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Post by Rikku on Nov 17, 2009 17:08:07 GMT -5
*nods* 30 minutes for a thousand words is about what I do when I'm goin' good, too. Of course, as the sections of goin'-good-ness seldom last longer than 30 minutes, it's a bit hard to say. xD
Ain't no ramblings like theological ramblings!
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Post by Kathleen on Nov 17, 2009 21:49:40 GMT -5
That is the description of books I very much like. =D Incidentally, I was quite ignorant on the Seelie/Unseelie thing until I looked it up a while ago for a story I wrote. Meant to write.
Word count envy. >.>; .. I'm not sure how much I write per half-hour. I'd say I go much slower, but if I can actually get on a roll, and it's interesting, only my typing limits how fast I write, and I can easily type seventy words per minute, so going by that.. huh. I should be writing a good deal faster. xD
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Post by Shadaras on Nov 17, 2009 22:04:32 GMT -5
The Seelie/Unseelie thing is just something I picked up from the various books I read. It's only the kinda odd theories on what faeries could have been (dead people, for instance) that I hadn't known about.
I don't actually know how fast I can type. xD ..it's typically my word retrieval and ability to make sense as I write that slows me down. Oh, and procrastination. *should be at 65k by now, really* *isn't* *obviously*
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Post by Shadaras on Nov 18, 2009 2:49:02 GMT -5
65,002 final count. =D ...two thousand words in the last forty minutes, too. The overstimulation of that is making me kind of trembly and wobbly and not wanting to really blink or anything, but that's cool. Once the sun was fully up, I gave up trying to read and left, dropping my mask and flying for the simple joy of flight. Wind rushed through my wings, and I laughed, not bothering to try and keep my hair from spinning and tangling in front of my face. I could see through the strands plenty well, and it was just a matter of how long it would take for me to get fed up with the feeling of hair against my face and trying to slip into my mouth or possibly even eyes or ears or nose. It wasn’t pleasant, and sometimes I wished that I could grow my hair out just a little longer so that I could bind it out of my way. It wouldn’t work, of course; hair would escape from any non-magical ties eventually, but it was give me more time without hair blowing in my face.
Even so, I couldn’t help but laugh as I wove through the clouds, playing in them like a child who had never seen anything like them before. Even Hell had clouds, though, as odd as it seemed. Nothing as beautiful as the clouds of Heaven and Earth, of course, since they had bright blue skies and pristine white clouds as often as not. Hell just had smoky skies and clouds that looked like ashes bound together with tears and eddies of wind. Sure, children went to play in them, typically games of hide and seek or the like, but it would’ve been so different and so much more fun in clouds like these.
I could have stayed in the sky forever, it felt like, but eventually I had to drop down. I dove recklessly, laughing into the wind and hearing the sound whip past my face like a leaf or one of the startled birds who could see through part of my veil. I wondered what they thought when they saw me. I was like a giant rock falling from the sky, nothing that would ever come through the sky normally. If I did this often enough, the birds would likely stop thinking it quite so odd, I suspected, but that time wouldn’t come for quite a while, if ever. |
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Post by Shadaras on Nov 21, 2009 2:13:33 GMT -5
68,013 - 18th 70,087 - 19th 71,001 - today. mreph I shook my head and started walking, settling my backpack. Sure, I’d get there early again, probably even earlier than normal, but I didn’t really care. I had nothing else to do, and sitting at St. Francis made it much less likely that Lucifer would decide and be able to do something else with my head. I doubted I’d ever understand why Lucifer’s Fallen power was subject to the same rules as that as demons. It just didn’t make sense. Fallen still used the same power as angels, even if they didn’t have as much power. Demons used a different source, unholy as opposed to holy. And then there was Lucifer and his strange ways.
I supposed that Lucifer was just an exception to practically every rule of common sense when it came to the Host and what they could and could not do. Maybe that included the manner of death, which I wouldn’t be overly surprised about. I kicked at a tree, wincing a little at the pain but otherwise ignoring the obvious effect of planting my toe into a solid object at a reasonably high speed. I started cursing myself and my situation absently as I walked, half-hopping to keep my toes from hurting too much. I kept wishing I could be normal, whatever that meant, but I kept having the simple fact that I wasn’t and probably never could be shoved in my face instead.
Still, was it so much to ask for a normal life in a semi-normal environment? And not have problems chasing me like lions after an antelope? Though really, that was my fault, since I’d been the one to challenge Lucifer, even if Cyrus had convinced me that the nutty plan had any chance of working to my – our? – advantage, which I still wasn’t sure about despite that I could see a number of ways that it helped. It was just that my head – which was starting to ache, now that I thought about it – said that this was an incredibly stupid idea and that we really should have found another way to get me away from Athsceriel that didn’t involve someone dying.
