She sighed softly, heavily, as she pressed herself against the body leaning against the uneven roughness of the brick wall behind her. It felt good to be in the arms of the monster again, hidden from the eyes of the public by the unerring skill of the creature crouched on a fire escape somewhere high above their heads. Under any other circumstances she would have panicked, the hole in conscious thought created by Dark types had been enough to set her aquiver ten years ago. Her body stretched out against one such hole, her cheek pressed against the soft cotton shirt inhaling the dark spicy scent of her lover.
It was as close to Arceus as it was possible to be to be like this again, to be together without the subtle tones of rage flying between the two people she was irrevocably in love with. The last time they had gotten into a fight she couldn't stop them; they were so intent on slaughtering one another that it had taken the entire Thirdling Kingdom jumping on top of Winter to stop the fight after she had overcome the significantly weaker Jayr and continued to batter the woman into the ground.
Jayr's blood splattered on the stone floors of the under city, broken and twitching on the floor the young woman had been unconscious before she hit the floor, before the second punch had tottered her balance. Jayr was a vicious fighter but there was something inside of Winter so primal and so understated that there was no creature besides maybe Hollis himself who could stand in a ring for a round with Winter. In a fair fight to the death she had no illusions to who would win even if Winter's sanity held out to the end, Winter could erase Jayr's very existence from the face of the planet and that thought was terrifying and at the same time dangerously arousing.
Suddenly unsatisfied with their current position she leaned back to stare directly up to meet the five foot eleven Winter in the eye and smiled hazily. Caitlin stepped back an inch and stood on the solid steel toe of the boots that the darker girl was wearing and wrapped her arms firmly around her neck, she didn't want this to be like last time. With a gentle mental nudge she urged Winter downwards and pressed her lips against the taller woman's, if anyone else had tried that Winter would have thrown them clear across the alley and proceed to turn them into so much red ruin on the sidewalk and casually walk away like nothing had happened.
While there were thousands of people walking around with dressed like Winter trying to play the badass, they would sit and scowl at people and get loud. But Winter was another animal all together, silent and intense the young woman had an aura of violence and absolute power that radiated from her at all times. If Winter were to walk down the street wearing baby pink from head to toe people would clear out of her way like she was a raging dragon and it was that level of danger that drew women to her from all over and even a few men.
She walked with a swagger that was well earned, everyone successful from The Deep did they had earned it with the hard life that they had lived before coming into the outside world, a swagger that made her the object of hatred.
"Rachel," she sighed and felt her Rachel relax beneath her, one of her small hand pressing against the heavy muscled glory of the taller woman's abdomen as the shorter woman let the taller take control of the kiss. Caitlin whimpered against Winter's lips as she remembered the last time she had touched Winter like she really wanted to and her body ignited with that memory as clear to her as if she was reliving it again.
Caitlin's too blue eyes stared back at her in the floor to ceiling mirror that dominated one wall of the bathroom, they were wide and a little too shiny but other than that there was no difference she could immediately recognize in herself. But then her spectacular photographic memory failed her in that moment, the post haze of sex seemed to compromise her abilities. She quickly and quietly compared it to an image she had consciously recorded of herself before coming to this temple that existed as a monument to the carnal pleasures of the flesh as well as the other decadence in which mankind took as a guilty pleasure and cursed aloud.
There was a large difference between the two images besides the expected "I just got laid" aura that hovered around her, though to anyone else it would've been imperceptible but there was no doubt in her mind that Darach would notice because it was his job to notice such insignificant things.
She just had the fuck of her life and everyone would know because Darach would tell Daddy all because Jayr liked to leave marks. Sure Jayr wasn't the only one to do such a thing, although, she admitted grudgingly, that while the wild child had stopped marking her neck she missed it. The sensation was too clear and vivid and it set her body aflame like nothing else could.
Though because of her continued protests, and the unexplained and completely inhuman possession that dwelled within her as a result of her indication towards the darkness, Jayr had taken to leaving marks in more delicate places. She wasn't sure if her lover was doing it in defiance of the one who truly held claim over Caitlin's heart or because there was a sadist inside of Jayr and not even the best psychologist could figure it out.
