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Got Em
Jul 19, 2017 6:38:14 GMT
Post by Raven on Jul 19, 2017 6:38:14 GMT
It was normal for Raven to have frequent mood changes. Some days when she was bored, she’d mess with travelers by shooting crossbow bolts at them or swooping down and pulling their pants down. Other days she just liked to play in the open sky, dancing in the air by somersaulting and doing acrobatic stunts while flying. Even with a century of life, Raven was still the equivalent of a young teen and it showed with her playful nature.
She was quite beautiful with her elegance in grace in the air, the bright shine of the full moon spotlighting her as she twisted and twirled in the air. Her platinum blonde hair flipped over from side to side, hanging free in the slight breeze and fair skin acting as a beacon in the moon’s spotlight. Even her wings were mesmerizing as they stretched to their full, massive length, flight feathers curling to specific angles to accommodate when she glided or flapped. The night was so quiet in the beautiful, flat meadow within the Tangle that the sound of her wings echoed through the area.
Raven was wearing simple, but loose-fit clothing. Her shirt was a pale orange and reached just a little past her waist. It was a little big and fell off one of her shoulders. The skirt she wore was long and flow-y, pale and white just like her skin. There was so much fabric on it that the most of her skin that was exposed as she flew were her ankles and calves. On the ground was where she left her two, small single-handed crossbows and their bolts. They only got in the way when she was dancing in the sky.
Within the center of the meadow was a small, but deep lake. Raven was high up directly above the lake, hovering in the air, twirling in a whirlwind of feathers and grace. She stopped mid-twirl and shot her wings out as far as they could go, as well as her arms and hovered again for just a moment before propelling herself down towards the lake at an incredible speed, wings flat against her back.
Just as it seemed like she would hit the water, Raven let out her wings at an angle and slowed her speed, raising herself upward and then shooting her wings out as she glided across the lake. She leaned over, letting the tips of her stripped wings dip into the water. It was such a still and bright night that Raven could see a near perfet reflection of herself in the water. A vain girl, she admired herself and missed the sight of the three dark figures sneaking in the night.
As she took a flap to raise into the air, she heard a shout and looked up. There, three human men pointed at her and there wasn’t enough time for her to act. One of them summoned a lot of wind and formed a mini twister, sucking the avian daemon towards it. Raven banked to get away, but she was too close and felt herself being sucked in. In moments, there was so much air that ironically, Raven felt she could not breath as she was tossed around in the twister. As soon as she was completely engulfed, the twister disappeared and she fell to the ground, flipping onto her front so that her wings were not damaged from the fall.
Wind taken from her lungs, she struggled for air on the ground, and soon enough she felt a heavy net draped over her, the men laughing at her struggles and constant yells of, “Shit, shit, shit!”
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Got Em
Jul 23, 2017 2:30:28 GMT
Post by Gabriel on Jul 23, 2017 2:30:28 GMT
Gabriel did not get involved in other people's problems without good reason. He was not a knight in shining armour by any stretch of the imagination, he didn't feel the need to charge into things and save the day. If people got themselves in trouble and wanted his help, there'd better either be a personal connection or something in it for him. He would not have bothered the three men in their hunting under most circumstances - this was life in Litharia. They could be catching a Shifter to sell into slavery, a Fae to harvest for magic for artifacts. These things he would not have interfered with. But when he realised they had captured a Daemon, and one barely out of childhood at that, he sighed.
He emerged from the trees like a ghost, silent as he walked, eerie in the way he appeared suddenly out of the gloom. The trees, pressing close, meant he was only metres away from them when he became visible - not there one moment, behind them with his arms folded the next. One of the men jumped, startled, upon catching a glimpse of this unexpected visitor out of the corner of his eye. This drew the attention of the other two and they whirled to face him, though they did not forget their quarry. Gabriel glanced at her once but she was definitely a Daemon, and young enough to still be thought of as adolescent. Bright teal eyes flickered up to the men's faces then, assessing them one by one. He appeared relaxed, sort of, but there was a crackling tension in the air that belied his real feelings on the matter. Which was, in a word, annoyed.
"What do you think you're doing?" His voice was silky, misleadingly polite. The men glanced at each other.
"That ain't none of your damn business. We caught her, she's ours." Gabriel arched a brow, glancing around in a pantomime display of confusion.
"Oh? Is there some law in this forest that states that, when hunters catch someone, it's there's and no-one is to intervene to stop them?"
