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Post by Hadjara Astaeldr Er on Aug 26, 2017 7:37:27 GMT
“That . . . sounds really useful?” Hadjara wrinkled her nose and scrunched her face into a frown. “How'd ya manage ta lose that?” Her weapons turned into jewelry now, but most of the time when she had her body in corporal form her spear was in hand. How could he just . . . lose that? “Were ya tryina' lose it?” She asked flatly.
Her expression changed from skeptical to delighted when Gabriel said he wanted to see the ruins. “Oh good! They're everywhere so we don't gotta look too far. Ya gonna wanna be careful, though. While weapons are here they're safe but I don't know what'd happen if ya brought anything back ta Litharia. It'd be bad, I think.” She prodded at Malak's thoughts and got a resounding 'I don't fucking know'. But there was still an underlying opinion that would be exceptionally dangerous and a very bad idea.
When Gabriel got into the truck Hadjara beamed at him before she shimmied a bit in her seat. Sitting all the way back, her feet didn't reach the pedals. She actually ended up standing up more than sitting down and that position made it very easy to step down with all her weight on the gas.
. . . Only for the truck to whine in protest.
“Oh, uh” Hadjara grumbled. The stick thingy was doing that. Hadjra stopped standing on the gas and she jerked it back, which made the car lurch backwards violently when she tried to step on the gas again. “Oops, sorry, sorry, that ain't right hold on.” She yanked the wiggle stick in the other direction and the truck blazed to life proper and rocketed forward. “Hell yeah!” Hadjara whooped as the truck launched over a mangled chunk of road that had formed something of a ramp before they were racing down the street as fast as the truck could carry them. Which wasn't as fast as Hadjara would have liked but probably also not as safe as Gabriel would have liked, since when she rounded a corner the truck was forced onto two wheels and the side mirror on his side snapped off when the truck jumped onto the sidewalk and clipped the side of a huge brick building.
After a minute of standing Hadjara just pasted the pedal to the ground with ice and sat down more comfortably, focused mostly on wildly jerking the car around to avoid the worst of the street debris. She was built like a tank, and after the first time she slammed herself against the side of the car she used her magic to form bone armor under her skin and she gave Gabriel a quick, “hey you're supposed ta wrap yourself up in that rope thing next to the seat somehow. So ya don't get a concussion or nuthin'.” She emphasized this point by driving over a huge crater in the street, forming an ice road under the wheels to form a ramp to the other side where the truck slammed down and bounced violently, making a noise that almost sounded like it was begging her to stop as she kept the gas pressed flat.
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Post by Gabriel on Aug 27, 2017 2:03:06 GMT
Gabriel shook his head, expression innocent.
"No! I just couldn't get used to having one hand out of commission all the time. And remembering to pack? I don't carry anything with me, if you haven't noticed. No bag, no gear, no weapons. I was probably in a hurry and just...forgot." He hadn't really looked for it either, if he was honest. Maybe it was just at the spire. He had absolutely no memory about where he'd last seen it to go off, either. He hoped he never saw that particular God again, or there'd be an awkward conversation.
"That's okay, I don't want to take anything back to Litharia. God only knows what killed this place. It might be catching." Gabriel had considered this possibility at length. Only the fact that the Shadows, Hadjara and her vectors all travelled between the Shadow world and Litharia made him feel the trips he took were worth the risk. He wasn't about to push his luck, though.
Gabriel watched Hadjara silently, with an increasing sense of foreboding, as she fiddled around with the truck. He tilted his head slightly at the way she was sitting - or not sitting, since she was too short by about a foot to even see out of the glass front. That didn't look right. Additional to this, the truck's throaty growl was soon accompanied by all sorts of weird noises. Gabriel had absolutely no idea what a truck was meant to sound like, but he was growing increasingly sure that Hadjara didn't have even a faint idea of what she was supposed to be doing. Just as he opened his mouth to say that he'd changed his mind, though, the truck lurched forward.