Hands reached down to such a beautifully horrible flaw working on the instruction of a part of her thought process that ran alongside the subconscious subliminal primal messages that dictated everything those of the Void did. There was a perfect ring of her lover's teeth tight around her right areola where she'd been tortured near to tears for a touch of that wicked tongue on her aching nipple. On another perfect ring of teeth, on the inside of her thigh, it was possible to tell the contours of the woman's hyper extended canines and the exact groove of her molars.
And now that she was probing it with gentle fingers she realized that it still hurt and not in the same way it had hurt when it had been pressed into her skin, she would be sore there and most likely have trouble walking correctly. Already it was turning a nasty shade of purple that promised to be one serious bruise that would require an icepack and physical effort not to limp although she could just cut the pain receptors just beneath the skin there to prevent herself from giving a visible tell. While contemplating this change she let her eyes wander down to the asymmetrical bite mark and frowned, there was a hesitation on one side that made the bite uneven as if one side of her jaw was weaker than the other.
Caitlin remembered the fight that had ensured just a year ago and scowled softly, when Valeria had set Jayr's jaw there must have been a bone fragment or something there that prevented the musculature around it from returning to regular strength.
Funny. She hadn't noticed that before now. It was a flaw.
There were further evidences of their physical differences, further proof of two very different natures that collided though they dreamed the same dream. Caitlin allowed her hand to travel south along the line of her body, stopping where the five trails of redness began at the touch of the woman's nails. Those nails had cut a line across her belly careful of her navel, the marks highlighted in the golden pale bronze hairs that lay almost invisible against her pale skin above the place where all of her attention both physical and mental had been focused not long ago.
There was a dark shifting in the back of her mind that she equated to the motion of one of the Void near enough for her extra sense to pick up but not so near as to register as anything else but a hole where something should be. It was like finding something you can't see so you have to look for things around it. She dismissed the shifting as just another resident moving past the room to their quarters to retire for the day. The staff did live underneath the club which could very well be the source of the disturbance though she couldn't prove it.
Caitlin turned herself around resigning herself to the problems would come her way but only after she had another few go rounds with the demon that called itself Jayrryan. They weren't expecting her home for at least a week because she was "easing the tension between psychics and those of the Void" which was a hollow excuse for why she was really here in the Thirdling Kingdom but it suited the "noble" houses as a reason. Those of the Void were an unusual lot and the hatred between the two groups if natural genetic mutations, nurtured bred and trained, was spawned because those of the Void were physically inclined; the state of pure physical response without any mental interjection or any prior thought process to anything they did. No logic required made them unpredictable and dangerous when they only thought in the abstract, unconscious way that tells you that you need to breathe. Within their mind primal thought and instinct ran thick and deep as black water currents south of Mossdeep or the blood of the sleeping Giants. But there was an advantage to that, no one had a libido like theirs and it had outmatched hers by entire revolutions around the world.
The sun was up so there was no doubt in her mind that she would actually have to wake Jayr up to go another round. Her mind touched Jayr's in that instant and she caught a glimpse of the eternal nightmare. The "human" life of Aihi Kuiyhui of Saffron City, who she was before this place, before the nightmares began, wasn't a pleasant thing either especially after Sabrina discovered her inclination and all but killed her in an attempt to run her out of town. Through her efforts Sabrina had succeeded in birthing the most blood thirsty warrior that the Firstling Kingdom outside Lavender Town had seen since Arabella came into power.
Running fingers through her hair she left the bathroom and stepped onto the plush black rug covering the granite floor matching the walls of veined gold and rose. She made her way over to the massive shape of the orgy sized bed dominating the center of the room and the sleeping figure there. On the floor, previously unseen, the black ball of fur lift its head from the ground, the thick rings of golden light erupted on its ears and the center of its forehead. The beast settled back down although she could sense the reluctance to do just that, it moved away with a skill and grace that had come with years of practice at its master's orders and nothing else. Even dark type pokemon abhorred a psychic and would attack at the slightest provocation. Caitlin could tell even at this distance that were it not for the fact that it would anger Master the thing would eat her alive or die trying.