"What? No, but-"
"Hmm. Is there some legal reason I can't just walk up to you and make you let her go if I want to?"
"Legal? Look, mate, it ain't got nothing to do with the law or-"
"Is there someone enforcing this law of yours? In the City you might call for the Hounds, but it seems like out here it's just the three of you. It's kind of like we're in the wilderness." He smiled. He would have looked almost friendly, if it wasn't for the fangs snaking over his chin.
"You can't make us let her go, you prick-"
"Can't I? Are you telling me there's a reason I can't rip your liver out and feed it to you?" His voice wasn't polite then. There was a distinct edge of anger there now. Gabriel had no connection to this young Daemon, but he was pissed off for an entirely unfair reason - these idiots should have turned and run the second they saw him coming. And okay, he didn't make it that obvious that they were in mortal danger, but Gabriel was not a patient man. If they were too stupid to foresee the danger, it was just natural selection at work, to remove their dumb arse genes from a, frankly, quite dumb enough gene pool.
He didn't even bother moving to kill the first one. Experimentally, he glanced at the man on the left - the one with his boot on the edge of the net - and was rewarded with a gratifying snapping sound that echoed through the forest like a snapping branch. He hadn't tried that before, snapping someone's neck telepathically, but it worked beautifully and the man slumped to the ground, dead before he hit it. Gabriel's smile at the remaining two was predatory, bloodthirsty.
"Still want to try and take her?"
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Got Em
Jul 23, 2017 2:57:30 GMT
Post by Raven on Jul 23, 2017 2:57:30 GMT
Raven was so fucked.
She was struggling the whole time in the net, trying to get out without damaging her feathers or wings. They were everything to her. Every time she shuffled around, it felt like she was only getting more and more tangled. How annoying. Anytime she made some progress, she could feel one of her feathers getting caught. Ugh. Raven heard the surprise from the man who saw the newcomer, but the small daemon on the ground could not . She was too busy eating dirty to really see what was going on.
There was bickering, but that didn’t matter. There was not a single part of her body that cared about what they were talking about, so she ignored them and continued to struggle to find a way out. There was a sickening ‘snap’ though that made her pause, and she tried to take a second to look through the mess of knots and rope to see a body on the ground, one of the three men that had captured her specifically.
Panic set in as she increasingly became stressed at her chances of escape. The pupils of her different colored eyes constricted and shrunk in size, a fear factor very common to birds that applied to the daemon girl herself. Raven had no idea if this person that was causing the stir with the hunters was on her side or their own side, and she really did not want to find out. Breath increasingly growing rapid as her heart pounded against her chest, she started to show signs of her natural tendency to panic was struggling a lot in the net now, released a distinct sound that sounded more bird like than daemon-like.
At some point there was blood, and she could feel it splash onto her. Common sense told her it was one of the men’s, not hers, but her mind did not always think along the way of common sense. It sounded like one of the two remaining people was running away, but Raven didn’t care. Her mind made her question; Was it her blood? Was she dying? Did someone manage to hit her, and she didn’t notice? Wait….wouldn’t she notice if someone hurt her?!
Finally, she managed to extend an arm out that was not trapped in rope. Frantically, Raven struggled to pull the rest of herself out. Next a leg. Yes! Then her head, a wing. And just as she was ready to bolt into the sky and far away, there was the fearsome feeling of a tug on her back muscles. She stopped and looked to see that her wing was uninjured, but hopelessly tangled in the net. Still, without even bothering to look at who or what was around her, she wasted no time to try and start working on fixing the issue, but it was hard with just her set of hands.
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Got Em
Jul 23, 2017 5:28:28 GMT
Post by Gabriel on Jul 23, 2017 5:28:28 GMT
At first he was just an ephemeral vision in the trees, appearing from nowhere to threaten their plans with silken words. Unsettling, vision-like, but an irritation more than anything. Then he was a Daemon, silver-skinned and eyes flashing in the moonlight, who could break one of their necks without seeming to lift a finger. They were scared after that, the acrid stench of fear sweat a familiar one to Gabriel. Still, at least the first one died quickly - almost instantly, in fact. The Gabriel that the remaining two came to know in their final minutes was a nightmare, coolly self-assured as he eviscerated the second one, leaving him slumped on his knees sobbing and screaming and trying to push his intestines back into his body. The final man, the one who'd done most of the talking, tried to run. Gabriel dragged him back, telekinetic ropes twisting around flailing limbs, and when he ripped out his throat his hands were on fire, melting flesh before his claws could even find home. In the end the man's windpipe and vocal chords were an ashen goop, too destroyed to hold, and Gabriel left him to suffocate and he inhaled smoke and black blood through the ragged hole in his throat, eyes rolling to the back of his head from the agony of burning.
