Speech = ``…..´´
Thoughts = … ...
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...Come and sit with me..., you and I in this dead world toguether for one time and never again...
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The sound of his footsteps echoed through the empty corridors, the blood smeared under his boots leaving wide and scarlet footprints on his wake, the floor having changed from the cobble stones that had made most of the pathways he had come across, now replaced with polished shards of marble..
A set of steep stairs at the very end of it..., leading up..
Back to the surface...
He hummed internally. The cultist had been right, he did sense a single spark of life in the direction he was walking towards.
Just one…
Alone, but not afraid…, in fact he could take on the nuances of amusement, thrill and anger coming from him in equal manners.
The power emanating from him reassured him that the man was not a body double, or just a distraction..but rather the real deal.
This...Fenris….he would be a fine kill in his notch. Another tally on his long list of corpses.
Still, it was strange though, that the place where the man was waiting for and where the cults most precious treasure in this place was within the area of a school.
A warrior school, yes.., but a school none the less….
But why..?
Would the authorities, the school staff or even the students not take notice of it..? Not sense it?
What was he missing..?
Surely they did not took a blind eye to it…, right? No organization would be able to create such large tunnels underneath an entire city with out no one noticing, even less if they had been built by the kingdoms own ruling elite only for them to be forgotten..
It was just neither feasible nor believable...
It was then, as his foot was about to touch the first rung of the ladder, that he felt it.
A voiceless sigh, the crunch of a drill digging, hidden in the back of his mind, a stone thrown into a placid pond, disturbing the surface with its entrance.
It was a ripple of power he had never felt before, and yet... somehow familiar.
And then the reality around him exploded into pieces as he finally took the first step, the shadowy passageway gone, ripped from its foundations as if it were weak glass, in its place a strange reality took its place.
Black and white stains adorned an incomplete landscape, where walls and corridors of some buildings opened out in front and behind him, while in others he could glimpse a vast and empty plain, like a blank sheet of paper which a writer had forgotten to write upon but the drops of ink that had slid off the tip of the feather...
He blinked for a second, looking back..., but instead of finding the corridor he had come down, he found more of the same.
That had been quick...
He walked in a straight line, passing through some of the corridors that tried to emulate some kind of office building..., until he ended up on another plain... the ground was black, while the bushes and grass that covered it were white.
He couldn't help but think how similar this reality was to the prison he had long considered his home. But apart from the feeling of strangeness that had taken place, he didn't feel a hostile aspect directed exclusively at him...
No..., he was wrong.
He did feel something..., an aspect that had passed him by with this turn of events.
It was not the dark scent that he had followed in which he was now swimming through…, it was not how the proximity had allowed to get a few new nuances of it, making him discern that perhaps…, just perhaps it was not what he had previously thought it was at first.
No, it was a sensation that he had felt for so long, one that he had tried to suppress and ignore yet it had always come for him, like a predator in the night, lurking around its prey.
Emptiness...
But this time it did not come from within...no, it was not as he glared at his surroundings. Not with scepticism or defiance, but with a glimmer of empathy...
This world..., this reality..., was unfinished.
Abandoned…
Left to rot...
``Truly, this was not what I was expecting..´´
He muttered, slowly kneeling down onto the monochromatic soil...his clawed fingers brushing the soft and still grass at his reach, metal talons trying to hold softly the leafs between them..only for them to die under his grasp.
Burning in bright particles of a blueish purple until the leaf crumble in their own..
Its dust staining the blood still smeared all over his limb like dirt before a non existent wind brushed it away from his hand into the air.
He had almost tried to surge forward and get a hold over them, to stop them from flying away…
From him...
But he did not…, a small voice telling him of the futility of such an act. He had done it so many times before….
He sighed, hanging his head low... the tubes of his archaic re-briefer jangling with one another as he did.
The sound of his sharp, loudly breaths becoming the only thing he could hear form miles around..
Now what..?
What was he meant to do now...?
Those were some of the questions that lingered inside him for far too long for comfort, a bother that he wished nothing to do about yet for once with no immediate response to quell them as they came, as they raged between the lines..
He did not know that he was grinding his teeth, softly at first...but growing in strength.
He could break free…, yes.., as sudden as it was his entrance point he could see the lines that made the box he was in.
Unstable and erratic as it was could have been dangerous for others, but putting a few pressure points in a certain location or just with enough strength and he would be out of this seemingly empty pocket dimension that had see it wise to accommodate him with out notice or warning.
And yet, wasn't this place the core of his search..? Wasn't this the place that he had come for even before he acknowledge the existence of the cult?
It had to be, for no matter wherever he looked at….he knew he was deep in the rabbit hole that had enticed him from afar with its scent.
It pulsed around him…
It called to him..
It welcome him...
Like the cool and solemn tide-waves crashing against the sandy shores of an empty coast, or the warm, steady drums of a heart beat in its sleep much to his shock and confusion...
But if it was so..., what was going on..?
Why..why wasn't anything evil like warp entities or a tide of poisonous blobs of flesh and bone with the sole purpose to feast on him? If this was the same darkness that he had come across back in his own dimension, and it made the entirety of this realm...then it was taking far too long for it to react.
To try to wash him away the same way a body's own defences would try to purge a sickness…
Instead he was met with nothing…
Just silence….
...Dammit…
He cursed internally as memories of the emptiness of the Abyss started to bleed out from his mind and into this crude imitation, and with them came things even more ancient and yet even more strongly remembered than the rest…
The smell of burning silver flooding the air..
The smell of sweat and blood staining the ground..
Wings of flame and eyes of fire casting low banners left and right with the whisk of their writs..…
Stoic masks of gold hiding the arrogance and glee of those that burned below them..
His clawed hands were shaking until he clenched it tightly, talons digging into his hand.
