<blockquote> ooc. Private for Jodieeee! Mia 8th, 81382. ic. Attrius had been walking for three days. He was tall and the Nyonges were, too, laid bare in all their panoramic glory beyond the shielding arms of the forest’s gnarled guardians. The day had passed by in a blur as he hiked up the mountains. The passing country was an electric green studded with gray jagged rock outcroppings. Crumbling stones everywhere; children dressed like medieval peasants ran along the woods and threw rocks at cessis and each other. It was all shanties and tents and broken brick homes tied in place with clotheslines. He exchanged a few words with the locals in the broken Ramathian dialect of the Nyonges. They said that the town he was headed for had been abandoned for over a decade, that a great evil [well, duh, of course they were talking about him] had been born in the church he wanted to go to. Hail Attrius Infernus, the Antichrist. It was midday when he finally reached the church. The hinges suddenly shrieked as he entered the moss-eaten building. He padded through the broken stones buried in shadows, the stained glass hung with spangles of light that he swore must have been the work of gray, primitive spiders. It was all crumbled stones and broken benches and a once gold-encrusted altar – but the gold had all been stolen by now. For a full century, the church stood with walls whose faces had gone bubonic with insect cocoons, naked struts and dust. The air had a glazed, unnatural quality, as if steeped in the air of something violently alcoholic – undertones both of dry rot and damp decay. And then he saw the bones. "Oh, ninne," he whispered, walking over to her and kneeling on the floor. He sat there, a column of darkness, dressed only in skinny jeans and a satchel. It was jet, his fur, as dark as the night sky, as black as sin – no, blacker, for it was darker than death, dull, unoiled. Unlike his hair, it gave off no sheen in the light, no gleam to the eye. His pelt drank up the light and diminished it; it was fur of pure shadow. Her entire skeleton lay on the floor, broken up by the kicks and punches of her now-gone assailants and battering wind. He picked up her skull and turned it in his hands. Frail and brittle, bleached paper-white. He sat in the slanting light holding it, the comicbook teeth loose in their sockets. The joints of the cranium were like a ragged welding of the bone plates, the emptiness of the brain box. "Mother," he said, quietly. Moments later, the Prince of Darkness started to cry.</blockquote>
A thunderous roar reverberated across the mountain terrain. The weather in Nyonge was quite the unpredictable thing. The clashing of the warm and cold air created all sorts of chaos in early Mia. One moment it could be snowing, the next hailing, and the next raining. Right now it was starting to both look and smell like rain. Jaceen's blank eyes scanned the rocky horizon. A large storm was rolling in, being pushed quickly toward her by high winds. In ten minutes, perhaps a little more she thought, she'd be in the thick of it. Jaceen was a small thill. Most would have thought that taking a trek though the mountains was way over her skill level. Of course, she was used to others underestimating her. However, it'd been a long day. Her stamina was nearly spent and Jaceen could feel the fatigue gnawing at her body and mind. She wasn't going to meet her checkpoint before the storm set in. “Oh, lonely Nyonge. How you bite at your inhabitants. Wear and tear down everything that dares touch your land." Jaceen spoke to her surroundings as she trudged along, having decided to seek out shelter for the night. “It's unfortunate, really... that you should be so harsh. I can feel so much here. The barrier is thin. Perhaps thin enough for me to cross over... no. That's silly." Jaceen readjusted her backpack, trying to get the weight to distribute more evenly. A fat drop of rain landed with a loud smack upon her muzzle. It was to be the first of many. Jaceen skidded down a narrow mountain path, sending pebbles rolling down after her. The sky growing darker and more foreboding as she moved along. As Jaceen stepped into a small clearing, the sky ripped open and unleashed its contents. In less than a second Jaceen was drenched. Soaked and slipping on the slick rock, Jaceen moved along as fast as she would dare. It wasn't terribly long before she found the shelter she was looking for. Nestled amongst a copse of of trees was a decrepit looking church. A small bell of recognition rang in Jaceen's head. There was something about it that she just couldn't put a finger on. Pretty much all the buildings in this part of the Nyonge were either abandoned, ruined or in some miserable state of disrepair. Jaceen slipped into the church, carefully stepping over the debris that was blocking the broken front double doors. Inside it was dark. Dark, yet dry. At least to some extent. There was a horrible sort of dampness in the air that made it stuffy and made Jaceen feel a little nauseous. “Kinda... dark. Don't you think?" She said to herself, her