RP:The Understanding
Part of the Venturil's Bane Arc
This is a Necromancer's Guild RP.
Seemingly Abandoned Manse, Vailkrin
The weedy path leading to this place belies the ruined grandeur of a house that is all but hidden among a tangle of rampant vines, hemlock branches and other forms of pale-hued vegetation. If one is brave enough to penetrate this gloomy thicket, a once-fine but now dilapidated manse can be seen more clearly, its windows boarded up and the ornately-carven door veiled in spiderwebs. It's doubtful whether anyone has lived here in a century. But, as a wise vampire once said, "In Vailkrin, looks are very often deceiving".
It was a scene from some absinthe-addled poet's imagination - under Vailkrin's eternal moonlight, in the wildly overgrown grounds of a grand, dilapidated mansion bloomed neglected banks of lilies and rambling, heady roses, the statuary between them crumbling - an angel with one wing, a fountain filled with detritus. Amid this decay, a pale woman, dressed in simple black, a gown of velvet with loose sleeves, drifted from bloom to bloom, stopping to observe the lichen's century-old growth in its excruciatingly slow, leprous creep along the angel's brow. "In Memory of the Fallen', read an inscription, and she smiled at it somewhat wryly.
While the abandoned mansion appears like a scene created by the most absinthe-addled poet, the dark elf that stalks the streets leading up to it is nothing short of their worse drink-induced nightmare. His chest is open still where his own sword tore into ebon flesh; the scarlet mouth of his wound still there.. still sometimes spewing sanguine vitae down a stomach already stained dark red with the crusted remnants of his blood. At his hip the E' et-Nilah Blade sits again in its enchanted sheathe, his other hip is home to a morningstar engraved with images of devotion towards the Spider Queen. And oh!- how his fingers want to wrap around the hilts of his weapons, the feeling intensifying more and more as he stalks ever closer to the grounds where whatever twisted nature grows in such a damned city is slowly, so slowly, reclaiming the mansion as its own... he knew Tenebrae was there... he could sense her, he was sure.. he could smell her.. which probably meant she could do the same, something that does not please Kuzial. But he would not rush to demand answers. He kept his measured approach... giving him time to decide whether to meet her with weapons or words...
Tenebrae, like a spider sitting dead center of her web, sensed many things around her, but nothing moreso than the presence of a thrall. Kuzial had been plucking the strings of her aura for some time now, but if her Empusai status had taught her anything, it was that patience was a virtue. And a girl had ought to have at least -one- of those…right? The Necromancer went on with her rambling garden tour, humming some ancient song learned at her long-dead mother's knee. No armour was upon her, and the fact she felt its absence keenly was observable only in the way she tended to wander the grounds with the manse at her back.. Tucking one of the red, deep-scented roses into her piled-up hair, she changed her tune slightly , to a throatier, more seductive melody. A siren's song. A lure, for he who hated to be lured.
Kuzial hears before he sees the lady Tenebrae. That humming song. It should not have been able to reach his ears, but it does... too easily does it permeate the darkened air amongst the alleys and forgotten fools who live in them. He can feel it drawing him in; he wants to hear it closer, to see whomever it is who can make such a sound, even as he knows who makes it... But he convinces himself that, 'he was going this way anyway,' and so continues to be lead along a path he knew he had to walk. And then he sees it; the tangle of pallid vegetation that has grown around the house. He had no wish to walk through it, yet by the time he has realised this he's already taken steps into the further gloom. His greatest means of attack was his stealth, and now this was lost. So when he clears enough of the vegetation to actually see Tenebrae, he strides boldly out, hand resting on the hilt of his morningstar. He doesn't speak, not yet; he merely glares with an intense hatred at the woman. And there he would remain, showing no signs of the agony that must be flowing through his body, waiting it seems for her to speak.
Tenebrae did not speak, not right away. Kuzial might think her foolish for the way she stood, unarmed, unalarmed in his bloody, weapon-wielding, hate-filled presence. But her smile said otherwise... it was a knowing smile, but it did not reek of smugness. Shedding red petals like a soft rain from that dying bloom fastened in her hair, the Empusai walked softly and in silence toward the drow, her sole acknowledgement of his presence that smile, and the cool, pale green of her eyes set upon him as though he were just another lovely bloom in this ruin of a garden. Closer, she came, closer.. She would halt before him, her gaze drifting from his burning half-gaze to the open gash he bore. Tenebrae herself showed no such damage. In fact, there was not a single blemish on her. "Ah," was all she said, and touched her pale fingers to the wound. Then she knelt down in front of Kuzial, taking care not to smirch the trailing hems of her elegant gown.
