Snow on the ground glistens under the moonlight and seems to illuminate everything with an ethereal glow. Destiny City feels almost safe, even at night. The fresh fallen snow seems undisturbed and brings a sense of peace. Only, there’s something eerie about it. After a while, it feels like someone--or something--is watching you. In the shadows of the trees, a set of milky eyes watches. Whatever it is, it’s tall and bulky. If you walk quickly, you feel it follow you but once you leave the line of trees, it disappears. If you try to approach it, a great beast will screech at you: a six foot tall snowy white owl takes flight. It may tackle or claw at you, depending on how you approach it, but it will always take flight and disappear in the night. If you choose to attack it, for the next few nights any time you look out your window you will see glowing eyes in the distance--or worse, hear it scratching to get in. Eventually, the temperature rises and the visits stop. For now.
Exhausted from fleeing the cabin, Laven was helpless to defend herself against the large owl that had followed her into the woods, milky colored eyes watching overhead as it flew silently above the trees.
The attack had been sudden and unprovoked. With a loud screech, it tackled her from above with a force that knocked the wind out of her leaving her laying there prone on the ground completely dazed and without a clue about what the ******** just happened as she struggled to draw in a full breath of air.
Her mind had been so focused on tracking Wolframite’s signature where it remained unmoving for some time in the living room where she had left him to have noticed any danger followed. It was nearly two feet taller than she was and a wingspan that was more than double but more frightening than that was that the beast had no aura to speak of.
The beast circled overhead once, then twice before descending, claws outstretched in made a move to grab her but missed. Sharp dagger-like talons glanced off her scales and for a fleeting moment, she found herself thankful for the armor-like youma trait that she was blessed with. However, having taken two direct strikes Lavendulan could feel that some of them had rattled loose and were about to fall out if she wasn’t careful with dodging.
But she was tired, and slow which put her at a disadvantage when it came to her again.
For the few times she had sparred with another officer or went on patrol, she had the ability to rely on her magic to escape but this time… there was none left for her to use as she hung freely from the owl’s talons. Their fight was short-lived but that was to be expected when you don’t train as often or as hard as Wolframite did.
One talon gripped her upper arm while the other held fast onto her leg. It would have been perhaps gentle if it wasn’t that a single claw curled into her side and with each struggling move it dug deeper eliciting from her sharp cries of pain as it carried her away. Desperation gripped her fiercely and through tears and pain, she twisted her body and was rewarded by another loud screech when her claws found purchase in the beast’s thigh.
Perhaps it was not the most well thought out plan. Rather than landing it simply let her go… Heights already terrified her enough as is but to fall from this height, not even the snow pile below could save her.
Laven screamed and for the briefest of moments, when her eyes squeezed shut, she imagined Wolframite there with that cocky ‘I told you so’ grin on his face. The image, however, was fleeting and quickly faded into darkness as her body slammed into and through a thick sheet of ice. It was her awakening but from much higher heights, and as the freezing cold water wrapped around her, blood from her wound bloomed in a red mist as she sank to the bottom where she would be safe for a few minutes at least.
Bleed out or be eaten?
For some reason, this moment felt apropos, as if this last year had finally come full circle and for once she felt content to just let it happen, to let this moment be her last as it should have the day she awakened.
MoonKitsune
Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2020 6:06 am
He had been left standing frozen still as the door remained shut and the fleeting imagine of Laven long since faded. He could still feel her though; His senses extended outward to that pull of Negaverse energy moving like a beating pulse into the distance. Further and further she went and he stood in the quiet kitchen, the snow on his clothes melting and drilling onto the tiles.
He shouldn't have said anything. He should have taken it to his grave. Anything ton reserve a few moments more.
He should have said it sooner. To make her know what kind of person he was way befor she invested her heart in him.
He should have never talked to her. Just because she was a half-youma alone in the world didn't mean he could make her his anchor. To make himself a weighted knose around her neck, keeping her just below the surface.
He should have tried to be better. To lay it all out and let her love the way she knew. Not the way he twisted his life into and was trying to make her accept was normal and even good. He wasn't normal. He wasn't good.
But despite this, he felt a growing panic. That that pulsing ping was going further and further into the woods. Further into winter. Further into the cold.
A flash of his own memories came. Of was seeing into the woods, lost, blind, and giving up. Settling against that log when he could no longer find Faustite and welcoming an end to it all. That he had ruined all that had been good in high life and that the end was justly deserved. That there was no worth or purpose left in him.