voice sounding foreign to her in the closed space. To remedy this, Jaceen made a small motion with her right hand.Curling out from her fingertips was her companion and friend – a small sized crimson and black butterfly with sharply pointed wings. It fluttered about her head, then without a word from Jaceen, it began to give off a soft red glow that pulsed with its wing beats. “I don't think it'll get much brighter than that... pretty exhausted, you know. At least I can see though." What Jaceen saw didn't exactly comfort her in the slightest. The entire inside of the church was in horrible shape. Some of it was due to simple weathering... but there were extreme signs of vandalism too: areas that had been burnt, profane words that had been both painted and carved onto various surfaces. Frowning, Jaceen let her backpack slide off of her shoulders and onto the floor. She then slipped out of her sopping wet jacket. The air that met her was cold, but at least her under layers were fairly dry. She tied her jacket onto her backpack before sliding it back onto her back. It felt like a wet useless weight... yet Jaceen was feeling too spent to do anything about it. “Maybe in the morning," she whispered to herself. “It feels like we aren't alone in here... I just hope they're a friend and not a foe." Jaceen took several steps forward, her wet feet making squelching wet noises as she slowly moved along. What had happened in this place in order to make it a target of such vandalism? “Hello?" she called out in a strong voice, tuning her ears in toward the darkness as her eyes scanned the floor in front of her for possible obstacles and holes.
<blockquote>He sat there in that cold darkness carressing her bones, choking on the cloying patinas of rot and decay. "Oh, gods," he whispered bitterly, "are you there? Will I see you at last - have you necks by which to throttle you? Have you hearts? Damn you eternally - have you any souls? Oh gods," he said brokenly. "Oh, gods." His eyes - lumionous blue moons - shot open at the stuttered noise of someone walking. "Hello?" someone called out, and his eyes followed a red and yellow butterfly, just before it landed on Saina's skull. He could make out a hazy figure in the weaving shadows, and he called back an answering "hello?"</blockquote>
Jaceen trailed along after her butterfly, for the most part her gaze fixated upon the uneven floor. Though the light it cast was a feeble thing, it was just enough for Jaceen to safely navigate herself with. Then, as if possessed by some other force of nature, the butterfly sped ahead and left Jaceen alone in the swallowing darkness. Her eyes followed its progress before the butterfly came to a stop and landed several yards away. The elder thill approached cautiously, taking things slowly as she fought her way through the shadows. In the short seconds that followed, Jaceen heard an answering hello. Her ears focused upon the location of the sound; it appeared to almost be coming from the butterfly itself. Which was absurd to imagine. Everyone knew that butterflies couldn't talk. As Jaceen closed the distance, she could make out the dark shape of another figure. They were sitting there, huddled over, as if in some sort of pain. “Are you... are you hurt?" Jaceen asked the stranger when she finally caught up with her renegade butterfly. The dim red lighting made things hard to see, so it took a moment for Jaceen to realize just what it was that her companion had alighted upon. A skeleton. Her left paw rose up to her mouth to stifle an already soundless gasp.
<blockquote> Outside, the sky to the north had darkened, and everything had turned a neuter gray as far as the eye could see. Shrouded in the black thunderheads, the distant lightning glowed mutely like welding seen through foundry smoke, as if repairs were under way somewhere in the dark iron of the world. He clutched Saina's skull to his chest protectively as the thill approached, the butterfly fluttering away. "Are you... are you hurt?" His eyes met hers. "No. She was my mother," he said, stroking her skull. "And this is where the Antichrist was born, and she was killed." Oh, gods. Damn you all to Kytlekh.</blockquote>
Jaceen had been prepared for a multitude of answers. However, the stranger's words threw her completely. For a time she was at a loss. It wasn't until her butterfly landed upon her head and basked her with it's red light that her mind set itself back into a flurry of motion. “That's good. That you're not hurt, I mean. I'm in no real state to be preforming healing magic at the moment. My name's Jaceen, but you can call me anything you'd like really." Jaceen's commentary was light, dancing around the real subject at hand as she tried to digest the scene before her. It was quite obvious that the dead thill, this fellow's mother, had been deceased for quite some time. Jaceen was by no means an archaeologist, but her interest in the dead and events long since past had brought her into contact with pendragon remains before. “Your mother though... that's horrible. When did this happen?"
