Darkness on the Rise (Finished)

[carcinoGeneticist]

A gift to the dying. No, no, no, this wasn't happening, how could she be dying...? She was supposed to die years from now, an old woman who had lived a full life, not here in some dingy alley, not because of some dirty mugger who wanted a few coins! But the pain was all too real, as was the feeling that air could not stay in her lungs, no matter how she gasped for breath. The whites of her eyes showed in her blind panic and she began to whimper, a high-pitched, desperate sound.

And then her whining was cut short by the feline's sudden motion, replaced with a soft and sickening gurgle. She collapsed, yellow eyes staring straight ahead as she watched her own blood pool on the ground before her. And then, her eyes went dull.

~~~

She was so scared. She could feel, somewhere very far away from where she was now, an intense pain. But she couldn't feel it at the same time that she could, like it was somewhere in the back of her mind, and that scared her even more.

She had no idea where she was, what was happening to her - well, beyond being... dead.

She felt the desire to move, so she began to walk slowly, not exactly sure as to where she was headed. She just walked, very slowly, scared of what might be waiting for her at... wherever it was that she was going. She felt so alone... What would her parents think? No, no, she couldn't. She whined again, the sound one of pure confusion and terror, and stopped moving. She needed to think. Or something, but she knew one thing. She couldn't move on to wherever she felt the urge to go.

[The Jenn]

Lior simply couldn't leave her body alone where it was and he didn't know why. He'd come out of his nearly trance-like state to find himself staring down at the severed thumb joint of her wing, the taste of blood thick on his tongue. It was inconceivable that he might have gnawed on a part of her body. Why would he do that?! He'd never done anything like that before! There was always the fear in the back of his mind that the curse and fascination of his cloak hadn't worked its way completely into his mind and this was proof that might be the case.

Almost immediately after that thought registered in his mind, a rush of euphoric pleasure hit him so hard that his legs buckled and he sank slowly to the ground, panting and wide-eyed. What the hell was that?! It felt... absolutely amazing. Completely unlike and beyond anything he had ever felt.

Once his mind cleared from the rush of pleasure, he began to think about what had happened. He remembered beginning to leave, and then suddenly he was staring down at her joint. Trying to leave was the only thing that could have triggered it. For some reason, he was supposed to... stay here? Did it want him to atone for her death? That didn't seem much like the spirit of the cloak's powers, from all that he'd seen. It seemed to embrace death rather than shunning it. So what could it want?

Not willing to risk another trance and dismembered limb, he huddled down next to her dead body and just waited. Eventually he fell asleep, and woke about an hour later when he heard noises from the end of the alley. They passed him on and he drifted off again, perpetually exhausted. At one point, he woke up to find himself somewhere else and next to another dead body, but then in a flash he was suddenly back next to Rhiannon's corpse once again. The constant in-and-out of trances left him disoriented and a little bit dizzy.

About sixteen hours after her death, when the next day had already worn on, he got the oddest sensation in the back of his mind. They'd mercifully escaped discovery - he didn't know how he was going to explain the pair of corpses in the alley - but this was something new yet again. He didn't like it. Once again, he was back in his other state and began to focus intently on her corpse.

After a few moments... she would be alive and whole once again and he would be staring down at her with his eery gaze, aura as cold as ever. "Welcome back," he rasped softly.

[carcinoGeneticist]

It was Rhiannon's own confusion that kept her from moving from where she was to where she felt herself being called. She took a step towards it, then stopped, and took a step back. She wasn't ready to go, she just wasn't. What would her parents do without her? What about Hadrian? And Xiven... She'd made the feline a promise, all those years ago, and she just couldn't go back to it.

It was there, in her haze of fear and confusion, that she began to feel something different. She was still being called, but no longer in the direction she'd been slowly moving towards. Something about it was different, more urgent, and she broke into a run, never knowing what she would find in that direction, only that she needed to get there as soon as she could.

