RP:Wading Into Still Waters
Part of the A Skull by Any Other Name Arc
The Labyrinth
Note: Skylei and Senka's players would advise that you do not read this RP if you're particularly squeamish. Or if you're eating an apple...
Senka doesn't even notice Sky stopping to look at that book. The wolf has it in her to look out for pack, sometimes, but after the many attacks on her soul the already selfish creature is not in the mood to mother Sky's tender moment. She only pauses as she hears that book drop, turning to look back only to see the halfling hurrying to catch up. Even if that still means the woman has to look back, temptation clear in every step. "You two-walkers are insane," Is the wolf's opinion, seeing nothing of worth in this room. It's with obvious impatience that she waits for her companion to reach her, her red eyes fixating on every detail of her as she waits for the woman to catch up to her. "Nothing in this room will hunt you your prey. Staring at…symbols…won't help you survive." Her husky voice is thick with anger, yes, but mostly confusion. The beast is sincerely puzzled by what she finds in the other's mind. Senka might look like a woman, now, on two feet and wearing what used to be a dress, but she's still as different from Sky as she was when she was wearing her fur. The albino waits for the other to reach her before reaching out to the door, impatient to end their little adventure. "You better be right, Harold," She growls, as well as she can with a human voice, "Or I'll find a way to use you to clean my teeth." Slender fingers, that hold far more power than the look of them suggests, turn the handle to open the door to the new scene. The fact that it takes a little force doesn't improve her temper. "You ladies are close," It would be impossible for the skull to put more sarcasm in 'ladies' than he already did, "You'll find me soon." "What do you mean you'll find-" Senka starts impatiently only to look down and see that her hand is empty. She's seriously getting tired of this shi-…place. The door opens and the wolf wastes no time to step into a new bright space. It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust, to find what she got herself into this time. Again, the beast goes still but she does so with the silence and danger of a predator spotting a prey. She's standing on a platform, perhaps three meters tall, as blindingly white as the wall behind her and the moment Sky is through the door it's swallowed into the white to reveal nothing but smooth blank wall. There's no going back. The walls stretch out, metres long to finally end in another platform with one last white door. It's not the whiteness or the doors that has Senka going still however. It's blood. Its sharp, tangy, iron scent practically clouds the albino's nose until she can feel everything inside of her hum in answer. The thick red liquid is still, like waters without current or fish, and waiting for them. Like a lake it stretches out before them, leaving them to wade through it to get to the other side. And though there are no fish, it seems something stirs within it after all for with a delicious 'squelch' something comes free from the bottom to pop up and bob merrily on the surface: an eye. Closely following that one lidless ball, is a jaw with all its teeth still in place, revealing to be humanoid at the very least. It's the blood of all the persons they've killed and all the creatures that they have hunted. Their past, once again ready to leave its stains upon them. "Oh…" Senka utters, like a child filled with wonder. Her eyes, already big for her face, seem that much bigger and that much deeper red as if in answer to the liquid spread out before them.
Skylei would have offered Senka an angry retort as to why books were just as likely to help her survive as claws were, but she didn't see the point. Her soul is weary by this point; she doesn't have the energy to fight the battle that she can never win with the albino. Instead she just dips her head, submissive as ever to her alpha, and keeps walking. The further they get from that temptation the better. As Senka pulls the door open, Skylei exhales in clear relief and pushes it firmly shut behind them and disappears into nothingness; out of sight, out of mind. She exhales deeply and her heart seems to stop beating at such a rapid pace, that is, until she sees what the next challenge is that awaits them. It's a lake of blood; how joyous... And not just a lake of blood, Skylei feels, instinctively, in her soul, that this blood holds a greater significance to the two women than it would if it were just the blood of the random drunks off the street in Kelay. "D-did, we do this?" she asks Senka. But the wolf is already gone, lost to a lust that confuses Skylei to her darkest depths. Was Senka enjoying the smell of the blood and the feeling of murder that surrounded them? Was there really that little humanity left in the beast? For the first time since the entered the labyrinth, Skylei is reminded exactly what Senka is and this, this is the thing that truly scares her the most. As that skull pops free and rises to the surface of the bloody bath, Skylei retches, "I can't. This is too much." She's not speaking to the albino anymore, but to her herself. She would edge back against the wall, as though to even touch the blood would burn away her skin. She needs to find the courage somewhere within that fragile, broken soul of hers to make her way towards the bloody tide and across it's silent surface.