<blockquote> Atti, like any Infernus, was betrayed and made distinct by his eyes. There was movement in them, like something dark stirring beneath the surface of a murky, green-brown pond - his every thought spelled out in an unwritten alphabet. Transparent. He locked them on Jaceen's like the crosshair of a hunter's rifle. You should've never asked that. The words were so clear they could've held an echo. "My name is Attrius Infernus. She was killed... oh, about twelve years ago. A group of pro-Grader radicals came and destroyed the entire village. They killed most of them; took a select few as slaves. I was one of those. I watched my mother being raped and killed before they took me."</blockquote>
Jaceen visibly winced at the word killed, then again upon the disclosure that the murder had been preformed by pro-Grader radicals. She knew quite a few pendragons that fit into that category. Of course, it didn't exactly help that a Grader was her sister-in-law... or was that ex sister-in-law now? The complications regarding that were messy. “I'm really sorry to hear that," Jaceen said sincerely. She didn't seemed unnerved at all by Attrius' sharp gaze. Though his story had hit her quite hard. “Like I said, my name's Jaceen. Jaceen Lapices. My parent's are long gone as well... though murder, that's a real tragedy. I'm sorry. It's very... unfortunate the types of atrocious acts that individuals will carry out in the name of the Graders."
<blockquote>Attrius leaned against the fragile wall with a look in his eyes that guaranteed the end of Jaceen's talking would coincide with his return to reality. He laughed harshly, like the call of a crow. "They raped me, beat me, hurt me so bad I became something other than a 'dragon... I turned into a beast, a monster, Prince of Darkness, the Antichrist - my father was Satan and my mother was the Whore of Babylon." He grinned crookedly, eyes narrowed to shards of aquamarine. "Oh, my," he cooed, thin brows lifting. "A Lapices? My friend is going out with Cayson Lapices, and his father is a good friend of Koani's." He had never hated the Graders - how could he? It wasn't their fault that such a tragedy hd happened. Oh, you look so lost.</blockquote>
Jaceen hugged herself tightly. She had always known that some pendragons were just plain cruel. History of course was often defined by cruelties. However, she wasn't quite used to getting first hand accounts from victims. What Attrius had gone through was unimaginable. Jaceen herself had never been a victim of rape, though there had been several times when she had been a target. “Oh... by Fronna, that's horrible. You really don't look like a monster to me though." “Er." Jaceen was a little startled by the recognition of her last name. It was still something she wasn't quite used to. It was almost as if Cayson had breathed some sort of life into the name. As all of the Lapices, save for him, were quite gone or forgotten. “Cayson's my nephew."