Animals went into the woods to live. Humans went into the woods to die. And despite how much she was a creature, Laven was very much a human being. A very hurt one.
Grabbing her coat from the rack, he pushed open the back door and started to walk in the direction off that pulse.
He walked the same path he had just walked minutes ago, but this time Laven's steps were there. After a while, they turned off the path and he wasn't sure if this had been intentional or not. The snow mad with easier to track her, and soon his mind and attention were simply focused on not loosing her trail. He wasn't here to catch up to her. He was here to make sure she wasn't alone or didn't go too far before she realized where she was. He knew she could tolerate the cold. Her body hibernated in a frozen lake, but that didn't alliviate her concerns.
He made a promise after all. If any of them ran, the other would follow. Wherever they went.
It took him a moment to realize the pulse had lifted and was moving erratically around. Confused and panic, he picked up his pacing only to feel the rush of wind and toss d snow from the trees overhead as a great white creature flew overhead. For the glimmer of a second, he thought if a white Phoenix.
There was a echoing of Laven's voice in the silence of the winter woods and the screeching of a bird. As he ran through the trees and broke the treeline if the woods, he came in time to see her body fall from the sky and crash into the ice.
"LAVEN!!" He screamed and ran across the slick, snow-covered lake. Cracking ice echoed out under his boots as he ran, tossing her coat and his own onto lake as he ran before he dove into the shattered hole in the lake.
The water felt like a thousand knives stabbing into him, and his body seized , tensing his muscles that screamed against the white fire if the water. Holding his previous lungful if water, he dove down and down, kicking wildly and hard as he used his large paws to cut into the water. Heart hammering in his ears, he reached out for her as the glow of white light above almost was lost this far down. Among lake grass and muck, he grabbed her and moved.
In what felt like forever and only a moment, he pushed back above the surface and took great, gasping breathes of air. The wind off the lake shot across his wet body and he shivered violently as he pushed Laven o to the surface of ice. If it wasn't for the impact of her fall, it night not have even given under her weight. Where her bones broken? Did she have a concussion? Did he need to call an ambulance?
Clawing at the ice, he laid his stomach on the ice and rolled over, then slowly slide their bodies across the ice away from the hole until it felt solid enough for him to crouch beside her. "Lavan? C-c-can yo-you h-here me?" He shivered out.
Only the owl responded. Owl, because as he looked up, he could see it was not a phoenix at all, but a massively large bird. Too large, yet as unworldly as it was, he sensed no magic off of it.
It screeched to have another chance at the girl, and rising to his feet, he flexed his claws. His teeth were chattering toj hard to muster poison for them, but he could still cut. Tear. Rip apart at the thing that threw her so carelessly into the lake. That hurt her this way.
"I'll kill y-y-you." He managed as he moved forward as the owl dove, slashing at soft feathers into the hard cage of it's bones and muscles.
Shanyume
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Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2020 4:35 pm
Unable or unwilling to move, Lavendulan laid at the bottom of the lake, a plume of muck billowed out from under her as seagrass shifted around her like a curtain.
Darkness wrapped itself around her mind posessively and yet, the sound of her name being called, though muffled by the watery blanket, was enough to make it recoil away just long enough for her to see the bright light above become suddenly eclipsed when something, or rather someone, jumped in after her.
Injured as she was, the sea-dragon leviathan half-youma was helpless to move let alone struggle against whoever, or whatever, was dragging her back to the surface. Perhaps if she wouldn’t have smacked the back of her head so hard against the sheet of ice, Laven would have realized that the one pulling her to what was perceived to be safety had a signature, like hers, but stronger.
Her body was limp as it was dragged out of the jagged hole, a thin trail of blood lining the snow as she was pulled away from the fragile surface towards a more sturdy area. She felt colder than normal but with her already blue tinted skin it was hard to tell how far hypothermia set in, if at all, since the cold did not really affect her the same way it did a normal human.
The owl’s screech was like a white hot lance through her mind. Painful in that it made her ears ring and head throb from the pitch of it. Her eyes snapped open but amidst the blanket of white, she had trouble focusing on any one thing save for a streak of purple and green.
