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 Posted: Mon Aug 26, 2013 2:36 am
[ caves ]
She turned a baleful eye to the waiting Caelius. Her lip curled back even further as an actual growl escaped her throat.
(A cornered animal protecting the body of its mate, some animals mate for life, maybe she could recover, given enough time, given enough-)
The kind stranger was not so kind any more. The kind stranger was just a stranger again, cold and sharp around the edges, and had thrown her beneath a moving vehicle. A slow moving tank that moved ever forward, and Clerise was crushed beneath it.
"They're not specimens," she spat at Caelius, her fingers tightening around the hilts of Balthazar. A vivid image of the blades embedded into Caelius' eyesockets filled her mind, his face painted red. How dare he. "They are remains. Show some ******** respect."
(The last time she had been so uncouth to him she had been tied up waiting for salvation, tied up and bug food had he not come in and saved them, and she remembered the press of his blade against her neck, a blade that sang with power and-)
He was all bark and no bite, and she was hysterical enough to not care that this would likely get her another cuff or something like it. The consequences would be insignificant in comparison. The consequences were worth this risk. The consequences paled in comparison to protecting Clarice.
I would follow you, to the ends of any earth.
(Offer him nothing of value, because he would take it. Call him on his bluff. Do not show weakness to the wolf. Do not show him the sorrow, the grief. Do not give him any ammunition: his clip is full and his gun is locked and loaded.)
"Over. My. Dead. Body."
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Posted: Mon Aug 26, 2013 2:48 am
[ Caves ]
"Exactly." He remained expressionless. "They are remains. The remains of <******** incompetence." And then he was moving in a little too close. "They are the remains of someone who <******** something up and screwed this entire island over. Consider it lucky that you, or anyone, is still alive." Clerise was too close. Not to Caelius. To a very, very familiar looking weapon.
"If I were you, I would think very carefully on consequences. I would consider her failure a very important lesson as to everything that could possibly go wrong."
"Um- uh-" Mark interrupted, putting up one hand, and then pausing, then putting it down, as if he was in class. He looked like a terrible, nervous wreck. "The uh- the things are still attached - I think part of Clarice is still alive in this feedback loop and-"
-"Destroy it." The Death lead didn't even pause to reconsider. He lowered his weapon, attention focused back on the Death assistant. "She's lucky she's <******** dead so I didn't have to go through the trouble of putting her out of her goddamned misery."
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Posted: Mon Aug 26, 2013 3:02 am
[ caves ]
"Don't talk about her like that," Clerise replied, her entire body shaking with the force of her rage. It was a cleansing fire, one that had set her innards alight.
She had never truly hated anyone until this moment. It was pure and unadulterated, distilled down to cruelty and a perfectly honed lack of compassion.
"I don't think any world is lucky if you survived," she snipped back. "I don't care about the ******** consequences-- she deserves better."
(Deserved better. She had deserved so, so much better, and Clerise had failed her in every way. If she had just been able to listen-)
Caelius gave the order to destroy the echoes of her, and had done her the disservice of letting his guard down. Like she wasn't good enough to fight, good enough to ruin, good enough to even keep an eye on.
(She would show him.)
"She was not an animal to be put down. You are not the harbinger of death that you think you are."
{[ Clerise, please, ]} Balthazar begged, but he was just a pair of blades. He could not stop her, even if he tried.
(Even if he truly, truly wanted to.)
Sickles out, the Life huntress lunged for Caelius, the sound of her warcry echoing throughout the cavern.
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Posted: Mon Aug 26, 2013 3:22 am
[ Caves ]
Life was unfair.
People were not born equal.
The weaker would always be prey to those greater, no matter how great their will, no matter how strong their resolve, when a smaller force met a larger, far greater force-
- The smaller one would simply and easily be extinguished.
There was a terrible noise - what sounded like a combination between a shriek and a loud hum -
- A flash of brilliant blue, just a burst-
- Silence.
Thud.
The Death lead was probably really regretting not bringing gloves at this point, as he stepped over the body. He was absolutely livid, and Clerise had simply been there.
People were not born equal.
Clerise's head was quite a fair bit away from the body. It had been cut clean off - the only mercy - painless really - what now lay there as a pale reminder of the girl who had just been standing defiant. There was blood, there always was, dark and pooling darker, and the body now was still twitching. Restlessly maybe. Ironically perhaps.