<blockquote>"Not now, perhaps," he said quietly, his rich tenor like candleflame against black velvet. His matte-ink pelage swallowed the light so that it seemed like a hard, flat shadow - his blue eyes and glossy hair contrasted deeply, accompanied by a brief grin, flashing his fatally sharp teeth. "I have been tamed," he said. "But she has been missing for a while now - just... disappeared. I worry about her all the time." He frowned deeply, his eyes flaring with emotion like a lighthouse beacon against a dark ocean. "Is he now?" he asked. "My half-siblings were the Medhsjytas... I had a nephew, once, before he got brutally murdered by this... this beast. But I avenged them. Their souls rest peacefully." He smiled shyly. "Would you happen to have any cookies or hugs?"</blockquote>
The yellow pelted pendragon smiled tentatively. There was still something that felt a little bit uneasy in the air to her. If she hadn't of known better, she most likely would have written it off simply due to her exhaustion. “Medhsjyta," Jaceen repeated the name to herself. She knew that name and she wasn't exactly prone to being forgetful. Jaceen hadn't followed their career – she wasn't exactly all that interested in the living – but she knew what had become of them. Their demise. “I remember. So you're that Attrius." It was there that she stopped though. Jaceen had rather mixed feelings when it came to avenging the dead. Saber hadn't exactly been avenged after all... “Oh, yes, actually." The last question was so far out of the blue that she was responding to it before she had fully comprehended it. Jaceen carefully slid off her backpack, as she did, her butterfly dimmed ever so slightly. It wasn't going to last much longer, nor would she it seemed. Jaceen bent over the backpack and opened it, brushing long strands of wet hair out of her face. A chill was starting to settle into her bones. “Let's see... cookies... I always bring little things... oh, here we are." Jaceen pulled a small tightly sealed bag out of her pack and handed it to Attrius. “They're probably not the best ever made."
<blockquote>Her words - the mention of their name - conjured up a deep reaction for him, one of those that just misses a ventricle, yielding a story dark as the storm raging outside. Memories fragmented in his head like shrapnel; broken ghosts of words coiled around his mind. So proceed, then, to the awful second arc of the blackest descent. "Yeah. That Attrius ." He stopped seeing, something black and painful hissing into his head, gnawing at the bones in his cheeks, tears pouring down his face. Ants inhabited the corners. Spiders prepared a grave. "I'm sorry," Attrius murmured, wiping at the tears before accepting the offered cookies and nibbling on them. "They're good," he said, smiling weakly. "But... I just miss them sometimes."</blockquote>
Jaceen's black ears lay themselves flat against her head. She hated seeing people upset. Tears were one of her weaknesses and they flipped that motherly switch within her to on. Unless of course those tears belonged to Koani, when they were hers, Jaceen couldn't help but feel scared. Koani was living proof that true monsters in this world existed. “It's okay," Jaceen said with a hesitant smile. “Glad you like the cookies." Even though Jaceen had slipped out of her wet jacket earlier, she was still quite soaked to the bone. Her red hair clung about her masked face as water steadily dripped from the choppy strands and onto the floor. Feeling a little light headed now, Jaceen hunkered herself down into a crouch beside her backpack, wrapping her arms about herself. “Missing... I bet. At least they're in Fronima though. Um... I was wondering a few things. Do you plan on staying here long? And do you perhaps know any elemental magic?" They seemed like innocent enough questions.
<blockquote>Atti pictured the Weather Channel's computer-graphic impression of the storm. Moisture traveled in from Hrishikesh, unseasonable icebox air sucked down from the north over the Nyonges, a territory-wide thumbprint of weather, fully a thousand miles broad. A thumbprint slowly twisting, as if to make the undermuscle of the world ache. "Hope they are," he said, quietly. "Lost my faith a long time agoÂ… I donÂ’t know if I believe in an afterlife anymore." How easily Neverland could be corrupted into the deserted island of Lyjp yv sha Vleat; how easily Tinkerbell could regress to being one of the flies pestering the gouged eye-sockets of the pig that the lost niotis butcher. "I plan on staying until right after the rain. IÂ’ll be burying her near our home, under her favorite treeÂ… the soil will be soft from the rain. As for elemental magic? IÂ’ve done a lot of shifting, and IÂ’ve had some limited experience with using air and fire."</blockquote>
"Oh, they are," Jaceen said with firm affirmation in her voice. While she didn't necessarily consider herself to be a religious sort, she was a strong believer in Fronima. It existed. Her own strong magical ties to the place only further entrenched her beliefs. The only thing missing from Fronima was Saber. If only he were there. Then maybe she'd feel complete. Still hugging herself, Jaceen peered up at Attrius as he continued to talk and answer her questions. It was a relief to hear that he would be staying. Jaceen was at her limit, and further travel at this moment in time wouldn't be possible. So it was good to know that she'd have company, at least until the rain stopped. "Do you think you could maybe start a fire here?" she asked after a moment's thought. Even as Jaceen spoke, her butterfly's red glow was fading out rather rapidly. It wasn't going to last for much longer. "I'm almost at the maximum in regards to my abilities at the moment. I'm not even sure if I could get a spark going... and it's awfully cold." It was perhaps a foolhardy thing to admit her current limitations, yet Jaceen felt that she could trust Attrius.