"Oh for Gods sake, stop struggling," were the first words he spoke not intended to put the fear of mortality into someone. He stood over the girl now, fire still rippling over clawed hands and forearms, searing away the blood and burnt flesh clinging to his skin.
"I go to all this trouble to fish you out of your sticky situation, and I don't want all that effort to go to waste." Okay, effort was overstating it a bit. It wasn't as though Gabriel hadn't enjoyed himself. His magic was ever-growing, developing and changing, and even the oldest of his powers were by nature creative, held endless potential. It wasn't as though toying with new ways to kill people was that much of a chore. He'd put it to more big-picture use one day, no doubt - the world was still at war, and honing your skills an ever-important task. And he had an obvious and admitted sadistic streak. So really it had been fun, a flexing of the muscles that left him invigorated and blood-splattered, all of this a very Daemon way to pass the time quite enjoyably. He might have scared the kid, though, so he let the fire flicker out.
Moving slowly, aiming not to startle her, Gabriel crouched next to the net and began helping to untangle it. He knew about wings, more than most who didn't have them - from a distance this girl even reminded him of Calandra. Blonde, avian, her wings a different colour but similar in size. Up close though the differences were obvious; she was young, much younger than Calandra, and lacked Cal's physical presence. A child, or thereabouts, and an anxious, frightened one at that.
"What did they want you for? Do you know?" Conversation to distract, to soothe. His tone was casual, light, and he didn't make eye contact, merely worked on the net, fraying rope with sharpened claws.
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Got Em
Jul 23, 2017 5:57:53 GMT
Post by Raven on Jul 23, 2017 5:57:53 GMT
"Oh for Gods sake, stop struggling,"
Raven froze in place like someone had just used ice magic on her, her heart pounding out of her chest. She was as still as one could be, afraid that if she moved, it would make the new guy lash out at her. She gulped, barely keeping her anxiety together. Finally she took a chance to actually look at who her attacker was. Most daemons were able to keep their emotions in check, but Raven’s were constantly all over the place thanks to her bird influence. She was pale faced, more so than normal, and obviously scared as her pupils constricted, then dilated, then constricted again.
The man she saw though, relieved so much pent-up stress that a massive sigh of relief came out from her lungs. It felt like she had been holding her breath, and she studied the guy for a second. The reason why she calmed down was due to his obvious appearance as a daemon. He had that bright skin and shinning eyes that so many feared as well as claws that he was using to work at the rope. This didn’t mean she was in the clear; Daemons were not strangers to killing one another, but it looked like he was trying to help. And he also looked…old. Great.
She scoffed at his question, pouting and wondering what the point of it was. “Bloody hell, did it LOOK like I had any time to figure that out?” Raven was full of attitude and sass, but she was not ungrateful, as awkward as it was to let the stranger help her with her tied up wing.
“Er…sorry. They caught me off guard. I was totally snookered. Don’t got a clue why the wanted me.” Oh gods. What if they wanted her wings?! And wait, why was she apologizing?! Raven did nothing wrong. As he continued to finish up working on the ropes, Raven looked up to the brilliant sky and smiled, finding comfort in something so simple, yet complex. “Why did you even help me, old man?” It was a fair question, and she was curious. It wasn’t like anyone but the woman that turned her had helped her before.
To add to her comfort, she pulled her free wing forward and studied it for a moment, checking for any damage. Her primaries were a little roughed up, but otherwise not damaged. There were stress bars lining the outermost ones as well, but they’d go away with a good dust bath. As for the other feathers, everything looked great besides the few down feathers that had been ripped and fell onto the ground.
The underside of her wins were different from the backside, which was a look she was quite obsessed with and vain about. Without speaking, she just admired their stripped beauty. The patagial area of her wings was white, while the rest was black and her primaries striped with white. For a second, she even forgot that the other daemon guy was there. Oops.
