The Cathedral groaned with life in a way unheard of on the surface. Here, the chitter of youma remained ever-present in the distant nooks of the towers and the cracks in the long, winding hallways. Cave systems bored into the place like termites, taking over what ancient architecture still remained. In every room cased, he noted the same decadent patterns of a place lapsed into heavy neglect. The Negaverse cared little for humble restoration of their ancient abode. And for this, Faustite felt just a little more at home - a little more suited to the broken husk of a once-grand tradition.
Cathedrals stood tantamount to holy places, he knew. He felt it so as he sat upon the pew, as he pondered the names of the Sovereigns and the Queen and the very head of all the power flowing through the area. Religion was Metallia - or Metallia became religion. He knew not which, and found no reason to think it over so. Metallia was no god of his.
Nor were the youma that clung to the place so, or the insidious crystals lacing through every wall to shine down upon others with their iniquitous light. Faustite cast his blackened gaze about the place, casing over every crack in the wall and every piece of fallen plaster, every broken bench left to rot where it once stood proud against gravity. This place matched all the souls they churned out from their training - all the men and women broken of morals, of home, or of body. And now he would join them as yet another monster - as another visage cast in the name of this Metallia that he never met. Another new testament for Queen Laurelite to read and cast aside, though he never met her either. The ladder of Negaverse power proved too mighty for teenagers who lost their youth to becoming a partial monstrosity.
Finally Faustite cast his gloves and glasses aside on the bench, and took in the unadulterated view of the main hall. Here, all the wayward souls would pass with their collections, into the offices to deposit their energy intake into the laps of better soldiers. Or they would consume the lot of it as Sarabauite did. Worse yet, they feed it to the machine for pigs.
So Faustite leaned back against the uncomfortable pew and waited. He searched within himself for the thin strands of religion yet burgeoning, not for the dominating force that cast the Negaverse in her image, but for the breaths of giddiness intermixed with pain, the cold song of sword struck through chest. in that, he could find motion.
sweenys_revenge
hope this works!
Posted: Mon May 08, 2017 7:57 pm
Strickenized
-God Help the Outcasts plays softly in the distance-
Noctua had not been back to the rift since the rebirth of Queen Laurelite. It's not that the place hadn't called to her -- quite to the contrary, it had beckoned her ceaselessly since. But just as all things worth having, the obstacles before Noctua had proved... difficult. Not insurmountable by any means -- if it came down to it, she could always ask Cinnabar to bring her down but... she wanted to do some things on her own. And it was with that in mind that she forged a tenuous alliance with a young Captain, perhaps her age and shorter in stature. She was the one who had brought Noctua down this evening. She skittered away from the corrupt before Noctua could utter anything like a thanks. She watched the little girl retreat around a corner, presumably to some office space or something, and found herself very much alone.
The Cathedral seemed different now, without the constant buzz of officers and senshi. Without the earth-shattering power of Queen Laurelite. It was bigger. More cavernous. Empty. Noctua peered up at the rafters -- or what was left of them. The wood seemed to be in the process of being consumed by the living rock that entombed this whole place, and what wasn't being eaten lay strewn across the floor, rotting into the carpet. A church had no business being empty. That what this place was, right? A church? The high vaulting ceiling, arched specifically to carry joyful voices to the heavens, window frames still lined with colorful shard of glass... what scenes had they held before time and chaos blew them out?
So this was it then. The beating heart at the center of her faith. Despite it's barren appearance, Noctua could feel the hum and buzz of electricity around her. True, this church was devoid of life as she knew it, but that was not all that there was to life. Hungry snaps and growls hissed down to her from the rafters, all manner of wings fluttering in anticipation, glowing eyes following the pulse of her starseed. The deep growl of the hungry youma followed Noctua as she proceeded down the center aisle, running her hands along splintered wood and rusted iron. Noctua felt closer to understanding what she was here. Her purpose. Her place.
Odd streams of light filtered in from the broken window at the front of the cathedral, illuminating a shower of broken glass on the floor. The glass, in return for the splendor, created a show of it's own, projecting shattered rainbows across the walls and ceilings at the front of the building. Was this... was this Metallia? Perhaps not in a literal sense but... maybe there was some vestige of her here. Were the youma not her children? Were not the officers as well? Was it not her choas that pumped through the hearts of those who served her? Even Noctua, who was so weak and so small and so blessed tired could feel the workings of the facaeless goddess that commanded her. And the youma above her, acting as servants for her divine purpose. Ultimate embodiments of Her power that Noctua could only admire from a far...