This plan did involve someone dying. Namely, Lucifer, if everything went well. If it didn’t, I was the one on the chopping block. I entered St. Francis and passed by the statue. My headache faded. I sighed, continuing on to the swimming pool and ignoring just how much my head hurt now, which seemed to be a lot more than before I’d had any relief from the pressure-pain. I’d had worse, of course, but those had all been my own fault, usually due to overextending my magic and not getting enough time to rest afterwards.
I hesitated out of sight of the swimming pool. The swimmers, if they saw me, would likely start spreading even more insane rumors about my supposed relationship with Cyrus. But considering they were the only other people in the school right now, and I had nothing to do and didn’t feel like thinking, therefore I was going to end up watching them, one way or another. Either that or end up sitting by the church again trying to ignore the buzz. But even the buzz would be better than the persistent ache that I was pretty sure Lucifer was inducing.
This was, oddly enough, the lesser of two evils. To retreat to the shelter of the church would mean admitting that Lucifer could get the better of me with nothing more than a simple little headache. That just wasn’t right, especially since I’d been the one to offer him challenge. I was a match for him. Or at least, I should be a match for him, if the genetics of the Host played out correctly. Lucifer himself had implied that when I was just a child, but I doubted that he remembered that sort of passing remark, and I doubted that he would think I remembered even if he did.
I finally walked close enough to the swimming pools for the swimmers to see me – and for me to see them. It really was a beautiful sport. Even I had to admit that. The water made everything shine and sparkle in the sun, and even if I hated being immersed in water any longer than I absolutely had to, I’d always been able to see the attraction of swimming to humans. It was the closest they could come to flying. There were only two reasons why I wasn’t on the swim team myself. One was that I didn’t like water. The other was that I hated their schedule and preferred having free time.
Now, I kind of wished that I had joined. It was impossible not to see Cyrus in the water; his body was dark where the others were light, and his swimsuit was a similarly atrocious rainbow as his backpack, whereas the other swimmers wore dark swim trunks. Though I thought that his hair was the greatest difference, since the rest of them had short hair, and a few were practically bald. Cyrus had his rainbow braids and let them hang free, not binding them as he usually did while walking around or in class. I couldn’t help but be spellbound by the way they moved and the colors shifted and the water helped refract everything.
And then the coach noticed me and things went downhill. As I had suspected, people assumed that I was only there because Cyrus was my boyfriend and I wanted to be near him or see what he was doing. Never mind that it would have been a lot easier to just stick around after school yesterday, or do the same tomorrow, but since I was here now, of course it was premeditated to be as annoying an interference as possible. Cyrus gave me a look that was somewhere between a death glare and happy surprise. I just shrugged in return, but I didn’t retreat. I didn’t move any closer than I had to, either. Just because I was watching didn’t mean they had to care.
They did, of course. The way they showed it was by trying to make Cyrus look as bad as possible, or, in some cases, as good as possible. I wasn’t sure which I preferred, but Cyrus kept going regardless, moving with steady strokes through the water as if he was born to it. Well, he was, but the humans couldn’t possibly know the full extent of that. They could just think that he was an exceptional swimmer. I hadn’t heard the full story that he’d made up to explain his skill, but I thought that it had something to do with having been raised in Florida or Hawaii or something like that. It was close enough to the truth, anyway, since he had been raised in a warm coastal area like that. It was just that he’d been born and raised on the other side of the world.
I leaned against the fence that bordered the swimming area. I wasn’t sure why it was there, but I was thankful for it right then. The sounds of water set me on edge, and the heckling that the rest of the swim team was giving Cyrus bothered me even more. That headache wasn’t helping anything either, and was probably reinforcing itself off of the worry and sounds there were here. But now that I was here, I couldn’t leave without setting off another strain of ridiculous dirty rumors and jokes that would haunt us until the end of time.
So I stayed and tried to ignore the little voice in my head that was trying to inform me that I was insane and should probably be locked up in a safe place where I couldn’t hurt anyone and where I couldn’t be hurt by anyone accidentally. But I didn’t care. That was a human thing to do. Demons just executed any useless of extraneous members of society. It was much simpler and more efficient and effective, in my opinion. Not that anyone had ever asked me what my opinion was, of course, but hey, of course I’d have something even if it never mattered.
Cyrus was the first person out of the swimming pool when practice ended. He didn’t even bother to try off before coming over to me. He grabbed me with his wet hands, still dripping water from his dark, sleek skin. “Are you mad?” he demanded, shaking me slightly. “Coming here, coming now...”