Ah. Too late, then.
Gabriel's instincts had no response to this kind of situation, which was probably lucky since so often his instinctive response to something he didn't like was to set it on fire. His only recourse was to freeze, which was what he did up until the truck tilted on two wheels around a corner. He was oddly mute, his vocal chords having apparently received the command to freeze also, but when the truck scraped a building on his side the metallic, inhuman screech shocked him back into action. He ignored Hadjara's suggestion - he could hardly hear her over the noise of the truck and anyway, it sounded like insane blabbering to his increasingly upset brain. So, instead of figuring out the strap that was flying merrily around his head, Gabriel lengthened his claws and jammed one hand into the seat and the other into the spongy foam lining the door, anchoring himself - sort of - into the cab. Then he glared at the side of Hadjara's head - she was facing the front, so at least she was watching where she was going although that appeared to have zero influence on her ability or desire to avoid obstacles.
"You. Don't. Know. How. To. Drive. Do. You?" he ground out, between clenched teeth and heaving breaths as panic as well as motion sickness threatened to overwhelm him.
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Post by Hadjara Astaeldr Er on Aug 27, 2017 8:01:22 GMT
“Y'know how I got that hidden cave I keep stuff in?” Hadjara said, “I think ya need somethin' like that too. Oh, did I show ya that? I got a cave. That swamp wraith that goddess gave me is guardin' it.”
She curled her hands behind her back and puffed out her chest, keeping her chin up high as she walked. “Oh no, this won't spread. Ya gods ain't gonna let it.” It wasn't intentional, but she slipped into Malak's old habit of othering the gods, claiming they were Gabriel's rather than hers. This world had no gods, and Hadjara didn't think it ever had any.
Not if this could happen.
Not unless this world's war had killed the gods themselves.
Not that any of that mattered, because driving was far more fun. Hadjara cackled as one of the wheels locked and the car spun wildly in the street, almost topping without a couple well placed ice spikes violently shoving the truck back upright. “Woo! Never said I knew how ta drive, just that it was faster!” Hadjara laughed as the front of the track rammed into another car and sent it spiraling as the truck kept going, now even more battered than ever before. Hadjara radiated glee as she rounded another corner and just drove the truck through the glass front of a building and into the lobby of a dilapidated shopping mall.
Without letting the gas up Hadjara withdrew her power from the truck entirely, and the lights went out just before it crashed one final time into the dry ruins of a fountain centerpiece. Hadjara grunted as her chest slammed into the steering wheel but she had the wisdom to turn herself into smoke before she could be thrown back into the seat again. Without looking at Gabriel she reeled back and kicked the crumpled door so hard it shot off nearly twenty feet before she tumbled out.
She was dizzy and she fell to her knees before she shot up and punched the air. “Fuck yeah! That was awesome!” She spun around, laughing hearty and loud, “damn I wanna do that again. Hey, Gabe, ya wanna drive next time?”
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Post by Gabriel on Aug 27, 2017 9:06:07 GMT
Gabriel nodded.
"I'm buying a house, actually. In Spirit." And okay, that wasn't very much like a cave filled with water, but they served the same function. For decades the spire had been the closest thing to home Gabriel had in Litharia. He had accumulated enough things over the years that it was beginning to feel like the Daemon Tunnels shouldn't be his only home, though. And he'd always liked luxury, and comfort. Luxury and comfort sounded great right about now, too, because something that definitely wasn't luxurious or even remotely comfortable was being trapped in a truck with Hadjara, with zero control over what was happening, and with her apparently forgetting that he couldn't use any magic to protect himself. He even went so far as to frantically reach for the spark of magic that would mean he could teleport the hell out of here and back to Litharia - yes, he'd be ditching Hadjara, but she could damn well survive here for a couple of days until he could get back - but it was still absent. Damn all the Gods.