"Someone clean this <******** mess up. We are this close away from everything shutting down at once and I do not have time for this bullshit." The tension was still high in the room, even as the Death Lead finally made his exit. This was how easy one seemingly prominent figure in their every day lives could just as easily snap. This was how thin the veil was between appearance and reality. Clerise might have thought the Death lead was all bark and no bite.
She unfortunately didn't have the luxury of hindsight. People were not born equal in this world. Life was unfair.
Death was just as cruel.
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Posted: Mon Aug 26, 2013 3:39 am
[ caves ]
She'd always heard that before you die, your life flashes before your eyes. She'd heard a lot of things, in her time. That everyone could be a winner, that she could be a star. That she could make a difference in this world.
That she would never leave her.
As it turned out, none of these things were true.
This is the way the world ends; not with a bang but a whimper.
Her latent rage had transformed into something quite blank, an abrupt realization that she had, perhaps, miscalculated--
Before going entirely blank.
Clerise's body crumpled and slumped to the ground, a pile of askew limbs and blood several paces away from where Clarice's remains were resting. The force of Caelius' attack had sent Clerise's head rolling off into a corner, her face slack and empty. Both of Balthazar's sickle scythes clattered to the ground, skating across the uneven stone until they came to a neat stop at Mimsy's feat. The runes glowed, still red, but their light began to stutter and flicker in and out.
There was a lock, simple and titanium, attached to the hilt of one of the blades.
Not so long ago, she had made a promise. Her fingers twined with Clarice's, a whisper in the dark, shared breath between them.
I would follow you to the ends of this earth or any other.
Clerise had tracked her through a false world, had sworn her allegiance to a Goddess who took and took and took. She had sworn her love to her, breathed it into the summer air as they rode across the desert.
And, now, it was time to follow her again, after a failed attempt at justice and a string of foolish decisions. But that was okay. Everything would be okay, now, because it was over.
Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.
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Posted: Mon Aug 26, 2013 3:58 am
[Cave]
Blood and flesh and bone.
Mimsy's pulse quickened as the spray of red found her face and her shoulders, and she smiled, a reflex, before she registered what happened.
Caelius. He'd called her bluff and killed her.
Then the smile was a sneer, and Svensyl was summoned, her knuckles white-turning-red as her hand clutched the weapon so tightly that her fingers ached.
Darkness flashed in the corners of her vision, bleeding red at the edges with each loud thump thump thump of her heart in her ears.
That was hers.
Clerise's death was rightfully hers and it was meant to be at her hands and it had been taken from her, the worst insult of them all. She'd lost it once, all those years ago, and now that she was given the chance again, she'd planned it carefully, tried over and over again to slowly break her down (until Clarice, damn it, but even she was gone now), and he had just taken it, as if it had been his all along.
<Off with her head!> Svensyl cackled, and it was a mockery of her failure, a mockery of her tremendous loss, a mockery of--
A warm drop of blood dripped from her chin and landed on her hand.
Something snapped.
"No," she snarled. "No, no, that was mine, that was mine--"
It didn't feel right. It felt cheap and worthless and ruined.
A furious glare found the headless body of the woman who had once been her cousin, and she moved to step towards her (just to get the last word), her foot falling on uneven ground instead. No, not ground. A weapon.
Her weapon.
Balthazar, wasn't it?
She laughed again at her own ignorance: its name didn't matter now.
Yet there was a piece of it that did matter, that little lock smiling up at her, and it was as if those last cherished pieces of Clerise were being handed to her as a peace offering.
(She would not feel at peace, but it would help.)
Both hands were tightly curled around the sword as she brought it down on the lock, its point stopping against the keyhole that was not made for it, and she twisted the blade, pushed with all of her weight, until it relinquished a satisfying crunch.
A body was only blood and flesh and bone, but memories - a legacy - that was what quantified an existence.
And she would destroy every last bit that Clerise left behind.
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Posted: Mon Aug 26, 2013 4:33 am
Metal struck metal as Mimsy wrought destruction on the last remaining pieces of who Clerise had once been. Each blow would trigger a memory, each one more faded than the last. His time was coming to an end, but his 'death' was a slow one, if inanimate objects could die at all.
The first memory is an expression of frustration, of hurt and betrayal at the hands of the universe. Her least favourite person has just entered the building, so she has to go to school with her. The creature. The monster. Her name is Mildred Kercher and she never wants to see her again.
The second puts her in bed, and she asks the blond are you okay, and all she gets back is a tight lipped "I'm fine." It is not fine, and she worries. It is not fine, and she does not want to end up alone. Her name is Clarice Sinclaire, and she worries for her future.