I shrugged, glancing around at the people around him. “It’s not my—”
Cyrus followed my gaze, swore violently, and threw me hard into the chain-link fence. It rattled harshly, and I barely kept myself from falling to the ground as my headache grew worse. Cyrus stalked off, presumably to dry off and change clothes. I shook my head and left, heading back to the statue of St. Francis. There, the headache at least would go away, and that would make things easier on my end, if not on his. I would have been sorrier for Cyrus if he hadn’t decided to throw me around like I was a piece of trash. I didn’t look strong, but I knew that most people couldn’t move me if I didn’t want to me moved; even Athsceriel couldn’t if I really set my mind to it. God knew, he’d tried enough.
I sat down on the bricks, my backpack beside me, and leaned my head on my hands. I rubbed my temples absently, as if that would help get rid of the pain. Feeding magic into it would probably just intensify the pain, since Lucifer was behind it, but I didn’t want to make sure that my theory was right. I refrained from it more out of common sense, really; I wanted to have enough energy to survive the day. And I was prideful; most devils were. It was Lucifer’s downfall and likely ours as well. I paused for a second. Lucifer acted more like a devil than a Fallen. Always had. I shook my head, not wanting to follow that line of reasoning.
It was tempting. It made perfect sense. A devil could disguise himself as anything he wanted, from an angel to a demon to a perfectly ordinary human. What if Lucifer had decided to hide as a Fallen and only use his angelic powers, just to throw people off the trail? If that was true, then he and I shared more of a heritage than I’d assumed, and it was going to be hard to disprove it. I groaned, adding that to the list of things I wanted to figure out during the challenge. I also added it to the list of things that were likely to get me killed. The challenge itself was on that list, of course, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t add a subcategory to it.
Sooner than I thought, Cyrus sat down beside me and placed a damp hand on my shoulder and gave it a rough squeeze. “You are either a sadist or a masochist and I can’t figure out which,” he said by way of greeting.
I raised my gaze and lifted my eyebrows, inviting him to explain that more.
He shrugged, flipping wet hair over his shoulder with his other hand. “You had to know something of the rumors that would come up due to that.”
“Are they worse than I thought?”
Cyrus laughed. “Any sports team is insanely dirty-minded when it comes to their fellows. It comes out of everyone having to change in a communal locker room more often than not.”
I winced. Part of it was the mental images, part of it was the headache, and part of it was my own stupidity.
“It’s not that bad,” Cyrus said cheerfully. “For me, at least. For you...” He shook his head. “You are not going to like what you hear today, let’s say.”
I went back to burying my head in my hands. “Please tell me it’s something that the girls will generally find too disgusting to repeat.”
“Depends on the girl, but generally speaking, yeah.” Cyrus paused. “Does it really matter to you that much?”
“Consider.” I thought about saying more, but then I decided that if Cyrus couldn’t understand what I was getting at, he was more of an idiot than I thought. And I couldn’t figure out any good way to phrase or end what I’d started. |
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Post by Shadaras on Nov 22, 2009 1:12:50 GMT -5
To all you lurkers: how much like the Dresden Files does this story seem to you? I've been reading it a fair amount whilst writing this, seeing as it suits perfectly. xD ...and yeah. Answer please?
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Post by Rikku on Nov 22, 2009 22:48:11 GMT -5
To all you lurkers: how much like the Dresden Files does this story seem to you? I've been reading it a fair amount whilst writing this, seeing as it suits perfectly. xD ...and yeah. Answer please? ... Actually, oddly, I've been rereading the Dresden Files lately too. xD strange. They have great reread value, but still. Crazy random happenstance. Not all that much, so far as I can tell. *shrugs* I mean. It's first person, and Christopher's sort of occasionally humorous and sarcastic like Harry, and the subject matter is vaguely similar, supernatural and all that. But in tone, theme, story, it's not very reminiscent. I mean, heck, Christopher doesn't even have a coat. =D |
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Post by Shadaras on Nov 22, 2009 23:05:37 GMT -5
To all you lurkers: how much like the Dresden Files does this story seem to you? I've been reading it a fair amount whilst writing this, seeing as it suits perfectly. xD ...and yeah. Answer please? ... Actually, oddly, I've been rereading the Dresden Files lately too. xD strange. They have great reread value, but still. Crazy random happenstance. Not all that much, so far as I can tell. *shrugs* I mean. It's first person, and Christopher's sort of occasionally humorous and sarcastic like Harry, and the subject matter is vaguely similar, supernatural and all that. But in tone, theme, story, it's not very reminiscent. I mean, heck, Christopher doesn't even have a coat. =D I'm reading them for the first time, having finally been convinced that I should by peoples. xD Some parts resemble it more than others, I think. Like the fey parts. Other parts (like Seth being all moany about Hell and the like) are most definitely not like Harry at all. Hey, I'm setting this in California (because I am lazy. xD). People don't usually wear coats until it starts to rain. I mean, Harry might wear his awesome coat during the summer, but it's spelled. Seth doesn't have any reason like that. ...and now that I'm thinking about it some, Seth is more like Thomas than Harry. Which is somewhere between weird and neat. *likes Thomas* |
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Post by Rikku on Nov 22, 2009 23:36:18 GMT -5
Thomas is my favourite. =D Second maybe to Harry. <3 Hell's bells, they're both awesome.