~~~

The coyote-bat jerked violently, retching and twitching as she found herself alive again. She scrambled to her feet but only collapsed once more, her sides expanding violently with each desperate breath. She could feel her heart beating in her chest, strong but fast with terror. Eyes wild with fear, she looked up and met the gaze of... something that was but wasn't Lior, and she scrambled away from him. He had killed her...

But she was still alive. She whined softly, the note one of terror. "What's going on?![/b]" she whispered, voice sounding somewhat raspy, eyes wide with panic. "I-I died... I was dead.. Wasn't I?[/b]"

[The Jenn]

Lior watched her come back to herself, once more alive, and the back of his mind suddenly became aware of several things that would stick with him even after the reaper state left him. He could only do this once every month. He could only do this to someone he himself had put an end to. He... really kind of liked it. "You were dead," he said in that high-pitched voice, a small, creepy little smile appearing on his muzzle. "And now you aren't. I wonder how many people could say something like that. I'd say you were awfully lucky. Aren't you glad that we met?'

He sat down, shook his head slowly, and the dullness left his eyes in favor of their normal appearance. Staring, he couldn't take his eyes off of her. Some part of him actually remembered something from that trance, enough to know that he had just brought her back to life. Somehow.

Alright, that was a bit too much for him. He just stared at her, and then passed out.

[carcinoGeneticist]

Rhiannon was dead. Lior had confirmed that, beyond a doubt. She whimpered again, brows furrowing. But death wasn't a temporary thing, she had always thought. Her entire world had been turned upside down, and she was at a complete loss. She didn't know quite what to say or do, instead creeping towards Lior on her belly, tail wagging quickly and uneasily, not an act of joy but one of nerves. "You saved me... But... You killed me,[/b]" she whimpered, expression pleading.

Her ears flipped back at the sudden change in his expression, and she whined again, tenatively licking at one of his golden paws, an act of worry and submission. Yes, he had killed her. But he had also - somehow, she had no idea how - brought her back. She was alive again. It was so confusing, but at the same time, she felt like she was somehow in debt to Lior.

And then he collapsed, and she yelped softly, jumping away from his body before moving back, licking urgently at his cheek. Was he okay? What had happened? He had seemed so calm before, and now he was just laying there, completely still. "Lior, you need to wake up.[/b]" she whimpered into his ear. They couldn't stay here, in the dingy alley - someone would find them, and she didn't want to consider that. She knew that Seth had an apartment somewhere close to the Outer Bazaar, and she had a key...

All she had to do was get Lior there.

[The Jenn]

Lior's reaper persona wouldn't have reacted to her submission, merely cataloged it as an observation that was promptly lost as soon as he became himself once more. He barely had time to register her appearance or demeanor before losing consciousness.

After about five minutes out cold, he woke up with a pained mewl and winced against the slanting rays of evening sunlight that hit the alley at just the right angle to be painful. Something was wet on his face and he scrunched his nose, bringing up a paw to wipe at it. Then he noticed Rhiannon next to him, extremely close, and the fact of what had just happened left him momentarily gaping. "Th- that's never happened before," he whispered in panicked awe, mind buzzing as he tried to figure out how it was possible for her to have died and been brought back - by him. He didn't know, couldn't work it out without a lot more thought, and his head ached from the strangeness of it all.

"Rhiannon," he said after an awkward moment, voice hesitant, "I'm very, very glad to see you alive. I don't know how, but... um. I just don't know. Things just keep happening."[/b] He looked like he was lost, glad that at least one of the lives he'd taken had been cleared from his blackened conscience, warm and confused at the sensations that had rushed over him after taking a part of her body. The wing claw was tucked into a pocket of his cloak, kept safe until he could figure out what to do with it.

And now what would he do? The thought made him close his eyes and tuck into himself a little bit.

[carcinoGeneticist]

Rhiannon chewed on her lip as she thought about the best way to move Lior out of the street, and had moved to his side to look him over. He was larger than she was by quite a bit, her coyote heritage making her much more leggy than her father had been. This just was not going to be easy.