Glass crunched beneath Noctua's feet, not bothering to stop for careful step around the debris. Even when a stray shard pierced the thin cloth of her slippers, she remained on her course, stopping only at the massive window frame to gaze out at the expanse below her. So this was heaven then. She rested her hands delicately on the window frame as she surveyed negaspace so as not to cut her hands.
She didn't even notice the half-youma in the room with her.
Sweenys_Revenge
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Posted: Mon May 08, 2017 8:24 pm
When still, the errant officers failed to see him. He noticed it many times now, between all the purposeful lieutenants scurrying the halls, the captain that collapsed against the wall from the weight of her own thoughts and worries, and now this corrupted senshi that tread through glass without a glance in his direction. The shards crushed into the floor like teeth into pavement, yet Faustite did not raise his voice. He watched her move about with the misunderstanding that she was unwatched by intelligent eyes, undetected by the many officers laced through the cathedral. In this state, at least, he knew a semblance of privacy for people-watching.
Provided that Negaverse officers counted as people.
Finally she halted at the picture window, her long dreads catching glass shards in her wake. People like her held fascination for ruination - perhaps because they found something in it akin to themselves, and with that, a beauty that justified their deteriorating condition. Hadn't he found so much the same? His own fall from grace looked no worse for wear when set against the decrepit husk of the Cathedral. No, this place felt akin to a home without the twin ruses of love and adoration. So much now, with each passing day, dreams of his family slipped into lassitude. Soon, perhaps, he would wake. He had to. But what would he be upon rising?
Faustite shook the thought from himself as he rose, silent, from the pew. Blacked hands braced on the back of the following bench, and he watched the senshi still from his position. "Enjoying the view?" He asked coldly. "It's like staring into a pit." He passed into the aisle, fingers tracing rounded edge of pew after pew in his slow walk. "It's like staring down the dead dreams of men, where you can watch all the faults and failures of the people who came before you. It's what's left when civilization leaves its shed skin behind. What could you possibly see in that?" He let the question hang as he approached the senshi from behind.
"Tell me, Senshi - what brings you to this old hollow of a place?" He paused then, his hands clasped behind his back in an old show of formality.
sweenys_revenge
Posted: Mon May 08, 2017 8:56 pm
Strickenized
When the voice broke Noctua's reverie, the painful cascade of the owners energy broke against Noctua like a white-hot wave. It felt like cinnabar but... god above it wasn't her at all.
As Noctua turned to face the speaker, wicked black fingers wrapped themselves around Noctua's throat and choked the life out of the words. She opened her mouth to set them free, to set any sound free really, but all that came forth was a pitiful sound like a bird being crushed in someone's hand. She gazed in fear at the man that approached her. No. Not a man. Something else. Something that Noctua had seen before only once, and where there she felt reverence and adoration, here Noctua only felt... horror. Why the difference? Was it this place, so out of Noctua's realm of understanding that stuck deep in her heart and allowed dread to creep like a cancer through her? Was it the monstrous image of the thing before her. Where Cinnabar still had the likeness of something human this was... this was something else. Malice oozed from him like miasma, clogging Noctua's nose until all she could smell was the acrid burning of this creature's... perversness.
It was still speaking... what was it saying? All Noctua could hear was the rush of blood in her own ears and the cackling of the angels in the rafters. It didn't matter what it was saying... all that mattered was the noxious vapor that poured from every pore and orifice of this beast was coalescing around her wrist and ankles, shacking her to the floor. The arms multiplied with every second, winding through and around Noctua's legs to lock her further in place. They wrapped tightly around her torso to bind her arms to her sides and constrict her chest so that each breath of air was a battle and she was losing. Shadows at the corners of her vision began to take shape and seethe. In the safety of her own bedroom, in the newborn hours of the morning, Noctua knew these to be only phantoms but here... here they were real.
This nightmare was real.
"Nephilim" she finally shocked out, though the weakness of her voice failed to carry her words. So they fell, broken and hopeless among the glass at her feet. But she had a voice now. And if she had a voice, thens he had a chance.
"Noctua Feverish Nights."
