|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2015 2:07 am
 |
|
|
 |
He was off like a rabbit, and that was exactly how she saw him. He fled, stumbling and tripping and altogether bumbling just to get away faster, and she waited.
She waited until he was out of sight, and all she could do was smell his trail. She picked up her pin and waited until she could hardly hear him noisily running through the brush and leaves, and then she crouched, tensing every taut muscle until they were tight and ready to respond to her.
A twig snapped, and she flew.
At first, it was just a four legged run across the ground. Soon enough, she utilized the trees, leaving deep gouges in their bark as she climbed and leapt from one to another. She could hear him now, his run never slowing, and she zigzagged from branch to branch until she saw him far below, just in time to drop like a stone down to the ground and land violently on top of his body. She grabbed a hold and rolled, twisting around him like a snake until he was trapped and pinned once more. This time, she slammed him into the ground to daze him, for good measure.
That was pathetic. She growled, having settled back into her pinned form during her run. She launched herself off of him, only to claw at his body in order to get him back on his feet. I said RUN.
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2015 11:19 pm
|
|
|
|
Yuki might not have looked back, but he listened. He'd expected her to follow him right away, snatch at him and grant him only moments of freedom before she trapped him again. It was difficult to hear anything at all, over the sound of wind rushing past his ears, his frantic flight through the trees that had all manner of forest debris crunching and crackling underfoot. Low hanging branches snagged at his head and body, and more than once he yelped in alarm in the belief that it was the grasp of Riley's claws. He wasn't trying to be silent; it would have done him no good to try and it only would have slowed him down.
The longer he ran headlong through the trees, he told himself that he'd put distance between them. Maybe she hadn't chased him at all. Maybe even if she did he was fast enough to keep ahead.
He didn't realize that he was wrong until he heard her high in the trees just behind him. He was afraid to look back. Her body came down on his and he cried out in alarm, limbs tangled with tentacles as he tried to wriggle in her strong grasp. He gasped for air the moment she took him to the ground, forcing out what breath he had.
"No! Riley, please!" His pleas to her switched to screams into the night just as quickly. "HELP! SOMEONE HELP ME!"
Pain and vertigo overtook his head in tandem, his voice dying in his throat abruptly. For a moment he forgot how to scream at all. The world spun and even when she released him it took her claws to urge him up. He staggered, trying to judge where the ground and his feet actually were.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Jul 17, 2015 9:27 pm
|
|
|
|
Her movements stilled for a single moment when she heard him say her name again, as if it had triggered something so startling, so all encompassing that it stopped her. Her hands balled into fists, and she stared, for several long, horrifying seconds, before she finally gained her wits back.
I told you never to say that name. I told you. She lurched forward, bearing down on him with slow steps. Do you think she exists? Is that it? Are you trying to appeal to her in the hopes that somewhere, deep down, the woman your counterpart married is still in there? Because I can assure you, she is not. And if I could go back in time, to when they both existed, I would kill them both with my own two hands.
Her hands shot out as she said it, gripping his wrists to pull him up close to her. Her eyes were less anger and more disgust, at this point. Don't you realize what they were? What they did? What they bred? Does your blood not boil with the same anger at the mere idea that you had any small, insignificant part to play in the creation of those - those - The words that came from her mind began to garble, as she spoke in her native tongue. But the inflection made it clear that they were not compliments.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2015 6:36 pm
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2015 8:39 pm
|
|
|
|
Was he arguing with her?
Riley felt a moment of panic, unable to admit that the boil she'd been torturing and tearing down felt safe enough to argue with her. It was enough to save him, however temporarily, from more pain.
Are you defending the humans, simply because they had not yet evolved enough to hurt us? Would you not kill a dog if you knew that it would kill your family the next day if left alone? What monstrous, ludicrous logic do you propose these humans to be innocent with, and why? WHY? WHY DEFEND THEM AFTER ALL THEY'VE DONE?
She was shaking. He could feel it around his wrists, and it was surreal to her. It had been too long since she'd felt anything but anger, hate, and bloodlust.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2015 3:28 pm
|
|
|
|
How stubborn he could be in confrontation had nothing to do with how Yuki valued his own personal safety. Perhaps it was what had killed him to begin with; tempting fate with bold, foolish protest and finally losing. It might have all just been quite a dangerous game of trying to get in the last word, in his mind.
He tried to tell himself that, anyway. What use was it to want to make her understand? Why did he want to?
If he actually realized, or presumed, that she was shaking for any reason other than out of anger, it wasn't addressed. His tension was the only reason he wasn't still shaking.
"I'm not defending them all," his tone actually held confidence in that statement, "but not all of them are killers!"
That was where his confidence faded, and his brows furrowed at her proposed suggestion of kill or be killed. "There's no way to know such a thing..." While he grasped the reasoning she was trying to press on him...
"Why wouldn't I tell them to stay away from it? Could I not just have someone to take it away? Why would killing be the only choice?"
He clammed up when she started yelling at him again, anxiety welling up and ready to have him struggle again. He resisted it, for the moment. Curiosity was pulling at him, if gently. Was it just about the Hunters, or was she cursing humans as a whole?
"How can you condemn an entire world? We-- They." He had to amend himself, and felt his dead heart jolt at the implication of what he'd said first. "Those humans wanted peace. Not... Whatever the ones after them evolved into."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2015 7:57 pm
|
|
|
|
The shaking stopped.