Senka doesn't have the bloodlust of a werewolf so much as that of a human. And humanity is frightening in its own little ways. Pupils dilate in sheer utter exhilaration as the wolf inhales the musky scent of so many different bodies, so many different kills. Really, they're lucky that only a few animals are mixed into their combined kill streak or they'd be drowning in it. After all, there was a time when the lycan turned her nose up at the thought of eating two-walkers. Unfortunately it didn't last very long…During her time spent with the Fog Forest as her territory, the albino had been the main source for all the missing-person-stories. No one venturing between the fog filled trees had been safe, the wolf spared very, very few. And her kills are here to welcome her back now, every single one of their unique body scent emerged in the blood until she's reliving every single kill. Most of them had been murdered in the way the wolf enjoys best: jaws ripped clean from faces. It's a delightful time to think back to, the time before Tenebrae found her and forced her into a new pack. The albino has frozen, the air of danger thickening around her like a beast gathering the most savage corners of its soul. It's only when Skylei retches that the wolf finally shudders and gasps, sucking in new breaths filled with the many scents of their kills. "Look at it…It's beautiful. Can you smell it?" The albino seems hardly aware of speaking, and even her body seems to move on its own accord. Steadily, the wolf begins to step down the steps leading into that red lake. The moment her toes are emerged within the thick liquid she once again shudders, closing her eyes as if in rapture. "It's still warm…" Her voice is thick, now, hunger and excitement making it almost impossible to speak. Her next few steps are a little hurried, kicking up droplets of blood to spatter and cover her front. The beast only pauses when she's waist-deep into the memories of her past kill and only then to look at the items she's kicked free from the bottom. More body parts: hands with their arms still attached, intestines, jaws, ribs…It's one of those ribs the beast finally picks out, carefully lifting it free from the mixed blood to sink her teeth eagerly into the flesh still clinging to the white bone. Her pale face stains easily, such a sharp contrast to the red that clings to the meat. It leaves behind a macabre painted smile, like a child that has been rummaging into its mother's make-up, and it's with that on her face that the beast lifts her eyes to look back to Skylei. Her pupils are wide, darkening her look until the bright red of her eyes matches the colour staining her face perfectly. There is definitely something inhuman about that look as, in the end, the lycanthrope truly is. "Come," Senka's face might still be human, but her voice no longer matches it, deepening into rumbling tones better suited to a monster, "Don't be such a child. Be proud of what you've accomplished…" Thoughtlessly the woman drops the rib, which now misses a piece cut nearly round in the shape of her mouth, as her attention turns to the next piece of flesh drifting by. It's an arm that she sticks into her mouth, then, tanned from the sun and thick from years of hard labour. Its hand dangles cheerfully as she wades deeper into the lake, her eyes not on the door but the red surrounding her, in a macabre wave to the last sane person standing on that platform. It turns out that Skylei's mind has connected to three, rather than two, psychopaths after all and is stuck with the last one.