Jamming his claws into the upholstery worked, sort of. Vibrations from the truck sent shockwaves through his arms, an extremely unpleasant feeling, but he hung on for grim death because if Hadjara - gleeful beside him - was choosing to smash through perfectly avoidable obstacles now, he dreaded to think how this ride was going to end. Gabriel hissed when they drove through a window and the glass covering the front of the truck shattered, leaving a neat pattern of shallow, thin cuts along the left side of his cheek and jaw, narrowly missing his eye. He didn't have time for any other reaction before the truck slammed into a fountain and came to a stop. A very sudden stop. Too sudden.
If he hadn't had his claws embedded into the truck he figured he'd have flown straight out of the front of the truck. As it was, his left arm was jammed into the door padding, and at just the right angle that when he jerked forward he heard the distinct, crisp snap of breaking bone with jarring clarity. A brief, sharp stab of pain confirmed the injury before fading; thankfully, because he was pretty sure that should have hurt a lot more for any non-Golem. His head smacked against the door frame, too, though his arm slowed him down first. Still, his vision went black briefly before flickering back in technicolour, much too bright and fuzzy at the edges.
For a second, Gabriel just sat there. He could hear Hadjara distantly, shouting and gleeful. It was like hearing her through water though, and he blocked it out to concentrate on himself. Being unable to feel pain put Golem's at risk of sustaining life-threatening injuries and not even realising it, so he ran through his usual mental checklist and determined he was probably concussed and had definitely broken his arm, but everything else was minor. Gabriel gritted his teeth and yanked his claws out of the seat, then used his good hand to more gingerly free the injured one, popping his claws free one by one. He might not feel much pain, but he didn't want to make the injury worse. Then, very slowly, he opened the door and climbed down from the cab. Staggering around to the fountain, Gabriel intended very much to yell at Hadjara, but he only got halfway before he had to press his brow to the cold stone and close his eyes because the room was tilting weirdly.
"Were...were you trying to kill me? Because you've half bloody succeeded."
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Post by Hadjara Astaeldr Er on Aug 28, 2017 9:14:53 GMT
Hadjara almost threw up, she could taste bile in her mouth after a final spin before she collapsed to her knees and coughed a few times. She might have a concussion. Defiantly her chest was badly bruised although her bone plating under her skin kept and ribs from cracking. Who cared though? That had been even more fun that breaking things with magic.
She needed a bigger car.
A much bigger car.
She wagged her tail enthusiastically as she thought about it before she leaned over the side of the fountain and vomited some mixture of blood and the undigested bone from her last meal. Hadjara swirled her tongue around her mouth and coughed out more chunks of gore as she heard the other car door open and heard Gabriel get out.
Hadjara wiped the back of her hand over her mouth and got back to her feet, staggering a little before she turned to smoke and reformed, bracing her guts and brain matter with an internal layer of frost that made faint curls of steam rise from her pale skin.
It didn't register that he was actually upset. Unlike the fun house Hadjara hadn't found this any sort of creepy and had, in fact, found this more fun than just about anything else she had done before and from her point of view the only thing he had to be upset about was that he hadn't gotten to drive. “Ah, c'mon don't be like that. That was a lotta fun! I meaaaaaaa- what's wring with ya arm?” Hadjar's face fell as her gaze locked on the swell of meat and tissue around broken bone. With none of his disorientation she jumped back out of the fountain and caught his shoulder, not considering how cold she was to the touch even as she melted her fingers in order to move them.. “Damn, sorry 'bout that. I can heal it if ya can handle a bit a cold, y'know.”
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Post by Gabriel on Sept 2, 2017 2:37:07 GMT
For a while Gabriel just stood there. The broken old fountain was made of marble or stone, and in the sunless Shadow world was icy cold. Pressing his brow to it helped a little, and as he blinked his vision shifted between distorted and technicolour back to normal but fuzzy. Pretty soon that made him feel sick, though, and hearing Hadjara vomit didn't help, so he closed his eyes and groaned unhappily. When you smacked your head there was nothing for it but to wait until the consequences passed. He'd done it before, no doubt he'd do it again, but he was not happy about the circumstances under which he'd done it this time.
