Eminence Grise.

[Carnath-Emory]

In the waking world, Ariane Emory is equipped with a well-honed weapon and the means with which to wield it. In the waking world, her will is her own: she moves and acts according to her own choices, cleaves to detachment in favour of the vulnerability she'd carved away long ago. During sleep, however -- as she twists and fights beneath sweated sheets -- those choices are very few indeed...



This is the living tomb, the bowel of the earth. This is No-Place, No-Time, a lasting darkness that is fuelled by the memory of things long dead. The duration of her stay here is three hours, no more and no less. The passing of that time is marked by persistent, inescapable pain: on each heartbeat, a thin needle of it violates her flesh.

No-Place, but there are some boundaries here; enough futile stumbling permits her fingertips to brush against cool, damp earth; enough stubborness sends her falling against pulpy flesh and old bedsheets. "My girl, my girl," whispers old Blood, the black dog that had been her family's salvation. "My girl," it breathes by her throat, as a loved-thing screams its agony to the uncaring darkness of this void.

She is not alone here. But then, in dreams she seldom is.

"My girl," it croons, as lightning tears through the skies and shudders across her nerves. Silver rises in her veins like a mercurial tide, rises in her throat to choke like black feathers, like dry blankets, like a rush of rotting gold. It floods from the corners of her mouth, and she is dying of this violation, fallen to her knees as the breath grows stale in her lungs.

The healer's eyes are the most beautiful thing that she's ever seen, sometimes frosty with purest jade, sometimes glittering with sapphire, twin jewels set into the chill heartless gold that is her essential self. "Thank me," sings the tiny woman, as fresh rot rises in her dying lungs. "Be like me," she commands, as paper wings unfurl, crackling and dry, from her shoulders. There is a staggering lunge, a bare hand clawing through empty air --

Because she is alone here. But then, in dreams she often is.

[Thadius Dhrin]

Alone....never quite. Never quite alone anymore.

As Thadius Dhrin prepares for rest, his prayers to Him finished, body slipped between silk sheets, his mind is tuned to a specific purpose.

Eyes close as he focuses on her, finding her, so close it would almost be simpler to walk...but not nearly so effective.

Breathing slowed, became gentle, regular. Fingers stretched at his side, rubbing slow circles over the smooth fabric of the sheets. The motion would slow, eventually cease, as the body was left behind.

Darkness.

All encompassing darkness. The feeling within was both chilled and sweltering, only one presence felt here, so close, though far enough that a touch would be startling.

"Nightingale"

A single word allowed to flow like tar through the darkness. The faint scent of mint follows. The rustle of silks, the scent of copper resting just beneath the mint.

His presence is a new thing in her darkness. Something added to an already volitile mix of strikingly clear pain and fear. In the darkness there lives now a halo of light. Somehow damaged, tarnished, but there, surrounding him, pale in silks and flowing hair. A haunting specter in this place of ghosts and shadows.

A step into the darkness, deeper still, toward the core of shadow that seemed to engulf her. The shimmer of light waivers, as the darkness tries to enfold it. Dimmed, for only a moment, he continues.

"Do not hide from me, Nightingale. Do I frighten you?"

Pale silver silk swirled around him, the dirty light glittering from the soft sheen of sweat on his bare chest. One slender hand, minus a finger, extended toward her, beckoning, insistant.

[Carnath-Emory]

A single word, whispered like quiet thunder. The air is electric, searing her nerves.

He is ink and paper, indistinct lines scrawled upon a crumpled surface; he is Purpose, fragile and comanding and undeniably alive. He is a distant point, awash with silvery colour, and the soul recoils as the body stumbles forwards.

Here, time moves backwards and forwards, marked only by the steady prick of needles into her spine. She, too, moves toward and away; kneels with naked fingers sunk deep into the earth; looms cold and deadly and silver-clad.

Iron and silk battle for dominance.

'Nightingale', he breathes like a prayer, like a hymn, and Lady Rot is a distant presence. Her laughter is like the crackle of old parchment, a timbre of dry ruin. Every step towards him is a sacrifice, every step is an act of contrition, burning coals and broken glass. The darkness smothers, mouth filled with the taste of cotton; a somewhere bird batters its wings against the ceiling of this tomb, flutters and shrieks.

'Nightingale', he sings, unattainable and terrifying, and speaks words from long-ago. "Vargan," she whispers, with hope in her heart and stars in her eyes, "Vargan," like a curse from torn lips. Blood courses from the hand he extends to her, blood floods from his fingers with a will and eagerness of its own. It is a great crimson lake, illuminated by his own Perfect purity, splattering her bare ankles with each step that she takes.

There is but an inch between them. Heat radiates from his flesh, curdles the blood in her veins. So Close! cries the heart, the willing mind. So close, fingers winding about his hand, lifting it to her lips as if she could drink down truth with that eager blood.

"You know," she breathes, in joyless sacrifice.

[Thadius Dhrin]

Her visions color this place around him, this is her dreaming not his own. The crimson flows between them, pooling at their feet, both warm and chilling. Her lips to the missing digit, gouting life blood across the floor, his skirts, her flesh. A surreal, beautiful vision in the strange haven of light.

The whispered words of her reponse flooded him with a heady sense of victory. One slender arm would snake around her waist, draw her close to him. Pale flesh, tinged crimson with the relfection of the blood on her face, shone softly in the spot of illumination. Soft words, breathed close against her throat.

"But there is more...isn't there, Nightingale? There is more...than fear."

The bite began gently enough, a lovers nick upon the flesh, but soon enough the pressure would become pain. Tender flesh would tear aside, allowing her blood to join his own. Iron succumbs to Silk...for a time.