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Got Em
Jul 23, 2017 7:01:44 GMT
Post by Gabriel on Jul 23, 2017 7:01:44 GMT
"Not a smart reaction to have to a stranger you just saw kill three men." Gabriel didn't stop working on the net, but he glanced over the at avian Daemon when she suddenly let out a sigh and appeared to relax. Yes, he was helping her, but for all she knew he had his own nefarious reasons for that. Her youth was obvious in that naivety and he shook his head slightly, rocking back on his heels when the tangled rope suddenly slackened and slid to the ground.
It wasn't surprising that she didn't know why the men wanted her, but Gabriel was curious. Losing interest in the girl as she checked her wing for damage Gabriel stood and wandered over to the bodies of the men, peering down at their faces with clinical detachment. Broken neck was a goner, as was burnt wind pipe, but guy trying to keep his bowel in place was staring into space with glassy eyes, tears dribbling down his cheeks. His hands were pressed to his abdomen and blood was slowly seeping out around a mass of red and pink flesh. Exposed to the air, his guts were starting to swell and would turn necrotic in a matter of hours, though he'd probably bleed to death before then. Right now, however, he was alive.
"You could always ask this one." Gabriel nudged the man with his toe, and frowned at the low moan that bubbled out of his lips. Whether the girl wanted to know why she was being hunted was her business, though. Personally Gabriel thought it would be the height of stupidity not to find out, but he wasn't about to hold an interrogation on her behalf.
"Old man? Really?" Turning back to the other Daemon, Gabriel folded his arms and glared at her. Only to find her absorbed in admiring her own wing - utterly entranced by it actually. Gabriel stared for a moment before rolling his eyes.
"If you can tear your attention away from your own looks for half a second, so I can wrap up here and get on with my life, I intervened because you're a Daemon and they are not. I happened to be here, and I happen to value Daemon lives higher than most. So, do me a favour - stay alive, grow up, learn some skills that make you a little more useful than you currently are - which is not at all, if you were wondering - and maybe you'll be of use to me someday." And with that Gabriel turned on his heel and strode off into the forest.
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Got Em
Jul 23, 2017 7:44:25 GMT
Post by Raven on Jul 23, 2017 7:44:25 GMT
Raven wasn’t broken from her trance until the man spoke up again, this time in an obviously annoyed voice. This was exactly why she called him an old man, because all he could do was nag her, sheesh. She pouted as he lectured, but wasn’t entirely listening. When he stormed off though, she fumbled around to gain her bearings. She needed her mini-crossbows and bolts! Luckily enough, she had been caught close to where she left them, just a few feet away, and she quickly grabbed them and ran after the mysterious old daemon guy.
She managed to holster one of the crossbows around her waist, but she kept the other in her hand and quickly loaded it. For a moment, she looked down at the gutted, dying man. Raven had no interest in knowing why they wanted her, and she pointed her crossbow down at him. She was going to kill him, but her brief feeling of pity was soon replaced with a shrug and she skipped away, being careful as to unload her crossbow before sprinting after the man.
The daemon man had made a little bit of space between where she had been and where he was the, but she quick and soon caught up to him, her wings flat against her back. They were massive to compensate for her body weight, too big to fully spread within the close quartered wood. Raven struggled to clip on the second crossbow to her waist, but she was working on keeping up with her “savior”.
“My gods, I didn’t realize you wore panties, because they sure seem to be in a bunch.” Raven wasn’t being hostile, she was just being….her. All giddy and careless, she skipped around the man, studying him. “And I’ll have you know, old man, that I am actually a really good shot. So don’t be an arse.” Again her vanity for herself showed, but Raven was oblivious to it.
There was confusion for a moment as she played back his words. Raven walked in front of him, but backwards so that she was facing him, completely not watching where she was going. Her head cocked to the side, long hair falling all over one shoulder, and she crossed her arms. “Wait. What did you mean ‘maybe you’ll be of some use to me someday’? I’m not a damned slave! I thought most daemons didn’t care for slaves.” She was clueless, running it over and over through her head on what he could of meant.
Something brushed against her wings unexpectedly and she jumped, turning around so quick in front of the man just to see that it was a long, low hanging branch with lots of leaves that touched her. Oops. Her face turned red with embarrassment, but even so she continued to pester the daemon.
“Erm, I’m sorry for being snappy though, old daemon man. It’s just kind of an instant reaction. Thanks for saving me.” She shrugged, but meant her apology. “Wait okay. Do you have a name? Because I’m getting bored of calling you old man. I guess I could call you Mr. ‘stick up my ass’, but I have a feeling you wouldn’t like that.” Again, she was joking, but with Raven it could be hard to tell. She stopped walking and stuck out her hand to offer it to shake, a big grin spread across her face. “I’m Raven!”
