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 Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2010 11:40 pm
Iru's narrator was having trouble with logic, but little details didn't matter all that much outside of fighting. She felt something sliding under the bottom part of her suit and sat up to see what it was. She was relieved to see that it was just Ross's finger. Bugs in a swim suit were not fun. "Eh, it's fine." She looked at her wet hand. "Swimming got boring pretty quickly."
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Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2010 12:02 am
"Well, you're right, though. And I did promise I'd swim when I was done," Rhoslyn replied, grinning. "So I guess you'll just sit there and watch me?"
He curled his finger and idly pulled at the fabic a bit, then fished his finger out, grinned at her again, then walked to the pool and gingerly lowered himself in at the deep end, treading water.
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Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2010 7:32 am
The fabric made a small snap sound after Ross let it go. She grinned a little then looked at him. "No way. Sitting here would be just as boring as swimming by myself." She stood up and followed him into the pool. Since she was behind him, Ross would end up getting a cold and wet sensation on his back after they were both in the water. He would pay dearly for letting her get bored.
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Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2010 6:19 pm
"Why do I care?"
He was glad to have his hand back, finding it odd being pulled along by this tiny little girl that he thought he knew so well- this white mage that was outwardly much stronger than ever before.
With her touch still lingering on his hand, Epothos brushed passed Sey and towards the sliding glass door exit to the balcony. He stuffed his hands in his the pockets of his suit pants before resting his forehead against the glass, gazing out into the sky.
"For the longest time, you have been nothing but a reminder of my mortality, my damned soul and the fleeting mortality your god has forced upon me. Feelings and thoughts that came along with being human, being mortal, I first felt because of you.
And then those feelings started to expand to 'friends'- love, compassion, caring for others. I hated it. I wanted to destroy everything that threatened to tie me down to this world in which I am damned but was unable- and so I shut it all out.
The night you fled the temple I found myself amongst the graves of those who died in the battle for Barton years ago and..."
Moments passed while the demon-man just breathed against the pane.
"...whatever. I've always cared, Sey, and I don't know why- it just doesn't piss me off anymore."
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Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2010 7:15 pm
Liquid Lights "...whatever. I've always cared, Sey, and I don't know why- it just doesn't piss me off anymore." She was silent as she stared incredulously at his back while he spoke with a candor that was unprecedented in the seven years that she'd known him. Seven years they'd known each other, nearly dying thousands of times in their collection of misadventures - and it took him... this long to say all of this? Before she truly realized what she was doing, her legs had halved the distance between them, heels clicking against the hardwood in a determined rapid pace. Once again, she reached out to grab him and her hand clenched around his arm, yanking the demon back from the window to face her and using all of the strength that she could muster without her magic. Her face was flushed, shoulders held back, eyes flashing brightly and teeth clenched as the whole of her petite self exuded an emotion she so often held tightly underfoot: Anger. "Well it pisses me off!" Sey yelled, her free hand rearing back as she dragged him around, slapping him hard on the cheek. "Just because it took you so long to get over yourself... Some of us were suffering you know!" She couldn't help herself as the tears welled in her eyes, dangerously close to falling from her black lashes. The words that rushed from her trembling mouth were words she'd been wanting to say for months - no, years - and there was nothing she could do to stop them now that she'd started. "After Samael and the Forgotten One... After the Temple was destroyed, I was alone. You left me to suffer alone; even after what you did!" Her head shook as her bitter laugh cut through the air, the tears in her eyes shaken lose at the movement and she let go of his arm as her anger rose at her body's traitorous tears. She suffered alone for eight months and fourteen days in a wheelchair, back broken, soul the battleground for the great siege that had not ended for her after she was knocked from the sky by lightning. Months of suffering and she still gave more grievance over their first and last kiss. Her fist real kiss with no magic infused to sedate anyone. "And then when I left the Temple after you punched Him-" Her voice cracked a moment and her hands tightened into fists, the white mage's shoulders trembling as though she was struggling to hold back the urge to slug him in the face just as he did her God all those years ago. Each point she brought up had so many memories, so many emotions attached to them. She had left everything she knew in this world for a chance to live a normal life. For a chance to experience love and live for herself - something that she could not do if she stayed and accepted the ultimatum of her God. She took that chance greedily... But he wasn't there when she searched for him. "Nothing. There was absolutely no sign of you anywhere. And now you say you care? Now you're making an effort to CARE!?" It was clear in her tone of voice that her anger was abating to sadness, the immense amount of sorrow she felt originally hidden by her fiery outburst. There was no way that the innumerable tear-filled nights and spurned emotions could be truly hidden in her words, not when they held so much stock in her heart. "I loved you Stryphe. I didn't care that you were a demon, I didn't even care that you had fought my God. I brushed off what everyone was saying about how you would simply hurt me and I fell for you.