Skylei cannot control her whirling stomach any longer. As soon as Senka announced that the scarlet liquid is in fact, still warm, she knows what is going to happen. Doubled over she heaves once and then twice, before pushing herself away from the wall and vomiting violently into the pool of blood. Chunklets of sick intermingle with the warm blood to form a cocktail of the most disgusting nature. The sight of it alone is enough to make Skylei loose the contents of her stomach again. And the smell. The smell is indescribably, stomach-turningly vile. Thankfully, Skylei is too busy vomiting her breakfast into the sanguine lake at the moment that Senka decides to insert the mangled arm into her mouth. She might have fainted if she'd seen it. With sick stains down her face, sweat on her brow and tears forming in her eyes, Skylei begins to physically shake with fear of what is to come. Backing away she thumps against the smooth white walls, praying that a door would appear from the ether. No such luck. After a few moments of fruitless banging and a sob of despair she turns to face the most disgusting sight she has ever seen. With wobbling steps she approaches the lake. Each second feels like an hour, each minute, a lifetime. Eventually she dips a toe into the thick red liquid and begins to retch again. This time it's simply dry heaving. There's nothing left for her stomach to expel. The toe is quickly extracted, "I can't" she cries, to no one in particular. Senka is of no help. In fact, with the blood in her eyes, Skylei fears she's more of a threat than a friend. What's to stop the wolf from tearing her throat from her body and leaving her as naught more than another memory in this bloody pool? Huge, gulping shaking sobs echo around the white room as Skylei forces herself into the bloody lake. Her experience is rather different to Senka's. As soon as the blood reaches her waist, (and by this point she's already felt an eyeball crush into naught by gooey pulp between her toes) Skylei's soul begins to dig at the deepest recesses of her consciousness, forcing repressed memories to the surface. There's Skylei as naught more than a child, standing next to the broken body of another youngster, with a tear streaked face and pain in her eyes insisting that she hadn't meant to do it and it had been accident. Two more steps and the shifting of bones beneath her feet. Sky can't breathe anymore; the scent makes her nauseous and she's gasping for oxygen. Fast forward a few years and an older Skylei, fresh out of the enclave doing what she has to do to survive and looking down at two more corpses. She remembers every face, every circumstance, every feeling that had coursed through her veins as she killed, be it intentional or unintentional. She forces herself onwards, two more steps. There's a crack beneath her feet and Skylei realises, to her horror that her foot has slipped between two ribs and is now encased in a ribcage. She can't walk anymore, "Sven save my soul…"
Senka isn't concerned with the vomiting. Not even the sharp pinch of the scent that was Sky's stomach content can quite pull her away from the thick muscle in her mouth. It's a delight to break skin and feel the blood fill her mouth, to feel flesh give away under the force of her teeth. The fingers of the arm she's biting into twitch with every press of her teeth into that arm, the last spasms of a man long dead. There's cruel amusement in her eyes as she notices it, and quite happily the woman continues to bite down into the muscle as she wades deeper into the water. All concern she might've had for Sky is lost, disappearing into a haze of feral hunger as she surrounds herself in the scent of death. She's drunk on it and enjoying every second as an alcoholic would enjoy his drink. Already her arms are covered by the warm thick liquid, sticking to her skin until she's redder than white and her fingers spread with the delight of a child to feel the life pass through them. Her long hair drags behind her like some form of cloak, stained with pink in the parts that the red had spattered as she entered the red lake, but most of it the deep red is soaking deep into her silky white strands. It's as if the blood is determined to colour a creature that, by nature, is colourless. Perhaps it's nature's wicked way of making up for taking all of her pigment…It's still not quite enough for the lycan who seriously considers diving into the warm liquid of life until she's distracted by Sky's struggles behind her. The wolf has already had her ups and downs, unafraid as her toes braced themselves on the many body parts littering along the floor. Even now her heel is digging into what she guesses to be a stomach, soft and squishy enough to invite her to bounce cheerfully until it bursts beneath her weight. Despite the flesh in her mouth, the wolf still snickers as she feels it, unconcerned by the little pieces caught by, and lodged between, her toes. Finally her hand reaches up to carefully lift the arm from her mouth, only so that she can study the hand instead, toying with dead fingers limp between her own. With the warm blood covering the dead hand, she can almost pretend it's as warm as her own fingers. "You should be proud," Her husky voice rumbles, low and content. Even as the albino studies her companion, she carefully singles out the index finger of the dead hand in her hands. She curls back her lips as she lifts it to her mouth only to bite down onto the finger as two-walkers would bite into a carrot. Blood bursts free into her mouth, too fast for her to swallow and it dribbles down her stubborn chin, already covered by the sticky stuff. "No pup could take a life," She continues, crunching down on the bone with the absentmindedness of one enjoying a snack. If anything she seems to enjoy the feel of bones splintering inside of her mouth to mix with the flesh, blood and muscle. "It's a sign of adulthood that you've hunted successfully. You're not worthy of offspring until you do." With that said the beast lowers her eyes to study the drifting limbs and organs around her. To stand in what is, essentially, human soup seems to have cheered the lycan greatly. It's probably the most content that Sky has seen her so far as she releases the arm to instead catch a stomach wobbling nearby. It's almost gluttony, the state the wolf's in, the way she so absent mindedly releases her little trophies to replace them with the next. "I ripped this out while she was kicking," She remembers, feeling the soft tissue of the liver between her fingers and studying every inch of it. Sure enough she can carefully pry it open where her fangs created massive holes, studying the inside with a head tilted to the side in a way that, frankly, would've been cute has she not been waist-deep in human leftovers. "She didn't like that much…" She notes, and finally something wicked is entering her voice and tilting the corner of her mouth upwards. Her red eyes move to lock with Sky's in a companionable fashion, as if her little statement was a private joke to be shared.
