What if all the world's inside of your head...

[Matsu Xiangu]

It was hard to come back.

Whether she'd really been gone at all was a matter of debate. There were times she thought maybe she's just wiled away the months in her bed - catatonic, living off the Force.

But if that were true, she would have woken up when He came for her.

She'd been gone. She'd seen things out there.

(At first she'd been one of the creatures at the bottom, suddenly jettisoned in to a place that had no need for her and no knowledge of her. It had been jarring after the all the places she'd known. She fought for her scraps, picking up little bits here and there and piecing herself back together. It was pain and it was sweat - a thousand indignities she bore to get here. Something else. She'd always been something else.)

And yet she came back. There were others she wanted to see - [member="Vrag"], [member="Sage Bane"], [member="Darth Zilti"] - but some things were sacred. She'd never said as much to Him, but perhaps her reappearance when so much more called her in places far, far from here would denote devotion.

He feels different.

She doesn't know the ship, but she knows where he is. Part searching, part rumor, part instinct. (It feels slow, tedious, to fly now. In another place she might simply unfold, extremities materializing black and inky, risen from tar to find herself in the middle of the deck of the massive ship. But she must fly.) Maybe he felt her or maybe the crew aboard had simply been told that one day she might appear, but she has no trouble docking the tiny one-seater and slipping out of the ship.

He feels different.

[member="Reverance"]​

 

[Reverance]

Where had she gone, when so many change were born? Was the realm of star flecks and cosmic bodies too small for her, the supernatural and celestial entities the only place she could truly call home, to know her equal? A presence of vagrant animosity and tinkering, encompassing and devoid, a neutron star took pause in its own collapse to look upon her in awe. A black hole, wiping out millions for the knowledge they once stored, such comparison laid upon proper foundation. What had she seen when she was floating upon ethos and mindfulness, the sort that Reverance could never understand. Especially now, more than ever, a loss of a particular humanity threatening to draw them closer or forever split them down the middle.

The ship was a living and breathing thing, aching in her presence. He felt it as soon as the space quivered around her, convulsing in response to the small form, a turn of crimson would cut across the ship with an acute nature. Honed in, the belly of the beast taking in the small ship, her form spewing forth from it, burning oil evacuates metal. A tremble ran down his spine as he turned towards the view screen, inescapably distracted. There was no level for him now, nothing to keep him the stable mind that she once clawed at with prying fingers. He anticipated the freefall, minds converging on one another through heat and fire, pools of steam where ice once existed.

The Voxyn arm shuddered in response, eye opening in full to take in the flutter, effervescent present drifting about. Static caught in an oxygen tank, he longed for the heat. But more than that, he longed for the pain and the escape, the bliss of artful hands drawing scars upon scars. Recollection, mind drawn to Selvaris and to a particular bout, would unfinished business be handled. Or would the long arm of debauchery and sadism sweep away old wounds in favor of the new blood, arterial and venous, all intertwined in cyclical and twisting spindles.

They were different, both changed. But magnets never knew the strength of such polarity, as he drifted down the hall towards the inner chasms of the ship.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]​

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

She was unaware that she looked different.

Of course, she still looked like the woman whose portrait used to be plastered all over Coruscant, propaganda that would make the most unrepentant of infamous world leaders proud. Someone who knew her only from that art (a lifetime ago, a lifetime) might not even have noticed a difference. But someone who had spent time around her would notice a deeper set to her eyes, an upturn to the corners that made her look distinctly alien, a duskiness to her skin that made her look like the night sky. She would not have been surprised if she ran across a mirror – her insides felt new. Why shouldn’t the outsides match?

When she found him (easy, polar, complimentary) she stopped in her tracks. Physically she thought he looked much the same, save for the marks of battles she’d know only through their retelling. The arm seemed more controlled, given time and willing symbiosis. But the difference in his head made him feel like a stranger – for as well as she’d known him, the gulf stretching out in front of her was as daunting as where she’d come from. That he could defend such waters was obvious, but she couldn’t stop herself from prodding anyway, a sharp stab of pain more akin to stepping on a tack than the agony she could promise him. A vacation had not stayed her penchant for experimentation.

