to make her monstrous, mother refuses, turns from her.
    Instead, Violence looks simple, plain – a dark girl in a sea of dark girls. Though she can do incredible, terrible things, she doesn’t look the part, and she hates it. She wants to strike men dead with a glare, wants features so sharp they could cut glass, wants claws and fangs and fury to wield on her body.

    Did you try to control me, he asks, to which she simply responds “yes.”
    She tries again, then, reaches out to his dead form the way she does the bones, and once again there is a slight tug, a moment as decay recognizes its master, and then it’s gone, shut out. She huffs, frustrated, wanting him – not as a friend, not as woman often want men, but as a toy, a piece to add to the collection. He is fascinating.
    “You’re strange,” she says, “what made you like this?”

    I’d stay the hand of god, but war is on your lips

    Reply
    #6

    I had a dream that we were dead
    and we pretended that we still lived

    There would come a day he would no doubt wish to be plain. To be boring and unnoticeable. To be a normal horse. Perhaps that day would even be today. Even now, he becomes swiftly more self-conscious of his appearance, of the death that clings to him like a putrid cloak. For a moment his skin glows, as though he is trying to erase the essence of his being. As though the light can replace the darkness staining him with its awful, ghastly ruin.

    And then he feels it again, that sharp tug that claws at his soul and sears his mind with its wrongness. He takes a hasty step backwards, eyes widening as those pale, clouded orbs widen with recognition. With understanding.

    He may only be a boy, but he understands all too well what it means. Though the truth of her desires remains hidden from him, this girl is something else. Something frightening and surreal and all too familiar. Something he is not entirely sure he wishes to face just yet.

    ”Stop!” The word is expelled on a rush of air, the alarm too evident in his tone. Were he a bit more clever, he might have hidden his fear, might have chased away his discomfort. But he is only a boy. Unfortunately, not everyone is so forgiving of the clumsiness of youth.

    Her question stills him, preventing him from retreating another step. There is nothing physical halting him, only the realization that he still doesn’t know. He cannot answer her questions, even though he should be able to. He had never stopped to ask.

    And that is perhaps one of his greatest mistakes.

    ”I…” He halts, unsure if he should even answer her. But, despite his doubt (or perhaps because of it) he manages to stutter out an answer. ”I don’t know. I was born like this.”

    His pause is more pronounced this time, wariness and curiosity warring inside him. In the end, he cannot seem to help himself, his desire for knowledge outweighing his fear. ”But you. You’re different, like me. Do you know why?”

    Jinn


    undead son of Tiphon and Elysteria
    Reply
    #7

    violence


    Interest gleams bright in her eyes as his skin glows for a moment, as if he has been set alight. It’s gone in a blink, replaced by the acrid stench of his fear, which is its own rich pleasure, an almost metallic tang she is learning to love.
    Stop, he says, and though she has – not willingly, but because his body is not dead enough for her magic to ensconce itself in his skin, she tilts her head, curious.
    “Why?” she asks, “I would make you better.”
    It’s what she’s done to her sister, after all, piloted Charnel like a vessel and made her hunt, used that gloriously monstrous jaw to rend flesh. Charnel is better for it, surely – without Violence she would be a simple, stupid monster. With Violence, she is something else, something transcendent. A weapon.

    She smiles at him, and it’s a wide, dead smile.
    “I was born like this, too,” she says, then adds, “I can do something else, too. Something besides moving the dead.”
    The ill-wrought possession, still rough at the edges, unable to stay long unless they are willing or particularly stupid (Charnel is both, but moreso the latter – her mind is used to Violence, now, and does not know to push her out).
    “I could show you.”
    She says it like it’s a gift.
    “If you let me.”

    I’d stay the hand of god, but war is on your lips

    Reply
    #8

    I had a dream that we were dead
    and we pretended that we still lived

    He is not a monster, no matter what stories his skin tells. He is more than appearance, more than an undead thing with protruding bones and decaying flesh and foggy eyes. The world might define him one way, but he refuses to do so. Perhaps it is naïve – childish and foolish in the way that youth so often are – but he cannot seem to help himself.

    He would not let the world tell him who he must be.

    She is something else entirely. Something he cannot quite name, like his tongue is catching, thick and uncomfortable, on the words. He is by turns curious and fearful, unable to resist the lure of her words, yet inexplicably alarmed by import of her brightly gleaming eyes, of her wide smile strangely devoid of true emotion. His pale, white-blue eyes flick warily towards the creature of bone that still lingers by her side.

    The similarities are striking, but the differences even more so. He has flesh still stretched taut over his bones, blood that pumps sluggishly (but somehow effectively) through his rail-thin frame. He owns his own mind, his own will. He had been born, not made (even if that birth had been ghastly in its own right).

    ”Really?” The words leave his lips before thought can stop them. It is less a question of awe and far more one of curious horror. Isn’t that enough? he thinks.

    Of course, he has so little room to judge. Not he, the one cloaked by death, the one who heals and the one who bends light. But his thoughts hold little room for rationality right now.

    Her next words draw him in, reluctant, hesitant, but still he cannot seem resist. His interest is piqued, the word slipping from his lips on a breath of air before he can reconsider the consequences. ”Ok.”

    Jinn


    undead son of Tiphon and Elysteria
    Reply
    #9

    violence


    “Yes,” she murmurs, and she says it with such honeyed sweetness she could almost be trusted, were it not for the way her eyes gleamed bright, almost glassy. And whether in response to his inquiry or his allowance to her I cannot say.
    Ok. It is a lukewarm acquiescence, but it’s all she needs, because in this moment he is open before her like a flower, beckoning.

    She slips into his mind – not deep, merely wading in the shallows – and feels the way his heart beats sluggish in his chest, the slow draw of air into his lungs. Yes, he is alive, she can taste the saliva in his mouth. He is not like the bones, after all. But she still controls him, now, in this perhaps-fleeting moment where his mind opened to her and he invited her in.
    She inhales – his lungs expand – and she prods further. In addition to the undead oddness of him she finds other powers – the ability to heal, the ability to manipulate light.
    She is most intrigued by this – her own manipulations came to her easily.
    She pulls at light available, using him as the conduit, and shapes it like clay, tries to make a create to stand beside her bones. It is crude, rough-edged, and the light bleeds away as soon as she has it shaped, but she is thrilled nonetheless, excited to manipulate something else, something more.
    “Yes,” she says again, this time through his rotted lips.
    I could do such lovely things with you, she sighs to him in his mind. The light is dancing around them, wild and piercing and painful to look at. She stares anyway.

    I’d stay the hand of god, but war is on your lips



    PLEASE let me know if i should change anything. she can keep making him dance like a monkey or he can kick her out of his mind at any time obviously <33
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