When the feline stirred, Rhiannon instinctively jumped back from where she had been leering over him, dropping her head slightly. "I believe that,[/b]" she said softly, moving to his side once again, almost trying to assure him that she really was alive. She was having trouble believing it herself. "I would imagine we'd have heard more about it if people were coming back from the dead..[/b]" it was a weak attempt at humor, but she needed to try and cut the tension somehow. This whole situation was messed up. That was the only way she could describe it. She was so scared... Her whole body wouldn't stop trembling.

Damn it all, she needed to get a hold of herself. She had no idea what had happened, but neither did Lior.

"I don't know what to say to you,[/b]" the woman said bluntly, her ears flattening against her neck. He didn't look injured, and now that he was awake it would be much easier for them to move to somewhere safer. "I'm glad to be alive, but I'm really scared right now, and we need to get out of the alley. M-my father has an apartment nearby, if we can get there... We can talk. About what happened.[/b]" she let out an urgent whine, then took a deep breath, her eyes meeting Lior's. "..about what's been happening.[/b]"

[The Jenn]

Lior attempted a weak chuckle at her joke, but it came out more like a whimper than he'd wanted it to. This cloak would never let him rest, would it? Things just wouldn't stop happening, no matter where he went. Leaving the city hadn't helped. Tulgey had been just as bad, for completely different reasons, and he hadn't even meant to end up there. And now this curse was changing yet again? It made him want to scream, except this time... it seemed sort of good. Well, with the exception of gnawing off a piece of her wing. He still hadn't quite owned up to that one, and it was the only discrepancy on her otherwise perfectly normal body.

He took a deep breath and stood up, meeting her gaze. She looked just as confused and stressed as he was. "Alright. I don't have anywhere else to go. I don't... this cloak, this curse doesn't really allow for a home." He just hoped that he wouldn't encounter any of her family at her father's apartment. The man was a bear of a bat, wasn't he? Memories were slightly fuzzy, but he knew that he'd been a fruit bat of the Glacier. He couldn't remember the man's name.

To prove his ability to move, both to her and to himself, he took a few steps and looked at her. Waiting. He would follow her wherever she took him. There wasn't anything else he could do just then, unless he wanted to go find a box to crawl into.

[carcinoGeneticist]

Rhiannon hesitated, frowning beneath her mask, brow furrowing. Though it was common knowlege around the courts that Lior had left, no one really knew (or at least didn't speak about) why he'd gone. Rhiannon had personally assumed that it was linked to his father's death - she had known that a lot of people had been effected very strongly by the event, and she had once overheard Bernard say that Lior had run away from home once before...

For the first time since they had met over the dying body of the ferret, Rhiannon really looked at the cloak that Lior wore. It was a creepy thing, and she tensed slightly once she realized that it seemed to be made entirely of the wings of birds. A curse. Was this what was changing him, what gave him the ability to bring her back to life? "My father.. he doesn't really live there anymore, but he still pays the rent so that we have a place when we're in town. We'll have the place to ourselves.[/b]"

It all seemed far, far too strange to be real. Perhaps she was dreaming. Dream or no dream, when she looked back at Lior she saw the haunted look on his face. She might have had a difficult life, but she always had a home to come back to. She couldn't imagine feeling quite that exiled.

Rhiannon began to trot down the alley, staring directly in front of herself. Her thoughts were spinning and she felt herself shudder slightly. No, she wouldn't be sick again. She needed to keep strong. It was a quiet and short walk to the apartment, and she led him up the stairs and into the small place. It was warm inside, a refreshing difference from the night that they'd come in from. Exhausted, Rhiannon closed the door once Lior was inside, leading him to a few comfortable chairs in one corner of the room. Motioning for him to follow her, she glanced at him, the shadows beneath her yellow eyes deep. "When.. did this all start?[/b]"

[Kiki]

Jenn and Xenon receive 1 token each, to be redeemed in Ashwin's Shoppe. This will automatically be added to your recorded totals in the shoppe. Congratulations, and keep up the good RP!