Closing the distance between them (warm and unfolding, a trick, a trap from which only he managed to escape) she quirked her head, a habit unchanged by time.

“I leave for a little while,” (vague, she had no idea how long she’s been gone) “and you didn’t even leave me a post-it as to where I could find you.”

(A thousand images, meant for his mind but just as well in hers if she was wrong and he couldn’t feel her there. His blood soaking her skin, dark hair tangled in sticky, dry patches, the shine of collarbone with a heaving breath. The taste of his flesh, stuck between unusually sharp canines, a desperate ditch effort in their unfinished business when she’d resorted to tearing him apart. How good he’d tasted had been distracting. She often remembered it when she hungry in that Other Place. She’s hungry now.)

“I missed you.”

[member="Reverance"]​

 

[Reverance]

The eyes deceive when the mind wonders, contemplation towards identity and appeal. Just as mesmerizing as she had always been, the blood red of fixed iris traced her form and the capabilities that lied beneath. Twilight tones on the flesh of something that may have seduced him, in his nightmares. A shadow of her form, hybridizing with the aerosol of his blood, completing the task that had created her. Was this his nightmare now, happily taken by the hand, for the hope of pain that might follow?

Not moving, he let Matsu approach him, as he tilted his head. Towering over her, as he always had, he felt so small in the presence of her hungry and inquisitive eyes. Phrik arms hanging to her sides, he wondered if this was the end he had finally been promised, suggestion tossed into a mind that was readily susceptible to her powers. Words that had once interested him now fully affecting, projection of a dream blemishing in the reflection of her eyes, flesh and skin and sagging bones. He closed his eye as she approached, breathing in the silent promises of a future he could look forward to. To be consumed by her, and all the pain that would precede it, the heat of his blood against her gaunt flesh, the pop of bone from socket, the crunch of marrow across rolling mollars, the gasps escaping his final expressions of pain.

How woefully he wanted it. But even more so, how right he was to be so fixed upon her, it impressed him. Her powers had never taken hold and with the thawing of the fortress, the removal of that particular weakness, he could finally bend to her abilities. As he had always wanted.

Opening his eye, he narrowed his vision, implication of her missing him. "An empty stomach growls for sustenance..." He reached out, pressing the back of his voxyn fingers against her cheek, caressing her jagged features, hoping that they might draw blood from outstretched digits. Fixating on her cheek bones, his crimson eye lifted to find spider black staring back. "You need but look to where the universe bleeds. That is where you will find me."

He missed her too, beyond words. So much had changed in the span of time that separated their last meeting and now. He longed for the cut, the feeling of her ripping at him, a beast gnawing at the meat to see what might exist beneath. But most of all, he missed her strength, and the fear it stirred within him."Tell me about such immense endeavors, that they could pull you from my side." From flesh. From beating heart, yanked thumping from the chest.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]​

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

He deserved that much – an explanation. She’d left without a word, though she’d hoped that in their time together it would be obvious that it wasn’t for good and that if she’d had a hard time leaving anyone in this galaxy it was him. She could make no claims in regards to functionality in relationships and perhaps her disappearance was a fundamental example of her personality.

“I’ll show you.”

It was easier that way.

It rolled out beneath them – sand, red and dark. It smelled like iron. Where once it had been just her peering up from her place on her stomach, whale-eyed and immobile, her memory consumes them, sews them together in an insult to creation.

“Move.”

She couldn’t. Whether it was the planet’s gravity or some unknown force, she felt a weight unimaginable pressing against her back. A creature with horns (nature reels, spiraling reminiscent of kudu, some predator with vicious teeth) gives her instructions in a tone that sounded almost curious. When she (they) managed to move her head to look, it displayed what passed for a grin. It had chewed its lips off, revealing incisors stained red by time and mottled by the sand’s erosion. Flesh clung to its jaws, gum tissue holding on to what it could.

“Move.”

