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 Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 9:53 pm
Tsssssss
kskkttttss..
kktkkkkkkksssssssss...
The white noise of hushed voices in her head often overlaid into similar noises, sometimes words she was trying to understand, other times just noise. Only noise. Noise that hummed and told her everything was wrong. That even if she took the time to clean up before she went to the dragon's room he wouldn't be there - he'd be gone just like Riley was.
No. No he won't be. Shut up. Shut up... She tried to remind herself even as she headed up the stairs, blood - her own blood - still half caking her arm, lips, chin and the front of her shirt. Even some of the hair around her face had flecks of it in it. But the pain was forgotten easily in the place of some sort of welling-up desperation she felt.
She didn't understand why she was so worried about it. In fact, she didn't even question the overwhelming nature of her sudden concern. She knocked on the door to Jericho's room, and she waited.
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Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 10:06 pm
Jericho didn't answer the knock at his door, but the door wasn't really completely closed in the first place. It creaked open a bit from the knock in fact. The dragon was inside still, sitting in the middle of his room while staring at the ground. At first glance he might have looked fine, but the state of his living space was far from it. Treasure was littered all over the ground. Some of it was broken too. There also was the remains of his electronics strewn about, as well as a few scorch marks here and there.
If it weren't for the fact that Jericho was physically fine, one might have thought he had gotten into quite a brawl in his room.
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Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 10:13 pm
It felt worse than it looked. Shehk cautiously pushed the door open and stepped inside, closing it behind her without a word. She didn't know how to greet him, but from the way things looked - and the messages she'd received, he already knew. She would have been stupid to think that he didn't know. The pricolici carefully navigated around thrown treasure and broken pieces of various things towards the center of the room where Jericho sat. Still silent, she sat next to him.
Wrapping an arm around his shoulder, she half leaned against him, some semblance of an attempt at a hug. Some sort of comfort she really couldn't give because she herself didn't feel at ease with the situation at all.
"I'm sorry for your loss...." she finally said, her voice shaking, eyes half glossed over. She wanted to just say everything all at once. To get every feeling she had in her out and it took a lot to hold it in, to not just speak until she said every wrong thing she possibly could.
tssshhhh....wrong...ssssssssstttkkkkkkkkkkkkkk
Should she not have said even what she had?
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Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 10:24 pm
Jericho heard the door open, but he didn't turn around. He really didn't react at all until he felt her arm wrap around his shoulder as a sort of hug. Slowly, his gaze drifted towards Shehk. It was probably a good thing the sclera of his eyes were black, else they would have been notably bloodshot at this point. Staring at the pricolici for a few moments, his face soon shifted before he let his head drop back down.
He didn't have anything to say yet. Or rather, he couldn't say anything as he began to sob once again. The dragon felt pathetic, crying as much as he was, but he couldn't help it. He tried to fight against it, but the tears didn't stop.
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Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 10:30 pm
When he began to cry, Shehk also seemed to break from her attempt to hold it in herself. She wasn't sure if it was her own sadness or just how broken Jericho sounded as he wept which did it, but there were tears none the less as she shifted and put both of her arms around him, squeezing and half burying her face into his shoulder.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." she repeated it over and over again, as if every ounce of guilt she felt just weighed down so heavily upon her. It was all her fault. She should have known what to do this time. She should have known how to stop it that time. But she'd done nothing and now Jericho was suffering for it.
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Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 10:47 pm
Jericho leaned heavily against Shehk as she pulled him close, burying his face into her shoulder. He didn't say anything until the sobbing had quelled to the point of him being able to speak once more. Breathing heavily, he balled his hands up into fists.
"Th-this wasn't supposed to happen... why did it have to happen...?" he choked out before spending a few more moments to try and control himself.
"Why couldn't it have been.. me instead..."
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Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 10:58 pm
She brushed her hand over the back of his head, but made no motion to 'shhhh' or tell him it was alright. He was allowed to feel raw sadness, it was a powerful feeling, after all.
"If you had been there," Shehk whispered, "It might have been both of you." She wasn't sure it was the most comforting thing to tell him, but it was the truth. "And if it had been you, it would be Riley sitting in her room, mourning you." Which was also the truth - or rather, she hoped it was. "Which either way, isn't fair to either of you. Either way there would still be someone I would have to go and comfort and not know what to do or say."
sssssstttkkkkkccchhhhhhhhhhhhhyouhhssskkttt.... It wasn't about her. Why was she even bringing herself into the equation? That was just so selfish! She shouldn't have said that.