Kuzial knew that smile already. She wore it often, though now it lacked her innate arrogance. That smugness that spoke of age and power; of having seen too many things that would drive a normal sane person to become the most deranged of lunatics. His fingers clench into impotent fists as she walks closer. He wanted to lash out, to drive his weapons through her unblemished skin. To watch those pale-green eyes lose their luster as death claimed at last the woman who so often dances with him. But he doesn't. Instead he stands still as she kneels down and responds to her spoken noise and touching of his wound with words in his lyrical voice. "The fruits of your labour... or is that now what I am?"
Tenebrae pressed her lips to the wound, as though it were some small child's boo-boo, and as those chill eyes turned up to him he'd feel her mouth moving if his pain was not too intense. "You are what you are. But will you become ..." Her tongue flickered out, a forked softness probing the sullied flesh she'd opened with his own blade. "... all you can be?" One hand - an incredibly strong hand, for its size - wrapped to one of his calves, the other rose to present itself, tilted to expose its wrist, to the Patron's face. "Such resilience," she sighed, as her maw lengthened, "ought to be rewarded. Don't you think?" Then she pressed her mouth to the ragged opening, her bite unsavage, gentle. Deep.
Kuzial , for a long moment, is caught so completely off guard by her words and actions that not even his ever-present rage can drown out his confusion. A month ago this would have disgusted him; he would have reacted with swift anger and deadly violence. But he isn't any longer repulsed by it and this more than anything holds his hands steady at his side. He doesn't stop her tasting his wound, though in time he reaches out and grabs that wrist. The desire within him to bite into her flesh is strong, but he restrains it with an intensity that rises like a crescendo until all he can hear is a roaring in his ears. Only then does he snap his arm up, tearing her lips from the scarlet mouth in his stomach, breaking her hold upon his calf until she is forced to stand before him. "I am not what I am... I am what you made me..." Before she could reply he pulls her close and presses his cold ebon lips against her mouth, uncaring of whether it's elongated or not, and just briefly does he taste his own blood upon his lips. When he draws back he speaks again, his voice a sibilant hiss of a whisper that weaves amongst the plants that grow here like a eldritch spirit of old. "You should be rewarded with pain and death... but..." a growl grows in his throat as he speaks on, "perhaps I should be grateful." A rather unlikely event. Without bothering to hide it, he looks her up and down, his single eye taking in her details in a rather predatory fashion. "I will not become an animal like the idiot vampires who walk these streets... I kill for pleasure, not for food... tell me, Tenebrae, why I shouldn't tear open that throat of yours right now..? Convince me, necromancer... convince me that what you did is not merely spread your curse like the parasite I've always thought your... our... kind is."
Tenebrae tried, not very convincingly, to look as though she were not thoroughly enjoying his barely-repressed violence. Sucking traces of his blood and saliva from her lower lip, she tilted her head, as though she found him exceedingly curious. "What is weak, ought to feed the strong. What is strong.. " here, a dramatic pause that she filled by tasting his blood again, this time from his own mouth. ".. ought to be made stronger, lest it waste away. That is my credo, Kuzial Stavret. I am Empusai, and did not prefer you subsumed by the.. thing.. in your sword. Gone.. a ghost. An echo. Perhaps now, you will master it?" She trailed her wrist tantalisingly across his mouth. "There are mortals who would happily die, happily kill every last member of their bloodline, just to have me offer myself.. this.. to them. Will you refuse it, Stavret? Will you remain.. a lesser being than you ought to be?"
Kuzial does not like being reminded of his weakness. He had placed the blame of being bested by his wicked blade upon the remnants of Shattered Dream's nefarious influence when its power was shattered... but the lingering doubt is there. "Do not tell me you've taken up the mantra of an idiot druid. The strong feed on the weak, the circle of life... or lack there of." Just quickly he lifts his hand to touch a petal in her hair, before it trails down her cheek in a gesture that would appear entirely loving were it not one shared between these two. "You even look like one." He flashes the smallest grin; it is faintly mocking, though what it mocks exactly is entirely ambiguous. "There was a drow once who became addicted to Nalferuos... a drug... he too would have killed every member of his bloodline just to get some more of the stuff... does not mean it is good, or a gift." Still holding her wrist in his hand he lifts it up to his mouth. For a moment it looks like he will bite down on her pale flesh, before he stops himself with an almost tangible effort of will. "You... chose me for a reason, Tenebrae. Is it just because I am worthy... or is it that you needed to prove you could destroy one of the few people who have the power to destroy you?" He doesn't mean physical power. If he got close he doesn't doubt he could kill her, though getting close to her would be difficult. But it's clear that's not what he means with his words. Whether or not she understood, though. He neither knew nor truly cared.