Skylei stands, a bloody, vomit and tear stained wreck. Salty tears fall thick and fast into the blood as she tells it as though it will make the pain ease and nullify her sins, "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry." Still the memories come flying back to haunt her. There's Skylei looking as she does now, save for the ugly scar that adorns her cheek , sword in hand and standing in a puddle of blood with the body of a vampire lying in a crumpled heap at her feet. "Not him." She tells her soul, "Don't make me remember him." She tugs her foot, still encased in ribcage, from the ground but finds she cannot take more than a step without being in agony. This ribcage needs to go. She finds solid-ish rest on a tightly compacted pile of leg and arm bones, though the fleshy feel of semi-decayed muscle underneath her foot immediately has her retching again. She shakes her trapped foot as hard as she can. No joy. Arm reach deep into the blood bath, in an attempt to manipulate the ribs, snap them if necessary. But she cannot reach. Not without submerging her entire being in the bloody pool. She shudders. She sobs. She tries to come up with any other solution, but she cannot. She begs the gods for another way. They offer her nothing. She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes and submerges her entire being in the liquid. She daren't open her eyes, yet with shaking and fumbling hands she reaches for the ribcage that has trapped her poor foot after a few tugs she realises that the ribs need to be broken. With all her strength the scared half-elf pulls at the ribs until, after a good twenty seconds one gives way to her struggle and cracks into two pieces. Her foot is released from the bone prison and so she arises from the depths, dripping and gasping as though fresh from a baptism, with half a ribcage in her hands. This has been a baptism like no other and, as blood rolls down her face, arms and hair the half-elf begins to shake uncontrollably. Her white skin is stained a dirty, condemned red, making her appear as the terrifying monster she currently views herself as being. Blood finds rest on her lips and as the half-elf opens her mouth to speak she gets a taste of the blood of the dead. It is the most evil and disgusting she has ever felt in her life as that metallic taste resonates in her senses. And yet, she's not crying anymore. Her clothes are heavy with gore and she feels as though she is going to be dragged beneath the sanguine again. Fit punishment for her crimes, is it not, to be drowned in the life essence of those you killed? She would reach Senka soon, stepping from organ to organ, bone to bone without a single tear. She doesn't speak until she reaches the wolf "I -never- liked it." She tells the albino with a stony expression and pained voice, blinking blood from her eyes as she speaks, "I… I did what I had to, to survive. And I'll never take pride in what I did." That's all Sky has ever wanted. Just to survive.