I let you talk me into fighting in Heaven or Hell. I let myself make you the reason why I went crawling back to Falis, to beg him for his help in saving your bullet filled body." She, in her weakness, let her emotions compromise her principals and now she was here living with the consequences. Back under the yolk of her destiny as a White Mage and once more the dutiful handmaiden of her God, Sey had learned her lesson from the cruelness of his absence. And she would make sure that he knew perfectly well how she had felt all these years. "I have always cared, Stryphe Ebrowen Epothos! And if you dare to claim the same then... then... I haven't slapped you hard enough!"
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Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2010 8:34 pm
His cheek reddened, his brow furrowed, and his eyes smoldered into hers from above as she layed into him with feelings years old. He held that burning stoic gaze even when she mentioned 'love'.
When she was finished, a familiar snide smirk slithered it's way onto the demon-man's face.
"The one time your precious platinum dragon could have saved me some trouble, you go and step out from under it's wing so you can be closer to a demon. And now I'm getting slapped around." The gruff, dark words rolled out of his chest like a violent, distant thunderstorm - hushed and intense. There was nothing she could bring up that he hadn't already damned himself a hundred times over for, and so he came back with sarcasm.
It was weak though, and lacking the usual confidence. The remark was contending with mountains of shame and guilt that he'd been climbing for some time that Sey had just shoved in his face. He softened. The demon-man's shoulders slouched a bit and he turned his face away from hers, moving for the bed and sitting on the edge to stare at the floor. Using his elbows, he leaned against his knees and let his hands hang limp between them.
From hidden within a veil of wavy, dark brown locks, "Seyumi... if I didn't accept my shame; if I didn't recognize how terrible I've been, I wouldn't be here right now."
The weight of the fact was severe: Stryphe had only lived as a mortal man for a short time, and he wasn't close to being good, and his countless terrible acts as an immortal demon were still with him. In accepting his shame, the demon-man was giving up on his quest to re-attain immortality, power, and vengeance.
"I am resigned to my damned fate, Seyumi." He looked up at her, a demon making a prayer to the former High Preistess. "Help me to live this mortal life. Trust me, Seyumi. Trust me when I tell you that while this body still draws breath there is no harm that will come to those two children."
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Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2010 9:57 pm
"Help you..." She wiped her gloved hands over her eyes, letting out a mumbled curse as she ruined the make up that the Priestesses had so carefully placed on her eyes. She felt dizzy after finally saying what she'd wanted to say for years, the sudden release of her pent up emotions along with the sight of the demon looking so forlorn and so mortal on the edge of the bed making her mind spin. Did she trust him? Could she trust him? The needless questions raced through her mind despite the answer being there as it always would be: yes. "Stryphe," She uttered his name in a single syllable of forgiveness, the broken heart that beat inside her finally allowed a chance to mend now that it was bereft of the heavy load of bottled pain. How could she begrudge him for what he had been - what he still was? Sey wouldn't dare to say that she had fallen for him blindly; she knew full well exactly what kind of man sat before her, what kind of terrible things he had done and was capable of doing and it was that demon that she had so naively fallen in love with. But despite being a being that originated in the depths of hell, Sey would always see the bright spark of goodness that was inside him. She saw it and believed that he was a good man."What are you so afraid of, that you'd come to me now? What have you heard?" There would be time to talk more about the past later. Sey hadn't yet forgotten the urgency of which he'd made his surprising visit and wanted to know just exactly what kind of threat would send him after her so suddenly.
