Faustite refrained from announcing himself. His core delivered all the grandiosity for him — he was absent, then he was there, and the blackened, sooty room lit up with a dim orange glow that caused the shadows under Cybele's eyes to dance. Heat filled the room, rolling off of him in steady waves. His aura choked the area.
But so did hers, he supposed. As weak as she looked, her aura never faltered.
Before he spoke, he gave her a perfunctory once-over. No infection by glance, but she looked pale and weak for all the rest she hadn't been getting. He wondered, then, what Albite did for her. Was it only water she was given, or some light fare that she might stomach? Did he clean her feet, or simply look them over and shrug when they looked good enough? They hadn't spoken much about coordinating her care; the crux of their argument was over why she remained in the first place.
Seemed Albite didn't like her so trussed up and damaged. But what did that matter, when Cybele was only a means?
Faustite spoke plainly. "Wake up." He nudged one of her damaged feet with the toe of a metal boot, then waited for the howls after.
stari_maga
Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2022 3:40 pm
Cybele felt his presence the moment he arrived. It wasn't like she was actually sleeping, with how her feet were. (Awful. In a few areas, there was a crustiness to them that she hoped was scabbing, but the area around her toes was growing disturbingly hot.)
She knew it was Faustite himself, the Bad Cop, from the youma in his aura and from the way the air rose in temperature a few degrees as soon as his feet hit the floor. She could see the flickering of firelight from her mostly-lidded eyes, but she did not move.
He'd gotten something from her with that artifact last time he was here. He didn't know who he'd seen her punch. Cybele had punched enough people that the memories of all of them started to run together, but Faustite had clearly seen one of them.
Perhaps if he thought she was asleep, he'd just use it again and not bother taunting her.
No such luck, though. He kicked her. She screamed, then bit her tongue to cut the sound short.
She opened her eyes and shifted enough to glare at him.
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Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2022 5:26 pm
"Giving you another chance." Faustite leaned over, examined the front of his boot. Furrowing his brows, he wiped the toe against the ground. "Answer and I'll clean up your feet. Guessing you've an infection now."
It hadn't smelled in the room the way that rotting tissue did, that distinct smell of cells dying to infection, but it might've been overpowered by the lack of toilet or bathing facilities. No worse than the way he could smell himself, he supposed.
He held up a digit. "Sylvite purified. What's her Knight name, and which planet owns her?"
Then a second digit. "Where is she now?"
And a third. "What's her civilian name?"
He knelt down to her level. "Know you've a history with her. She wanted your starseed after you left. Fought you in the woods by that garage. Do you really have the scruples to protect someone who threw your memories away, who wanted you dead? Who treated you like a prize?"
stari_maga
Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2022 6:38 pm
"No," said Cybele, her voice cracking from thirst again. Albite had been in with water, but she didn't know how long ago that had been, with the way the minutes bled together uncounted into hours. She looked over at him, eyes glazed slightly. Perhaps it was just from exhaustion. Perhaps fever was already setting in. "She put a knife in my back when I left. I'd do the same."
So that was what Faustite had seen. Not Cybele's finest moment, but also not someone she particularly cared about.
She knew that she should not wish for the death of someone purified, and if Sylvite was recorrupted, it would make things more complicated for Cybele's allies that still fought, but it turned out that Cybele was not very good at forgiveness.
"That said, I don't know much. She had moon symbols on her outfit. I ran into her and she tried to touch my antlers. I panicked and hit her. I left. It's not like she came after me to tell me her secrets after that."
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Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2022 7:07 pm
Look at her, admitting to her faults. Faustite wanted to smile, but couldn't bring that thought to his lips. She would make a good youma, holding grudges like that. He wondered what form she would take. Perhaps a hind like Albite wanted.
"Mm." His attention trailed off of Cybele. "Pink dress. Butterfly wing motif coming off the collar. Translucent cape. All those crescent moons. Wonder if that makes her a Knight of the White Moon.
