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Post by Hadjara Astaeldr Er on May 25, 2017 10:17:05 GMT
“Yeah, ya always say that but I ain't actually met a human as borin' as ya say they are,” Hadjara said with a shrug of her shoulder. “IIIIIIIIII think ya might be lyin'.” She flicked a strand of his hair out of his eyes. “And I think I'd like me even if I was still a human-person. And more importantly I think you'd still like me too.”
Hadjara knelt down next to Levent and turned her net back into a necklace, letting the bottled fall onto the grass beside him. Levent hissed and thwapped his tail against the ground irritably. “Oh hush," she said before she kissed the end of his snout. Although she couldn't help but notice there was no fairy women to oohh and ahhh at her for that one. “Remember not to eat anyone or you'll get us in trouble.” He snarled back at her and bucked his head a little in her lap before she kissed him again then got to her feet.
She liked the feeling of being close to him, and her curled her fingers tightly around his as he spun around with her. But she could feel people around her. Too many people. Her head spun and it didn't take long before she was just blindly following him around and moving her feet roughly in tune to something but if it was music or his heartbeat she couldn't tell.
I don't like this, came a nervous thought, make this stop, I don't want to be here!
No that wasn't her. She didn't think that.
He's in my head. Make him get out. Stay out of our head!
No it's not your head, it's OUR head. You get out!
Hadjara ground her teeth together and one of the muscles in her neck tightened. No, both of you get out of MY head! she ordered them but instead of them shutting up they both got confused and started chattering, trying to figure out why they could suddenly hear one another instead of just her.
It was actually Yed who thought of it first.
Are . . . are we the same person now?
What? No. No, you two get out of my head!
No I think we're me. I . . . I think I like this. I think we like this.
No, no, no, no, no! We do not like this!
You're sitting on my head and I can and will eat you.
She felt lips and teeth against her skin, and the sudden stimulation set off an explosion of confusion, fury, and terror in her. Hadjara screeched suddenly, encased her jaw in a glove of spiked ice, and aimed an uppercut square at his chin. Then she turned and ran through the crowd, ducking under arms and whisping into smoke any time the crowd got too thick. She ran to where her familiars were and fell to her knees, curling into the crocodile and wrapping her arms around his jaws before he could bite.
“Stop, please just stop please.”
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Post by Gabriel on Jun 9, 2017 7:06:34 GMT
Gabriel laughed at Hadjara's defence of humans, largely because she was of course exactly right. He prided Daemons and their typical shared qualities above all else, but Humans were interesting and tenacious. Had he not spent hours and hours with Hadjara while she was Human? There were other Humans who had fascinated him too; Stefanie, he'd nearly caused all out war over, however unintentionally.
"Mayyyybe I exaggerate for effect," he admitted good-humouredly.
As was his habit, Gabriel lost himself in the heaving mass of dancing Fae easily, without effort. Living in the moment was a very Daemon attribute and he had always loved this kind of sensory overload - the heat, the living scents, the throb of the music that could almost be felt as well as heard. A pleasure-seeker, hungry for sensation, this intensity was the closest he came to recapturing the chaotic buzz of the Dream World, of matching his own inner experience. He didn't notice Hadjara unravelling, too lost in the moment to notice much at all.
Until, of course, he was punched square in the jaw by a frost-cloaked hand.
Hadjara's hand, he realised, after he recovered from the shock. This took only a split second, his magic reacting to his instinctive fury before his brain processed what exactly had happened. Searing fire rippled over his skin, originating at the point Hadjara's fist had connected with his face and sending nearby Fae scattering away from the sudden heat. Chaos erupted as people scrambled to escape him - although he regained control in only a few seconds and extinguished it, the grass beneath his feet was scorched to black and the smell of burnt vegetation filled the air. The music never stopped and the crowd quickly resumed their feverish dancing, only a few of the Fae in the crowd cognizant and disturbed enough by the display to eye him warily as he started picking his way through the crowd. It parted for him like water, mostly because he telekinetically shoved aside anyone that didn't move fast enough for his liking. His initial, reactive fury had been replaced almost immediately with concern - Hadjara had whacked him plenty of times, but this time it had been so out of character that he didn't know what to make of it.