It wasn't even the injuries that bothered him, really. It was the total lack of control. Gabriel so rarely felt out of control these days - not without his explicit consent or due to such an overwhelming kind of power that a true inability to influence the world left him reeling. There was a very big difference, he'd just learned, between playing along with Hadjara in a neon pink Tunnel, or between the explosion of elemental magic, hormones and emotion that could cause him to become the force of out of control destruction. In this situation it was the truck that had wielded the power, and Hadjara by extension as the one directing it, and being robbed of his magic might be uncomfortable all of the time but in that situation it had been nightmarish. Gabriel didn't remember the last time he'd felt such pure, unadulterated fear.
"It's broken. You crashed that thing going Gods only know how fast and I can't use magic. Don't touch it, I can't face the cold right now." He didn't move as he spoke, eyes still shut so he didn't have to deal with the technicolour-fuzzy disco going on with his vision while he waited for the nausea to pass. It was a weird thing, feeling no pain, when you had a minor head injury. His brain appeared to be freaking out and it didn't like the look of his arm much either but with the lack of pain he could have walked off right then and there, if only he wasn't so dizzy.
He didn't have the energy to try not to sound angry, because he was, although there was a definite layer of shock far more prominent than the anger. When truly angry you'd know - Gabriel could be the dangerous, quiet kind of angry or the explosive, destructive kind of angry, but either way it was unmistakable. He practically radiated it. For now it was dampened by the shock but still, there was a warning note to his tone.
"Don't ever ask me to get into anything like that again."
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Post by Hadjara Astaeldr Er on Sept 2, 2017 8:30:26 GMT
Hadjara's tail slid between her legs and coiled nervously around one of her thighs. She worked her fingers together nervously in front of her chest as she opened her mouth then closed it, then opened it again and said, nervously, “w-we was goin' at about eighty four miles a' hour. There was a thing on the dashboard that showed the speed.”
It wasn't like she didn't know it was a rhetorical question but she wasn't sure what else to say and he was unnerving her.
“U-uhm. Okay. I, uh, okay.” She backed up a little and looked around, her eyes darting around wildly. Her vectors were clambering out of the bed of the truck, apparently they had scrambled in when she had started the vehicle up. Nalla clambered to the top of the truck and started cackling, running in circles as the points of her wooden legs made a rat-ta-rat-ta-tat noise against the metal. Shauri was, as usual, silent as she floated slowly after her sibling, ever content to simply watch.
Hadjara wanted Malak.
She missed the weight of his thoughts, his constant whispers to pry and hurt. She missed her familiars too, and their shared senses. Even though she could feel all of them connected she could feel next to nothing from her familiars and at this distance there was a delay in information between her and Malak, and they were living in different moments. Preoccupied with different things rather than one united focus.
“Uh. Guess I'll . . . go . . . check the – I mean secure? Secure the perimeter. Make sure there's no . . . things . . . there. Uh. Yeah.” Hadjara was backing up still, as her thoughts stretched out and felt for her bonds. “I'll leave them vectors j-just let 'em know when ya feel better. It'll – Shauri I mean – understand. I mean well ya heard it talk and uh, they can teleport.” Hadjara laughed nervously. “Anywaycatchyalaterbye.”
She turned to smoke, holding the outline of a daemon girl for a moment before she curled and shot off down a wing of the mall to lurk somewhere she couldn't see or hear Gabriel directly. Namely, the fourth floor of a hotel across the street from the mall. It took only a few seconds to reach it and she curled nervously around before she reformed sitting one one of the too-soft beds with her knees to her chest with her arms wrapped around them. She didn't know what else to do but space seemed like a good idea. Probably. He was mad at her and last time he was mad at her they started arguing and it got nasty.
Better just give him space until he wanted her to come back.