He is turning from her then, a swirl of silver and sanguine tones, his back exposed. The eyes look back at her, far more real here than they had been in the Rememdium. The largest, stationed at the base of his spine, spanning the width of his pale back, blinked. The violet expanse of the iris disappearing for a moment, before it stared intently at her once more.

"He is mine. You...are mine. Release yourself to me, nightingale. Allow me to show you the true pleasures of the flesh."

[Carnath-Emory]

Blood is not the core of him; the sanguine is not his essence. He is a living, gleaming clash of intellect and flesh, and always has been. Denied his mind, denied its answers, she must resort to the only alternative left to her.

It floods across her lips, this splendid delirium. It stings, electric, and leaves the soul unourished. It spills from the corners of her mouth, and she licks it from the torn lips -- No Escape, pulses her heart, No Escape for this ellusive monster, this untouchable torment. No Escape for the blood she's claimed as her own, and lightning sheets white across the ceiling of this cave, this tomb, this slow death.

The arm, some limb, circles about her waist: it pushes her back into the long-ago sheets as she swallows down feathers and dusty breath; it traps her in a moment of beauty that flays her heart wide; it is a violation, and the long-ago self chews her lips into tattered meat. Perfect Monster, burning her skin with the heat of his own and whispering the world's most terrible words against her skin.

Paper cranes flock for the stormy skies, as his teeth find her throat. A great gust of them rises, rises, evaporates in a sea of lightning that colours the world in brief, potent shades of cobalt. Blood boils about her ankles, cool and implacable and feverish all the same. Agony lances through her, then and now and always, and as he speaks those words, she searches for beauty in his eyes. Searches for twilight and sunset, and finds neither.

'More', he gloats, as she sags against him, another willing sacrifice. 'Mine,' he seethes, smug master of secrets, as she slumps against the mausoleum's wall. Thin sweat trickles down her spine, silver aches in the pit of her stomach, and she recoils from this sight, from those terrible eyes. Twists against damp, hateful earth as gold sparkles within that violet iris, righteously bitter. But he speaks of flesh, he speaks of more --

And she is upon him like stilted vengeance. Here is a hand in his hair, staining it furiously crimson; here are fingers tearing platinum at the roots, one thousand tiny pricks of pain, three hours' span of smallest agonies. Here is lightning in her eyes, as she blinks away the useless patch: it sparks brief and bright in her vision, illuminates the world with a perfect clarity, and fingers clench to bend his neck back, back, viciously back until his spine is a straining bow of a shape.

"More," she breathes, and there is silver on his tongue and iron in his throat. It hates. It seethes. "More!" she cries; it is a feral growl, it is a roar that trembles the world and clenches at her gut. Down, now, down to hold his back over her bended knee, down until his bones might almost creak, a gauntlet poised, bristling, over his heart. "Convince me of that.

Make me believe."

[Thadius Dhrin]

"More" The word an admission, despite what may follow. She did desire more, despite her best attempts to hide from that desire. For a few moments there is lush exploration before her more frightened self takes hold. Anger and fear becoming one creature within her.

Fingers coil into his hair, a sharpness to them, a need. There is a deep intake of breath, almost a moan of pleasure even as the action becomes far more than a wish for him to submit. Her blood on his lips seems to consume him, trying, much like she, to devour him whole.

Silver tresses now streaked through with dirty crimson, caught tightly in her hand. Body is bent, roughly, harshly. Over powering him, here where she has that power, always.

As his body bends, the sound of bones snapping as the strain becomes too much, his frame limp now in her arms. Jagged fragments of bone protrude from where once smooth ribs had been. Ivory flesh now stained with the rivers of crimson and silver that gush between them.

"Make you Believe what....Ari?"

The voice is choked, tears evident in the words before she would even have time to look upon his face. A voice she has heard, filled with tears, passion, regret, so many times before.

Crimson tresses are matted against his face, his body broken against her. There are no tattoos, no scars, save for those she knows quite well. A crimson skirt covers his body, perhaps it had always been that color, but so deep the blood now...who could know for certain? Amethyst eyes look up at her questioning.

"What have you done? Why?"

A right hand, whole, reaches to touch her cheek, as the fire flows from his gaze. The hand falling back as his life floods the already deep tomb of blood and darkness.

[Carnath-Emory]

He bows before her, caught beneath the weight of arms and fury and demand; he breaks, and she gluts herself upon the ruinous sight. Her veins pulse with greedy silver, lit brightly beneath her skin, and she breathes her pleasure to the glittering sky -- but there comes the staccato crack of his bones, and it is a denial. It is a refusal, and the curse her lips shape is both triumph and furious dismay. Too Soon, wails that silver tide, Too Soon, as she stares down at this wreckage.

And stares.

And stares, as her fingers relinquish their grip upon crimson hair. Fragments of it drift across her cold skin, silken and harmless. Here is the sunset gaze she'd sought, here is the gentle voice that had soothed fears from her mind. There is a dankness to the water in which she kneels, a black rot creeping up the bark of the trees which surround them. The silver surface of that small lake clouds with frost, thin icy tendrils creeping up the bare skin of her legs, as she lays his body gently down. Words. Some quiet words, all of them meaningless in the face of what her eyes tell her.

Dead... is dead. Dead is meat. The world laments beneath its grey sky, soft grass succumbing to decay. The chill climbs her back, entwines about her throat, and his hand falls away from her cheek, a precious thing plummeting down a chasm of impossible darkness, and all of this is quite, quite unbearable. She withdraws from the world, its muted colours receding as the chill sets its grip upon her heart, and

she wakes clutching tangled sheets and her own gaunt cheek, her gut clenched upon panic.