The bed shifted almost imperceptivity as she sat down and it that instant she felt the change, eyes that were black as starless, moonless night and deep as caverns seemed to puncture deep beneath the skin. Malicious intent penetrated deep into her skin, seeming to reach her heart, and sent shudders down her spine with the same arctic ambivalence as the one they called "Jack Frost". She knew who it was that defiled this inner sanctum as she knew at the moment Jayr dreamed the dream and was gone, gone into a place that no even the finite of death could compare to. All of it was gone: love, peace, harmony, happiness, friendship and courage were absent from this room.
She was plunged into an Arctic Ocean in the heart of winter saved from freezing by riotous waves and the sensation stole her breath and burned her lings, tears threatened to well up in her eyes because even awake and at full strength she was at the mercy of Winter's madness. Drawing in a shuddering breath she stood her ground, feet braced apart preparing herself for the inevitable, the more you fought the more the madness liked it. She had to endure and surrender.
It took the considerable force of her will not to look blindly in the dark for what she could not see. Calming herself she reminded herself that she was wise to this game and she couldn't allow the panic that boiled beneath the surface overcome her any more then she could find her stalker. In the darkness trying to use her eyes to find the shadow of the demon crouched atop one of the opulent columns that overlooked the central construct of the doom done in tiers was completely useless. Nothing was private here and she'd learned not to care. The only one given any privacy was the true predator, the "Conquest Icon of the Void", was somewhere in this spacious chamber, the living embodiment of the Void who both was and wasn't the true love of her life all at the same time. One who was the Artic wasteland in which nothing can seemingly exist but yet still life existed, one who had fallen into the Void itself but still continued to live. The validation of their purpose, their Saint, their holy deity, the messiah to lead them into the Void: Rachel Schuyler Sullivan.
Caitlin smelled of fear and the predator liked that, the predator liked everything about the tiny pale woman below her and at the same time hated her with all the vehemence of the animal soul. The woman was afraid of the dark (every logical creature was afraid of the dark); searching, probing for a hole in reality for where one of the Void existed but there was nothing. She felt the quizzical thoughts that screamed for her to panic or to be patient but neither would serve her well; Winter was the master of patience; the girl might as well be using he vision to stop a grey snowflake in a blizzard.
"Can you not see what lies ahead when sun is gone and moon is dead?" an innocent question that burned within the essence of purity though whether Winter was pure good or pure evil remained to be seen. Then everything was cold and distant her senses sweeping her away as velvet liquid shadow move effortlessly down one of the pillars and made its way over to where she was drowning in the smell, sound, and feel of a cold winter's night. Schuyler's words against her skin, not to fight against Winter's will les she excite the beast and fall into the all-consuming madness.
For the first time since the accident she saw the Ruler and understood, in the increasing darkness all she could see were two pale silver gems now blazing half crazed surrounded by a wall of black in front of her. a moment of animal terror when she realized she'd been rolled like the junkies in the clubs, pushed so smoothly that not even she, as an exceptional psychic, had noticed the change. And then there was nothing anymore.
Only sensations in the dark.
Wholly and willingly she submitted.
-ooo-
Sundown let out a low chesty growl as he turned the corner and caught the scent of something that was not supposed to be here, not the fishy odor that came this close to the port but something far most sinister and cruel. If ice had a smell that would be what penetrated his nose, and it was Ice that was somewhere on this crowded street most likely somewhere close to the smell of frying oil at one of the many stands. Slateport was a city where you could eat yourself into excess and have a good time doing it; food was never far away but then neither was trouble or hookers. While he did appreciate what whores did for society he would never sink so low as to touch a prostitute especially if he wanted to spend the night or day in bed with his lady which didn't seem to dissuade them from trying to pick him up. They paraded themselves around the city and some even found it necessary to rub against him as they passed in an attempt to draw his attention, he would have to burn these clothes before returning to Charlie.