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Post by Shadaras on Nov 25, 2009 2:41:53 GMT -5
72,050 - 21st 73,050 - 22nd 74,021 - 23rd 75,103 - today. Shut up about how slowly I'm going. xD ..I've been at school for most/all of today and yesterday and had homework over the weekend. Cyrus hadn’t let up his death-grip on my wrist yet, either, I noticed. It was starting to hurt, even.
That was rather annoying. I didn’t try to tug out of it. I just tried to keep pace with Cyrus better, but for all that I was quite good at running, my muscle and bone structure just wasn’t as strong as his, and thus I couldn’t keep up as fast a pace for as long. Long before I wanted to; I was lagging again. I’d started out more tired out than him, anyway. If I hadn’t been so resigned to this, I would’ve found it much more annoying. As it was, I just wondered when it would be over and what exactly it was that Cyrus was running from.
The latter, at least, I learned soon enough. I heard dogs behind us, and I looked back to see what looked almost exactly like the Wild Hunt riding towards us. It had ruddy, rusty red-orange dogs, creamy white dogs, dogs as black as obsidian night; all shapes and sizes of dogs, some mixing those colors in various ways, but all of them holding those three colors dominant. The one thing that held true for all the dogs was the bright light that engulfed their eyes and faces: gold light that could either bless or curse the one who looked upon it.
I could make out other shapes behind the dogs; shadows of horses and riders, things that might be fey everywhere. I even thought I saw the trees themselves wake in the Wild Hunt’s passing. I turned back forward and starting running for my life. I couldn’t afford to hold anything back anymore. If I did, I’d almost certainly die. If I didn’t, it’d just be because Cyrus intervened on my behalf and called in another favor that he, as prince of Spring and Autumn, had so many of. I couldn’t help but begrudge him that; it was so much easier for him to live than for me.
Cyrus led the way, of course. I couldn’t argue with him about where to go while we were in the Twilight. I especially couldn’t argue right now, since he was the one saving our lives. All the tress were starting to look the same to me, anyway; silvery bark, loosely leaved branches frosted over, dead leaves turning flame-colored instead of deepest green, and smooth everything. They were beautiful. Everything in the Twilight was, to be honest. I just didn’t like admitting it, because it felt like a betrayal of all that I’d been born to.
Every once in a while, I glanced back to see where the Hunt was relative to us. Cyrus seemed to have an instinctive knowledge of where it was, probably because he was fey. But I had to use my eyes. They seemed to be keeping at about the same distance from us, but the shadowy forms I’d seen were getting clearer to my eyes. I wasn’t sure if that was good, bad, or just something that always happened with the Hunt. If we survived this and I was still sane and remembered, I’d ask Cyrus. Right now, I had more important things on my mind, namely dodging trees and jumping over sticks and keeping my footing.
Cyrus had no problem with any of that, of course. It was just in his fey blood. Even if he was Kindred and not a Sidhe born to this environment, he still had so much more of a tie to it than I did. I couldn’t mind overly much; I had a similar tie to Hell and, most likely, Heaven, after all. I could navigate Hell without thinking about it. Even Hel, the city at Hell’s center, was nothing more than a particularly interesting challenge, with all its walls and thorny bushes and other obstacles. Humans didn’t have a similar instinct for their world, as far as I knew. They never acted like they could find anywhere from anywhere else, except in a few rare cases. Those few cases fascinated me, but even they had their limitations: the person had to have been to the endpoint before.
Nothing like the fey and their Twilight. I knew Cyrus had a destination and I had no idea what it was and I didn’t particularly care. Keeping my feet under me, however, I did care about. I stopped thinking about anything else for a time and just ran. The feeling of nothingness and surrender that I so often used running to find moved through my body, keeping me from succumbing to exhaustion. I wanted to succumb, oh, I wanted to. To let the Hunt overtake me, feast on me, make me part of them – it would mean no more sorrow, no more pain.
No more joy, either, I reminded myself, except in the hunt and the kill. I didn’t particularly like hunting. Never had. It had been yet another reason why the demons thought me odd and did their best to beat me into their mindset. That thought, the thought of the demons who had once haunted and hunted me coming after me instead of the fey in their Wild hunt, spurred me on further, though Cyrus was still moving faster, further. I didn’t know where he got the energy, though I suspected he was taking it from the land he passed over. Fey could do that. It was a skill that the Host didn’t have, so far as I knew. It seemed dratted useful, though, so I didn’t know why we didn’t.