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Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2010 10:32 pm
Epothos was more than glad to revert to recent events. After today, the threat of actually feeling sorry for himself didn't seem so bad when compared to the little priestess feeling sorry for him.
"Before I came looking," He started, the sound of relief quickly fading to cold, gruff focus, "when I was burning some darker bridges, I overheard some disturbing talk. At the time," He breathed, "I was so certain that you were in trouble, it didn't register at the time. 'A hefty price for a couple squirts.'"
In fact, the night Epothos'd heard that he'd been in a drunken stupor at some shady bar in Durem, and some lowlife complaining about the price he payed for his 'squirts' wasn't totally uncommon.
"There's a good chance this could be way off, but I think Raulin could be looking for someone to do some dirty work. That and I kinda admire the guy. Can't be good."
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Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2010 10:57 pm
Liquid Lights Epothos was more than glad to revert to recent events. After today, the threat of actually feeling sorry for himself didn't seem so bad when compared to the little priestess feeling sorry for him. "Before I came looking," He started, the sound of relief quickly fading to cold, gruff focus, "when I was burning some darker bridges, I overheard some disturbing talk. At the time," He breathed, "I was so certain that you were in trouble, it didn't register at the time. 'A hefty price for a couple squirts.'" In fact, the night Epothos'd heard that he'd been in a drunken stupor at some shady bar in Durem, and some lowlife complaining about the price he payed for his 'squirts' wasn't totally uncommon. "There's a good chance this could be way off, but I think Raulin could be looking for someone to do some dirty work. That and I kinda admire the guy. Can't be good." She wasn't sure what was worse; Stryphe's admiration of the man that sought to make her life a living hell as much as the church's canon of propriety allowed him or the fact that his eavesdropped information might actually be supporting his seemingly far fetched assumption. The color began to fade from her cheeks the more she thought about it and Sey began to pace the length of the room before the bed, her mind struggling to place a High Temple trained White Mage - and a High Priest of all things - breaking his oath in such a way. The training one receives to become a member of the clergy runs bone deep. The years of experience and endless drills and lessons on the teachings aren't something to be forgotten overnight; or something to suddenly shed on a whim. While it was something that was expected of the Oathsworn, it was a skill that was drilled into those in Isen that they would sacrifice themselves before putting their comrades in danger. From the first moments of their fostering, their Acolytes learned that their lives were dedicated unto the service of others. That giving up their spark of life so that others might continue was an honor and a privilege. Obviously it was something that Sey herself had a hard time of forgetting and naturally it was something that she could not expect of Raulin who had spent the same ten years being indoctrinated behind the white walls of the High Temple. But if she was going to protect those children then she'd have to think of the unthinkable... And there was nothing more unthinkable to the white mage then a man of the church preparing to damn his soul. "I don't know what to say. If ever there was a loophole that he'd be able to justify keeping his oaths after having two adolescents killed, it'd be by hiring someone to do the act for him. But... Our Temple is having terrible financial issues right now. There's barely any money left for our charities after what we've spent on rebuilding." The more she thought, the more scared she became. If Raulin was capable of breaking his oaths then why would a little embezzlement of church funding bother him? "How much." Her throat dried over the words, but she forced herself to verbalize the terrible, terrible thought. If she went back and checked the Temple finances... "How much was the price offered for their deaths?"
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Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2010 11:12 pm
"s**t, I don't know," He groaned, laying back on the bed and glaring holes into the ceiling in concentration. There was no way he could remember much more. "I was drunk, taking a piss-"
"HALF A MILL-?!"