Holes twist open in the sand, thin legs reaching from their depths, angular, sharp. She had never been afraid of insects but in that moment she understood whatever she’d known in the galaxy in which she’d been born…it meant nothing here. They crawl over her, and it is only when the first digs its legs in to her skin that she feels the weight lift off her. She (they) can feel them burrowing, finding the places where she is softest to nest. Their movement is akin to screeching, a mockery of grasshoppers as their song crescendos in delight. Screaming is no relief, digging fingers in to the places they disappear to tear them out.

The creature with no lips sighed as if disappointed.

“You come from a place that is soft and weak. Every few centuries I find one of you out here, foolishly seeking something you will never be able to understand, let alone control. And you…you won’t even make it past the first step. Exceptionally pathetic.”

The Force was the same here as home though lightyears separated the boundaries. She could feel it, but she couldn’t touch it save for the most rudimentary of skills. Her suffering made it impossible to tap in to the sorcery, find the mutilated creature’s mind. Focusing on where the insects burrowed, consuming fatty tissue in their endeavor to find the best hollows, she reached in over and over, throwing handfuls of their dead-dry husks from her insides. (It’s not real. None of it’s real!) Rolling on their backs, pointed legs wriggling in the air, they righted themselves only to skitter towards the horned creature. With each handful she dug from under her ribs it seemed there were more, breeding and multiplying.

Just as they gathered at the creature’s feet, it raised a gnarled hand and they disappeared. Her insides felt whole. It narrowed dark eyes and considered her. It nodded. It disappeared.

She stayed there for hours, convincing herself that when she got up everything inside her wouldn’t spill out on the sand. (That’s why it’s red. They eat us from the inside out and when they’re done whatever’s left just soaks in.) But eventually – intact, whole – she struggled to her feet.

She showed him planets and planets and planets, places that defied imagination and existed nowhere in the galaxy they both knew. It had all been exceedingly primitive, cultures centered entirely around the practice of pain, tribal, even more alien than one might have expected. Little of what she believed of the universe stayed with her now. Reality felt tenuous, a construct elaborated on simply to ease away from a truth too large for little minds.

“My old Master spoke of how to leave our galaxy. There are thousands of other places, but I…that was the one I found. It called to me. It taught me about suffering.” Her gaze is far away, eyes bleeding in to her excited amber. “I could never have imagined the things I saw there, the things I learned there. And neither can anyone in this galaxy. Not yet.”

She had always planned to come back, if only for him, if only for Ygdris, if only for Kesare. But now…their place in the universe seemed small, a playground in which to practice the art of harvesting before she moved to the next.

Walking and talking, she untangled (a moment, soft and quiet, a parallel to the cold silence that prevailed inside her skull as he touched her cheek) and delved deeper in to the ship. She wanted to find his quarters, build her web – a place where she might wind him in silk, some for now and some for later. It was a curious sort of devotion. She would readily admit to her own selfish reasons for setting out in to the unknown, but it hadn’t entirely been just for her own enlightenment. In him she found perfection – stone that bled at her touch, that enjoyed that which she needed to give. Few of her previously held convictions about her existence rang true anymore. But her continued existence – that fact that she hadn’t consumed herself, destroyed an imperfect vessel – was because of him. She’d been in a place devoted to the worship of agony, and she hoped that she might satisfy something in her partner.

“I’ll show you first. But tell me what I’ve missed. Tell me why you feel different.”

[member="Reverance"]​

 

[Reverance]

A ghost, specter of smoke and tar, both things escape the tightened grip of a man that needed its cold touch. Needed it, wanted it, the two were inseparable for the man now separated from assuredly weak thing. He was bolstered now, a brew cooked for far too long, black and bleak and harsh to those unsuspecting. But for her tongue and teeth and consuming mind, it might have been the sharpened cold, the stab that wakes her, that she might cling to a mind that was once unobtainable. Now splayed open for her.

He closed his eyes once more, the warmth of her agony and experiences, pressing comfort across the mindscape she had created for him. The beasts in the sand, mica painted red in dripping and hot blood, coursing in eroded ravines that poured out from her body. An immaculate scarlet tree growing out from her open abdomen. Ink pitched eyes blind to what was happening, he lived in a flash that illustrated an eternity of exploration, insects scurrying in and crawling back out. Cracking and eating and pulling back the flesh, paint peeled in the wetting and drying of a sun and deluge for all the ages, pressed out before her. Paper rolled out from dowel, ends wet and turning to mash. Her fear, her pain, scents across the mind to be savored. If she could feel such things, he'd shudder for what woes might await him.