Probably because Heaven was in the sky and Hell was scorched earth. Neither of those really lent themselves to being drawn upon for energy, unlike the fey-grown wilderness that surrounded me. I envied the fey so much right now. And if Cyrus ever found out, he’d tease me mercilessly. I didn’t look forward to that; I did look forward to living long enough that he could find out, however. The fir trees had given way to oak and bay by now, and I could hear my footsteps crunch the dry leaves with each step. Frost simply made the sound louder still.
I didn’t like the noise. It made it feel like the Hunt could catch up to us even more easily. It wasn’t true, from what I knew of the Hunt; they tracked by magic and scent, if anything. I wouldn’t be surprised if they just picked prey and then just had the same uncanny unerring sense for where they were as they did for general navigating in the Twilight. Cyrus yanked me near an ash tree, which looked rather random in the midst of oak and bay. He hit the tree, swearing in a liquid language that was probably his native tongue. The tree opened up with alacrity, glowing gold and silver. Cyrus entered, dragging me through behind him.
I felt, more than heard, the tree shut behind us. I knew that the Wild Hunt was roaring behind us, tearing at the tree, trying with all its might to find its prey. I also knew that Meliai would protect us. From what I knew of them, they were Summer fey, and the Summer would not transport Winter-touched like the Wild Hunt. Sure, during other times it was Summer-touched, but since it was Winter-based right now it could not touch us. Cyrus slowed his pace, and I could now hear his ragged breathing. I wasn’t even close to being out of breath. Running and swimming exercised different muscles, I knew, but I hadn’t been this aware of the differences before.
Cyrus kept going anyway, of course, but when we emerged out of another Meliai, he collapsed onto the ground in much the same way I had upon first entering the Twilight. I sat beside him, trying to recover my energy. I’d need it for whenever it was that we returned to Earth. Cyrus had been very careful to keep me from spending a night in the Twilight, I’d noticed, but I didn’t know why. I wanted to know why, now that I was thinking about it. It probably had something to do with the balance of Summer and Winter, but I didn’t know what exactly.
I also suspected it had to do with how much Lynne wanted to kill me, but that was just a side effect of him being Winter and a lot less likely to bend and see that I was closer to human than Host a lot of the time than Summer was. I wasn’t about to try and convince Cyrus to let us stay in the Twilight through this night; I didn’t want Lynne to come after me any more than Cyrus did. I just didn’t want Lucifer’s nightmares, either. But if I stayed here long enough, I suspected that he’d find some way to invade my dreams and mind anyway, and thus I was just overall better off if we stayed on Earth more often than not.
This still required Cyrus to have enough energy to open a path back to Earth, or for him to ask another fey to open the paths for us. I preferred the first option; I didn’t trust the other fey to get us back anywhere near where we wanted to be, and while we could both fly, it seemed so much easier to just bring the paths down where we wanted to go anyway. So I waited and glanced around to see where exactly Cyrus had taken the Meliai to. At first glance, it seemed like a normal hilly grassland, but when I started really looking, it was a beach.
I could barely hear the waves, but I could smell the sea, and that was enough for me. I could see some feathery clouds overhead, and I couldn’t sense any sign of animal life. Truly, this was a more barren part of the Twilight than any other I had seen. It didn’t even feel like any of the rest of the Twilight. I closed my eyes, trying to figure out just what felt so different. Part of it seemed to be where we were; there was less a feeling of earth and more of a feeling of saltwater and wind. Less a feeling of the fey and more like Cyrus and Nellen.
I stiffened and turned to Cyrus. His eyes were closed and he seemed to be swearing softly. I crouched down next to him and touched his arm. He looked up and me and said, “We need to leave now.”
“What do you call your world?” I asked, not moving.
He made a face. “The Depths, which is worse than the Sidhe Twilight, I think.”
I grinned. “Do you even have the energy to open a path?”
“Give me yours and I will.” He reached out to place a hand on my face. “Trust me, if we stay here too much longer...”
I nodded and tried to relax. The next thing I knew, the world erupted in steam and light and I heard myself scream before falling unconscious. Longer than usual. But hey, it's the wild hunt and ramblings on... something or other. xD |
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Post by Trilly (18426 words) on Nov 25, 2009 18:20:37 GMT -5
Okay, the fey were cool.
But it is totally awesome that you included the Wild Hunt! I've read so many stories about fey (I'm a bit of an addict), but so few of them actually mention the Wild Hunt. I can think of... two that I've read, and one of them was pretty much just in passing.
This story sounds like it will pwn.