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Got Em
Jul 27, 2017 1:53:34 GMT
Post by Gabriel on Jul 27, 2017 1:53:34 GMT
The Tangled Woods were impossibly dark at night, the trees pressed too close together for much of the moon and starlight above to ever filter through. A Daemon needed only a little, though, to see, and Gabriel covered the ground quickly - unhurried but efficient. Animals would converge on the bodies he'd left behind soon enough, and there was no reason to linger and get into more fights. He managed to put some distance between him and the clearing in only a few minutes and, as such, was surprised when he was suddenly rejoined by the girl. Trailing to a stop, Gabriel stared at her incredulously.
"What are you doing?"
By which he meant, why was she following him? Gabriel scowled - what was it they said about no good deed going unpunished?
"You're following me. You're following me, when three men just trapped you in a net and you have no idea why. One of them is drooling and snivelling in the clearing back there, just begging to be forced into telling you why. And you're following me?" Gabriel folded his arms, eyeing the teenager irritably. Actually, judging by the sounds drifting through the trees, she was already too late. The woods were full of predators, and there had been blood and the scent of charred meat hanging over that clearing for long enough to draw them in. With all the fresh, exposed flesh, they'd probably have gone for disembowelled dude first. Gabriel was willing to bet he wasn't alive any more.
"You're not a damned slave yet. Possibly thanks to me. How would you know though? Did those idiots want a trophy? To sell you? To pin those pretty little wings on a cork board in their office? How do you know there aren't more of them coming for you? Because instead of asking, you're here." Honestly, it was a goddamn miracle Daemons ever survived into adulthood. Had he been this dense as an adolescent? Probably, so thank the Gods he was past it.
Gabriel's eyes flickered down to the hand she stuck out, offering to shake, and the look he gave her in response was one of such withering disdain that some might have died of embarrassment on the spot, though he didn't think Raven was one of them. It wasn't that he disliked the girl, per se - he simply had no patience for the foibles of youth, and she was proving herself frustratingly careless. The cheek wasn't endearing her to him either, when paired with entirely unfounded overconfidence. A deep breath, through his nose, allowed Gabriel to retain a measure of calm when he finally did speak again.
"Gabriel. Daemon Lord. You're welcome. Are you going to keep following me?"
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Got Em
Jul 27, 2017 5:05:06 GMT
Post by Raven on Jul 27, 2017 5:05:06 GMT
Raven had no idea what exactly seemed to be annoying the guy so much. When he stopped moving, so did she as she shrugged her shoulders. “I mean you just…saved my life and suddenly stomped away all grumpy and pantie-bunched. So I was just checkin’ to see why you’re having a bad day!” She pondered over what she said and supposed it wasn’t the entire truth. “That and, well….I don’t get to see too many people. And I wanted to thank you.” There was a hint of sadness to her voice. Over the course of many years, she’d been very lonely ever since she’d lost her human family, especially when they all grew up and basically forgot about her. But it’d been decades since they died, so Raven actually that sad about it. Plus she just enjoyed being a daemon way more than human.
Wearily, she watched the area around them, cautious of predators. The Tangle was a very dangerous place, and she liked to frequent it a lot. The trees were too close together for her to fly away, should anything happen, but they weren’t so close as to trigger her fear of closed spaces. Even so, she was constantly breaking eye contact from the random guy, making sure nothing was sneaking up on her.
Again, why was he so irritated? Ugh, old people. Mimicking him, Raven crossed her arms as well and tried mimicking his same expression as if to entertain herself. When he was finally done ranting she grinned. Maybe she really should keep calling him old man, Raven noted to herself.
Not wanting to just stand in one place in the middle of a very hostile wood, she starting walking backward again, but more carefully this time so that she would not jump at the slightest brush of her wing. Almost like she didn’t hear anything else but the compliment about her wings, Raven’s grinned grew. “OH! You think my wings are pretty? I do too….” Vanity and narcissism at its finest, one could point out the fault to her and she wouldn’t think twice of it.
“Uhhhh, I mean. I thought about asking. But then he just looked like a daft cow, lyin’ on the ground grabbing his guts and all that. So I just left him to rot.” Giddy though she might have seemed, Raven was still a daemon at heart, and a rather merciless one at that. Violence hardly bothered her, so it was not past her to just let someone suffer, especially after tryin to harm her. “Maybe the animals will eat him alive? Bugger deserves it. Never done nothing to him, or ever seen him.”