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Post by Gabriel on Sept 6, 2017 8:24:25 GMT
Gabriel could hear, through her increasingly incoherent babbling, that he was making Hadjara nervous. He knew she didn't like it when he was angry, at least not with her, and he was so rarely angry with her. Not really anyway; they sniped and teased all the time but that was different - easy banter, playful and familiar, and she had read it right that he wasn't feeling at all playful now. He was too busy trying not to vomit to worry about her, though, so he didn't try to stop her from going. He was too busy trying not to vomit to even say anything actually. It'd be really nice if the world would stop tilting like that every time he experimentally opened his eyes.
The initial symptoms of a head injury did pass eventually though. Long moments of silence stretched out until Gabriel finally felt like he could turn and sit on the edge of the ruined fountain, back pressed to the statue in the middle that had once jettisoned water into the air. There was a feeling of pressure in his head that for most people would have been a thumping headache, but his vision had corrected and he didn't feel quite so sick. Frowning, the Daemon Lord examined his arm, turning it this way and that and trying to stretch his fingers out. They twitched in protest and he didn't much like how it was starting to swell and turn blotchy purple and red. He'd have loved to heal it himself, he really would have, but fire in the middle of this abandoned shopping complex had to be a bad idea and anyway, it did better at flesh wounds than broken bones. With a sigh, he got up and wandered over to the truck where Hadjara's vectors were...playing? Gods only knew, but whatever. Hadjara had said to send Shauri.
"Hey. Can you go get Jara back? I changed my mind, I need her to fix my arm. You can tell her I promised not to yell at her." He was calmer than he had been when his heart was threatening to hammer through his chest and he was caught in an unexpected existential crisis around his total inability to accept a loss of control, anyway. And he wasn't mad, not really properly mad. He'd had worse injuries, and though he'd meant what he'd said - nothing on this planet or any other could convince him to get in a vehicle with her again - he knew she hadn't meant to do that to him. She was just completely mental, and that was nothing new.
"You can tell her she's a shit driver too, if you want."
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Post by Hadjara Astaeldr Er on Sept 7, 2017 6:49:40 GMT
Hadjara walked lightly high on her toes, soundless as she walked over the rough shag carpet before she sat herself delicately in an armchair covered in itchy fabric. She propped up her chin on her knee and closed her eyes. She breathed in slowly before she finally asked, Malak? Are you still eating?
No. But I still won't make you feel better.
I don't need you to make me feel better. I just don't like being alone.
She felt his thoughts coiling around her, a heavy presence that enveloped her like a warm embrace. She could almost feel arms wrap around her shoulders and a soothing hand running through her wild curls and Hadjara wrapped her own mind closer, letting the reality around her fade out until it felt like she was with him. Hundreds of miles over the still sea of jet black jelly with frozen creatures embedded in the depths. A massive creature trudged over the water, far below. Something skeletal that resembled some mix of an elephant and a serpent with a tremendous gem stuck in the back of its head, one that gleamed so bright they could see it even as high in the air as they were.
She sighed as she returned to herself, back into a body curled on a worn out armchair without any real memory of how much time had passed.
Hadjara let their minds slide out of alignment again, though. The brief unison had soothed her and she felt stronger for it.
The daemon raised her head as there was a soft rustle overhead and a vector was there, floating breezily and spinning slowly. She had teleported the moment Gabriel had finished speaking to her and she hummed thoughtfully. “Thing . . . says return. Not . . . mad? But can't drive? Spoke . . . fast. I didn't . . . understand . . . everything.”
”Thanks,” Hadjara said. She rose from her perch as smoke and made her way back to the mall, a little slower and more timid than she had left, and it took almost a full two minutes before she crept in like a slow rolling fog.
Nalla had grown bored as soon as its sibling had left and was now skittering in wide circles around Gabriel on two legs while all her other legs raised into the air to wave around frantically. She was scolding Gabriel in her rough, scratchy voice with words he wouldn't understand, occasionally pausing her running to jump up and down a few times. As soon as Shauri hummed, however, Nalla lost all interest in him and took off at a high speed to hassle her sister instead. Hadjara reformed a few feet away from Gabriel, ignoring the vectors entirely as she put her hands on her hips and smiled nervously. “Uh, feelin' better? Wanna get clothes?”