Gabriel found her crouched over Levent at the edge of the clearing, muttering rapidly and looking so unsettled any remaining anger evaporated. He rubbed his jaw ruefully, where a bruise was already forming beneath the smooth opalescent skin. He felt no pain, so touch was the only way to determine how much damage she'd done. Thankfully, not much, by simple virtue of standard Daemon hardiness. He was not vulnerable to ice in the same way he was to water else she might have broken his jaw, but from prodding around and moving his jaw from side to side he figured the actual damage was minimal.
"So. Care to explain?"
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Post by Hadjara Astaeldr Er on Jun 9, 2017 10:10:02 GMT
She was seeing too much. She could see the scaly hide of Levent, the side of her own face as she dug her claws into the skin around her eyes, and out over their shoulder to the dancing people. Their perspectives didn't match and none of them were used to seeing with other eyes. It was sickening. She dug her claws in harder and raked them across her face, trying to force her consciousness into the body that was hurting and shove her familiars out.
She went absolutely rigid when Gabriel spoke, save for a rapid and frantic twitching in the end of her tail. “Wait which one of me was he talkin' to?” They whispered under her breath, “well me, obviously. I want to eat him he's loud. No, no you stop that I do not want to eat him. I'm pretty sure I do. But I'm outnumbered two of of me don't so you get back in my body.”
Hadjara pulled her claws out of the skin around her eyes and set her hands on her knees before they all looked at Gabriel, all three of them turning their heads the same way and fixing him with eyes they all saw through. Blood was running down her face now, streaming down her cheeks and dripping off her chin. “We're . . .” they said, “not sure. I can't feel where I stop being us anymore.” Levent rumbled a growl and Yed croaked in perfect tune to her words, matching too perfectly to be called an echo. “I know I'm not all of us but I feel like I am.”
All three of they bodies blinked before Hadjara turned her head away and slowly wrapped her hands around her throat.
“It hurts,” she said. She hunched her shoulders and folded in one herself so she was sitting on her feet and her torso was bent so far forward that her head almost touched the ground and her hair spilled into the grass. Ice grew out from around them, turning into spikes that pointed outward while a thin layer started to rise around all three of them like a flower but. Hadjara tightened her hands around her throat so her voice came out strained, “it feels like I'm meltin'.”
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Post by Gabriel on Jun 12, 2017 9:49:55 GMT
Gabriel had been concerned at first. Worried, even. But when Hadjara looked up at him with blood dripping from deep gashes below her eyes, inflicted by her own claws, while muttering to herself and clearly distraught, he was horrified. Her state of mind had deteriorated so fast he couldn't quite believe what was happening - she'd gone from insisting she was fine to what looked like a full-blown mental breakdown in less than an hour.
And when she and her familiars synchronised, Gabriel could say with utter certainty he'd never been so creeped out in his entire life. The Daemon Lord had faced terror before - he'd fought monsters that had made legions turn tail and flee, had battled nightmares taken form. But those things he could combat, those things he could kill. This caricature of Hadjara was a monster of another kind, someone he cared about slowly melting into something he didn't recognise, right before his eyes. There was no fighting whatever terrible thing consumed her mind. Only one thought flashed in his mind, one possibility of escape from this rapidly unfolding horror - he had to get her out.
The white-and-jewel forest had gone eerily silent around them. Whatever Fae would have made their way down this path turned aside, sensing some disturbance where Hadjara's magic glitched and fought against the Fae dimension. They were left alone and the quiet unsettled Gabriel more. And, when Hadjara's magic started to form a shield around her and her familiars - something that didn't seem to be conscious, but perhaps was Hadjara's subconscious trying to protect them from what it considered a hostile environment, Gabriel started to panic. He needed to get to her to get her out, and already the ice was curling up around her...she was disappearing from view. He swore under his breath and reacted - only instinct was any good in this kind of unfolding disaster, so it was lucky for all of them that Gabriel's were good. After countless close calls to his life and the lives of those he cared about enough to protect, his natural instincts screamed to do what it took. Anything it took.