You're a ghost. Riley's voice was a slow and sinister slide of sound and thought that penetrated his mind with purposeful discomfort. She let his wrists go, because her tentacles had come to life, and they were sliding around his legs and arms and neck with constraining twists and turns. Her hands fell down to her sides, but her demeanor remained tight - tense - prepared. Ready to strike, as always.
You were one of them, once, weren't you. The sound of realization was obvious in her tone; this was why he couldn't turn himself away. This was why he felt sympathy. Not because of what they'd seen. Not because of that, she repeated to herself. She chanted it, several times, until she believed it. There was safety in this realization. Asylum.
I condemn an entire world, because they condemned us first. It was a gentle reminder, but it was also a lie - that wasn't her reason for it. Just a fact. And you.. you know what those humans wanted. It was not peace. It was each other. It was base, crude procreation. They wanted to make more of the little bastards, and they did. I would have stopped them. I would have protected us. The tentacles tightened around his neck. And never given them a chance to fulfill their abhorrent destiny. But you.. I see where your loyalties lie. I know what you would have done.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Aug 05, 2015 7:01 pm
|
|
|
|
He wasn't sure how to respond to her statement, because it was fact. That, and she was making his head hurt again and he was uselessly trying to will away the ache. Yuki wanted to reach to it, rub his temples, but just as soon as his wrists were freed the tentacles returned. The pain in his head didn't matter in comparison to having the appendages around his limbs - his throat - and he immediately stilled as not to prompt retaliation.
It probably would have helped to be still and silent, if anything were to help him at all.
"I don't know..." Yuki replied quietly to her accusation. It hadn't been a question.
He looked relatively normal in comparison to most. Even in comparison to other ghosts... It seemed logical that he had been human. He had no way of knowing that it had been only in part, nor that the fact that he didn't bleed crimson wasn't just some result of death. Regardless... Even in life, human was all he had wanted to be.
"How can it matter? Even if I was?" But Riley was angry again, and going on about the two humans that they had dreamed themselves to be. It kept going back to that. He struggled to grasp the why. It was crystal clear that Riley hated the humans, the Hunters...
Pressure tightened around his neck, but not enough to choke him. Not yet.
"I don't think you hate them for being human," Yuki thought aloud. "Not as much as you hate their devotion to one another." His soft tone sounded almost piteous, as if he believed that she knew nothing of love.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Aug 05, 2015 7:55 pm
|
|
|
|
It wasn't clever to try and play mind games with a mindflayer.
I hate them for what their devotion spawned. She hissed out, annoyed at his pathetic attempt to turn things back around onto her. Humans don't understand what true love is. They do not have the capacity. I know what humans are capable of.
Her tentacle pulled his hand closer, until it rested on her stomach. It rose, and then there was nothing. A sickening hole, one which she drove his hand through hard. Only I know what they are really capable of. You know nothing, you impudent whelp. You know nothing of what they do in their labs. But I do. They have taught me well. They have taught me how to kill, by killing me, over, and over, and over again. That little glimpse of the vacant predecessors to their kind was nothing but a ruse to make you complacent. And it worked. Look at you. You sicken me.
She was done playing with him. She'd taken her fill of his pain, his agony, his confusion, and now all he was giving her was weakness. I'm going to kill you, now. It's not going to be quick. It's not going to be easy. But I can promise you one thing. It is a drop in the bucket compared to what they did to me. What they will do to all of us.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Aug 05, 2015 8:26 pm
|
|
|
|
She shot down his accusation as quickly as he could finish speaking it. The answer he thought he'd figured out was wrong, and in a way he was disappointed. Though, even if he had been right, it probably wouldn't have made her any less angry than she had become.
He tried to pull against her, to draw his hand back before it made contact with her body. Another thing he didn't understand, especially when she seemed so appalled by him. Why would she want to have him touching her? He drew in a sharp gasp, his eyes widening and hand fisting the moment she forced it through the hole in her chest. Like he expected sharp teeth there as well, ready to clamp down on him.
He had an idea of the labs she spoke of, but he didn't speak up in regards to it. What he had seen in the Trials hadn't been real, anyway... He didn't want to imagine how much worse it could be.
"I've already died once," he said without turning his gaze up toward hers. "I suppose when I wake up, I'll forget about this death too."
If only it were that easy.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Aug 05, 2015 8:42 pm
|
|
|
|
No such luck, I'm afraid. She chuckled out, lowering him down to the ground with a frightening gentleness. You won't ever forget this. You won't ever forget me. And that is a true, honest shame.
The tip of one tentacle tightened to a point, sharp and deadly, pointed right at his chest.
Because you'll want to.
One slow, and meticulous vivisection later, Riley had nothing left but the humanoid shaped plot of oddly colored blood staining dark leaves on the ground in front of her, and she stared down at it like a piece of art, oddly satisfied with her work. It would serve to keep her sated, until Amrita returned to retrieve her. It would be enough.
For now.
Backing away and climbing like a spider up into the trees, her last fleeting thought was that Malodore would have been proud of how careful she'd been to keep him alive until the absolute very last moment. But of course she managed flawlessly; she'd had an excellent teacher.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