Noctua closes her eyes and calls the name of her attack. Upon opening them, she will lock eyes with one person and they will be immediately subject to the attack. For the next ten seconds the victim will feel like they haven't slept well for the past few nights. They will feel sluggish, irritable, and confused. Noctua can use this attack 3 times in a battle if she pushes herself, but mostly she keeps it to twice. It's useful mostly for getting away or getting in a sucker punch if she needs to.
Note: She needs to lock BOTH eyes with her opponent. So if someone has a non functioning eye for whatever reason, the attack will not work. Alternately, if Noctua's eyes are out of commission due to whatever reason, be it darkness or injury, the attack will not work. If the environment is too dark to see anyone's eyes, the attack will fail as well.
Sweenys_Revenge
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Posted: Mon May 08, 2017 9:13 pm
The girl choked when she laid eyes on him, and he stared back in a distinct lack of sympathy. If anything, mirth came from the abject shock she displayed - mirth that the rest of the Negaverse would paint him so starkly evil as she did in that very moment. The lot of them were murderers and thieves, yet they found precedent to judge.
So let them judge. If they could place themselves on high, then they had a little more room to fall.
She spoke at last, cowered against the shattered glass as she was, though what came from her mouth was unintelligible. When she spoke further, he expected she would clarify, yet instead came a phrase heavy with magic. She spoke of feverish nights and briefly his mind fled to the cold hilt of the sword, entrusted to his back like a stone — a bone sheath. He drew breath and with it came whorling delirium, passing shaddows into the corners of his eyes. All at once the youma grew active in their frequent dartings, and each blink left the world trailing behind itself like a comet's tail. At once he felt disjointed in his own environment, unable to place himself. His hands fell from their clasp and he touched nailed hands to his eyes to chase away the sudden exhaustion. Senshi magic? He felt nothing like it before.
"What did you do?" His voice rasped with the sluggishness of sleep. Exhaustion clung to him incessantly, relentlessly, chasing away all coherent thought beyond the most basic of functions. He hated it; he wanted to think. Faustite needed to think, but words failed to step forth?
"What did you do to me?" He asked again, hissed again, expectant for an answer.
sweenys_revenge
Posted: Mon May 08, 2017 9:29 pm
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Whether it was the monsters distraction or Noctua's own bolstered confidence, the spell that kept her bolted to the floor was been broken. She gasped for air as her throat was relinquished, relishing for just one moment the sweet taste of oxygen in her mouth and the feeling of full lungs. But she didn't have much time to lose. With her mind suddenly dizzyingly, Noctua had time to process what had just happened. Someone had interrupted her. Someone had come, uninvited, into her reverie and broke the spell that cast a glamour of beauty across everything that she saw. And now as she looked around, over the struggling monster, she saw only decay. Out the picture window there were only dark deserts as far as the eye can see.
Heaven had left her.
Noctua turned back to her victim who was still stumbling for purchase under the weight of her magic. It had taken heaven from her. It had pulled her back from its resplendent gates and cast her into this broken purgatory instead. Worse, it had made her feel terror. Real, unabashed, unadulterated terror that had halted Noctua in her steps. Such things hadn't happened since that little c**t's magic in the woods. With this power she swore that she would never again fall victim to fear. She promised Cinnabar. She promised Umber. She promised herself. And this monster had caused her to break those sacred vows.
It would pay.
With the enchantment now lying broken at her feet with the shattered glass and broken name, Noctua was free to move. She was light and quick on her feet, an unexpected boon from her skeletal frame. She was upon the monster in seconds, wicked little bony fingers digging into the soft flesh of it's throat. She would not stop as she had stopped with the child. This time she would take a life with her hands. This time she would watch her victim die.
Sweenys_Revenge
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Posted: Mon May 08, 2017 9:43 pm
Shadows leapt and fell in tandem with reality, and the reaching hands never crossed his mind as her own. She couldn't - wouldn't - reach for him. No, not as two fragments of the same faction. She couldn't —
She did —
Her nails seeking passage through his skin chased away the fetters of sleep, and adrenaline flooded in its wake. He sought to seize her by the wrists, to pull her small hands off of himself, though his wrist protested greatly at any sign of strength. He wanted to push her away, to get her off of him, to get her away from him before she rattled his throat and left him worse for wear. But the thrill in his veins rose unbidden, and he felt that bitter excitement pass beyond his realm of conscious thought and reach into old reflex. "Stop," he eked out in a harsh hiss, and he reached for her own throat, carrying with him acrid, carbonaceous smoke.