Fire. Fire burned through ice, turning it to steam, and although ice could hold against him better than most materials, it couldn't overcome nearly four hundreds years of honed magic coupled with desperation. Gabriel threw everything he had at the flower forming around Hadjara, flames burning so hot between his hands that they turned to pure white, the fire rippling over his skin flashing icy blue. And slowly, slowly, he clawed his way through the barrier her magic was throwing up. The forest around them turned to steam and chaos, white clouds of it billowing away from the centre of the drama, so hot it killed the trees all around them. And still he fought until, gritting his teeth, straining against the ice and melting it away, Gabriel broke through. He grabbed Hadjara's forearm and, with even greater difficulty and a deep annoyance at how difficult the damn crocodile made it, managed to grab Levent's tail too. Yed was gripping Hadjara, he thought, and it would just have to be enough because already Hadjara's ice was fighting back, trying to overcome him now he'd let the fire die back.
With a blink, he teleported them to the first place he could think of.
When he opened his eyes they were on his spire in the Daemon Tunnels, and the world was spinning so much he staggered and fell to his knees, dazed.
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Post by Hadjara Astaeldr Er on Jun 12, 2017 11:20:53 GMT
One second the feeling of vile, foul life and death and true existence was pressing horrifyingly close to him and the next second he could feel himself again. He unfurled, filling out and getting used to their body again before crushing state of her mind hit him like a wall. It was like white noise and it felt like they were on fire. “Woah, woah, woah! What the fuck!?” he tore control from her and collapsed to his hands and knees, gasping full breathes of air. The heat of fire had sucked the air from their lungs and he gagged and coughed trying to smoke from his lungs.
Malak grasped for Hadjara in his thoughts but it felt wrong. Her mind was tangled up, and the lose bonds that connected her to the pair of her familiars suddenly didn't exist because they were a part of her. They were her and his attempt to gather her up and pull her out seemed to just tangle them up even tighter. “Okay,” he hissed, "okay calm down. Trust me." And they did. He could feel her trust strong and bright and it felt like she put her hand in his.
He smothered her consciousness and as he did so Levent and Yed both went limp simultaneously. Malak touched his face slowly, and felt the gashes from where Hadjara had clawed herself. What had happened? Gabriel had gone on about a party and he'd been against it but Hadjara had trusted him and then this happened. He had no memories of what had gone down and he couldn't look through Hadjara's head when she was tied in knots like this.
But Gabriel had done this, that he was certain of.
Malak finally directed himself outwards, assuming total control of their shared body as his usual markings spread across his body. He got to his feet then whirled around, fire already in his eyes. “What the FUCK did you DO!?” They were so close that Malak was able to shove his shoulder, hard. “What did you do to Hadjara? What did you do to her? To them?” He pointed at the unconscious familiars piled together.
“Tell me what happened so I can fix the mess you made!”
He was angry, more than he had ever been in his life. Gabriel seemed to piss him off effortlessly and that really was nothing new. But he was afraid too, and that was new.
Even when they were separated he hadn't been afraid. They had been growing close but not nearly so much as they were now and Malak was suddenly terrified. He had never been terrified before and he didn't know how to respond to it.
There were angry tears in his eyes, only really apparent from the blood if someone looked very close and Malak had more important things than stopping his tear ducts from producing fluid just to save face.
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Post by Gabriel on Jun 13, 2017 6:44:27 GMT
Gabriel was not happy when they arrived in the Daemon Tunnels. Wielding magic might be an old, well-honed skill, as instinctive to him now as breathing, but the actual strength of specifically his fire elemental powers was still somewhat limited. No Litharian creature had unlimited reserves of magical strength, either; it was a finite resource that needed recharging, just like physical strength. So, combine the newness of the fire magic and Gabriel's comparative lack of fitness in wielding it, with the element's innately high-energy consuming nature anyway, and the effort he'd had to go to to get through Hadjara's icy barried when her subconscious was actively trying to protect her from anything outside had drained him more than any time in recent memory.