The blatant disregard for her handshake didn’t bother Raven and she shrugged it off. Maybe the guy thought he was too good for her to shake her hand back? Under her breath she muttered, “Asshole.” Did it really bother her that much though? No.She found herself catching her breath at him claiming a title, however.
What? How? Huh?! WHOA! Raven’s wings extended just a bit, as if she were going to fly or jump up from shock or amazement, but instead she folded them back in and finally turned around, no longer walking directly in front of the man that called himself Gabriel. Now she was walking next to him, her expression one of awe and admiration.
“NO YOU’RE TOTALLY LYING,” she exclaimed, loudly and practically skipping with each step. “That’s really cool. Wait wait. WAIT. So??? You’re like, the head honcho then, yeah??” Raven was so confused! Was there a protocol to meeting the daemon lord? The woman who turned her had taught her about daemon positions in politics, but meeting someone in that position was different. As a human, she would have had to bow and basically apologize for letting her “insignificant being” get in the way of royalty. But daemons were different….what the hell was she supposed to do? “Bloody hell, I had no…I..uh. THANK YOU?!?!” That was all she could muster up, really. It was all so confusing to her.
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Got Em
Jul 31, 2017 9:15:58 GMT
Post by Gabriel on Jul 31, 2017 9:15:58 GMT
Gabriel blinked.
"You think this is grumpy? If I'm short with you, it's because stupidity annoys me. Other than that my day is going just fine." In fact if anything it was going quite well, now he'd flexed a few magical and physical muscles and indulged in a spot of light murder. He didn't seek out violence but, Daemon through and through, he was rarely sorry when the opportunity found him. It was true though that he sounded sharp and condescending when he spoke to her, though in between being explosively impatient his mood was unremarkable. She had a lot to learn about reading people, especially around her effect on them, though admittedly Gabriel was so unpredictable he'd give far more experienced people whiplash when they tried.
She was twitchy. Like a mouse. Gabriel eyed the girl for a moment, assessing and cataloging. Unlike her he was an excellent read of people, and her uneasiness wasn't hard to pick. It couldn't be him she was reacting to so this baffled him somewhat - he'd never read the Tangle as a threatening place so this didn't even occur to him.
"He is not the point. You're not even a little curious as to why they were hunting you? If someone came after me like that I'd make them talk, then take revenge. You're thinking too short term." Apparently his disdain, his proclivity for snapping at people when he was irritated, had had zero impact on the other Daemon. So he tried a more measured tone, an appeal to curiosity. Unlike their innate tendency towards violence, though, curiosity was not a universal Daemon trait. Gabriel wondered if he was the odd one here, but if he was then it had helped him survive nearly five hundred years. It had to be worth something.
If anything, the awe and exclamations and fawning was more insufferable than the casual disrespect. Gabriel sighed and kept walking, resigned to the fact that she definitely wasn't going back to try and salvage her source of information and that following him seemed to be her preference instead.
"People don't lie about being the Daemon Lord unless they have a death wish," he muttered. He was walking with purpose again now, glancing around every now and then as if looking for something, though for the most part looking straight ahead as he picked his way over twisting roots and through thin patches of undergrowth. Stray moonbeams reflected in his eyes, flashing a sign that Daemons could see in all but perfect darkness out into the world. Like predators, which of course they were.
"People also don't call the Daemon Lord an asshole unless they have a death wish," he added, glancing at her with a wry expression. Okay, maybe he was a little grumpy.
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Got Em
Jul 31, 2017 9:58:41 GMT
Post by Raven on Jul 31, 2017 9:58:41 GMT
Raven wasn’t fond of being called stupid, so his remark actually got to her for a brief moment. Just briefly. This was shown by the annoyed frown and furrowed brow, but she shrugged it off. “Ya know, if I could deal with my boring human family throwing me out because they think I’m a piece of shit, I think I can deal with you, grumpy daemon lord guy.” Truth be told, even after living for as long as she had, there was little of it that involved other daemons. Sure, she met some here and there besides the one that turned her, but most of them were humans and shifters with the occasional fae.
