She was the picture of silent raging as she scowled her way through the Nible Mountain range, the rain clouds sounding their thunderous protest beneath their weight of unshed rain. Every now and then Vincent would lag behind and she would pull savagely on the chains bound around his arms and chest which ran to a harness of her own design on her shoulders and would literally pull him off of his feet. She was determined to leave Nible as far behind as possible. Around the fifteenth time Vincent was pulled face first to the ground, Aulia didn't stop to allow him to gain his footing, she snarled and fought against his weight up the sloping stone trail. Blood ran the color of his eyes from all the cuts on his one arm and he struggled with his bound arms to stand up.

"There was nothing you could do." Vincent panted softly as he came to his knees again. The chain harness laxed on her shoulders, and the lead between them clashed to the ground as she halted with startling unexpected speed.

"Say that again." she growled slowly, one reptilian golden eye appeared above her harnessed shoulder as her blood smeared face slowly turned beneath red matted white hair.

"You couldn't have stopped your partner. His actions were his own." Vincent spoke slowly. He remembered how she leaped out of the coffin he hid her in and threw him out of his own just to get at the now darkened stone ball. She had howled like a deranged animal, much like the sounds Vincent remembered himself making beneath Hojo's scalpel. The look in her eye told him that was what he was now dealing with, a deranged animal, scared, unpredictable, alone. One that lost something akin to a mate. He could sympathize to this strange woman. She ransacked the mansions' basement and came up with odd lengths of chain and bonds that Vincent recalled occupying at one time or another, and forced them into the servitude of one great length of chain with her own two hands.

Her eye blazed savagely at him over her partially turned shoulder. He could see her hand, inside it was the darkened stone, clenched above her heart. He could almost see the pain written in her eye, so clear he could read it: HE'S FUCKING GONE! AND YOUR STILL ALIVE! WE WERE SUPPOSED TO TAKE YOU TO THE NORTH LADY DEAD, SO NOW I'LL MAKE YOUR LIFE A LIVING HELL! He wasn't worried about her killing him, Riven said that they were linked by the portrait on the coffin's lid, for a while at least. She closed the gap between them in one spinning kick to the side of his head. He flew side ways about ten feet and she was caught off guard as the chain pulled her with. She launched herself up the side of the mountain at inhuman speeds on all fours dragging him up the crags behind her.

"Listen to me gunslinger!" she howled enraged as she leaped from crevice to crevice, Vincent following the chain all the while barely bearing the life now granted and the gift of feeling pain. "He was worth a lot more than any life on this stinking rock, yours, mine, the North Lady's, Spades', all of them." She yowled dodging around a jutting stone which struck him in the back and he gritted his teeth. His confiscated firearm bounced at her hip (she had to fight him to get it and get him into the chains a fight that didn't go well for him, one that was still being fought). "He had vanished ten years ago" Ten Years. She shook her head to dislodge the thought and tears flew from her eyes.

I've had enough. Vincent growled mentally as the flew towards the summit on Aulia's hands and feet. He could feel the demon emerging from its dark cave deep in his mind.

Allow me. It hissed and Vincent could feel it pulling into his mind as the familiar light around him came. Within seconds Chaos' wings snapped the chains and he free fell. Aulia had leaped down after the falling black form, mistaking it for the man. Fully the blue wyvern, she plummeted after the black form, talons outstretched like an eagle, she caught him and spread her swept back wings. Chaos twisted around and caught her off guard with a bone shattering strike to the face. She hissed and back winged as frost fell from her jaws. He twisted out from her grasp and fell to be caught on his own wings. Aulia rode the wind higher and dropped onto his demonic form with a blast of frozen wind from her throat to his face. Around the aloft combatants, a fanged spectral skull appeared and the attack struck Aulia. She could feel her mind dimming as the force of the attack snapped her right wing radius, causing her to scream a harsh draconic curse as she futilely tried to wing away from the demon. He dug his talons into the soft skin under her wings. She pumped her good wing and beat at his face with her shattered one. He bit savagely into her throat and held on as the flaming blood seared into his face.

The mountain crags soared up to their altitude as they free fell. She latched onto the back of his neck and ripped the muscle there viciously. Chaos moved his weight so that Aulia was angled towards the ground and pulled his teeth free of her bleeding throat. Her eyes were dulled and the blood drenched her sky blue body. She struck with a juicy thud and Chaos stepped off of her motionless body. The stone rolled from the tattered remains of her jacket pocket and came to rest by her shattered skull. The light returned around the demon and Vincent returned to existence. He removed the gun from her belt and returned it to his holster. He watched with little interest as the broken body before him slowly returned to its young human form, the side of Aulia's pale face bashed in badly, her throat continued to bleed, her right arm shattered as the bone was forced through the skin, her feet broken and mangled and the ribs forced up through her chest, yet her eyes didn't seem to show that she felt any of this. He decided it best to leave the dead in rest the way it fell and he turned towards the darkened mansion which was his home for untold years. His boots tapped softly down the faded gray stone trail as rushing rain clouds opened and cleaned away her lifeblood from the mountains' teeth. Vincent only wished to return to the only comfort left to him, he didn't care about these death dealers or their masters, he just wanted to dream of the woman which inadvertently caused him and his humanity to part company a great time ago. A dream, of life that was and could have been. The rain joined the tears which ran down his pale face.