And as it turned out, while depleted magic couldn't kill Daemons like it could kill Fae, the experience still sucked. He was dizzy at first, and an alarming blackness crept into the edge of his vision. If he could feel pain he felt sure his head would be splitting, because there was a weird pressure in both temples. He was still on his knees when Hadjara - no, Malak - shoved him, causing him to snarl and brace against the cold crystal wall of spire he was next to. It still took a couple of seconds before he could speak though, and that was a delay that was so long for the inhumanly fast Daemon species that to Gabriel it felt like centuries. He was moving underwater, head foggy, though his anger at Malak was a reassuring hint of normalcy.
"I..." he paused. Breathless. Weird.
"I didn't do anything." Ordinarily that statement would have been delivered with an insult, but he was still trying to push through the odd feeling of magical exhaustion. Had he ever felt like this before? If so, he didn't remember. He managed to get to his feet after another second though, and shortly behind the return of his balance came the return of the ability to speak longer sentences. Thank the Gods.
"I took her to Faery. She insisted she was fine. Then, she punched me in the face and took off. I found her less than a minute later and she'd started trying to claw her eyes out." His voice was curt, the information delivered as quickly and efficiently as possible. He'd have been more offended by Malak's assumption that he was to blame if he wasn't busy being desperately worried about Hadjara. What had happened? It was an utter mystery to him, and he wasn't interested in getting into an argument with the adumbrate until Hadjara was better.
"I don't know what happened. The time between her being normal and breaking down was a few minutes at most, and she wasn't talking to me during it, just muttering about her familiars. I had to burn through her ice to get her out." Gabriel knew Malak was angry, and under any other circumstance they could have had a roaring argument that lasted for hours when Mal was behaving like he currently was. But the Daemon Lord saw real fear in Hadjara's face, and as Malak was in full control, that was Malak's fear. Which meant whatever was wrong with Hadjara was serious. He knew Malak would fix her if he could - the one and only redeeming feature the adumbrate had, as far as Gabriel was concerned, was a true attachment to his host. So he didn't bother with questions, wanting to let Malak do what he needed to do.
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Post by Hadjara Astaeldr Er on Jun 13, 2017 7:54:23 GMT
Malak ground he teeth and his fingers twitched as irritation rippled through him. “You're the one who did this. You took her there, you told her it would be fine and it wasn't. Clearly your judgement is sub-par.” He glared down at Gabriel before he turned sharply and started pacing around the unconscious animals and the exhausted daemon lord. His tail lashed and he put his thumb and forefinger against his chin as he wrinkled his brow and looked down.
“Okay, okay, I can fix this. I can fix this,” he muttered under his breath, “how the fuck do I fix this?”
Even when they were unconscious, they were all tangled up. Malak tried to sort them out, pull at the sleeping mass and gather up who she was without who they were getting mixed in but they kept snapping back together. He locked his teeth even tighter as he tried even harder to grab at her, find their edges and separating them but their edges had always been undefined. A huge part of Hadjara's power came from understanding who she was and she had never had an issue with that before. She had never even needed to rely on his power before. But now she did need hi and he didn't know how to redefine her for her. She had to do it herself, but she couldn't, not when her magic had been essentially inverted. But . . . he had a pretty good idea how to straighten it out again.
“Okay, alright. I can fix this.”
He turned on his heel and glared down at Gabriel. “Hey. I need you to teleport us to the Shadow World again. These two idiots will be dragged into their own bodies and I can repair the damage that is absolutely your fault.” Malak had lost patience while talking and he threw his arms open. “Okay lets fucking go.”
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Post by Gabriel on Jun 13, 2017 8:18:27 GMT
When Daemons wanted to, they could hide their emotions so well that even the most skilled reader of people couldn't tell their true inner experiences. They were masters of the minute details in facial expression and body language that gave others away. So, Gabriel's only outward response to Malak's entirely unreasonable assertion of his guilt in causing this mess was a very slight narrowing of his eyes, the brilliant teal jewel-like in the muted light high in the cavern, atop his spire.