He knew not from where it came, only that it enveloped them both wholesale and hung in the air with such thickness that Faustite felt certain they each needed to claw their way through it. But as its heady tendrils coiled around him, as he tasted the sullen ash and moondust on his tongue, he felt no searing in his lungs like he expected. The smoke never stung his eyes - no more than light steam in the shower. The blackened material settled in his lungs like a dampness, only lighting momentarily, ever ready to leave. So what was the point, then? Where did it come from?
And what could it possibly do to stop her? Thought darted to Chrysocolla, then to Arsenopyrite, and he wondered if he could still call for them when his throat was shut to every last rasp of air.
Tactic changed and he pushed her then, his blacked fingers never once passing unbidden through the skin over her starseed.
sweenys_revenge
Dispersion ;; Range: 3 foot radius with Faustite at the epicenter. Duration: 30 seconds Use Count: 3x Miss Chance: Circumventing magic, stepping beyond radius before execution, stepping out during the attack. Holding breath and closing eyes mitigates some of the effects. Effect: Faustite draws his hands together, and a sound curiously akin to an opening lighter may be heard. With a deafening blast, Faustite then envelops himself in choking smoke. Those caught in the radius of the initial blast endure a residual ringing in the ears and mild disorientation. The blast itself articulates as the billowing black smoke, and those who breathe it will suffer burning lungs, stinging eyes, and may cough frequently depending on their reaction to the smoke. The symptoms of ringing ears and coughing will linger after leaving the smoke, up to a maximum of five seconds. This attack is not intended to produce lasting damage (like lung damage or hearing damage), but may do so at the defending player's behest.
Posted: Mon May 08, 2017 10:11 pm
Strickenized
Something rational in the back of Noctua's mind rattled off reasons to get off of this monster and get out. Get somewhere safe. But the thrumming of her victim's pulse against her fingertips was intoxicating, and drowned out any sense in her mind. Her pulse quickened in time with the monster's rising heart beat. Did that mean that the end was near? She knew better now. Stay on them until the heart stops, not just the struggling. And then take the starseed. Wouldn't Cinnabar be proud of her then? Saving heaven, bringing it back down to their home so that all might marvel at it's splendor. No one would ever take it from Noctua again.
The first thing Noctua noticed to be wrong was that her ears had suddenly begun ringing. After that, everything was just so damn loud. Not necessarily the sounds, either, but just everything. The feeling of her clothing sliding along her skin. The excited chatter of the youma above. The light from the broken window. It all clamored for first purchase on Noctua's brain all at once, leaving nothing usable for Noctua. Did she focus on the heartbeat beneath her hands or the glass stuck in her foot?
The smoke. Focus on the smoke!
Too late. Noctua's eyes began to sting as the cloud of black enveloped her and the monster. And then her lungs began to burn... what was this? Noctua's body tried to reject whatever debris was causing the irritation, triggering rattling coughs to loosen the particles. Instinct took over in that moment. If there was a fire, she vaguely recalled some well-intended teacher telling her, crawl because smoke rises. So Noctua fell to her knees to avoid the toxic fumes that surrounded her. No such luck. The miasma followed her to the ground where she searched in vain for a way out. Nothing. Everywhere that she turned there was smoke.
Was this how it ended? Alone, in the ruins of a church, murdered by a monster?
Sweenys_Revenge
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Posted: Tue May 09, 2017 8:52 pm
Faustite caught his breath among the thickened plumes. His birdlike chest heaved as he ousted some of the adrenaline from his blood. Looking down, he could see nothing more than the carbonaceous smog that settled over him - though he himself suffered none of its ills. His attacker's hands left him well enough alone, and for that, Faustite felt grateful for the sudden explosion. He didn't understand it, but he found no time to look back on it now.
Stepping out left him with a view of the Negaverse senshi's feet, slipper-clad and glass-stricken as they were. He glowered upon her with disdain, his delicate features rippling into an abject snarl at her very presence. "Feeling proud of yourself now? You attacked one of your own. You thought you could leave me for dead in the middle of the Negaverse Cathedral. Did you think they wouldn't figure it out, that they wouldn't hang you for treason?" Though his anger remained undeniable, he couldn't shirk the glimmer of excitement at such an exchange. Thrill over the possibility of death, fuel for change toward a greater cause. The senshi attacked him, yes, and in that, he found a power latent in his own being. The black of his hands and eyes held purpose.