He didn't truly understand what he saw, the picture of her skimming the worlds bare foot and covered in blood, the future or the past, it made no difference. What she was capable of, the things she had experienced, he was an intermingling of envy and lust. A microcosm beneath her singular memory, hope for something significant formed in the image of a man basking in the light and flicking shadows, silhouettes of the pestilence above him. Licking at the wounds he'd hope to endure.

Opening his eyes, he suddenly realized that they were moving, her explanations of experiences were the abstract he had never grasped. That was the sound of affirmation in obsession, that there was a reason he had sought her capture so long ago.

"I will tell you of my change. But after, when it is all said and done, I would know of this suffering." Crimson eye locking with the umber, he lifted his non-vong hand. Such thing couldn't impart the force and despite her powers to reach into him so easily, he required contact for such revelation. Pressing his thumb against her forehead, a conduit would open, the very same that she traveled through with ease. But the weight of ineptitude diminished his ability, a reckless mind stuttering through things he struggled to recall.

A face in the dark, a world without a name. A shimmer of something, maybe green, maybe blue. Particularly black, it ran across the mind in a blur before dissipating to form the image of a cloning facility. A stain of technology, born in the darkness of shame, in the crust of Selvaris. Reverance stood, body hunkered down, inspecting a clone of himself. Made in his own image, scars and ink colliding upon the leather hide of his sun worn flesh, strapped to a table for offering. And in an instant, time jumped forward, the brevity of life previewed in the passage of minds. The link she once could never find now turned visible, twins forced into the same body, now split from one another in a gesture of energy and pain. Nails scraping against flakes of rust, revealing bloody iron beneath. Exhausted, celebrating the loss with a sigh, the clone escaped and with him, the weakness he had forever embodied. Hole drilled into the skull, forever opening the brain with soft flesh healing over, palpable and pulsing.

"I cannot recall the catalyst, I suspect a memory stolen from me. But with the pain of burdensome brother, locked within me, I unshackled myself from his weakness." Excising a harmful tumor, drawing out the blood and weakness it represented, his only true regret was not killing the man before his escape. A true missed opportunity. Smiling, he tilted his head, dropping his finger from her dusky flesh. "I have missed you. I know someone else who has missed you as well."

The door to the quarters opened to reveal a decorum she might not expect. Though if she recalled his room of wood and rustic study, she might suspect this change in scenery. A room with a view of space and the stars, a bed of black satin, with a particular red head lying beneath the soft sheets. A flash of slightly silver skin, crimson eye looked back to Matsu. To gauge her expression. To wonder what might happen with the meeting of ralltiir tigers, having never known the cage. A spider hunched over her meat, would she devour or play? Notions interchangeable for the sort that existed now, in the belly of this beast.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"] | [member="Vrag"]​

 

[Vrag]

Some people preach that those who commit evil deeds will be haunted by them until the end of their lives and beyond, tormented by their heinous acts for all eternity; they preach that in waking and sleeping hours alike, these cruel men and women will suffer for what they had done.

They were wrong.

Ygdris lay in peaceful slumber under the cool smoothness of satin sheets, the cloth moving ever so slightly with each deep breath. She didn't look troubled, and she didn't look repentant. She simply looked like someone who was finally catching up on some well-deserved sleep. There was even a tiny little smile curling the corners of her lips.

If there were dreams blossoming behind those closed eyelids, it wasn't obvious, and in the half-light of the cabin, it almost seemed like the woman was corpse-still underneath the sheets. Streaks of black and red lay splayed carelessly across the pillow, and even in the darkness of the room, the contrast was striking. Her hair was longer, too; she'd been letting it grow out these past few weeks, and it very nearly reached her shoulders already.

A smile, then, wider, and the woman turned, shaking off the thin blanket as she did so. It slid down the contours of her body, and the sudden chill of a door opening had the firrerreo opening her eyes with a lazy stretch.