He felt a tug at his pants leg and looked down at the creature that had a good portion of the denim in its mouth, as he looked down the four legged thing sat back on his haunches and looked up at him with intelligent sharp eyes. Black tongue lolling out the side of his mouth the dog like thing twitched two high pointed ears back and forth his black nose quivering, heavy jaws hanging open. The little thing had a skull cap design on its forehead that was a kind of parody of a bird's skull that grew had as bone over black fur; two holes appeared in the skull creating an eyebrow like effect. When closed the short dangerous thick muzzle was a spot of almost brilliant orange against the black and two long canines protruded from his mouth at all times. The strange bony protrusions continued on his back, two slashes that covered the entire upper body from side to side leaving a goodly gap between the two ridges and a short triangular shaped tails. Powerful hind quarters were marked with a few scars from the brute's many fights in his time with his back as well as a vertical slash across his chest where he had a run in with some creature that had lead him to Sundown in the first place. The gash reached from his left shoulder to right armpit and crossed over the triangular tip of orange fur that marked the crest of his chest and continued down across his belly. Strong four clawed paws splayed across the ground in front of the brute displaying the last and most unusual set of protrusions that circled around his fore and hind paws close to his equivalent of a wrist joint like handcuffs.
Immediately he greeted his master with a wagging tail, paws up on Sundown's thighs to get closer to the hands that dealt love and punishment. It was a behavior that turned heads, a behavior that exactly mirrored another similar creature, a Growlithe, enough to be unnerving but it wasn't an act.
Some people claimed to have domesticated them but the truth was that there was no domesticating the creatures of the Void, you just got them to comply with your will by pressing upon them your own will. The only thing that was keeping him and Charlie together, she was a strong willed woman that would lay into him with whatever she thought was necessary to get him to comply with her wishes but gave enough for him to understand that she loved him. It was just the nature of their relationship and the lay out of every relationship that was successful in the real world or at least in his mind.
However it was this train of thought that made him convinced that Jayr was a less than appropriate choice for a mate for Caitlin, it was very clear that Jayr was in control at all times which meant that her will was always being exerted and Caitlin never had a chance to be dominant. Not that it was necessarily a bad thing because if the noises that he heard and things that he had seen made him believe that she liked being dominated but there was insecurity over the claim that Jayr had over her. Winter was an animal, a true animal that played nice in public and bent to Caitlin's will whenever the blonde wanted her too and it suited her. That was how you knew that it was love, how Sundown knew that the brute adored him, despite the fact that people were convinced that anything of the Void was evil and incapable of love.
They were wrong.
The brute truly loved Sundown and deferred to him as leader and father in that strange way that domesticated canines have with their "owners", when he came he was happy to serve in exchange for the sensation he was receiving now, fingers messaging the roots of his ears setting him aquiver with pleasure. Sundown gently pushed his shoulder and he obediently let his paws fall to the ground and looked up at his master, instantly ready to go to work.
Despite his looks, he was a smart little bastard as all his kind were and he had found what he had been sent looking for and as such willingly submitted to being collared, one of his kind running around through back alleys was not a problem, one of his kind walking around on the streets would draw attention. Dark types were considered to be evil and therefore unlucky in the eyes of the masses especially if they were wild. His dog was a wild animal through and through and the only reason why the brute even listened to him was because they had friended one another during an unusual portion of his life when they both had needed someone, they had created a two man pack and he was the leader. Looping the black leather around the dog's neck he allowed the dark creature to pull him winding through the streets until the overpowering scent in his nose was enough to make him nauseous.
Though mercifully the beast halted his pace and stopped nosing towards the building across the street and panting loudly. "You sure she went in there?" Sundown half whispered to it despite the roar of the street. The brute simply turned and nodded once, sharply, the affirmative. He trusted that knowledge, after all, the little bastard was smart and they had been together too much for him to try anything stupid. "Alright then," he smiled, "Let's return and take council with Charlie." At the mention of her name the brute's tail set to wagging to hard that his entire rear shook with enthusiasm, he liked that quality in the beast for a reason. She would have some idea as to what Dawn was doing here with Ice of all people that was something other than what he suspected, or at least he hoped so.