Senka doesn't mind Sky getting close to her. Out of all the times Sky had yearned for the lycan's touch, that human contact in a world of madness, the only time the albino freely offers it is when she's covered in blood. With an arm covered in red and brown, as if wearing a long glove made out of blood, she reaches out to slowly wipe her index finger over the halfling's cheek. "You two-walkers are so strange," The albino idly notes, pulling back her finger to pop it cheerfully in her mouth to taste the blood upon it, "You kill those weaker than you and then waste your energy crying about it." Gently she blinks, a vaguely puzzled expression crossing her face before a floating heart passing by takes her attention. The liver still in her free hand is dropped to be replaced by the heart, which the wolf then bites into as if into an apple. The chamber of the heart is exposed as the wolf tears free the flesh, the muscle being juicy enough to fill her mouth. Already she's eying the eyeballs floating around her, the lungs, the legs…There's plenty of food, and enough blood to make her heart triple its usual speed...The beast has no reason to leave. In fact, she only looks around for more snacks to pick and chew on rather than a way to that door. If that means balancing on legs and decaying corpses for the rest of her life... well…she's dealt with far worse. In fact, she can get used to the squashy feeling of brains between her toes.
Skylei is leaving; there's no two ways about it. Unfortunately, she feels that the only way she's going to find her way out of here is if she can persuade the wolf to come with her. They got into this 'mind mess' together and damn sure, they're going to get out of it together too. That's pack mentality for you; if you can count Senka and Skylei as a pack. They're damn sure the weirdest and worst pack to have ever roamed the land, but they stick together. That's what they do (even if it's Skylei who does most of the sticking). She nearly balks as the wolf voluntarily touches her face and then places her finger into her mouth. Did Senka's bestial brutality know no bounds? It seems not, and as Senka bites into the heart, Skylei shudders, having to fight the urge to vomit again, "Y'know, you four-walkers are weird too." Normal people, after all, don't think hearts should be chomped on by apples. Skylei falls silent, idly moving her hands through the blood that surround them both. She'd try to wring it from her hair, but there seems to be little point. Her real mission is to persuade Senka to buy into her vision and agree to leave this 'haven' they've fallen into. She has no option but to rely on her wits to try and persuade Senka that this is not the place for her to live out the rest of her gory, blood-filled, organ-munching days. So she tries to play to a hunter's instincts. Chewing on her bloody lip, Skylei fights her best instincts and the swirling regrets in her mind and manages these half-confident challenges on the alpha's behaviour, "You've surprised me anyway. For all you know, you're chewing on my kills right now. And they're not even fresh…. Urgh!" Skylei shrugs, "I'm sure there are better kills to be found. That's all I'm saying."
Senka sends a dark look Skylei's way, as suddenly and sharply as a wolf nipping reprovingly at a pup's paws. "You do because you're not as stupid as most two-walkers. Don't disappoint me." For a moment, the albino is back to her arrogant self as she merely taps her nose with a pinkish bloody finger, "My nose -always- knows." The lycan is her usual blunt self but her anger doesn't seem as heated as it normally is. Something about being surrounded by blood has calmed the beast as she's never been calmed before. Everything she does is with a slow, almost languid touch of a woman who has everything. Sure enough, her eyes take their time finding and fixating on Skylei'd neck. It's with the same air as a child finding something shiny that she eyes the pulse beating fiercely in Skylei's neck. Speaking of fresh kills….It doesn't take much imagination to see the halfling's blood being freed from veins to join the rest they're already surrounded by. The psychopathic part of Senka would be quite happy being alone, utterly alone, in a world consisting out of blood and guts. Luckily, her character is not nearly as one dimensional as she tends to pretend it is. "I don't mind a little rot." She answers, but her husky voice is losing some of that inhuman quality and her reluctant gaze pulls away from her companion's soft skin to instead turn towards the door waiting for them. It's just a matter of crossing the lake, maybe a ten minute worth of wading, to reach that white stainless door. It's true that Senka has eaten far more disgusting things, spider guts for instance, but it's undeniable that she's hesitating now. Nothing quite beats the thrill of the chase, after all, and there'd be nothing to chase here except for a few eyeballs drifting on the surface of the blood pool.