She froze mid-movement, and her expression seemed to be caught somewhere between surprise and excitement. She bit her lip. Okay, excitement, then.

"Matsu," she said, and the greeting rolled off her tongue much like the satin sheets had slipped off her body. Her voice was low, timbre still rough from the vestiges of sleep clinging at the edges.

There was not an ounce of shame to her movements as she rose completely, strips of light flaring up the silver in her skin as it filtered past the pair of figures in the doorway. One tall, one short, and both intimately familiar. The part of her that was not just hers anymore clawed at her chest, alive and hot against her ribs at the sight of the final beast. It was nearly overwhelming, to feel what he felt, and to hold it back. To remind herself that it was Reverance, and not Ygdris, who would tear his own flesh from his bones just to let her in, to be closer.

It was becoming icreasingly harder, these days.

There was a slight upward tilt to her chin as she leaned back, icy eyes flashing with a rare warmth as she untangled one arm from the sheets and slowly curled a finger towards the atrisian.

"Come," she mouthed. "You can tell me of your travels…"

"later."

[member="Matsu Xiangu"] | [member="Reverance"]​

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

There was no part of her that would trade the knowledge she’d gained in her travels for the opportunity to have seen such excision herself. But still, it was a disappointment to have missed it. Memories traded did not taste as sweet as the experience itself. She would have to be satisfied with the results of the separation - a consolation prize well worth it on its own. His memories were rich, easy in the telling when she’d spent so much time crawling along the walls that used to protect them.

When the door to his rooms slid open, she should not be surprised to see the burst of fire among ashes...and yet…

She could not find it in her to think of the development as anything but pleasing. It was a strange triad, but who was she to deny the absence of an ache? Her hunger left a void, a hollow she needed to fill with worlds, with energy siphoned from opponent or innocent. A final beast, she who speaks to the Demiurge and tells it to undo everything it has done. And yet with them - just them - it’s demands were silent, her insatiable need for stolen power a distant call. She would feast in other ways, but their satisfaction was proof of a perfection - trinity, indeed.

There is something different about Ygdris - a hundred things different, all so changed.
She wants her answers, but they seem unimportant in the face of…

Time was confusing. She did not know how long she had been gone. Whether it was days, weeks, or years in this place, it mattered little - she had been denied pleasure long enough for it to seem as precious as water when offered.

She is careful - the same spider, picking the threads of her web to descend so as not to disturb that which she would sooner sink her fangs in to than save for later. By the time she’s reached the expanse of the bed whatever she had been wearing was gone, a ghost forgotten on the floor behind her.In this place she must move as used to be habit - slithering, drawing herself up to sit in front of the firrerreo.

Reaching forward, she twisted a lock of red around her metal fingers.

“This suits you.”

It was also convenient, much easier to wrap her fingers in and pull backwards, exposing a length of silver neck she hadn’t realized she’d missed the taste of so much.

[member="Reverance"] | [member="Vrag"]​

 

[Reverance]

Blood contained in the orb, piercing view stalked the woman as she moved. A snake before the fire, casting away useless fresh for the more tender membrane beneath, he flashed an unseen expression of appreciation. After all, there was pain to be had and no better company existed to share it among these stars. Sharing. Was that the nature of such beasts, ripping at the matted fur with endless yanks and tugs, hemorrhage and spray to follow? He recalled a painting he viewed upon Annaj, a man stapled to a mountain, carrion and wolves ripping at clothes and man and bone and all the other bits that held him together. Above, a dual horizon of touching sun and moon, painted in dripping red. They hung high above, lingering eyes looking up for the acceptance of place and position upon hill.

Cracking the knuckles of the voxyn hand, well aware of its abhorrence for such things, he felt it stir against the shoulder. In hunger for the ebb and flow of the force, for the sight it provided and the colors of such presences, cascading through the room in shimmering ribbons of red and darker red. Not intent on seeing either of them like that, muscle and meat for the physical world, he contained the wondering eye through the clench of the fist. A twitch, the adder that started the war, he found the sidelines appropriate location as he lingered in slow pace towards a obsidian table. Off. The vonduun responded with a hiss and sucking noise, spitting bubbles from the armpits as it clung to the air with defensive measures. Clicking away from his suit, the armor retracted bladed legs from his flesh, personified by a wince and smile. Aching red rills opening against tanned leather, hidden beneath the armorweave suit, he cherished the warmth of the wound and every utterance of it. Until the armor was gone, clacking into storage container nestled behind glass door.