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Post by Gabriel on Sept 7, 2017 8:59:24 GMT
Gabriel was watching the vector, the one that had remained behind, with an expression that was mostly blank but for a hint of exasperation. He couldn't understand what it was trying to communicate and, not really understanding what it actually was, wasn't sure if he should care or not. He kept curling and uncurling the fingers of his injured arm, unsettled by the growing tingling sensation and the difficulty of making a proper fist. It had been a long time since he'd broken a bone - flesh wounds, those were common, but it took force to injure a Daemon like this, and it took unusual circumstances for anyone to get close enough to Gabriel in the first place.
Too bad his instincts, experience and magic couldn't factor in a runaway truck, a friend with zero respect for self-preservation, and a world he wasn't allowed to use magic in.
"Do I scare you?" Once Gabriel had re-calibrated he had realised Hadjara taking off was...unexpected. He wasn't sure he understood the reaction and he was curious. Perhaps even repentant, which was a funny place to find himself in given he was the one sitting alone in a ruined building with a broken arm. He wasn't angry now though - he was watching her as she reformed, head tilted slightly to the side in query, something unfathomable in his eyes. He'd had time to calm down and because he didn't feel much in the way of pain, it was easy to brush of the injuries. He was still working on brushing off the deep, bottomless discomfort that being trapped in the truck had inspired, but at least he was doing so internally now.
"Yeah, we can go get clothes. First, though, I changed my mind about my arm. It's starting to tingle and I think that's probably better sorted out. Fix it?"
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Post by Hadjara Astaeldr Er on Sept 7, 2017 10:09:26 GMT
Hadjara paused in her smoke form, curling and uncurling a little in the air before she finally spoke. Without a mouth and her voice seemed to come from everywhere all at once, and while her voice sounded like a normal speaking voice the volume changed like someone was turning it up and down at random. “I ain't scared 'a ya,” she said, “I'm more scared I'm gonna make ya mad an' ya won't like me no more. Ain't nuthin else ya got for me ta be scared of, Gabriel.”
After he spoke without any apparent anger, however, most of her tension dissolved and she approached freely. She caught his elbow and pulled his arm to her eye-level for a moment. “This ain't gonna be pleasant,” Hadjara said sheepishly, “This would hurt a normal non-fire person too probably so, uh, count of three, okay?” She didn't look at his face as she put a hand on either side of the break and took a deep breath.
“One.”
Her hands grew very cold very quickly, even this close to the heat of his body.
“Two.”
Hadjara had been lying when she said the count of three. Ice shot into his arm, lancing through his bones and seeping into the marrow as a thick layer of ice fused the bone shards together. It only lasted a minute but the cold of her body was enough to leave hand prints of frost over his stone skin.
Hadjara withdrew her hands quickly as soon as she was done, and skittered back a few steps so her ice cold body wouldn't impede his heating up at all. Or so she wouldn't be burned if he couldn't resist bursting into flames.
“That should be better right?” She asked. “Uuuhhh, an' if ya don't mind could ya hug me 'cause I'm real cold now.” She opened her arms and made a grabbing motion in his direction.
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Post by Gabriel on Sept 8, 2017 7:16:43 GMT
Gabriel watched her smoke form for a long moment, silent while he tried to decide how to feel about that. And how to respond. It felt...delicate, somehow, like the air in the room might shatter like glass if he said the wrong thing.
"Even if I get mad at you, I'll always forgive you. I can't think of anything you could do to make me not like you any more." Never say never and all that, but for now at least the statement was true. And he was relieved when she reformed and looked more relaxed - quite apart from the fact that he didn't want to be fighting with Hadjara, he also didn't want her to ditch him again. Not while his teleportation abilities were constrained.