A growl ripped through him as his claws found purchase in the owls chest Wolf...ra-mite? Her heart wrenched at the betrayal she felt from the secrets he kept and yet… Laven was left wondering if this was just a desperate dream of someone terrified of dying alone.
She broke her promise to him and ran away but in that moment of confession he became a stranger to her.
There was a searing pain in her side when she's tried to move, pulling from her a whimper. Tears clouded her already blurry vision.
Idiot
Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2020 5:18 pm
There was not a second to look at Laven. To him, she was laying torn on the ice, bleeding. He had sent her to run into the woods, and if she was dead, the blood was no more his fault than it was the owls. The owl however, would have no sense of regret from attacking her. Not in that it meant it had hurt her, but only regret in that he would tear it limb from limb until it was a dismembered cavity for the starving winter scavengers to pick clean.
The fact he could sink his claws in meant it was living and not just a figment or something unworldy enough not to bleed. That there was enough to ignite the vicious veracity that jolted in him. Gripping in, he slashed until he could get through enough of the bloody feathers to sink claws into the chest of the bird. This close, the talons kicked out like a kickboxer one by one, pummeling his chest and shredding his uniform, but he kept one hand anchored into that tender belly while the other pulled out of the body and stabbed back in, Over and over as black and red blood spilled across him and the ice.
His chest tore and the bird grabbed him and threw it's weight into the ice, dragging him across it as it flew, trying to now get up high enough to go, but it only made him more frantic to keep it down. However, a good kick out of its legs sent him smacking against the ice and before he could leap up and grab a wing or leg, it leap up. Its chest was a mass of torn feathers and blood that dripped out of its wounds as it flew over them and up into the air, crying out over the expanse of lake before it went into the woods.
Panting, he laid there a moment as every part of him felt hot from the fight and blood but cold from the water that wanted to numb his body through. It didn't take him long before he thought back to Laven and turned, half-crawling and half-running over to her to kneel over her. He quickly tried to wipe his hands on whatever of him wasn't covered in blood before touching her. "Laven?!" He called, giving her a slight nudge, not sure if her neck had been injured.
His eyes looked frantically around to assess how he would go about getting her back and then calling for the hospital but - no. Not the hospital. They were half-youma. He'd have to call for a general, but it was the holidays and most had their phones either on silent or wouldn't take his call. "********." He breathed out, panting as he looked back down at her.
Shanyume
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Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2020 7:45 pm
Her head swam like nothing else but his touch at least let her know that this was no dream and he was very much real.
“Idiot,” she breathed out through labored breaths, wincing at the sound of her own hoarse voice. “You should have left me, I was safer down there.” Half-truths were still lies but it came easy enough when she focused on one of her hidden talents that he wasn’t really privy to.
Regardless, even if freezing to death or drowning were a non-issue or something to be scared of, if it took too long for the owl-beast to leave she would have bled out and the end result would have been the same. But at least the cold lake water would have numbed her side enough that she wouldn’t have felt pain.
A part of her wanted to crawl back over to the hole, but with him between them, that would be a difficult task and just the simple thought of moving made everything hurt all over again.
Laven knew she should thank him for saving her life yet again, another strike on the scoreboard and at this point, she really didn’t know how many he was up to. But it definitely seemed that she was slated to always be the damsel in distress and he would always be her black knight. However, pride was a powerful emotion and she was still angry, and frustrated, and even with his hair clinging to his face and fur matted over wounds caused by the owl, Laven wanted to kick him.
MoonKitsune
Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2020 9:05 pm
She spoke and it was enough to make him breath out and want to cry. "Yeah. Guess I- g-guess I am." He stammered, glad she was conscious and talking. That was a good enough sign. Right now they needed to get back so they could look at her head and he needed to see how deep the cuts were on his chest. They just needed to get to the cabin, and he was glad they gave their gifts before now.
It was as good a time as any to use their charms.
"I'm glad yo-your a-alive." He reached for her and noticed how badly his arms were shaking. He just had to make it to the cabin and fireplace and it would be fine. Slipping his arms around her, he heaved her up and felt his body immediately protest. Fighting usually didn't take this much out of him, but the dove into the lake had taken everything from him. If he was still new to all of this, he doubted he would be standing.
But Laven was a anchoring weight in his arms giving him the power to keep moving and pointed himself in the direction of the cabin. They just needed to be close enough. On the lake there where no shadows though, and so he moved to the first tree at the edge of the lake. Each step was slow and hard, pain rushing from his chest and every muscle aching. Already his shirt and fur were frozen and the clothes he wore were heavy with lake watwr. But after a while they made it to the treeline and into the shadows.