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Post by Shadaras on Nov 25, 2009 23:02:08 GMT -5
The Wild Hunt is awesome! And a good plot device. Except that I am bored of writing running scenes now. So! When Telemar tackled me, I blinked and started swearing more loudly than I ever remembered doing so before. Telemar shook me and kept shouting, something about how I was an idiot for trusting a fey. I started shouting back that I didn’t know for sure that I could trust him either, and threw him off with a blast of power that came from somewhere deeper inside that I remembered pulling from before. The devil went flying and I pushed myself to my feet. We were in a clearing, and I vaguely recognized it. Cyrus was stopped a short distance away, his eyes still distant and opalescent.
“You’re being an idiot again,” Cyrus informed me. Even his voice was different, more distant than I was used to.
I glared at him. “You weren’t helping.”
“I didn’t need to. Your friend had it all under control.” Cyrus crossed his arms and gave me a cold smile. “Explain to me this, Seth. Why would you trust a dragon who admitted that he was out for himself and who said that he’d charmed you? What made you think that I would stop charming you?”
“That you seemed like a good person,” I growled, pulling power around me. “What are you really, then?”
Telemar tapped me on the shoulder. “You might not want to get into this right now,” he said mildly. “The Wild Hunt is coming closer.”
Cyrus and I both looked for the Hunt, and I heard the dragon start swearing about a moment before I did. He started running first, too, which amused me rather more than it should. I followed him, as much because I figured he knew the safest route as because I wanted to figure out what was up with him and why he was acting like he’d turned against me. Telemar followed me, though when I heard his voice in my head, it was more annoyed that I remembered ever hearing it before. It isn’t like you could have chosen something sane to do, is it? You had to choose to follow an accused prince of the Kindred and get yourself half killed.
It wasn’t exactly my choice, I replied, still running. I didn’t know he was accused or a prince or even what the Kindred was until after he’d charmed me into being his friend.
You are indeed an idiot.
Before I could reply to that, Telemar cut the connection. I didn’t mind overly much, seeing as I wanted to try and work out what Cyrus was trying to do. I wanted to believe he was a good person. I really did. He was doing his best to make me believe otherwise, it seemed, but I could ignore that as long as I didn’t have any good reason to deny my instincts. Admittedly, my instincts had originally screamed that I should either get away from the dragon or kill it, but I didn’t want to remember that. As I thought about it, I started mentally cursing myself.
He still had me under his spell and I couldn’t break it until I stopped moving for longer than a minute or so. That bothered me now that I was thinking about it, but I suspected that as soon as I went back to ignoring it I’d have to fight my way back to even realizing the spell was there. I didn’t want to need to fight my way back to that stage, but I suspected that if I wanted to survive I’d need to. Still cursing myself, I continued to run. Now we were in an oak woodland, not the mixed pines. I almost preferred this; I could keep track of the Hunt more easily now that I could hear them.
They were made of shadows and mists and fear, but they were no less solid for that. Their feet still touched the ground, their claws and teeth still ripped and tore, and they could easily disembowel me – or any of us – if they tried. I didn’t want the dogs to reach us, and I wanted to see the shadows behind them even less. And the only way to avoid that was to run, run, and keep running until they gave up and chose easier prey than us. If I could easily find the way to the darkness and forget the call of the light, I could leave them behind and let the dogs take them.
I couldn’t leave the light behind; I couldn’t forget the high call of the angels that had brought me here, nor could I forget the light that shone from Cyrus when he wasn’t being a jerk. The rainbows had their own power, though it was a power of illusion and mystery, not the bright light of the sun that the angels followed. For all that the sun was the sky-fire that was one half of Cyrus’s blood, the earth-river of his blood and the opals that were his eyes had their power more firmly seated in the dragon.
As for me, I couldn’t be anything more nor anything less than what I was born to be. The cohort had named me right when they had said I was the last key of a prophecy meant to bring the Host back together again. As I ran, Fear behind me and Lies ahead, I could see the shadows and the light balancing in the fire and the light and the colors of the rainbow. Telemar couldn’t see any of this, I knew, and if I had been thinking clearly this would all have been for naught. I would not have let these words form in my mind, and I would not have let the shadows come or the light try to blind me in its pure beauty and the truth that it held.
The angels had it right; the power of God was all-consuming. But the demons and their lord had it right as well – if the Host banded together and took all the power that we had, we could destroy God and make ourselves a society of equals, even as the fey were. We had no intrinsic battle with the Fey; God did. God didn’t want His oh-so-holy Earth to have been corrupted and overtaken by another race, even if they had come here first and had more right to the land than He and his Host did.