"The universe has missed you as well..." Opening the glass pinch decanter, he filled three cups with crimson fluid, transparent and full of body. He could see the two through the mirror on the wall but he wasn't intent on interrupting such storied reunion, the sauntering sort of longing feel that might shave skin from the bone. "We have cracked the Republic and now, like insects, they hide beneath crevice and in cracks." Rolling his neck, he closed his eye and took in the sound of bated breath, sipping on glass of auburn. "After a long campaign, I have grown tired of these shackles and economic restrictions." Worlds burned for their ash and the taste of soot across grey sky, he longed to be released. Dreams lingered on notions of drowning in recklessness as the epitome of existence, the apex which all should climb. Or fall in attempt. Turning from the mirror, moved by reflection and anticipation, he approached the two with glasses in hand. The fluid jostled as it came to a stop. "I've grown tired of false freedoms. I would have you give me true liberation."

Was he talking to Matsu or Ygdris? Maybe both. A man chained to the mountain, beneath rising sun and moon.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"] | [member="Vrag"]​

 

[Vrag]

There was a lazy way about her, a relaxed arrogance to her gait as she approached; thin and barely there. It took all her willpower to suppress her killer instincts, for they were screaming of danger with a grin of needles and blades for fingers. And yet… Ygdris did not move, and instead kept her icy gaze firm and unwavering, grinning in the face of death.

She came slowly, carefully, letting each touch ripple and collide like an universe reborn inside her flesh, sending shivers down her spine. [member="Matsu Xiangu"] had always been a creature not entirely of this world, but it seemed more apparent in this moment than ever before; somehow, she'd become stripped of the thin veneer of humanity in her absence. Whether she'd flayed herself or someone had offered in courtesy she didn't know, and truthfully it mattered little.

Pale skin and pale bone, with some red-hot meat holding them together, pressing in, closer, closer, until her lips seared against the column of her throat. There were some words before, but they were gone now, lost to the gasp of a constricting trachea as teeth and phrik pressed against it.

Uncharacteristically, perhaps – or in a sentiment borrowed from [member="Reverance"] – she let herself be led down, arching against the cold sheets when the Final Beast traced the path of the Beastia. Something about her neck, evidently, attracted predators, and something about predators evidently attracted Vrag. An appetite for mutually-assured destruction, or perhaps just… an appetite.

She let her fingers wander the expanse of her back, ghosting, scraping, clawing; nothing like a warm welcome home, except for a warm and bloody one.

Instead of words, she spoke in breaths now, wrapping her legs around Matsu's lithe body with ease. There was a brief instant when she pondered pulling them all the way up, snapping her neck – like a twig, a twist in the hips to the side, and the starless voids would truly become empty – but a particularly deep bite banished the thought and never saw it return.

No, she laughed instead, at the absurdity of her musings, at Reverance's collected exposé.

"Oh, yes. Liberation."

She sought the curve of her jaw with one hand, pulling the woman almost gently away from the weeping flesh of her neck to bring her lips closer for a taste.

"Do you come bearing such gifts, Matsu?"