And like that, they were back at the start of the trail near the cabin, and he felt glad that he didn't have to teleport. "It worked." He said as he wavered in the snow, taking slow steps as he adjusted his weakening grip on her.
"Almost. Almm-mmost there." He managed as he moved forward. His balance shifted to the right and he leaned forward before he felt Laven slip into the snow and himself after. The white snow all around him before it went dark.
Shanyume
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Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2020 7:34 pm
For a moment she thought Wolframite had come to his senses and was going to drop her back into the water where he should have left her to begin with, but the hole she created when her body collided into the icy barrier was becoming gradually smaller as he continued to walk away from it. If only she had the strength then she would have struggled against him, but the owl beast was still out there, watching from a distance; even though she couldn’t see nor sense it, Laven just knew it was still near.
For now, she conceded. Let him have his way for now otherwise, they would both be dead.
However, when he stepped through the shadows rather than use his magic, Laven knew that something was really wrong. He was cold, yes, that much was evident by the way he stammered when speaking or arms shook from carrying her useless body across the lake.
But then he wavered, strength sapped from him and she fell into undisturbed fresh snow the piled around them. A sharp piercing pain shot down her right leg then raced all the way back up to the stab wound in her side where it continued to radiate outward.
She glanced over to his still form beside her and only then did she notice the streaks of blood that slashed against his already dark-colored uniform. The green bands had turned an almost rust color but what startled her more was that his eyes were closed and that he seemed to be barely breathing.
“Wol-wolframite?” Laven rolled over onto her otherwise good side and shook his shoulder carefully. “Wolframite? Wake up! We’re - we’re not there yet.” Frantic eyes searched the tree line hoping that the monster wasn’t soaring high above them waiting to strick again. “Wolframite!” she repeated his name louder as panic rose in her chest.
“D-damn it.” A lump of guilt grew in her throat, threatening to suffocate her if she didn’t calm down. “Don’t you dare…”
“Don’t you ******** dare…” She swore at him. “You don’t get to just pass out like this.” Struggling to rise to her feet Laven looked around again and only this time did she notice the rise of smoke probably a hundred yards away.
A large shadow passed overhead when the owl soared above the treelines still bleeding from its wounds. Laven's heartbeat quickened when she heard the beast screech out of frustration and quickly grabbed one of Wolframite's paws and slung his large arm over her shoulder.
He was a dead weight that made her side scream but she couldn't leave him; she wanted to... good God she wanted to. But for all he had done, despite betraying her trust, she owed him at least this.
Laven was wise to stay in the shadows until there were no more trees to hide them, by then there were maybe fifteen yards to go and a few steps leading up to the front door. The journey felt a hell of a lot longer than it probably was as a trail of blood marked the path they had ventured and when she finally was able to open the door and close it with a horse kick backward with her foot. The motion set her off balance sending her, and her current charge, stumbling unanimously to the wood flooring in a heap of limbs.
Her vision blurred but with one last bout of strength, she dragged Wolframite away from the doors and windows, through the kitchen into the living room where the fire was still burning, where she slumped to the floor beside him.
Two half youma, both a bloody mess seeking solace in the darkness of their minds.
What a pair they made... what a pair...
MoonKitsune
Edited - Fin?
Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2020 7:59 pm
It was pain.pain he was used to, lived for, and thrived against. Pain meant you were alive. For now, the pain was good. But it was going numb that was Maki g him panic. The rolling cold that reached s climax that went over the threshold and just spilled to a numbing white. Was this why Laven wanted the lake? To sink in the dark cold and let the pain float above with each rolling bubble of breath.
His name was shouted, muffled under a haze of black. It was faint now, and here in the dark, it was going quiet. That cold was actually actually starting seek inside. It reminded him of one of his clearest memories. In the woods against the tree as - someone. That person had a name but he forgot it. But he remembered the snow and how the snow melted underneath him as he sat and the world was quiet and dark in the woods. How his eyes were going and all was black and blurred shapes.
The woods could be so wonderfully quiet in winter. Sleeping as it did before spring. Just resting for now under a blanket of cold.
His name was called and he made a small noise in his throat but it was not a battle he had the energy to fight.
