|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2022 3:00 pm
Follows flinching at the sound of your name."Take you home when I'm through with you," Faustite muttered to the dead weight slung over his shoulder.
He and his quarry reappeared in a musty, blackened room. The space was empty, save for built-in shelving lining the short wall with its doorframe. Black painted the place in mottled patches, coating all the walls save for one with a long, rectangular, white patch with repeating black holes. The floor, being concrete, was cluttered with fallen, charred chunks of ceiling tile that half-disintegrated on impact.
The emptied, windowless box reeked of fire. Smoke, combusted wood pulp, burnt paint permeated the air. Faustite's smoke rose lazily through the empty framework for the ceiling and curled across exposed metal and wire.
Cybele was dropped in the corner near a pair of exposed metal drainage pipes. He knelt down next to her, pressed a pair of pyretic fingers against her neck, then reached for his own. Off came the manacle, and he drew her hands around the pipe, her back pressed to the unforgiving metal, while he clasped the manacle around her wrists.
Then he moved to her feet, where he knelt near her shoes. Each one was wrenched off after some fuss, and he got to his knees and took up her ankles. He looked at each bare foot, sighed through his nose, and pressed the bottoms of her feet flush against his grate. He counted to ten seconds, then counted another five.
Then he peeled her feet away and stood. From nowhere came a pale, glittering starseed, with a hopeful little light that meant nothing to the glowing bustle of his fire. He looked at it, and his hand twitched, and he swallowed dry, and dropped the troublesome thing into the space beyond her brooch.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2022 5:40 pm
The first time that Cybele's starseed had been returned to her chest, it had been pumped full of Chaos immediately afterwards. In the moment, that had soothed her as much as it had broken her. It couldn't have been gentle. It must have hurt, but that memory was just out of Cybele's reach. The second time, it had been Albireo giving the starseed back to her. That had felt like relief. The anxiety of the way that both of them had almost died had washed away as they'd found a place in each other's arms. This was different. There was no drifting back to herself. Consciousness came all at once. The pain came all at once. Her first breath was a huff. Her second was a half scream, bit into teeth-grinding silence as she saw Faustite lurking next to her. She thrashed instead, or at least she would have if she hadn't been stopped by a sharp tug against her shoulders and the clinking of metal. She glared daggers, even as a third breath came out in nearly a whimper. "What is this?" she asked.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2022 6:06 pm
'What is this' wasn't the question he expected out of her. He spent careful time considering it, remaining silent for the moment, as he hitched up his pants at mid-thigh and squatted down next to her. Parts of his grate moved and articulated, allowing him the privilege of bending.
Pain granted people a feral look. It was the same look, he thought, that he'd seen in the eyes of youma. Things that knew pain, but lacked memory for it.
His fingers twitched. His thumbs stroked over one another like some pantomime of work.
His voice was soft. Intimate, aware of the small space, aware of how to fill it. The youth in his voice pulled on its clear timbre. "'Your crumpled body. Your anxiety vomited out like confetti. Your eyes weeping like split oranges. You are going to be a wailing asteroid for the rest of your life.' Someone wrote these words, but they weren't thinking of you.
"Strange, isn't it." He let the comment occupy the space between them. Then he stood.
"Talking won't get me anything. That's what this is.
"Untreated, your feet will get infected. It'll rot your toes, enter your blood, pass into your brain. Take you over and kill you, but it won't be quick. Give you as many chances as you gave me, and remember, they weren't many," he seethed with perceptible strain. "Tell me who you know."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2022 7:23 pm
If Faustite hadn't thought words could get him anywhere before, Cybele was hardly going to give attention to his words now. With every ounce of scattered focus she could muster, she pulled her attention away from the fire in her feet and towards her hands, and she banged the manacle against the pipe while he recited poetry at her in the off chance it would break. It did not. "Defused infection of a man," she shot back as well as she could when her voice was a thin, pained thing. She did manage a pointed glance at his youmafied midsection, though. "Someone wrote that, but they weren't thinking of you. What a coincidence." She stilled as he laid out his threats, and his terms. The shock of waking up to agony wore out just enough that she could feel something cold and heavy settle in her chest. Cybele did not fear death. She was at the point where she could often push through pain, or even embrace it. She took her hits in battle and she kept going. The thought of withering away to fever, her feet crying out for weeks, was different, and Faustite might have seen that in the way her lips twitched. But Ganymede had survived the Negaverse for months. Cybele could hardly give in after less than a minute. "Sylvite," she said, keeping her voice flat even though she knew that the last General who had taken her had somehow become a Knight. "Aquamarine. Jet. Albite. Feldspar. Kamacite."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2022 7:36 pm
Faustite snorted soft. He didn't mind the insults. How many he incurred, always from the ones in white, dragging their morals around by the nails and flaunting their humanity like it earned them the right to judge. Those of the White Moon were sour and wicked, their compassions conditional, their goals ever set on demeaning the dehumanized.