The third puts her in a hospital room, hunched over a bed, clutching a pale, clammy hand. "I love you, I love you more than anything, can't you please just hold on a little longer?" The woman on the bed does not stir. Her name was Danica, and she had been her first love.
The fourth is a vision of something so poetic. A scythe cuts close to her neck, drawing blood, and his face distorts into something terrible. "This is what it means to be a hunter." His name is Caelius and he was always going to be her demise.
The fifth is the purest sense of betrayal at him choosing her least favourite cousin to be the better friend. It is betrayal and loss and sorrow, it is regret. it is worthlessness. It is hopeless. His name is Dakota Rainstar, and he was once her friend.
The sixth is nothing but warm feelings for a certain boy with a drawl and blue eyes and a sharp exterior (but something softer, inside, he is delicate, moreso than he looks). His name is Otto Graves, and he is a treasure.
Six memories. Six memories lost to the whims of a cruel god. Those six memories and pieces of a corpse were all that was left of Clerise Nicole Wilson, and the memories faded with each blow from Mimsy's blade. The lock broke under the pressure-- the rest of the weapon followed, disintegrating into dust.
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Posted: Mon Aug 26, 2013 5:33 am
[Cave]
Six memories, six stupid little memories of hate and love and loss, all gone. All erased at Mimsy's hand, just like all of Clerise should have been. Still, it had been more than she could ask for at this juncture, a flawless bauble to smash beneath her palm.
She pressed harder, and the fracture that her weapon created beyond the keyhole spread, multiplied, until the lock shattered entirely with an even more satisfying sound.
She liked reducing things to pieces, and this had been the most perfect of them all.
A pile of dust was all that remained, and she was delighted that two of the most important things in Clerise's life were just two matching piles of tiny little particles. Perfect. It was all perfect now. And she had been the one to make it that way.
She dragged Svensyl through the collected weapon dust and smiled.
"I killed her, I eliminated everything left of her, I did it, I did this, I..." She mumbled the partial-delusion several times before bursting into hysterical laughter again, not bothering to hide behind her hand this time.
"She's dead. She's dead."
The words were barely audible between bursts of laughter, but they were there for those who listened closely enough to what she had to say.
Survival of the fittest.
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Posted: Mon Aug 26, 2013 5:59 am
[WESTERN SECURITY]Out on the western front, oblivious to the deaths and whatnot, Bix still stood over a suffering hunter while Sunny and Stormy both tried to help him. If help could be had, that is. He was watching them, careful not to leave them alone while someone with the Staff wandered free. Was anyone coming for backup? Bix had only fired off a text to moons and Suns so he expanded it to everyone on his contact list, including leads and assistants. He had no idea Clarice was dead.All Contacts Merlin staff spotted on Western perimeter. Hunter down. Reinforcements requested for search & defense.
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Posted: Mon Aug 26, 2013 7:47 am
[cave]
Sasha watched with a detached sort of impassivity as the events unfolded before her eyes. It was fascinating in a morbid sort of way, and Sasha made no move to leave. She made no move to coax Clerise away when Caelius arrived on scene, and she made no move to move away herself.
This was a lesson she felt she needed to learn.
The iron-rich, crimson spray of Clerise's blood misting across her clothes. The thud of that pretty head hitting the ground. Mimsy's muttered words and hysterical laughter. Balthazar's lock shattering, broken in pieces just as he'd been once before.
Crossing her arms over her chest, Sasha took her leave. Orders were orders, and there was nothing left in the cave for her.
[exiting cave]
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Posted: Mon Aug 26, 2013 9:05 am
[Outside the Caves] Jerry frowned with concern as Candace and Dakota took off. It was a stressful time. He just had to keep his mind off it. Plus, he had a shocked Harrison and an out-of-his-mind Rep to worry about. He pulled out his phone again to see if Allan had gotten back to him- nothing. He probably had his own hands full. Well, if the phones were still working, he could cut their search shorter- Prolixity Text to Jordan: Things are crazy. Rep and Harrison out of it but with me. Meet outside the caves.
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Posted: Mon Aug 26, 2013 9:12 am
Quote: Text to Jerry: Out of it? I'm on my way. Jordan arrived a short time later, looking somewhere between tired and worried. He assessed the physical condition of the group with a quick look, concluded that nobody had actually been injured, but something was sure as hell out of the ordinary. "What's going on?"
