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 Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2011 6:08 pm
She was remarkably quiet for still being alert, sprawled against the base of a tree, decorated in the finest it had to offer from fragile boughs. Glazed eyes squinted at him through the blur of midnight, his own stare inscrutable as the demon regarded the smears of filth she'd picked up in her retreat, defiling the scrolling narrative on her legs and adding a dingy element to her exterior. Better, but still lacking, inadequate in a way he could not pinpoint. It was almost as if she were purposefully refusing him something, a small token to complete the scene of desolation. Such defiance could not go unanswered, not when it had the ability to compromise the sordid games they played. He found that he wanted to dismantle her, see how much smaller her skeleton could curve without the restraints of flesh, muscle stripped away like bark until what remained was pure, emaciated and unblemished like the first of her kind.
Mephistopheles pondered his options with deliberate slowness, dragging the minutes out before moving forward, the shadow that slipped over her cooler than the darkness already perched there. Taking great care to draw attention to the gesture, he lifted his cloven hoof high as unyielding tendons allowed, dipping down to press its length along the pale line of her throat. The edges were sharp and brittle, capable of drawing blood with the faintest shifting weight; and it would take only a modest amount of pressure to cut off her airway completely, to crush all the tiny, overwrought vessels that kept her flushed and breathing.
He lowered his head toward her streaked face, watching it for nervous signs, a rabbit-hearted creature's dead giveaway. "You did very well, Habibi," The congratulations rang perfunctory at best, his hooked lips scraping at the air, unnervingly close to her white-rimmed stare. "But you are exhausted and weakened from your brief service, unfit for true worship. A pity. You had such potential." His neck straightened, hollow expression empty of anything reassuring, looking over her bruised, perhaps even crippled form. "I could finish it here and now, if you wish." The threat was delivered placidly, ushered forward with a droning vibrancy that did not fit his features. It was not a boast – it would have taken the same amount of effort to behead a flower at the height of its existence, petals ripening only to fall. At the same time, he was free to revel in her terror, to crack the thin veneer of false sympathy overlaying his most recent interactions. The sudden absence of restrictions proved intoxicating, and he tarried for her answer, awaiting resignation or else further begging. Either option was acceptable, so long as she chose her words correctly. If nothing else, it counted as practice for a much more significant ceremony, a filicide with deeper reaching consequences. This was an outlet, a trivial matter to be dealt with until he grew disinterested. In the now, her neck was supple and straining, lathered with sweat from her run, affording her precious seconds to decide.
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Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2011 3:05 pm
Oh, but he had inspired a certain amount of terror within that pretty head, and the pale uni couldn't help but stiffen at his approach. Muscles bunching, despite the burn of fatigue, as she managed to shift away from him. An inch or two, but no more. She couldn't move to protect herself from his divine wrath, let alone run, and that fear was painted as a strained mask along henna curled features. Metallic gaze widening as he came to a halt just before her, the thick trunk of his leg raising to a chorus of woodsy groans.
It was a whimper that fell from the mare's thin throat as that prickling edge touched her neck, but that soft whine faded and died under the pressure of his great hoof. Careful or calculated, the weight he allowed to rest upon her was soft thing, but she held little doubt in her mind that he could crush her throat with laughable ease, and her death would be nothing be nothing but a flicking afterthought. Their encounter easily forgotten, and her life would mean nothing, be nothing. It was a hard thought to bare, and in that permanent darkness the shine of crystalline tears barely glittered as they trailed over dirt smudged cheeks.
It couldn't end that way, couldn't. She was young, there was so much left to the world she hadn't seen, experienced. She didn't want to die..
His praise, false or mocking, cooled the heat that stung at the corners of frightened eyes. Tears slowing to a stop as hope, however misguided, welled up anew. Snuffed out again almost immediately as he continued on. Silken baritone naming her useless, and twisting her stomach into nervous knots. "No no," she breathed her protest, moving to pull long legs back beneath her body so she could raise, prove her worth to him, but managing only to cut her neck her against the unyielding weight of his jagged hoof against her delicate skin. It effectively put a stop to her struggling, but her voice rose, her only defense. "Please, forest lord, I can be useful. If you but give me one more chance."
Even now, terrified, she sought his approval. Not simply her own survival, but something more. He was frightening in his magnificence. His wrath and temper raising and falling like a leaf tossed in the wind, and she knew he could kill her. But he was still amazing, terrifyingly so, but she couldn't deny the pull of him.
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Posted: Wed May 04, 2011 7:13 pm
The hasty undertakings of a shaken mind were reflected in the mare's eyes as she fought to regain her bearings, willing a tongue to deliver something other than the bleating fear that whistled past her lips. He observed carefully, wordlessly, noting the renewed tears that slipped down her muzzle, salty and gathering earth with their passage. They shifted to earnest mud halfway along her chin, leaving globes of brown suspended like sprouting mushroom caps on the paleness of her features. The longer the unicorn lingered in his domain, the uglier she became under its influence, marked and marred without compunction. It had taken mere hints of mortality in the air to shred her composure, the confident beauty she'd strolled in with cracked and strewn in shell-fragments around her form. Now she presented as a spectacle, thrashing and mewling, more idiot foal than mare, more common than mystic. Even goats with their slanted-pupil simplicity died with more grace than she was willing to display in that moment.
But she was not necessarily a weak link; rather, she was indicative of a dilapidated chain, another piece in a sequence that had begun when her breed had ceased being paladins, trading their nobility for greater numbers. How easily these new beasts broke, he mused, the impression deepening when she jerked against the physical threat his hoof presented, opening a shallow crescent in her skin. Crimson flowered willingly from the spot, slickly dark in the diffuse lighting as it spilled along the bulging cords of her throat. The wound's curved shape smiled invitingly up at him, and Mephistopheles inhaled against it, seeking the released spores of her blood before the air could whisk them away. A fine, thickened texture invaded his flared nostrils, the bouquet-like quality sauntering along his tongueless maw, making him bare his teeth in sharp laughter, almost pleased with her clumsiness when it bore such sweet results. "You should exercise more care, lest you condemn yourself to a death slower than what I had envisioned." Mephistopheles warned her lightly, tone almost sociable, for all that he kept his weight on her neck. Would it be this straightforward with Laurelin? His thoughts painted a guardian tree on the back of the trembling creature underfoot, darkened her fresh spring to a sun-baked summer in his mind's eye. Yes, just like this, only better for having eluded him for so long, the wait ripening his fulfillment to its peak.
Her words finally spun above his fantasizing, sunken eyes narrowing further as he digested the plea, the expression eaten by the strangeness of his face. "Chances are not free, Habibi, nor are they infinite. There are no gifts here, only prices." He thrummed lowly, foot still stranded on the planes of her neck and pressing further into the breach in her flesh. It was death prying into live nerves, contamination vying for a place in her bloodstream. A few scarce ounces of weight and he could engrave a fatal line, watch her pour out into the clearing and latch his jaws onto the gash when the stream ran sluggish, mouth her dry. But he waited, timeless and in control, interpreting the flickering emotions on her face. "What might you provide that I do not already possess?" She was one, small and flimsy; he was many, practically indestructible and without a soul to tear at. He already had a lookout, a fool that would do his bidding so long as he filled her head with whatever nonsense he could concoct. And there would always be another game, another lost wanderer searching for a legend, a wish, or even something as uncomplicated as a way out. He did not need her.
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