He did not want to admit it...but most of the time there was something or someone standing on his way, the amount of oddities and abominations trying to stop him making him realize that he was in the right track when one was tracking down the remnants of the non material realm..
Had his sight been robbed, blurred by madness…? Had he been chasing a shadow after all this time..?
He considered it for a brief few second, though they felt like an eternity.
In the end he shook his head, pushing those thoughts of doubt away before they chipped away too much of his sanity if he even had that.
No…, that could not be. This was the place…, a projection of it, yes... but the one and only all the same.
The only thing left to do now was-...
``What were you expecting, then…?´´
A soft, calm and youthful voice asked... its mournful tone interrupting his thoughts the same way a leaf would when landing over the surface of a water stream.
His mind trying to understand how he had missed this presence, this voice….
One that he almost believed to be the resurgence to the voices of his head, had he not turned around and met its owner after his neck stopped struggling to turn around.
A girl..
It was a young and pretty looking girl…for normal standards..
Her long dark purple hair fell down her back like a velvet waterfall, her skin was smooth, her pallor was not dangerous, in fact it made her look more attractive.
She wore a two-piece suit, the upper part of which exposed her shoulders, her large chest barely hidden from view by the tight-fitting fabric that hugged her figure, as well as the tit-window between her breasts. Left not much for the imagination...
The lower part however was rather hidden by a wide skirt that concealed her legs and shoes. Her arms hugged them tightly against her chest as she sat on the field beside him.
Any closer and she would have leaned against him the way one would in the company of a friend..
Or a lover...
A shudder crawled behind his back, his teeth gridded against one another.
The idea repulsed him... though he didn't know why.
He rose to his full height, not quickly, but not slow either….
She did not follow suit, deciding to remain sited on the ground, her hair being brushed to the side by the playful touches of an ethereal wind he could not sense.…, ruffing the grass around them as-well.
She bore a pained semblance on her face, drenched in melancholy of broken dreams and the taste of ashes in her mouth…
And yet, even if she was not attempting to hide the emotions coursing behind the depths of her eyes... she was looking at him with a shred of curiosity in her eyes as-well as sympathy…
``I hope I did not startle you, it was not my intention...´´
She spoke out, her voice soft again…, with a small hint of playfulness at the end, yet she could not hide the pain beneath.
As if she had scared a lot more people with her mere presence in the past than any action she had ever taken.
Something that had left its mark behind the politeness of her expression, scarring her deeply..
Long..long ago...
``….´´
He scoffed, his fist clenched as he took a step forward..only to realize how small she was as basically a meter remained between them. With him having to look down while she had to crook up her swam like neck to met his blazing glare.
Fire meeting purple…
The sharp, ghastly echo of air pushed out through the breather meeting the calm and faint sound of her lips sealing down in a pained smile.
The way her eyes glimmered, sadness behind the depths of those eyes. Her arms shuddering a bit, her fingers grasping more tightly onto the fabric covering her legs as she tried to hide it away.
She looked so frail.
Like a doll of porcelain that would shatter if he were to lay a single finger on her…, a mirage in the clouds that the winds could break apart with a single gush of air. A tiny spot of snow in a field of ashes, ready to melt in a moments notice.
Something that should not be face to face with towering wall of steel and blackness that he was.
``….´´
His eyes narrowed, his cold heart throbbed painfully as he fought down the urge to heft his left arm and blast her to pieces with solid steel.
He hated that…
He loathed to feel things that he did not understood. The emotions coursing through him clearly becoming far too visible for him to control or her insight were far more sharper than they appeared at a first glance as she spoke once more.
``I am sorry if I did…, is ok for you to be angry with me.., I am used to it.´´
She replied softly though no less bitterly, her eyes closing to a half lid as a weight seemed to start crushing her..
He could not help but stare at her in a long eerie silence, dumbstruck at the nonsense he was witnessing. His lips quirting with a confused expression. Struggling to give it a proper... look, as if the very skin and bones beneath the mask were alien to such natural movements.
Sorry…
Sorry...?
Had he heard right..?
Was she-, no.., he refused to believe that what laid before his eyes was nothing else but a demonic avatar from this place made to test him, something to made him lower his guard.
And yet, was this thing really telling him that it was sorry..? Of all the things that it could say, that it could try to sway him with…, that was the one it went for..?
…
Would wonders and fools never cease...?
But rather than speak up his thoughts he remained silent, like a lifeless statue that had too much realism and blood to ever be considered anything but the devils work.
Never wavering his glance form hers, never moving an inch as he burned two holes into her skull.
She did the same, albeit more timidly and with less..potency...
A silent conversation exchanged between the two…, one that did not need words or gestures to exchange the meaning behind their intent.
In the end he was the to break it...though not in the manner and way he would have expected as he pointed the dull, flat side of the blades length to the woman's left shoulder.
Not touching it..
Not even relatively close to grace or poke the tender, soft flesh..
But no one was deceived that he could not twist his fingers and rip her head in less than a heartbeat.
Then he spoke, one, single guttural word that torn through the air like thunder, the ground shaking as if the words were toxic..
``You…´´
The woman flinched, her soft purple eyes blinking for a few seconds before they adapted to the aura that was sipping out from him before she too, replied in kind with an equal quaint statement as she rose from her seat in the grass field...
Now finally noticing the shackles that were wrapped tightly around her writs, a pair of chains connected to them though now broken as the links of steel clattered with one another or against her body as the air made them swing briefly from one place to another..
``Me…´´
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There are many auroras out there, Sanctum Aurora, Midgar Aurora, finger Aurora and for what it appears to be each and every one of them have different personalities. So it would be more normal that if the one in the Sanctum longs for freedom and companionship, the one in Midgar is more pessimistic and silent.