-ooo-
The sun had set below the horizon as he tipped a wing and brought them down in a tight downwards spiral that kept all four of his feet level with the ground and allowed for his head to come around to defend himself if absolutely necessary. Twice more they had been attacked by the men on those bird things and twice more they had killed the entire band of them without thinking of questioning any of the men, it saddened her but at the same time allowed for humor to bubble in the back of her mind.
Whoever was in charge, surely everyone she had met had been cannon fodder, was persistent to send not one but three squads to their deaths at the hands of a dragon and his rider, the last unfortunate man had become a meal along with the bird like creature as they passed over Forina and Mt. Chimney. The calories had filled him up and that had actually taken time off their original estimation for how long it would take to get to the city, because of this they chose to wing around heading out to sea towards Pacificlog before turning back northwest coming in a large circle out at sea to the house off the coast which she had been informed would be the official meeting place for this strange occasion.
An unusual request but Erin assumed it was intentional and Caitlin was trying to give her time to put together the pieces of an abstract puzzle before presenting what she had a hold of to them. Insofar what she had gathered had been decidedly little, the men didn't have much in the way of fighting skills or flying skills for that matter which compared to her didn't mean much. Every Dragon Rider could fight from the back of a dragon as well as they could on the ground and fly from anywhere, even the tail which had come in handy several times over the last few hours. The advantage of being slung through the air over the head of your enemy's mount to get at him directly while the mount was busy trying to avoid a ravenous dragon was more than just marginal and besides- who would really think that someone would come catapulting off of a dragon's tail.
In the end she had only pieced three things together, poorly, by the time the lights from the coast came back into focus from her observations and radically different manner of reasoning. Which meant little but maybe Caitlin could put it to Blue Archeology better or, if they were lucky, Winter.
From what she had gathered from Caitlin who had contacted her somewhere between Lavaridge and Mauville in the midafternoon informing her of the happenings so far within the city and more importantly informing her that Winter seemed extremely lucid which was great in its own way, the way that the psychic had posed it made it seem as if the madness was coming to an end if such a thing was possible but you could always hope. More importantly they would be discussing the matter that came up between Charlie and herself shortly after the expedition to the Whirl Islands and more importantly what they had found in the Relic Castle and the Ruin Valley on their vacation on the Sevii Islands.
Such things would only be discussed under very particular conditions which included all of their number present with the exception of Devyn, who was having woman issues according to Cynthia. Erin was of a strong mind to remind Cynthia that they had their own problems to work out but would hold it off until such a time when it wouldn't be obstructive and damaging to the dynamics of the group. Couple's therapy would do nothing for the two of them they just needed to sit down and talk it out.
Back on topic the problem with Devyn was pressing, Valentyne was an invaluable member of the team with some of the best experience with translating the hieroglyphs of numerous civilizations and a good eye for detail. Without his help they could over look something. And while the information could be relayed in real time to Devyn with the help of Caitlin's Musharna the transmission had proved to hamper that excellent eye.
The real time display of information over vast distances almost was enough to make her envious of the psychic but with what Caitlin had to endure as a child to get those powers under control was enough to make the Dragon Master certain that she had gotten off relatively easy despite how hard her grandfather had pushed her and Lance.
And with Caitlin becoming a member of the Elite Four at fourteen and for the previous thirteen years having no real control to harness and unleash your power was a feat that Erin could appreciate even if she could only just comprehend what psychics did to "train" themselves and their minds to keep other minds from theirs when they wanted no one's thoughts in their head except their own. "Having no one else's thoughts in your head except your own." She thought quietly feeling the low rumble of Shan away from her thoughts like distant thunder on the horizon.
The concept was as foreign to her as living a life without him in her head, without him beside her, the breaking of such a connection would undoubtedly kill her spiritually if not physically. Maybe that was what it was like for psychics all the time with all their powers except it wasn't just one person it was everyone that they were around. That helped her get her head around the thoughts.