"Not asking for my comrades," he corrected, and his expression fell to a slow frown as she went on. "Asking for yours."
From a nowhere space, he pulled a heap of jewelry. Picket it apart in his palm, the delicate thing — all wire and Rift crystal, careful metal bent or hammered into an artifact older than him, older than her, older than the building in which they stood.
"Last chance," he warned as he started assembling the loops over his fingers.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2022 9:18 am
Her face was pale but set, her eyes red but steely. She'd made her choice. She didn't care about last chances, not matter what that object was that he was trying to taunt her with. She did not bother straining her neck to get a look at it. She stared at the ceiling, instead, and bit her lip against the pain until she tasted iron. "Geocronite," she continued, "Although I doubt you'll see him again. Oh, and that other Captain I killed in the forest. Didn't catch his name." It wasn't like she'd get much mercy if she cooperated. If anything, they might try corrupting her again, and that, she thought, was a fate worse than torture.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2022 6:13 am
Geocronite — a name he hadn't heard before. Something to keep in mind for later.
And the other one, the Captain? All the Captains he cared about were accounted for; little to trace back for that. Seemed she didn't care what happened to her, then. Faustite found that curious; when faced with pain for long enough, weren't people willing to do anything to stop it? It was Schörl who cautioned him against such things, but that was neither the purpose nor his process for Cybele, there, in the blacked-out bowels of the underfunded Farnsworth rehabilitation.
He fitted the jeweled pile of metal and Rift crystals onto his hand, snapped it shut about his wrist. The crystal at his palm glowed a deep violet alongside the glow of his grate. Faustite knelt next to her.
"Don't need to talk to get what I want," he muttered to her, and pressed the palm of his hand against her chest forcefully.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2022 2:32 pm
Cybele stopped talking after that. Instead, she tried to suck in breaths deep enough that they could somehow get her attention away from the rest of this. It wasn't working. The burns were too much. On top of that, as she heard the clinking of delicate metal, she couldn't help but steal another glance at his bracelet. Cybele wasn't always the type to notice people's jewelry, but right now she was something a captive audience. An uncooperative captive audience. She swallowed dry and forced herself to stare blankly at the wall. It did hurt when he shoved the gem into her chest. It was a lot of pressure on the burn she'd taken when they'd been fighting, and on top of that it jostled her whole body, which jostled her feet, and she gave another low, pained sound. The bracelet did not resolve itself into some torture device, however. Still, Faustite might find himself with something he wanted.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2022 7:26 am
His attention shifted, darting here and there, in patterns visible only to him. His stillness lasted only a minute, maybe two, then he drew his hand back with a slow, smoky exhale.
"Least you punched her for us," he murmured aloud. It was the only consolation they would get out of that memory.
The short glimpse said more than Faustite wanted to see, and it disheartened him, knowing that human loyalty was so terribly capricious. From a trusted one to a traitor, and how long did that take? Would it happen to the others, too? Would it happen to him? Would the Sovereigns change their minds and turn their backs to Metallia? Would the Queen? They were human, each and every one of them, after all.
Faustite dismantled the glove bracelet from his hand. The crystal at his palm no longer glowed, dulled for the expenditure of all its energy. Even if it portended betrayal, Faustite considered this memory a promising start. Perhaps he chose well for a target, this time.
Better to keep her alive, then.
"Send someone for you soon." He considered, however briefly, telling her that he would come see her again tomorrow. But that would give her a way to gauge the time, and he would rather her fail to discern an hour from a day, a day from a week. "Stay alive until I see you again."
He stood, then all light fled the room.stari_maga fin, and i can start another after work heart
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