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

[SIZE=12pt]How long had it been, in the years that she used to know?[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt](It was a small place, snowy, and I cradled on my side in its cold. I couldn’t see very far because the woods were so dense.)[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]It felt like centuries. Deprivation hadn’t made her hungrier for pleasure - it had simply made her forget it. It felt as alien as she herself was. When she’d come back it had been all around her: in the bright neons of Coruscant’s underground, the gut-stopping food elaborately advertised, amenities to make life easier. It all felt foolish. But this...maybe there were some things still just as good as they were cracked up to be.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt](When I first woke up, I could hear things. Birds. Bugs. But the longer I was frozen there, it became silent. By the time I accepted I couldn’t move, it had become very dark between the trees. There was a rustling, a soft buzzing. The bark on the trees was moving. Crawling with insects.)[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]“Liberation,” she breathed, testing the word, staring at the hollow between Ygdris’ collarbones without really seeing.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt](Moths. Horseflies. Wasps. Caterpillars. All piling together on those trees, but not coming in to the clearing. The branches hung low with the weight of them. They didn’t sing. They barely moved. They were watching me.)[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]She knew all the ways to excise that which was useless to them. Not even the Emperor - fiction, or not - had seen what she’d seen.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt](Then the birds came. Sparrows and robins. Crows. Predatory birds. Hawks, owls, eagles. Birds that didn’t exist. Strange things with six black eyes and red-tipped beaks that hooked at the end. They circled. Around and around, so many they blotted out the sky. The sound of their wings beating was too loud. I wanted to run.)[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]Someone else she might have told to be careful what they asked for, her dark eyes ticking along in their sockets to stare at Ygdris, chin cupped in bloody palm, her pale skin starker for its contrast.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt](There were other things behind the trees. Animals. Behind the trees. Bears. Mountain lions. Other things. Things I didn’t want to look at.)[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]“I do,” she said quietly, voice rusty with disuse.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt](It may have been days before they left, flying away in a rush of noise and light as the gray, cloudy sky became visible again. I pulled my knees up to my chest. I think I cried. But I understood. They said we’ve lost it. Our whole galaxy is immaterial - every animal, plant, insect, fish...things have finished changing, and their world is better for opening its wounds over and over. They want us to know that, accept it, come out. They wanted me to know that their way is the right way. What we used to follow was nothing. But I learned.)[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]She was all eyes, angles, legs knuckle knees, as she looked down at the mark cascading between the valleys of Ygdris’ ribs. Unnecessary. Reminders of a useless convention. She imagined her insects (weighing down branches, dropping from leaves, scuttling inside and digging out, rippling under blue-gray skin, rip them out, GET THEM OUT, GET THEM OUT!). This new freedom they asked for…she would oblige. But was it truly freedom if not created by their own hand, at least at first? She had the finesse, the power to make it seem real despite her companions knowing her for what she was. (Burrowing under Ygdris’ skin, a burning stopped only by peeling away flesh to let them out. Take it off. Get them out.) From her grip in Ygdris’ fingers, tangled in the nearly unbreakable cage of her legs, she looked to Reverance. (How long had it been…in the years I used to know…I missed you.)[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]This was a pleasure still wholly as enjoyable as before she’d left.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt][member="Reverance"] | [member="Vrag"][/SIZE]​

 

[Reverance]

Thinly parted lips, showing just the reflection of teeth beneath, revealed the subtle origins of a devilish grin. An expression that might indicate hunger, the anticipation preceding the moments before the feast. That one might so readily pursue such painful ends, he looked upon it with a flicker of hope that never approached fleeting fancy. His desire for the beast that found shelter in such a small frame, fingers crimping between the cages of her ribs and spreading apart. Revelation to the monstrous nothingness within, the dark void that pulled him and Ygdris in, the ever consuming black hole that approached the ethos of communion, found sermon through whispers and promises. Idle hands, satisfied with the exchange provided the drinks for the two if they were to take it. Other wise, lukewarm fire would sit nested on the foot of the bed, wrapped in silk and waiting for the spider to devour, when she was finished with the main course.

Turning, sharpened blade found the cool voxyn hand as fingers wrapped bristly around the hilt. The wooden island shifted, the weight unsuspecting and release evident, as he turned back to the two. Deft fingers peeled away the black armorweave skin, starting at his chest. Until the de-gloved remnants of the armor sat in a pool at his feet, something quickly stepped away from as he closed the distance. What lied beneath was nothing foreign to the two, a canvas of war and necessity, body of stone chiseled and chipped and scared, weeping ink for the demarcation of a mothers hate for a son. But among the amalgamation of tribal marks and bars that etched the tanned flesh, a mark unlike all others sat shimmering and new across the lower portion of his abdomen, abutting the belly button. A mark given to him, ever squirming, raised and pulling from the flesh.