The blood in Skylei's hair has begun to set in the time that two women have been conversing, leaving Skylei with sticky clumps of gore plastering her ridged hair to her skull. Most of the excess blood has run off her skin by this time, but still, Skylei looks a disgusting shade of browning-red. To Senka, apparently, she looks like a meal. Sky cannot help but catch the albino's eyes on her throat. That gaze lingers a little longer than Sky is comfortable with, and then some. She even considers voluntarily submerging herself in the blood bath to avoid the hungry eyes of the wolf who revels in the thrill of the chase. Not for the first time, Skylei is reminded of the beast that lies within Senka. In her two-walker form, it is so easy to forget that the creature is a deadly animal; one wrong move and she could tear Sky clean in half. But there is something, some god-damned sentimentality that makes Skylei crave Senka's unpleasant, murderous company. But right now, Skylei cannot find that sentimentality. She wants out and away from the beast that lingers in this bloody chamber and she wants out now. She takes a few steps across the pool, feeling intestines flap up from the depths and wrap themselves loosely around her legs. Disgusting. The shake in her voice is undisguisable as she addresses the alpha, though her words and actions are bolder than she feels, "I'm off to see what's beyond the door. You're welcome to join me, should you wish."
Senka is as much of a mess as Skylei is. Although not having ducked her head beneath the surface, even if she would've been much less opposed to, the beast has blood clinging to her and clotting on her skin. Her long hair would be impossible to untangle had she stood where she stands now with her body, rather than her soul. Easily distracted, as always, the lycan is eying the guts drifting lazily by when the halfling makes her statement. 'It's about time we leave…" The alpha agrees but it comes from a place far away. She knows she needs to leave but it's undeniable that this is where her soul is drawn towards. Murder, blood, intestines and gore…it's the basics of her being. Blinking as if awakening from a daze, the woman finally looks up towards that door that stands on the platform not too far from them. "Let's go," The woman says it as if it was her idea in the first place, turning to face that door head on. She makes a direct line towards it, never minding whenever she steps on corpses (or what's left of them) as she does so. Guts and intestines cling to her as they cling to Sky, but the wolf breaks free from them easily as she moves without any sense of disgust. With the same casual air from before, she pulls up a shin from somewhere underneath the surface of that blood. It's that, that she feasts on, carefully prying the flesh free from the bone with her teeth as most of it is already rotten away. Only when she reaches the platform does she bother to let it go, carefully placing her hands on the stairs as she approaches them. Her feet are slippery but so are her hands and finding that she'll be unsteady either way, the woman carefully picks the spots to place her feet on the stairs. Senka's unsteady under the best circumstances, being so uncomfortable in two-walker skin, but covered in blood and scaling smooth stairs is a recipe for disaster. No wonder then that she slips not once, not twice, but three times: falling back into a bath of blood each time. During that time, curses as foul as those of the Rynvale sailors escape her mouth as bruises form beneath the layer of blood. Looking more like a monster than she ever has, with her long white hair covering her in a cloak of blood and gore and bones, the woman finally reaches the door they had been approaching. Now no longer willing to stay, the albino will reach for the handle of the door if Sky doesn't beat her to it first.
Skylei has slowly grown to find her feet in this gory lake. Elf-blooded and thus sure-footed, Sky makes her way over the gore that litters the floor with an ease that Senka, not being used to her two-walker form, can only envy. It's thanks to this that the half-elf reaches the steps before the wolf. Sky may be covered in a slippery layer of blood, but now that her shakes have dissipated into nothing she is able to climb them with ease. Once she reaches the platform Skylei would lean against the wall alongside the door, leaving gory stains on the pristine white. Whilst she waits, the half-elf looks out across the sea f gore and thanks the gods that they had seen fit to persuade Senka to leave this place at her side. Sky had feared they would be trapped in this hellhole for all eternity. She prays with all her might that this might be the last trial sent to test the two and that, beyond the door to her right, lies the way to reality and sanity. As the albino struggles with the steps, Sky averts her eyes out of politeness. She has no desire to anger the wolf by bearing witness to her embarrassment and even less desire to offer help, just in case that causes offense and leads to Sky's blood being drained into the sanguine pool alongside the duo's numerous victims. Eventually the wolf joins her on the podium, but the half-elf makes no move from the wall towards the door; Skylei knows her place. She may have climbed the ladder first, but it's Senka who gets the privilege of flinging open the door and being the first to see what lies beyond.