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Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 11:04 pm
In part, Jericho wondered if it would be better if they both had died then. Then he wouldn't be here suffering like he was, and nor would Riley for that matter. The whispers bit at him for this, seemingly to pick at how selfish such a thought was. That he really was a horrible friend to all. Closing his eyes tightly, he shoved them aside before abruptly pulling back to stare into Shehk's eyes. There was a certain look of desperation in his own.
"What.. what happened... tell us..."
He knew insanity was involved. But he wanted details. This was going to be his fate one day after all.
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Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 11:18 pm
The question caused Shehk to recoil, a thousand images flooding into her head all at once, the smallest crinkle of hushed noises coming over them. Perhaps they were accusing her. She wasn't sure, she couldn't understand what they were saying. They were saying everything and nothing at once. But there was one voice that she remembered with surprising clarity. One thing.
Eyes that looked at her, so sad. As if she'd known.
Stay Back. It was a strain on her mind to force herself to relive it, to make herself remember everything. She couldn't forget anything. She had to tell him, she had to tell him everything.
"When I gave you my journal, did you read the note to ask me about the Observation Point?" she asked. It was related, but without prompting she pushed on. "Underneath each island was a small sort of..... Jack, I don't even know what I'd call it. But they were secret rooms they were using for something. Just filled with FEAR. Raw energy that was hungry and wanted to eat all of us.
While the clans were at their meeting, I was at the Isle of Famine with Riley and Malodore and..." her voice dropped to a low whisper, "Hunters. Hunters were in those rooms doing something. Those with us went to force them out and...." Shehk could still feel the pain of burning in her back as the chainsaw met her flesh, that horrible sensation. Her hand even moved to grab towards it, remembering.
"Riley reacted badly when I got severely wounded by one of them, and it escalated from there...." the guilt she already felt weighed into her words as she slumped. It was her fault. If she'd been able to take care of herself, Riley wouldn't have snapped in her defense.
"There were.. there we-... Oh my jack..." Shehk seemed to suddenly find it a prudent time to strip off her jacket to check for the wound that had been inflicted upon her. In the shredded remains of the back of her shirt - and feeding its way into the opening of an old scar ripped open anew was a vine with red flowers attempting to blossom on it, making a low humming noise. "They pulled Riley apart while she was fighting with the hunters...." there was paranoia in her voice as she tried to get a hold on the vine that wasn't her own flesh to rip it out.
"And then...and then..and then..." Oh Jack, get it out, get it out, get it out. "She was turning silver the entire time and telling everybody to stay back. Stay back, stay back, stay back...." She couldn't help repeating herself.
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Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 11:30 pm
Jericho listened carefully as Shehk began to explain everything. Yes. He had recalled the journal, but he hadn't had a chance to ask her about what happened there exactly. Now he didn't have to. At the mention of hunters, a spark of anger and pure hatred seeped into his eyes. Of course. The hunters. The hunters would be at fault here. The more he thought about it, the more he wanted to completely and utterly rip them apart. Limb. By. Limb. And then burn their remains.
"Jacking hunterssss.... They had to have done something to her. While you were all fighting. Itsss them.. We know ittt..." he snarled. Nevermind what Stacey had said. The hunters must have found a way to trigger insanity to worsen.
They had to!
It was probably a good thing he didn't know about the whole insanity phoenix.
Yet.
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Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 11:47 pm
Shehk ripped the vine from her back with a nice surge of pain and some blood for her efforts, panting as she wrapped her messed up jacket back around her. She really wasn't aiming to look 'pretty' to begin with, fortunately, so it didn't bother her in the least.
"They..they must have." she actually wasn't too certain about that, and the agitation in Jericho's voice made her anxious, her tail curling around her legs and a small whimper escaping from her. "But when she reformed, she was....bigger." She motioned with her arms, with the assistance of her vine-plant-parasite to help her as she did this. "And....." Shehk half clutched her chest. "She was so bent on destroying us." It hurt to admit it. "So much raw power."
Could the heirs even do that? She didn't know.