Evening came and went, yet the rain stayed into the dark cold night. Aulia's eyes where still open, but her blood had long joined the rain in its long journey into the darkness under the mountains. Her cold unseeing eyes beheld a phantasm skulking towards her through the freezing cold mists which played over the figure for a moment as it stopped. It dropped down to her level on all fours and cupped her battered face in a bloody hand.

A smile crossed its blurred features as tears ran from eyeless sockets. It was a man, was being the important word. His scalp had been torn nearly clean off, yet, still there were a few clumps of short greenish-black hair. He lifted her broken body to his bare chest, which after a mere few hours of his parting, he seemed to have starved him, made him waste away to a rough seven foot skeleton. Carved into his dead skin was a symbol, and when her body touched it, an unearthly scream irrupted from her motionless lips, the symbol flamed with fresh blood. It was like a leering face which stared hungrily from bloody lines at Aulia.

If only she knew she hadn't truly been torn from Riven. If only he could recall what this dead woman meant to him. It was strange, as he stood there, a darkened piece of materia fell from her hand. He stooped and picked up the little darkened stone. He rolled it in his palm and watched memories which didn't seem to belong to him flicker and fade across his partial mind.

Yes, materia is rare. The voice of the Dread Child whispered into his head. The woman of Midgar named Scarlet commissioned that all the pieces in private and profiteering be used in the futile attempt to blow up the Great Stone that the God had summoned. Remember.

I suppose, he thought, yet it seemed like an extension of his being. A part of him. Then he remembered. The woman in his arms had fought against armed guardsmen to keep the thing while it had glowed a faint silver, she fought and nearly died for it.

She was a fool. The Dread Child whispered. Riven watched as Mideel swam up to meet his mental eye. Mideel ten years ago. A great blue and white beast swam deep into the seas around Mideel. It's golden eyes endlessly searching the cool blue green depths.

She was searching for me, after all that time she was still looking for me? Riven confused himself, yet he knew the thought was true. She sank deeper suddenly as a huge fissure loomed to meet her, glowing a faint green which grew stronger by the second. She forced her way deeper, past the teeth of the fissure, the need for oxygen written on her reptilian face. Deeper and deeper until she float just above the surface of an ocean beneath an ocean. She stared hopefully into its green depths and swam on. Blood mixed with the sea water as the capillaries in her nose burst from the pressure, yet she eagerly went deeper. The memory blurred and Riven's half mind screamed with untold agony. The scene blurred into his mental eye was that of Aulia drifting down into the blood of the planet, her wings useless, her eyes empty as if she died there, out of the darkness arose a huge red and black shape which wrapped her in its dark embrace. The smaller blue wyvern was, for a moment, entirely eclipsed by the enormous red spectral one. Then, the red beast seemed to distort itself and be drawn into the shocked and staring lifeless eyes of Aulia. It's body melded with hers and her eyes changed, They became the color of a cold winter moon, and her scales ran with what looked like blood beneath their mirrored surfaces. Her head jerked and frozen spit flew from her jaws to dissipate in the warmth of the Lifestream. Her body contorted and twisted like a man possessed and the spectral intruder forced the helpless wyvern down into the deep green of the planets' life force.

Riven shook his mutilated head forcing the memories away from him.

I took her over? What am I? Riven mouthed, he was no longer capable of human speech due to the eye shaped gash in his throat the size of a fist. Padding out of the rain and darkness behind him was the Dread Child in her true shape. She stood on four sword like limbs each as sharp as a diamond cutter, atop the knives she strode upon, was her mangled body which rested at a height far above the now earth bound Riven's head. She resembled a mutilated cigar on sharpened stilts, her head, or lack of one , was a crater on her rotting flesh colored shoulders with insect like mouth parts projected like piercing teeth. Riven turned, startled, and dropped to the ground in an attitude of servitude and reverence as he clasped Aulia's corpse to his lifeless heart, holding the stone to her forehead keeping her from screaming again. Mother, I thought you were on the hunt.


Our quarry has returned to its den. Come my son, tonight we will feed. Put that down, we have no use for that. The bastardized child of life and death spoke. Riven nodded and got to his feet. He laid Aulia to rest in the entry of one of Mount Nible's many stone tunnels. He hesitated for a moment and returned the stone to her cold stiff hand. And he returned to his Mother, Aulia's sightless eyes stared after them as they melded into the rain and fog.

Hours Earlier

It had begun to rain and the dark dead house looming above the quiet town named for the mountains above it, welcomed home its one true resident. Vincent moved through the ancient doors into the comfortable familiar darkness within. The confirmatory boom of the doors behind him seemed somewhat safe and satisfying. Moving to the stairs at the back of the entry hall, he stopped. He could almost sense the aura of something like himself gaining power somewhere off in the distance almost like a bad storm. So he sat down on the stairs and waited with his gun in his hands.

Jade here. Finally back on the sight. I had to track down a couple of my chapters. It's been ages, but soon Wrong Tales'll be updated soon enough. Thanx for lookin'!