Why did the light shine so brightly for me now? I could hear the crunching crashing leaves faintly, but they were nothing to the beauty of the light and the pattern that was in front of my eyes, showing me a map, a path that I had to follow. I started tracing the lines, murmuring the words that accompanied them. By the time I realized what I was doing I couldn’t pull back; the only choice was to keep going forwards and hope for the best. I cast the path, the portal, in front of Cyrus and pulled Telemar through it with me. I knew where we were going. I just hoped it wouldn’t hurt. I also don't know what's up with Cyrus or what's up with plot anymore. I just know that I've sent my characters to Hell and things are going to get interesting now. ^_^ |
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Post by Rikku on Nov 26, 2009 2:21:42 GMT -5
Cyrus is all traitory? D=
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Post by Shadaras on Nov 26, 2009 2:46:03 GMT -5
Cyrus is being fey. xD ..whatever that ends up meaning.
83,040 words. ^_^
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Post by Shadaras on Nov 27, 2009 2:51:24 GMT -5
90,016. <3 I sighed and flicked a pebble at him. As soon as it touched his body, Cyrus’s eyes opened. They flicked towards me, and in one smooth motion Cyrus was on his feet. I hadn’t even seen how he managed it, and I had been watching the entire time. He jumped towards me and landed in a crouch perhaps half a foot in front of me, a smile on his face. “You’re up early,” he said carefully.
“Maybe you slept late,” I returned, not entirely sure what was going on right now. I could find a number of paths for this conversation to take, and I didn’t know which one Cyrus was going to follow.
He ran a hand over the mess of frizzy braids that his hair currently was. “You said last night that I might say sorry to you for charming you and deceiving you.”
I nodded.
He made a face. “Fey don’t like admitting to mistakes. This is the most you’ll get: I believe that you’re right, that I shouldn’t have charmed you as heavily as I did.”
“Thank you,” I said quietly, touching his shoulder. “That means a lot to me.” To my surprise, it did. I gave him a genuine smile, removing my hand.
He returned the smile, looking oddly embarrassed. “Look, I’m not going to change who or what I am. I don’t think I can; I’m fey. It’s that simple.”
“It can’t be that simple.” I hit my chest. “I’m not who or what I was last year. Especially not what I was four years ago. I’m still a devil, I’m still Seth, but I’m not the same.”
“The Host and the Fey are not the same. Especially not the Kindred.” Cyrus sighed and tugged on his braids, falling back so that he was sitting cross-legged. “Sidhe can change like the wind, and that is their nature. We – the Kindred – are much more set in our ways, and it takes a lot to get us to change our fundamental nature. According to my mother, I was born with this sort of obstinate personality and I haven’t changed one whit.”
“Can’t be possible,” I said. “Everyone changed at least somewhat.”
“I’m fey,” Cyrus repeated, leaning forward to try and emphasize his point. “We aren’t like you.”
“Says the one who acts more human than I do.”
“It’s just that: I’m acting.” With a disgusted wave of his hand, Cyrus rose. “You obviously don’t understand what I’m saying, so why should I keep trying to explain this?”
“Because you named me a friend.” I looked up at Cyrus, He might not be tall, but he wasn’t that short either, and I could barely meet his eyes. “That means you have some obligation to explain to me why.”
“How much fey can you stand to have in your head?” Cyrus asked, moving so that he had a hand on my head, fingers softly stroking my hair. “That’s the only way I can think of to get it through to you.”
I tried to focus on his words instead of his fingers. “Less than you have shoved into my head before, please. It kind of depends on what you mean by fey and shoving into my head.”
“Let me put it this way.” His fingers stopped moving for a moment, and then started tapping in time with his words. “I’m not going to put memories in your head. I’m going to open my mind to yours and lead the path into your head.”
I closed my eyes. “Alright,” I said. “Let’s try it.”
He started playing with my hair again, but I could feel him kneeling behind me. His other hand dropped around my shoulder, running across my chest. As soon as that arm was in place, his other hand stilled, and I felt his head press against mine. I tried to keep still, ignoring my instincts, which were yelling at me to move, run, do something to get away from the dragon behind me. Despite that, I couldn’t unfreeze. I didn’t want to, now. He was holding me with his mind as well as his body, freezing me in place with warmth.
It was an odd sensation; I couldn’t say when the last time I’d felt like this was. Probably when Telemar had been teaching me magic and I’d been struggling with a particular spell. He’d done something like this to me, I realized. That didn’t make it any better, but it made it slightly more acceptable; if both fey and the Host could do this particular thing, then it wasn’t as likely to hurt or blast my mind to pieces for some reason or another. I felt a tickle in the back of my head, and resisted the urge to slam down my shields on Cyrus’s mental head. I wasn’t sure if it would work, and besides, I’d agreed to this.
Reluctantly, I opened my shields just enough for him to get in. I felt him slide in, slick and sinuous, just like his true form. The cool mist of his mind settled over mine, and I felt his mind, his voice as sweet as sunlight. Look, he said. Look, and I’ll let you see everything as best I can. But you need to turn away from your prejudice and fear and see me for what I am.