" I know I dissipated at least twice from her attacks. She tried to eat Sammy, but Sammy was trying to save her, to keep everybody from attacking by the time I'd gotten there." She left out that she'd had to die to get there. "It was only us students at first and everybody was trying to talk her down."
She didn't need to tell Jericho that Shun had been more insistent on the other way to save Riley. There was enough bad blood there. Tsshhkktttsss..shhhttttkkkkkkkkcchhhhhhh why crrrrrrrrrrrrrrrsssshhhtttttccckkk She didn't need Jericho and Shun doing battle over this as well. She wasn't being selfish, she wasn't!
"But then the hunters arrived, and they were less forgiving. They forced her down, and in her last moments she...went to Malodore before she petrified....." Shehk couldn't help but frown, holding in another fit of sobs she wanted to just let go. "It was like that was the first time since reforming she'd actually been herself. The rest of the time it was like it was just something pretending to be Riley.
Like Riley is secretly somewhere else and that statue the Boogeymen took from me wasn't her at all." the tears slid down her cheeks silently as she tried to hold onto her composure. "I kept her safe...I wanted her to come home in one piece. There has to be something we can do as long as she isn't broken.
She survived the hunters. She survived them destroying the isles of the Horsemen. I just.... I don't know where they took her." she sniffled. "It's so hard to focus with all the noise in my head. I..I just..I can't think straight. It's like ever since the hunters destroyed the Four Clan's home and that..that..."
she waved her hands about in a matter that would have been dramatic if it hadn't been so damn frantic. "The hunters just blew it up! And all those faces...a giant gray phoenix just rose up out of the ashes of the mess and descended upon us." HOME She couldn't think straight. "I just... it's like I keep trying to form thoughts since then and I can't understand what I'm thinking..." her fingers wrapped into her hair, a frightened look on the pricolici's face.
"But I had to get her home, Jericho. I had to. I did. And they took her. They took her from her home...."
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Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2012 12:04 am
Jericho continued to listen, frowning as Shehk retold the tale of the battle between Riley and the students. And to hear that hunters were the ones to strike her down? That pissed him off even more. But the rage quickly died at the mention of Malodore. It... was there when she left them then? He couldn't fathom how he would have felt if he had been there. Just finding out the way he had was bad enough.
He closed his eyes for a moment, imagining the body of his best friend grow still, petrifying. It was not something he could focus on very long before feeling a surge of pain rip through him.
"Thank you.. you brought her back.. you kept her safe... but now she's gone again... We don't know if they will ever give her back. She belongs here! Not.. wherever they took her..."
He gritted his teeth before pounding the ground with a fist.
"THOSE HUNTERS! WHY MUST THEY RUIN EVERYTHING!? HOW MANY LIVES DO THEY NEED TO DESTROY!?" he boomed before the strength left him once again, "Why did it have to be her..."
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Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2012 12:14 am
She moved in to hug him again. "I don't know. I...I don't know." she really didn't. It shouldn't have had to be Riley to begin with. It shouldn't have had to be any of them to begin with. The hunters should have been leaving them alone. They hadn't been hurting anybody. They didn't deserve what they kept getting. Why was it the Hunters always ended up where they were going? Horrible humans.
She wanted to eat them all.
If they'd never grabbed her to start with, Riley would not have had to give chase, and then she wouldn't have been........ it was her fault, wasn't it? She'd been too weak to defend herself, and she'd been too weak to save Riley. She had to do better. Was she capable of doing better?
"But...." she sighed, "I have to take care of you for her now, Jericho. Because Riley really did love you, and it'd be what she wanted. For you to get better. You were one of her treasures."
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Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2012 9:59 am
She didn't know but Jericho wanted to. Riley was strong and smart... and a leader as much as she was a friend. To lose her was a great loss for all the students. When Shehk spoke up again, he looked up at her before heaving a sigh.
"Our fate is sealed we feel... We may as well already be considered dead at this point.."
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Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2012 10:04 am
Shehk sat back, cupping the dragon's face with both of her hands.
"I refuse." she whispered, noise crackling softly in the back of her mind, again implying that she was saying the wrong things. "I've lost Red, Riley's fate is uncertain, and I'm not going to let you just go down like this. Riley would kill me if I just let you give up. I'm not going to offend her current state by doing that.
I'm not."
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