"I suggest you stop blaming me for something I clearly could not have foreseen, when the only reason Hadjara reacted to Faery the way she did is because she's burdened with you. It's not Daemons that react to Faery. It's adumbrates. You made her sick. Fix her." His tone was very measured, very controlled. Emotionless, like his expression.
Beneath the calm, the control, was of course a rapidly burgeoning fury. He railed against the arbitrary disaster than had befallen them, one he considered deeply unfair. It was just a party, and now Hadjara was an unconscious lump with an apparent tangled mess of magic in her head. You should be able to go to a Faery festival without having a breakdown, but whatever Shadow poison Malak infused her with must be incompatible with Faery. And, though he would never admit it, Gabriel was angry at himself for not seeing the signs sooner, for not getting her out before so much damage had been done. It had just happened so fast. And she had insisted, over and over, that she was fine. How had it unravelled like that?
Malak's pacing and muttering did nothing to reassure Gabriel that she could be put back together, either. Gabriel could only watch, silent after his short tirade, to give Malak whatever space he needed to work. It took a second to register that Malak's proposed "solution" was to go to the Shadow world. What? Gabriel regarded the adumbrate suspiciously - he had zero desire to ever, ever set foot in that hell dimension ever again. He was uniquely unsuited to it, as someone who never switched off his lower level magic (with the exception of times like this, when he was too drained to sustain even that) - he was a beacon to every nightmare creature that place conjured up. It also didn't come naturally to trust Malak; although he logically knew the adumbrate was invested in Hadjara completely he had to remind himself of any possible good intent very deliberately to avoid a knee-jerk response of 'no' to anything Malak wanted.
"Fine. But you'll have to wait. Even if I hadn't burned through everything to get her out of Faery, my teleporting ability only works once a day." Gabriel could tell without trying that there was quite simply nothing there, though he still tried to reach for the magic anyway. It wasn't like it was dim or weak, though. It was simply absent, as if it had never been. It wasn't his own magic - it belonged to the Goddess, and he borrowed it only under her terms. So, because he needed to recover and this was his home, he sat with his back to the spire and closed his eyes. He was mentally tired, a strange feeling when he was physically brimming with energy. Still, perhaps sleep would help.
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Post by Hadjara Astaeldr Er on Jun 13, 2017 10:52:25 GMT
“No, that's not possible. I don't have any influence that far into that hellscape, in or outside of our body. The fae are toxic to humans too, aren't they? Most of her magic is human in nature . . .” Somewhere along the line his voice had drifted from irritated and hostile to contemplative as he stopped addressing Gabriel and started thinking aloud. “Although she was changed in the Shadow World, she's not entirely of this world anymore, or your world either. But I can't see her memories and you're absolutely useless at recounting anything that doesn't revolve around you.” And the bite of hostility was back.
“And she isn't sick. She's just tangled.” He knitted his fingers together to get it through Gabriel's thick skull. “You don't get it because you don't have any familiars.” He didn't either. He and Hadjara existed together but they didn't actually share their mind. But he knew better than Gabriel, of that he was sure.
Malak chewed on his lip before he put his hands over his face, pulling his skin closed and letting ice lock his skin together so it would scab over faster before he flicked off the cold rivulets of blood from his cheeks.
It wasn't until Gabriel said he couldn't use his power again that Malak looked down at him, incredulous and furious. “Are you fucking kidding me!?” He gestured furiously with his arms. “You have that little magic? What the fuck!? I thought you were supposed to be powerful you fucking walking matchstick!” Malak didn't suffer from depleted magic, and when Hadjara did he supplemented her skills with his own. He was a constant, his strength never waned or faltered regardless of use because he wasn't alive. “I keep forgetting how pathetic you flesh bags are!” And that was the last thing he said in common for a while, but it was pretty obvious that the string of grumbling in the Shadow Language was far from flattering.