Perhaps he could exercise that purpose if he strove for more.
He wanted to laugh - a portion of him pushed for it. That portion grew from the frostbitten blade, an artifact from the past he never had. What use was morality but for upholding the status quo? It taunted. You're no part of that realm now.
Forever changed, you have no right to claim such petty tradition.
He knew it well, yet faced it not - just like her. Just like the exhausted heap of bones and hair that laid within the dissipating cloud of smoke. She gets to see the moon every night, the stars every day. She could taste the sea in her mouth any time she wants. Is this jealousy? I've never coveted someone else's place before.
"What use you are to the Negaverse, Senshi. I'm sure they've been dying to have their ranks thinned."
sweenys_revenge
Posted: Wed May 10, 2017 9:55 am
Strickenized
As the smoke began to clear, the burning in Noctua's lungs slowly began to ease and she could open her eyes again. How long had she been incapacitated? A minute? Longer? Where had that smoke come from? One moment she was avenging paradise and the next... the next she was choking on smog. For a moment she thought that maybe the miasma had come from her opponent but... then again... perhaps not. That was pollution, toxicity in it's most basic form. That had been a chemical weapon, and if it did come from the monster before her, it had been in the form of a weapon, not from his body itself, and she had seen no such weapon.
And then he tried to hurt her.
Noctua laughed, the sound of it caught in her chafed and painful throat so that it came out in croaks. "Of course, I don't matter nephilim," she hissed, struggling back to her feet. "What is an insect to a mammoth? What are we to the gods?" She knew she was nothing, and in that she took solace. She was one voice among many singing one song of praise. She was one stick in an unbreakable bundle. She was a single thread in a tapestry. She didn't matter, and she knew that. If one voice was silenced in the choir, the song went on. If one stick fell from the bundle, the bundle did not break. If one thread was pulled from the tapestry, the image remained unchanged. If she fell, the gods would not mourn her death because there would be others to fill her place.
"At least I cannot be raped by the angels."
Sweenys_Revenge
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Posted: Thu May 11, 2017 12:49 am
She knew her worm's eye view well, but the festering giddiness inside him informed that she knew not how to weaponize it. Her lot resulted in loyalty and unbending servitude. She could not - would not - take her matters further than that. He would roll his eyes to her statements, but realized in short order that none could ever tell where he looked. Unending black shaped his vision in such a manner that left his attention more ambiguous to onlookers.
Nephilim? Faustite snorted. Were he so lofty an abomination —
Were her words really untrue? Was he so untouched himself, now utterly divested from the normalcy he once knew? The Negaverse parted him from that existence and carried him into another, split between human and youma, paralleled to the spawn of angels and men from the oldest times. She wasn't wrong in her appraisal of him. No, she could see plainly what he could not. Faustite's harsh posture crumpled then, his arms falling from their post over his chest as he edged back a half-step. Finally it struck. Finally it sank in, buried itself inside and merged with that incessant giddiness. The memory became the epiphany. Logically he knew it, but he never fully understood it - he changed invariably, and now beheld power of a higher order.
The black soot that coated her lungs proved evidence enough. What if such a change was a choice, a decision bestowed on him due not to his sheepish nature or failing strength, but for his staunch refusal to fall in with the banality of following orders? What if Chrysocolla's sorrow grew from realization that she would not receive the boon? His thoughts spun with the utter surreality surrounding the girl's simple phrases. Senshi as she was, low as she was, she provided insights utterly foreign to him, and for that, he both loathed and adored her.
But she wasted her livewire passions on a resignation to servitude.
Slowly he came down from on high, his skin still prickled from adrenaline. "Raped or not, it leaves me a half-step closer to the gods, doesn't it?" Delirium settled into him as he closed the gap that reigned between him and that elusive giddiness. He realized now the expanse of the blasted world about them, and many of the broken secrets. Faustite needed to think.
"Your surety is fascinating." He offered a languid hint of a smirk. "Don't get yourself killed before we meet again. I'll be disappointed." He started toward the edge of the main hall then, where broken hallways led to stairs that spiraled down and down and down. Needing to think grew to be a mantra pounding in his own mind.
sweenys_revenge
i was ******** with this tag for two hours and it's still s**t