He was still, very still, when Hadjara took his arm and gave him fair warning of what was coming. Gabriel didn't like ice, he didn't like cold, and he really didn't like pain. The irony was that having a dulled ability to feel it most of the time meant that when real pain did sneak through his genetic defenses, he didn't have a very high tolerance for it. Still, he was a Daemon, and most Daemons could mask their true feelings nearly perfectly. Gabriel closed his eyes and a muscle ticked in his jaw when the ice speared through skin and wrapped around bone, but this was his only outward reaction. Inwardly he was screaming - he'd always been warmer than average and when his fire magic had kicked in that part of his biology had developed even more strongly. Now, when he'd been using the magic a lot, his very blood could boil and smoke when it touched the outside air. The cold was torture, genuine and terrible torture, lancing through his arm but spreading freezing tentacles deeper, through bone and blood and spirit.
His breath steamed in the air when he breathed out the first time, realising he'd been holding it throughout.
But then he could move his fingers and the pain faded. Examining his arm, he turned it over and watched the bruises fade to nothing, back to flawless moonstone. His body temperature faltered but then recovered, and the sheen of ice left on his arm melted and dripped as water off his fingers. He even resisted the urge to flame, to burn, to seek out and then radiate back heat in the form of fire - his control was getting better. Once, he wouldn't have been able to stop the fire retaliating. Smiling - the pain fading came with its own pleasant rush of endorphins - he pulled Hadjara close as requested, then pulled a face.
"Ugh, you're freezing. Like hugging an iceberg. Are the clothes here, then? In this building?"
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Post by Hadjara Astaeldr Er on Sept 8, 2017 12:21:49 GMT
The smoke of Hadjara's form paused before it sparked with bursts of green and silver. That wasn't true. She knew that wasn't true. Their argument in the Dream Land, and god's she couldn't even remember what that had been about, had been vicious. Not violent, certainly. Hadjara had never been afraid of him hurting her to any capacity. But there was a deeper strain between them after that argument. A noticeable shift in how they interacted that had taken a very long time to fade away but it had proved one very important thing to her.
Everything and everyone had a breaking point, and if she wasn't careful she would reach it.
“Well . . . if ya say so,” she said at last.
She was genuinely surprised when he didn't burst into flames after she froze him. Her tail stuck up straight before she let it fall again and she tilted her head. “Woah, ya really do heat up faster now, huh? Y'know while ya can't use magic ta make it settin' fires is still fine.” Although he would have a hard time of it with his arms around her.
Hadjara purred loudly and wrapped her arms around him and buried her cold face against his neck. Without giving him the chance to pull away she locked her legs around his waist, threw her wings around him into an even tighter hug, and she wrapped her tail tight around his leg.
“Mmmn, ya feel amazin',” she said. She was already at a reasonable temperature but she had no intention to just let him go. “This place is like a marketplace street. Each a' these rooms used ta be it's own store an' they all sold different stuff. Few of them had clothes, actually, but I only found one I think ya gonna like. Unless ya wanna wear assless chaps or skirts, which I'd like ta tear ya outta if I'm bein' honest.” She nuzzled her cheek against his neck and ran a hand through his hair. "Down the hall on ya left, eight doors down ta the the store with the twitchy mannequins in the windows. I ain't gonna let go, though, ya feel too nice.”
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Post by Gabriel on Sept 9, 2017 6:15:17 GMT
He knew what she was thinking of. He just knew, because it was the only time they'd really fought and sometimes he still thought of it, too. Their anger had ripped the world within their line of sight apart, and Gabriel couldn't remember how they'd gone from friends to fighting like that, and back again. And yet, they had. Eventually that too had passed.
"I forgave you then. And you forgave me. It was bad, but we came out the other side." His tone was gentle, and he spoke quietly but with an unusual kind of gravity. To Gabriel, this was simply a incontrovertible part of who Daemons were. Their chaos fractured the world around them, and they could destroy each other in their intensity. The well of experience, of emotion, of reaction, ran unusually deep for them and was brittle as glass. Hadjara had not been a Daemon long, though, and the way Daemons could clash - even when they loved each other, maybe especially when they did - seemed to distress her. Maybe her reaction was the right one.