"Shame you never found out. Could've gotten it from her when you made her cry." He clicked his tongue.
"Didn't give me what I asked for." He didn't act bothered; his flame hadn't grown surly with purpose, nor did smoke pour off of him and out his back, as it had when they fought. He shifted nonetheless, toward her feet, and rested on a half-folded leg once he drew closer to her injuries.
By his own glow, he saw the state of her feet. A hand opened up to nothing, and from nothing came a package of beef jerky. Faustite peeled it open, picked around, found a particularly thick and lengthy piece. Leaning forward, and ever aware of how his core loomed near her injured feet, he offered it to her face. "Bite this. Don't chew yet."
stari_maga
Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2022 6:15 pm
There was no energy there to articulate how while Cybele would, clearly, hit Sylvite, how she might subtly throw her under the bus given half a chance, she was she hardly going to beat someone who was crying until they gave up information. It wasn't her way. Even when she'd had enough Chaos in her veins that she'd been little more than a puppet, she'd always gone for the clean kill. She'd never done something like that.
It was possible that the torture was finally making her more agreeable. All she said was, "Perhaps."
A moment later she scrounged up just enough effort to add, "Unfortunately for you I don't care about her name."
She eyed his strip of beef jerky while his flames licked closer and closer to her feet. She thought about spitting it out, of letting her deal with her screams as she did whatever he was going to do to her, but in the end she took it in her mouth while she continued to watch him.
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Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2022 6:47 pm
"Mm." Her name wasn't such a loss. Sylvite was an interesting happenstance, and an important target, but he needn't be the only person looking for her.
Four things came from subspace, stored prior to his visit: the first was a lantern, whose wick he lit with himself. He set the light in a corner where it poured ample light over her feet and his side. The second was a cincher sewn from strange leathers. This, he wrapped about his unyielding waist, and snapped together in the front with practiced ease. The heat in the room would take some time to die down, he knew, and in the interim, they had only the lantern for light.
The third item was a bottle of 90% rubbing alcohol. The fourth: a large roll of gauze.
"One of my subordinates saw me cleaning out this cage. Thought he was being clever when he brought me rubbing alcohol." He uncapped it, and its strong antiseptic smell joined the miasma of misery that so thickly settled in the room.
Seizing her ankle with his free hand, Faustite tilted the bottle over her damaged foot. A thin stream came out, spilling over the bottom of her foot. He braced for her to kick, or wrench, or writhe, though her struggles lost some of their strength.
"Said it's a good degreaser, a good antiseptic." He exchanged the bottle for the bandages. After tearing the package open with his frightfully long nails, he unraveled the first rounds and began wrapping her soaked foot.
Then he took up the bottle again, and started on the remaining foot. Again, he gripped her ankle with his fever-pitched hand, though it lacked its ability to burn her skin now. "Took it from him, poured some on a report. His report. Then I stood, and it caught fire from heat alone.
"Still conscious?"
stari_maga
Posted: Sat Apr 23, 2022 9:59 am
It turned out that a strip of jerky between the teeth only did so much to keep a person from screaming. It wasn't that Cybele was trying to be loud. She wasn't trying to kick, either.
It wasn't that she cared if she hurt him. It wasn't that she cared at all. That had died when she'd woken up to agony, but the desire she had to kick out his shins or break his teeth was tempered by the amount of power he had over her right now.
Her reflexes took over, and she thrashed for a while, anyway.
Whatever veiled threats he was trying with that story about paperwork and alcohol was lost somewhere in between the pained noises that Cybele was making, and the pain itself, and the heady rush of dizziness that followed that brought her right to the edge of unconsciousness, but, unfortunately, not quite over.
When Faustite asked about it, she responded with a weak grunt.
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Posted: Wed Apr 27, 2022 3:50 pm
She shouted about it, banged on the pipe, made her noise. She hadn't bit off her tongue, though — praise the jerky for that. Faustite banished the lot of tools and resources back to that nowhere space, exchanged it all for the bracelet he wore once before.