I knew what he meant. It wasn’t a nice prospect. The time Telemar had asked me to look into his head, I’d gotten caught up in him so deeply that I couldn’t get out. Eventually Telemar untangled our minds. I didn’t remember much of anything from that, and since that day, Telemar had been circumspect about any telepathy that went deeper than a simple voice in another person’s head. But I knew how to look, and I understood control better now than I had back when Telemar had been teaching me. I turned inside my head and looked, not at my shadows, but at Cyrus’s misty light.
In those crystalline drops of his mind, I saw reflected one thing again and again: his heart and soul. Rainbows as back as midnight and white as clouds shone through the pure water of the mist. One pattern, again and again, not the variations on a theme or multitude of images that most people had. I knew that much from Telemar’s teachings. He’d let me look at some other minds, snapshots preserved in diamonds and opals and stored safely away. None of the minds he showed me were particularly interesting, but they served their purpose. In Cyrus’s mind, I saw patterns and knew them for fey.
It wasn’t disconcerting in the least; how could it be, when I’d been unconsciously viewing those patterns every time I tried to look deeper into Cyrus’s mindset and personality? He was Fey through and through, and that did mean that everything inside him reflected his soul. That didn’t mean his soul couldn’t change. I reached out, finding the colors of compassion in those rainbow shades. I touched it, and pulled it out into the light. As soon as I let go, Cyrus withdrew, and I felt his arm around my chest tightening almost enough to break my collarbones.
I didn’t say anything. For one, I couldn’t. For another, I wanted to see what Cyrus would do when he realized what had just happened. I suspected that he’d need to restrain himself from killing me, but if the change I’d made stuck, he wouldn’t be able to kill me without arguing against himself. That would buy me time, and if I had time and knew that he was going to kill me, I could break free of his grip easily enough. I knew that in my head, but my heart was thumping hard in my chest. Cyrus could feel it, I was almost certain. If he couldn’t, I’d be surprised, seeing as his arm ran almost right on top of it.
Cyrus’s head didn’t move from where it was. I could feel his breath, hot and heavy, on my neck. It wasn’t comfortable, but I couldn’t change that it was there and I didn’t want to. So long as that breath stayed steady, he wouldn’t kill me. So long as he could think about what he was doing and not devolve into madness, he wouldn’t kill me. That thought comforted me more than I liked, but I took what I could get. I calmed myself: breathe in, pause, breathe out, pause. Breathe in, pause, breathe out, pause. The cycle repeated, over and over again, until I could almost forget what was at stake here.
“Why?”
The question felt like it came out of nowhere, almost. Cyrus’s voice was harsh, rough, anguished. I reached back into his head and tapped him, pulling back the power I’d used to shift his mind. Then I said, “Because I had to know how much of what you’d said was true.” I reached up and land my hand on his, tightening my fingers around his. “I don’t think much of it is, to be honest. Yes, all of who you are is whole and complete and you can’t change one aspect without changing the rest, but that doesn’t mean you can’t change. It just makes it harder to do without magic.”
“Which you did. Without asking permission.” Cyrus still hadn’t moved. His breathing was slower, though, which I liked, and his voice was calmer now.
“You wouldn’t have let me.” I grinned, even though he couldn’t see me. “It’s fair enough, seeing as you’ve almost certainly messed with my mind by now.”
He laughed, shaking against me. “Light and fire, Seth, I did nothing to your mind other than charm you.”
“That counts.”
“What I did to you only changed one part of your mind: the part that related to me.” He went back to stroking my hair. I ignored it, as nice as his fingers felt. “What you did to me was mirrored in every aspect, as you said. There’s a huge difference there.”
“And that’s why I wanted to know about what you meant.” I sighed. “It’s still possible to change you who you are, Cyrus. Can’t you see that?”
“You forced it upon me.”
“Stubbornness doesn’t become you.” I paused, and then said, “I mean, you’re too stubborn for your own good sometimes. Like now.”
He shook his head, rows of braids rubbing against my neck. I clenched my teeth at the sensation, unsure of whether it pained or pleased me. Cyrus said, “It just doesn’t happen.”
“Fine,” I said, disgusted. “You don’t get my point. Shall we continue preparing for school and figure out how to explain to people that we missed a day?”
“Time flows differently between planes,” Cyrus said softly. “You know that.”
“Not that differently.”
“Purgatory means that anyone can live forever so long as they don’t get their body cut to shreds.” Cyrus laughed softly, breath caressing my back. “We didn’t really miss a day, Seth.”
I tried to process that. Then I said, “That doesn’t change that we need to start getting ready.”
“Spoilsport.”
“Stubborn ass.”
“My mother would say obstinate or insubordinate, but yes.” |
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