"ShyuddUP!"
Yeah. And it was right after that that the two men had gotten up in his face to try and indimidate what the demon-man had heard. What followed, Epothos couldn't remember. Most likely something not out of the ordinary, like dishing out an a**-kicking.
"Two hundred and fifty thousand a head." He blurted out, then started again, "Listen, even if he wanted to hire out, Falis knows. Just because he finds some loophole in your laws it doesn't keep his soul safe..."
He sat upright and looked straight at Sey.
"You said 'anyone can be dangerous if they're pushed far enough'." Accompanied by a 'yeah right' expression, he followed with his suspicious conclusion, "The kids. The hell is with them that could give Raulin justification?"
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Posted: Mon Jun 14, 2010 12:08 am
Liquid Lights "You said 'anyone can be dangerous if they're pushed far enough'." Accompanied by a 'yeah right' expression, he followed with his suspicious conclusion, "The kids. The hell is with them that could give Raulin justification?" Half a million gold. Half a million for the death of two fifteen year old kids. She struggled to fathom the brevity of the situation, hoping that it really wasn't the situation as she explained what she had originally held back. "He called them Vespers." Shuddering and finding her knees unable to hold her weight any longer, Sey moved to the opposite corner of the bed and sat, her gown fluffing out to cover the sheets around her. "They're supposed terrible demons from fairy tales that the clerics would tell us when we were younger and misbehaving. But the way he named them and the anger of the mob in the Temple..." It was quite clear to her that Raulin didn't think that they were only things from stories told to children to threaten them into good behavior. "The girl - Luazia. She summoned a dragon; a full grown silver dragon that could have been easily mistaken as an Avatar of Falis when the Temple was bombed. It took twenty two outsiders and the entirety of the clergy to take it down and kill it... and then someone took advantage of its death and gave it a bastardization of life. It's still out there, somewhere." She left out the fact that she let Falis control her body, the painful stretch of her soul nearly blinding her to the amount of power He was sending through her, her deity guided hands wielding the impossible amount of divine energy and driving out the massive undead dragon single handedly. She left out that and another choice tidbit of information about the man that had originally set out to kill the former Black Dragon Syndicate head; the man that, since that day, she was currently bound to for the rest of her life. "With that power those kids are capable of things that I can't even fathom... But what they wielded was all divine power; Falis' power. Raulin said they were demons but it was unmistakable to me. They're just kids whose gifts from Him are much stronger then possibly anyone else in living history - and too much for them to hope to control right now." She looked to him as though her explanation was necessary to a man who'd killed more people then she wanted to think about. That their innocence was something that would suddenly right all the wrongs and erase the southern grounds of all the graves that lay there. "I'm taking care of them because they'd die on their own. Die or get snatched up to be pawns by some terrible sort of person, or some variation of an unimaginable fate. They might be immensely strong magically but they're still kids."
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Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2010 12:54 am
He rested his chin against a fist while digesting all the information Sey was sharing with him, realizing that he was quite thirsty somewhere amidst it all.
When she was finished, his jagged, concetrating frown parted. "You guys have superior's, don't you? I was going to say you should try to talk to them, but with how strict your rules are I'm not sure he'd be acting outside of the Order's wishes yet."
It was hard to say what pleased him more- a perfect reason to stand against the entire Falician Order, or the idea that Raulin was indeed acting on orders from the very first link in the platinum chain of power. He'd steeple his fingers over his lips and sent a sly, quizical look up at the young priestess to see what she thought.