"Always admired your resilience." He shifted over to her, and the light of his unveiled core forced the shadows on her face into hiding.
Once he was certain all the clasps were in order, all the hoops situated and the large crystal seated over his palm, he pressed it to her chest once more, and waited.
stari_maga
purification rp?
Posted: Sat Apr 30, 2022 3:11 pm
Endorphins blurred the edges of the world. Cybele's feet stung through it, but she did not feel much else. She didn't respond to his words. Her eyes were distant as he took off whatever corset he was wearing, and as his flames flared up again. She barely seemed to notice when he put the artifact from before on his hand, or when he adjusted the glowing gem. She did glance down, ever so slightly, when he pressed it against her chest.
She still wasn't sure what it did. To Cybele, it did not feel like anything was happening.
To Faustite, it would be a different experience. The memory he'd catch was one of Cybele's most precious.
"I might need a lot of support no matter which way the memories go," she said. "I wasn't bluffing the other day. There are people in the Negaverse who have some morality left. I did the work they did not want to do. I stopped counting the starseeds."
Her voice was flat, her gaze barely apologetic as she met the gaze of the other woman, still half waiting for her to turn on her.
"I did not mind. It still does not bother me, although I'm beginning to realize that it should. I don't know what it's going to be like if I start feeling again." She paused, her lips pressing thinner. "I don't think I want to find out alone.
"But," she attempted a smile, "I'd like to return the favor, I think. I'd like to stand by your side in battle, or when you reach out to the next person," she hesitated, as if this was the hardest to say, "Or perhaps in line at an ice cream truck, or next to a pool?"
The mundane things were the most foreign to her. She was used to having youma in her kitchen sink, not to going swimming, but she thought that she wanted to try.
"I know I can never have a family," she said, and after everything else, that was where her voice cracked, "But I think I'd like to be your friend."
--- “You can have a family,” Ganymede assured her. “Friends can be a family, regardless of blood. You won’t be alone, Cybele.”
Ganymede offered a smile in return, small and tentative, overjoyed to reach this moment, but cautious still.
“It will be an honor to fight by your side again,” she continued, “and it will be my privilege to help you acclimate to a new life. Whatever that life becomes. I’ll do whatever I can to help you thrive.”
Life, in spite of all the evil in the world, could be so beautiful.
Stepping forward, Ganymede offered her hand, then paused, thinking the gesture too formal. She smiled again, encouraging, and held her arms just open enough to offer a hug, if Cybele would accept one.
“I’ll always fight for you.”
As he watched, Cybele's eyes fluttered shut, and she leaned back against her pipe, trying halfheartedly to chew on the jerky.
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Posted: Tue May 03, 2022 8:23 am
If that was all it ******** took.
His attention flickered this way and that, settling on nothing, as he watched Ganymede. His affect soured when he heard Cybele, heard what mundanities she requested in exchange for — he could only guess purification. While he wanted to know her thoughts, her feelings, either the magic in his bracelet wasn't that potent, or memories were not so rigorously recorded inside of someone.
If all it ******** took was a trip to an ice cream truck, or a pool, or some inane show of care and Benitoite ******** that up —
He loosed a seething sigh of smoke. More came, beckoning his attention.
So Cybele got an offer of family, of camaraderie. As if that could be dispensed so easily. As if she couldn't have had that in the Negaverse, as she was, if she spared them half a chance. It burned him, but worse than that was Cybele getting to have a family, the way that Faustite couldn't, though he'd tried with Lysithea.
Furious, he pulled his hand from her. The thought was automatic: pull her starseed, and she won't have anything. No friends, no family, no life, no future, no rebirth. His hands shook for how desperately he wanted that. He clutched one into a fist and punched her in the chest before he teleported out in a fit of heavy smoke.