He only stopped when he noticed that Gabriel was trying to sleep. Malak hunched his shoulder a little before he flicked into smoke and reformed a second later sitting legs crossed barely a foot in front of Gabriel with his hands on his knees and his neck sunk into his shoulders. He stared intently at Gabriel's closed eyes, wondering whether or not he would notice him since Malak was utterly silent. At least until he clicked his tongue and said, “If we had sex would you get this done faster?”
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Post by Gabriel on Jun 15, 2017 7:16:11 GMT
Gabriel shook his head.
"There's no such thing as magic that is "human" in nature. Humans don't have magic. Humans are driven mad by Faery because of their lack of inherent magic, not because of a clash between different magics. Being biologically Daemon means Faery should have been fine for her. Others changed to Daemons have been fine. It was you." He wouldn't have ordinarily bothered with explaining things for Malak, who at best had no frame of reference for what he was talking about most of the time so wouldn't get it anyway, or at worst would deliberately misconstrue or twist his words for the hell of it. But he was half puzzling it out in his own head too, and he was certain as he gave it voice that he was right. He'd taken Stefanie to Faery only months after she'd been changed, and the worst that had happened was she'd drunken too much and puked on an Elf's fancy curly-toed shoes. Changing Humans to Daemons wasn't so uncommon that the Faery question was unanswered, which left only the one possibility.
"Hadjara mentioned it, actually. 'This place is like poison to Malak', I think her words were. I didn't realise that meant it was poison to her too." The unspoken but very clear meaning behind this was he hadn't realised that Malak had ruined Faery for her, but the implication was underscored by his tone. Taking her back, ever, was obviously out of the question.
Gabriel was annoyed by the whole conversation, of course, but as it happened being only annoyed when Malak was present was actually a significant improvement on their relationship as a whole. Naturally, the adumbrate ruined that within the next few seconds with his ridiculous rant about magic. Now seated with his back to the spire Gabriel sighed sharply; Malak's utter lack of understanding about how anything in this world worked was absurd and frustrating. It was like having a toddler around asking constant questions, except the toddler had a foul mouth and liked to throw around nasty insults.
"Teleporting between dimensions is not actually terribly common magic," he practically hissed, now properly affronted.
"I don't see you zapping your sorry arse through space and time. It's magic reserved for the Gods and Goddesses, far more powerful than anything you wield." Too irritated to explain further, figuring Malak would get at least the gist of why he was going to have to wait, Gabriel closed his eyes. Only to have them shoot open in horror at the adumbrate's next words, his already pale complexion paling further.
"No! If you have a problem with the wait you are free to take it up with Seree, but if you're not going to do that I'm going to need you to back away, right now. And never say anything like that again."
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Post by Hadjara Astaeldr Er on Jun 15, 2017 9:02:09 GMT
Malak groaned out loud and rolled his head. “Well if it's not inherent then why didn't her magic change when she did? And anyway, she got her magic from an eye one of your gods. Which was cut out in that fucking forest, in case you forgot. Never would have happened if I was already there.” He folded his arms and put out a hip as his tail lashed. “At least she'll listen to me over you from now on since you ruin everything all the time. Really, are you even good at anything else? You had a fucked up home life and now you're going to take it out on everyone around you?” He laughed, and it sounded ugly.
He went back to pacing, thumb pressed against his lip.
“Well it is vile, so natural and alive. Of course she reacted poorly.” The did need to go to the Shadow World again where things were as they ought to be.
“Vectors can go between worlds whenever they want,” Malak said, “I know you've met Hadjara's. Shauri and Nalla, I think.” He knew. “And what you call 'shadows' travel between worlds daily. I can't because I'm stuck in this body. But it's normal thing for creatures in my world. Your gods are overrated and childish and I probably died before any of them even existed.” No way to know when the world ended, after all. “And don't pretend like you know anything of what I can and cannot do when you've only seen me using Hadjara's magic.”
He growled and threw up his arms in frustration when Gabriel turned him down. “Well why the hell not!? You have sex with this body all the time then you do whatever Hadjara wants. And I want to go to the Shadow World now.”
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