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Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2010 9:23 am
Stryphe would see Sey's face contort from a grimace of disconcerting doubt to skepticism as she burst out laughing, her silver eyes staring at him to see if she'd really heard what he'd said correctly. "Did you get shot in the head since the last time I saw you?" She managed to ask between bouts of laughter, though she quickly composed herself when she realized that the demon wasn't laughing with her. No. He could not be serious. "Firstly... Everything we're talking about right now is simply speculation. I'm almost a hundred percent sure that Raulin wouldn't do anything to hurt those kids – getting them out of the Temple was all he wanted. To banish someone is within the canon of the church but it also isn't something that a High Priest takes lightly. The kids did kill people - even if they didn't mean to. I understand why Raulin did what he did but I don't think it was the right thing to do." Taking off her stained gloves and rising to stand again, Sey threw them on her dresser and slowly began to pace in front of it, her mind snatching at all the cracks in his conspiracy theory and tearing it apart. "Secondly, even you admitted that 'there's a good chance this could be way off'. Hearsay in Bars while you're drunk isn't information I'd bet on." She'd entertained the thought when he'd said it but the more she thought about it, the more impossible it seemed. Raulin was a staunch conservative. If there was anyone who'd be against doing anything to compromise a single tradition of the church, much less the religion's actual central precept, it would be High Priest Quatremaine. "As for superiors... Stryphe this is a religion worshiped world wide. Do you even realize how big the church is?" It was a rhetorical question. Of course he didn't. "Not only has it existed for a millenia, or possibly even longer, if it was an organization capable of corruption we would have all heard about it by now. Millions of people worship Falis and I'm sure there would be millions of voices crying out if someone tried to justify killing in the precepts, even if it was the Hierophant." She said the words with a tone that said she was right, that there was absolutely no way that he could even try to find a gap in her logic before she remembered who she was taking to; a demon that barely knew anything about a religion he was roped into being a temporary paladin for. "The Hierophant is infallible, the mortal most beloved by Falis and His mouthpiece on this earth. Because he's lead the church so well, Falis blessed him with longevity – the man's over three hundred years old. And even if – IF – the Hierophant was somehow corrupt, the entire Curia would stop him." Sighing and rubbing the bridge of her nose, Sey paused to figure out how best to compress the years of lessons on church structure and administration into a quick explanation. "The hierarchy of the entire clergy is the model for that of a single Temple. If the High Priest is supposed to be the big cheese in a shrine then the Hierophant is the big boss on a global scale. The Curia are his advisers, dealing with specific administrative issues like finances, meting out justice for crimes within the church, evangelization, a bunch of things. They act like the Council of Elders for the Hierophant, helping him make decisions for the betterment of the church and underneath them are the Praefects, Priests in charge of geographic regions and the Temples and Shrines within them, and then High Priests under them.That's thousands of people Stryphe. Hundreds of thousands of Gaians who would not stand to see what they believe in be twisted or corrupted. So what you're saying isn't possible." It was a statement she truly believed and Sey stared at him, stopping her pacing as she held his green gaze and daring him to try and refute her.
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Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2010 10:03 am
As the priestess was wrapping up her informative tangent the demon-man stood up and made for the door. He was still listening as intently as he could muster, but he'd hit the limit on the amount of Falis talk that he could handle for now.
"I'm just so relieved, then." He said less than half-heartedly as he pulled open the door and motioned with a palm for Sey to lead the way out of the room, "Now c'mon. I'll buy you a drink. Hopefully my weapon is still sitting there in the elevator."
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Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2010 10:15 am
Liquid Lights "Now c'mon. I'll buy you a drink. Hopefully my weapon is still sitting there in the elevator." As he stood up she watched him wordlessly, blinking in surprise as he opened the door and expected her to follow him. He didn't even look like he cared about anything she'd just said! "Wha.... Ooooh!" Huffing and grabbing her gloves off the dresser, Sey looked in the mirror and dabbed her eyes with a tissue to clean off her smudged make up before marching out the door. "You're so ridiculous, you know that?" She scoffed while passing him. He'd suddenly rushed in here, ranting about her safety, making her go into her own rant - and it turns out everything's perfectly alright. Completely ridiculous. "I'm hungry too. Think you could manage to take me out to dinner as well? Something might kill me if I went out by myself you know." Sarcasm - it was something she learned to use from him quite well.
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