Tenebrae glanced down to her as-yet-untasted wrist. "That," she said. Her chin dipped toward it ever so slightly. "Is my proof that you would be no common animal. And it is why.." at least in part, said the pause, ".. I wanted you. This way." she amended, returning a smile as ambiguous as his own had been. "Plus, of course, the brief time you will be at my beck and call is bound to cause you no end of chagrin, which is of course delightful to me. Now, no stabbing.." another hasty amendment, her smile broadening to show an array of sharp, white teeth. "..for if it happens that I am stuck here, forever, without my stack full of warbeasts and thralls, without my King, I would have no other as my .. equal." She blinked, slowly. "As for being like them, the common bloodfeeders.. they make the most wonderful armour." Something in the glimmer of her gaze would hint that she was not talking about their skills as smithies. "My own, which perished to save me, was once just such a vampire. Weak. An animal." Haughtiness clawed its way back into her expression, one slim shoulder lifting and dropping in a careless shrug. "Of course, if you'd rather .. not."
Kuzial hears weaved into her words that which she doesn't say. He is a drow, even now, and he has lived in a world of half truths for his entire bloody, violent life. "Your beck and call, you say... I can feel it already." It is perhaps why the hand holding her wrist begins to hold it harder. As if he had to consciously keep telling it to not lift it to his lips. "But know this now, Tenebrae. I will cut my own heart out and beat you to death with it before I run after you like a dog seeking scraps from a plate. I will pick death over that... though I will not die alone." In truth, he's not entirely sure he could kill her right now even if he wanted to. But these tantalising promises of power... these glimpses into a world she commands... where blood and flesh are stronger than the weak mortals... it is tempting to the psychotic patron. He grows silent for a long time. Thinking through the implications of her words... of all her words. There is a doubt within his mind that she intends him to become her armour... he knew she would enjoy the irony, just as he would were the situation reversed... but, in a thought process that is almost spoken on his face... one exactly like the other night's... he realises that the road to power is not without risk. "If I accept this.. fate.. you have bestowed upon me.. understand that I will stand beside you, not under you... not unless..." The words trail off as his look grows lewd and unhidden. Thoughts of power were ever an aphrodisiac to the Patron of House Stavret. "I will stalk this path with you... but know that I do so of my own accord... I am not that dog, Joliette Thorne... Tenebrae.. Necromancer... And if you ever grow soft on me, I will kill you the ancient drow way... one piece of you will die at a time. How worthy I am means nothing if you turn into a weak-willed whore who wants to sit at home baking, like the rest of those who infest this world... Do we now understand each other?"
Tenebrae's wounds, these days, healed over easily. But some wounds are deeper than flesh, and never do go away. Her lip lifted in a voiceless snarl at the slight she perceived in his warning about domestication, at the way his words prodded one of her few sore spots - she had once allowed herself that weakness, indulged in it as that drug-addled drow had indulged in his own destruction and it was her greatest, deepest shame. Through the grit of her teeth, she hissed, "If you fail, Stavret, to unlatch yourself from my teat once you are complete, I will have that heart of yours on a plate before you can lift a hand," and once she was sure he saw that she meant it, Tenebrae's mien softened in increments, though clearly she was not entirely comfortable in being so bare-faced, "And if I wanted a dog, I would not choose one so very likely to bite..." she tilted her wrist, showing the sluggish blue course of stolen life running just below her white skin, ".. the hand that feeds it. At my side, Patron. Or.. not at all."
Kuzial watches keenly as her silent anger shows at his warning. It was more of an answer than any she could verbalise. It was confirmation; had she shown shame he would have matched it with disgust, but anger, rage... they were what grew monsters in the shadows, nightmares in the night. They were what he required of her, and oh, was she happy to deliver. "Getting my heart on a plate will be hard to do from beyond the grave." He grins - it is not a pleasant look. "We understand each other, lady of darkness." There is a silence, then, from the drow. Though, it is not one he consciously meant to make. But he can feel it around him; like a thousand cogs turning from one small twist. The scales have settled, their path is marked. Where it would eventually lead isn't known, though the drow can already feel the weight of blood upon his weapons. There would be oceans of it... but first, there was this stream. And either no longer able to fight against her insidious wishes or simply no longer wishing to try, he brings her hand up, easily pierces her flesh with teeth already growing sharp, and tastes finally the stolen life that courses through her undead veins. He seals their mutual promise with blood; fitting considering the consequences of breaking it, and he takes a savage joy in knowing that soon the world would learn again to fear the names of Kuzial and Tenebrae...