She warmed up quickly after she curled around him, though for a long time her skin still felt cool from his perspective. He wrapped his arms around her though she was so coiled around him he probably could have just let go entirely and she'd have hung off him, koala-like.
"The more the magic develops, the stronger it gets, the more my elemental biology kicks in. My blood runs so hot it smokes, now. I think that's why I warm up faster." Katerina had been the same, only more extreme - she had charred the ground with every step. He had vivid memories of his mother's tears evaporating from her eyes as steam before they could even fall...Katerina had cried a lot when she was around.
"I don't want to wear assless chaps or skirts. You can tear me out of regular clothing any time you like, though." Since it seemed like Hadjara had no intention of releasing him Gabriel simply carried her as he followed her instructions. The place she'd picked was obvious even from a distance - there were humanoid-shaped things behind glass, dressed in black clothing, which shuddered and twitched as if they were puppets on invisible strings. Gabriel trailed to a stop just inside, glancing around. The store was dark, any lighting long gone, and a thin layer of dust coated everything, but the structure was intact and nothing was too damaged. A lot of the clothing was dark coloured, which he figured was why Hadjara thought he would like it. It was a reasonable enough conclusion to draw based on what he usually wore.
"This will work," he grinned, ignoring the nearest mannequin as it spun around drunkenly and raised a jointed arm to point accusingly at them.
"You're gonna have to let go now, though. Are you going to find something to wear too?"
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Post by Hadjara Astaeldr Er on Sept 11, 2017 9:26:08 GMT
“Hm, that's fair,” Hadjara said, “the longer I'm attached the more bonded I am with me 'n my familiars. At the start I could only sorta feel them, but now I can use their senses whenever I want.” She cocked her head a little and her hair slid off her shoulder. “My ice magic is stronger too, mostly 'cause now that I got it I favor it, an' I ain't stopped usin' my super strength in near 'bouts three years straight. Seems like the more I use any particular power the stronger it gets. Like a muscle.” She set her chin down more firmly on his shoulder and closed her eyes so she could just enjoy the way he felt.
She grumbled and squirmed a little in protest when he started moving around and she scooted closer into him. “Promise ya'd look good in it,” Hadjara said, “ya make everything look good, it ain't fair. I should just find ya one a those gaudy tropic-lookin' button ups an' khaki shorts but ya'd make that look good too. 'S stupid.” She squeezed the tops of his hips between her thighs before she ran a quick hand through his hair then kissed the side of his neck.
When Gabriel stopped Hadjara raised her head and turned to look over her shoulder at the store. “Yeah . . . that's it. Looks like ya style, huh?” She slid her arms off him and landed heavily on her feet with a small 'ooph'. Hadjara squirmed a little before the clothes she was wearing just shlopped off to the floor. “I'm plainin' ta find somethin' ta fit me. Or, y'know, I can walk around naked. Seein' how ya like the way this looks.” Hadjara spread her arms wide and spun around before she walked further into the store, laughing loud and bright.
“Lemme know if ya need help getting anything on!” Hadjara called as she ducked around a clothes rack, swiping a small red band off a shelf and trying up her hair. She hadn't cut it in a while, and it was long enough to pull easily into a mess of ink-black curls before she let it fall over one shoulder. She did have an idea of what she wanted, and she drifted quickly around the store, rapidly finding slick looking sheer stockings and a lace garter belt and equally lacy underwear that didn't match the stockings but they were a shade of emerald green she liked, even if they were a few degrees off from her eyes. Hadjara found a white button down to throw over the cobbled together lingerie to hide it completely before she ducked around another rack of clothes to find him, assuming he hadn't followed her to the isles of very small feminine clothing. “Look at them creepy dolls if ya wanna know how these suits are meant ta go together.”
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