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Posted: Mon Aug 26, 2013 9:16 am
[Caves]
The sheer amount of willpower Dakota controlled at the moment from when Caelius stepped in, to when Clerise defiantly stood against him, to calling Caelius's bluff surprised Dakota.
No.
Not will power. Fear. Caelius angered him, he hated him. Being in the same room as the p***k just made the air heavier with stench of hate, with killing intent. Chama was in his hand, he could feel the weapon as his hands tightened around the sword. But Caelius had the power to take everything away from him. EVERYTHING. But he didn't move. Every goddamn consequence of anytime he protected a friend came back. Unlike Reine, Caelius didn't play today, it wasn't someone warning to useless trainees as bait. Unlike Reine, he hadn't been tied up with anymore than a fear what would happen to anyone he loved should he move.
Mimsy, Sasha, Him, Clerise. Mark and Caelius. They would be the witnesses to this.
He heard the blue. He was mottled by the sight of a spraying red. It was echoed by the thud of her body.
It was ice on his body as every word, every action froze. Yes.
Unlike Reine, a head rolled away from them. Red eyes wide with fear. Not acceptance.
Unlike Reine, This was someone he loved. So much that it hurt when she gave an ultimatum. So much he rebelled against it. he was a teenager.
(He was wrong. Why didn't he listen?)
Unlike Reine, This was his true first love. The first to actually take him. She had been his brother, his friend. Someone he could go to, someone who understood. She was family. Even when they had fought, he had been angrier that she would drop him. Did she think of him as family?
(Why was he here?)
And all she would remember of him was not telling her sorry. Of Choosing the monster in the dark over her. Of not finding and her just apologizing, of not telling her that maybe she was right. He had chosen wrong.
(It's real isn't it?)
He wouldn't now. As Mimsy attacked her body, he stepped away from her. He didn't even feel disgusted at her, he was so cold. A body was a shell, this body was hallow, what was left of the memories in it were few and far compared to the ones everyone held for her on the Island. Let Mimsy think she did it, She was sick anyways, Let her think she won. She'd be surprised. Clerise was more than just a torso covered in a lock. She was a teacher cartwheeling with a small little death hunter. She was sunshine to one of the other brightest suns. She was a friend, a lover and hunter among all.. (He had been so wrong.) Instead he slipped his jacket off, and with a numbness, bent down to where the head had rolled. Eyes open, staring. I'm sorry.
"I'm sorry Clerise." He whispered as he picked it up with both hands, away from the small pool that nestled around it, holding her cheeks in his hands. "You were right. You're always right. I forget sometimes that you are older than me. Know more than me. Can you forgive a teen who wanted nothing more than your attention?" His forehead touched gently to hers, blood covered his hands. Why didn't he listen. Why did it come to this? He was so numb. He was always numb. He sat it down gently on his jacket, closing the eyelids. She would see anymore. "Will you be happier?" He wondered. Out of all the people, He wondered if she was there with Clarice.
Clerise and Clarice.
Not forgotten.
With her head bundled tightly in his jacket, the blood seeping through, he moved to stand by Mimsy now.
"Do you think you won?" He asked briefly, Chama was placed in front of him just in case the woman decided to take Clerise. "How wrong you are. After all you've been through. There is not one Clerise." He looked away, the kingdoms. If they inherited their memories, than the kingdoms surely inherited theirs. "She is not tied to one form. You didn't kill her." He emphasized it just a little, "You set her free." Those memories, they would always be there. They would never disappear. "And she exist in place that you can never achieve." With that, he took the head of the hunter formerly known as Clerise, and left the caves.
[Exit]
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Posted: Mon Aug 26, 2013 9:18 am
[Outside the Caves]
Jerry's face was pale and stressed by the time Jordan caught up, a look of relief washing over him, "Oh, thank God! Jordan! Rep ah... he's er..." He motioned to Jordan's two boyfriends. Where to even begin?
He strode up to his friend, keeping his voice down, "Something's happened. Artifacts are missing and Clarice is..." His pale face shifted to a greener shade.
"They're performing an investigation. That Dr. Guy told us to go patrol."
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Posted: Mon Aug 26, 2013 9:21 am
[outside the caves]
Sasha caught Jordan's question and took a moment to glance at the faces of Rep, Harrison and Jerry before she spoke.
"Clarice is dead. Caelius killed Clerise, and Mimsy's gone crazy."
Sasha paused.
"Crazier, I suppose."
That being said, Sasha glanced down at her blouse before shrugging.
"I'm going to find Bix instead of worthlessly milling around. His text mentioned the Merlin staff."
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