<blockquote>Attrius sat there, his bony frame curled into an upright comma, finishing off his cookie. "Oh, I'm sure they are." Jaceen offered him a compassion no one but Pyemme had ever given him - no therapist could match true human comfort with their sugar-coated metallic medical jargon. "Yeah," he said, smiling. "I can start a fire." Att gathered up some broken pieces of wood and dragged them to Jaceen. He found a memory of fire in his mind; he kept his own thoughts mute, tapped a silence deep within his mind that flowed and gathered. When he opened his eyes, they glowed with reflected light - the snap of the wood, the sibilant language of the flames. Fire flowed from his fingertips and flickered along the scraps of kindling. He sat there and drew the flames into a hundred varied shapes: flowers that opened and then melted away, birds that took wing from his palm. He had forgotten his own shape; his hands, weaving in and out of the fire, seemed one more shape of it. Drawing his hands out of the flames, he opened his palm, letting a firey butterly fly towards Jaceen. "For you," he told her, smiling.</blockquote>
Jaceen's ears perked at Attrius' confirmation in regards to starting a fire. Maybe she wouldn't catch her death out here after all. She watched quietly as Attrius went about his preparations. Just when she was about to say something, her attention was caught by the now sporadic flailing of her butterfly. It was on the ground now, having lost all energy to fly. Even though it was simply an illusion, its pain was quite believable. It shrivelled before her eyes, then suddenly vanished into a small puff of red and black smoke. It would be back; reborn again. Just not any time soon. Still hugging herself, Jaceen's attention returned to Attrius. Watching other people perform magic was something that she never grew tired of. It was almost as if he were a sculptor as he began to weave, creating intricate shapes and small creatures out of the flames. There was only one word for this type of thing. It was when Attrius released another shape, this one in the form of a fiery butterfly, that Jaceen let the word escape. "Beautiful," she murmured. "Does magic come easily to you, or is it something you work really hard at?"
<blockquote>How do you know, walking out of your nepenthean pardon, that you have not returned home but back to the prison sentence of your own pain? Atti let the butterfly float towards Jaceen - not close enough to burn, though - before it extinguished itself and fluttered to the ground in a particle wash of minuscule ashes, coating the floor with white. "It came easily to my mother... she was a magician. I suppose some of it passed on to me." He smiled softly. "Shapeshifting has always come easily to me, though not other kinds of magic... I've had to work and learn at it." He sighed, folding his hands in his lap. "Do you do any other kind of magic than illusion?"</blockquote>
The warmth of the fire felt like a god send to Jaceen. However, it also made her realize just how close she had come to a terrible sort of fate. What would have happened if Attrius hadn't of been here? Jaceen moistened her lips with her tongue. Attrius' butterfly continued to flutter before her – it really was a marvel. Jaceen wouldn't go as far as to say that he had completely tamed fire. The elements, fire in particular, were far too wild for that. Yet, he'd managed to control, shape, and manipulate things in a manner that Jaceen found to be almost delicate. So it came as a slight surprise to her to hear that it was something that he had to work toward. "I've never really needed to shapeshift... though I'm sure that knowing how sure would come in handy at times. I've had a few students that were particularly strong in shapeshifting... troublemakers, the entire lot of them." Jaceen said with an amused smile. The numbness that had been settling into her body was now gradually being pulled away and consumed by the fire. "I know all sorts of magic, though, one probably wouldn't guess that by looking at me. Specially in regards to my current state. I work mostly with youngsters. Since they rarely know how to control their powers properly, they're usually the most dangerous." Jaceen wiped at her eyes. She was starting to feel rather heavy-lidded. "One of my greatest strengths would probably have to be the ability to safely dissipate harmful magic."