Wings stretched taunt his feet skimmed the grass and he came down eyes still searching the skies, with a gentle thump. His wings stretched to their limits out from his body with the bony fingers stretching as far from one another as possible, the vertebrae in his back popped and shifted beneath her body and she slid to the ground. Spine arching like a cat he stretched from wing tip to wing tip, nose to tail, flexing powerful claws and digits in the ground. The human equivalent of a full body stretch and the closest thing you could get for a dragon, his wings snapped into his body so fast with a noise like a sheet flapped in the wind that it was almost as if they had never been stretched to the limits just seconds before.
His huge scaly head came around to press the tip of his snout gently against her forehead, asking in his subtle language if she was okay to which the response was the same as his, "A little stiff but nothing a good stretch won't fix." He snorted a puff of hot air onto her face and turned his attention back to the villa on this beautiful stretch of coast, the windows brightly illuminated a beacon for them to follow.
She was off of his back and on the grass with a sound like whispering wind through tall grasses, her tall form moving with a grace born from years and years of practicing. A nudge to his shoulder with the whole of her body and they were off walking again, headed towards the light and the sound and the debate that would be coming up soon. Reaching out she pressed hard against the "doorway" between herself and Caitlin alerting the psychic to her presence as well as checking the time, Devyn had an hour and Sundown wasn't back yet though Aramis was on his way he would be teleporting in at the last minute so that someone couldn't follow him.
The last confused her, the explanation had something to do with ley lines and resetting of time at midnight which was why clocks went back to one and something about an hour that normal humans never experienced and something else. Jibberish in short.
A bubbling of golden warmth, Caitlin was laughing at her.
"You are simplistic in your views on the world around you still Erin Lynch Kirkland Braddock." The words in her head formed clearly in her native tongue.
"Da, the world is simple. The world is a thing like dragons, things happen for a reason and everything that an animal does can be explained by simple logic. Humans are the only ones that make thing complicated, hunger means eat, exhaustion means sleep, an ache means relief, an enemy means kill, and movement means travel. Psychic cut down on things by having energy move them that, is entirely too much like work to try and figure out so I ignore it. If it's not simple then don't do it." She felt the relief and satisfaction in Caitlin that she was the same as ever and Erin fought against showing Caitlin that the people around them that were unsatisfied with their life were the ones that changed.
Hiding emotions was something that she had become adept at, masking them as something else to prevent them from leaking over to your companion was something that all Riders were taught but Erin had been able to make herself a neutral entity as plain and unenticing as the color beige. If Shan couldn't pry apart her shields and see inside than Caitlin stood no chance.
Pushing the psychic away she focused on what was important, the problems she had faced and the connection to Devyn's "anger fit" three years ago. A part of her wished that everyone could be present for this meeting, it was imperative that everyone that was involved was here or at least in her mind she felt this was what it should be but the other part knew that if Devyn had any idea of what she suspected then it would result in them coming to blows. Hurting Devyn would make Cynthia angry and for some reason she didn't want to name Erin didn't want Cynthia mad at her.
This conversation was going to go on well past dawn and would take a turn for the darkest soon enough of that she was sure, sure as the rain that would fall lightly tomorrow afternoon around lunch time, sure as she was that a time of great challenges and tests was lying in wait for them just around the corner, just out of sight.
"How are you so sure that this will continue to go on?" the masculine growl belonged to her companion and she turned her head to look at him in one white glittering eye, the pupil focusing and refocusing on her and her close proximity to him.
"Just a feeling, a feeling like what I had when I saw the shadow at Lacunosa Town." He didn't say anything in response and just rumbled in agreement, he had seen it as well but only for a second before they had been under attack. A blacker shadow against the ground and a sound like nothing he had ever heard before something terrifying and cold sliding into his mind as ice thick as the polar caps formed on the walls of the city.
He had woken up curled around Erin tightly to keep her warm with the fire in his belly the next morning and they had never spoken of it again, after that experience ten years ago the two of them had trusted the gut instinct that came to Erin and it had kept them alive too many times to count. So he nodded and silently hoped that this wouldn't end up like every other time Erin had felt something odd on the horizon, it never boded well for man flesh that wasn't hers or her allies'.