The knife spun in his hand as he leaned towards the bed, bracing against the mattress with a knee as he endeared a proximity to Matsu that reminded him warmly of Selvaris and Annaj and blood and the times where she had crawled inside of him, fingers digging with metallic phrik or pale flesh coated in fresh red paint. A warm place for her to call home. A hand found the sharp features, nearing gaunt, as he traced her hair line, touching and feeling as if he had never done so before. The flat of the blade caressed coldly against the confluence of her clavicles, gliding down, as he looked for that hunger in umber eyes and flash of sharpened teeth. An expression of need, the reflection of his own in her eyes. The stirring of weakness crept within him, in the presence of celestial bodies, promises of flecks of rust against pale hues in trickles that demanded a flood. A weakness, vulnerability, that excited him.

Turning the blade over, brass hilt pressed against the ribs of the Atrisian, he smiled for the scent he recalled so long ago. "There is far too much flesh here, absent your mark..." Blood hued eye drifted to the chips of ice that looked up, longingly, from the striking and jagged expression of the Firrerreo. He recalled, at one time, the suggestion that that mouth of hers would get her into trouble. He wondered if this was what she had always been looking for, the deceit of soft expression and caring words, delivering all the endless pain that one could desire. And beyond that, beyond the threshold of expectation, there in lied the hunger of the unknown. To teeter towards death, he wondered if that was her desire as well.

Eye drifting back to Matsu, he studied her eyes, wondering what constellations he might find if he looked hard enough. There was nothing left of good or bad, evil or just. It was simply an expression now, a persistent desire to entangle, harm and be harmed. And with a tilt of his head, he insisted with a pleading expression. "Cut deep, as you always have."

[member="Matsu Xiangu"] | [member="Vrag"]​

 

[Vrag]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AJ5YDfsUWI​

​

It sent a slow, delectable shudder down her spine, that tone. It was low, like the distant rumble of a world collapsing unto itself – sharp, over-exposed images of Selvaris aflame danced before her eyes. Unbidden, unwanted – and it brought a mirrored grin to her face. Sharp features rendered softer by the smile, for once, as she watched centuries and lifetimes of some other place flash through the twin black voids.

This is what death looks like, she realized. The thought appeared, a clear, indisputable truth that now seemed to have always been there; it had simply taken her twenty-odd years of war and strife to dig it up.

They were all like that, the three of them. Secrets and carefully-guarded axiomata, cards always played close to the chest. Curious, cunning beasts, who had long learned how to wear their guise of humanity with poise. Their acts, believable; their lies, impenetrable. The veneer had cracked between back then and now, however. When, Ygdris couldn't tell. Might have been in that instant she'd glanced back over her shoulder as they were leaving, her and [member="Reverance"], and been treated to a sight she'd never forget. No more a planet, Selvaris had been a mere ring of fire in the uniform, invariable darkness of space, a world of agony and destruction with no beginning and no end. More fitting a tomb for the Hand and Wrath than she ever could've hoped for.

Still, the taint lingered upon them like a bad memory. Clammy and red and black, clinging to scarred skin of silver and parchment alike. Though it took a different shape upon each of them, the greedy tendrils of ink were not welcome on either canvas. Where his reasoning was surely more bloody and masochistic in nature, the firrerreo simply wished to be rid of that last piece of evidence, and there were no hands she'd rather entrust the task to than those of [member="Matsu Xiangu"].

She felt the spider's presence press flush against her, metallic digits dancing along the knots of muscle threaded through her ribs. The sharp talons dug in just a little deeper each time Ygdris inhaled, and each time, her nostrils flared at the pleasure. The sting was a familiar one, though she'd never received the elaborate treatment Reverance so yearned for; the desperate need was bleeding from his voice, dripping down his bared chest to form a trail the Final beast was sure to follow.

Ygdris grinned again, parting her lips in hopes of catching a drop or two on her tongue while the Spider feasted on the main course. She would remove the last of the disguise still obscuring the truth beneath, flaying the skin of lies and deceit.

She would flay them, and they would love her for it.