She was well aware of his growing annoyance towards her, but she was oblivious to the idea that it was a sign she should leave him alone. Now the daemon girl was way too curious and fascinated to even consider leaving. The concept of personal space was foreign to her as well, and she moved real close to Gabriel and lightly punched him in the shoulder in what was a gesture more commonly used among friends rather than strangers like them. “Welllll I mean, you are the Daemon Lord, so of course you’d want to know. It’s too late to even care about the why. They’re d-e-a-d, dead.” What was up with old people being so obsessed with the before and not being with the now? Sheesh.
Though their pace was slow, the trees seemed to be spreading out a bit and truth be told, Raven had no idea which way there were headed. Even so, she wasn’t more worried than normal. The trees were clearing up to another opening, much smaller than the last, but it was enough room for the avian daemon to spread her wings to their full width to stretch. They were long, massive to support her body weight. Instead of flattening them on her back again though, she left them hanging out just a bit loose in a more comfortable fashion.
“Er well, uh, sorry I guess? Okay I’m not that sorry because you have been kind of an ass. Your expression is a perfect example of that.” Well, maybe she was being a bit of an ass too, but Raven truly was grateful! It was just that she’d never been good at expressing that gratitude.
Finally, for just the briefest moment, there was silence as she pondered in her mind, though still intent on following the daemon lord. Raven did not feel like a nuisance and did not currently feel threatened by the man so that was main reason why she was just chatting with him, she supposed. That and well, she was bored.
“Okay so question. How often do ya gotta fight other people? The only way to get your title is to challenge you and beat you, so does that happen often? You’re kind of a badass so I could see why daemons wouldn’t want to mess with ya.”
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Got Em
Aug 6, 2017 3:20:33 GMT
Post by Gabriel on Aug 6, 2017 3:20:33 GMT
He was only half-listening to her now, slowing his walk slightly to ensure he moved more quietly, head tilting every now and then. Not that it mattered - Raven was all stomping feet and noisy talking and even though she didn't know it, she was making it very hard to accomplish what he wanted to accomplish, which was to hunt. It was always a fair guess that if Gabriel was in the Tangle it was for this reason; this was easily his favourite place in Litharia for hunting, and he rarely had any other reason to be here. Because he was only sort of listening to her, though, he didn't see the punch coming. It wasn't threatening, a gesture of camaraderie obviously, but Gabriel was not accustomed to people carelessly touching him without warning. Most people he didn't know well could tell, instinctually and subconsciously, that threatening power simmered just below the surface. Unless he was deliberately trying to enchant someone, people might find him mesmerising, but they knew better than to get too close.
Except Raven, it seemed.
His reaction was instinctive, and fast. Fire radiated out from where her fist touched his shoulder, rippling rapidly over his skin, so hot that the air around him wavered. It petered out naturally halfway down his forearm and after creeping over his chest and up his throat. It was gone within a second, the briefest moment of magic in an entirely unconscious reaction to being touched without warning or expectation. Gabriel's head whipped around and he glared at her, wondering if she'd been burned. He had no idea - he hadn't been trying to control the fire, and he thought it had been a defensive reaction rather than an offensive one.
"Do you mind?! It's rude to get in people's personal space without being asked, you know."
As well as being unschooled in the basics of social etiquette, the Daemon girl seemed unfamiliar with a lot of general Daemon knowledge. Information about their species, the structures and connections in their leadership, and definitely what he did and how. Admittedly, Gabriel loved to talk about this kind of thing, but right now he was warring between an empty stomach and a love of stories, especially stories about Daemons. Trailing to a stop again, the story won. Raven was scaring off any animals within a mile radius anyway.
"I've been the Daemon Lord for over a century. I used to fight a lot, but less and less as the years have gone on...Daemons are realising the difficulty of actually beating me, and I don't think there's anyone alive who wants this power, this position, more than I do. When were you changed? I've not seen you at the Tunnels."
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Got Em
Aug 8, 2017 23:12:30 GMT
Post by Raven on Aug 8, 2017 23:12:30 GMT
Raven wasn’t really sure what Gabriel was doing. He seemed to be walking slower and looking for something, but it didn’t cross her mind that he was hunting at all. She was hungry herself, but the whole excitement with the people and the net and now the Daemon Lord kept her mind off of it.
The last thing she had expected was for the guy to spontaneously combust when she gave him a light punch in the shoulder. Her speed and quick reflexes mad her shoot her wings out to their full length and flap her a good distance away from the man that had suddenly caught on fire. She was hovering in the air now, looking down at the hand she’d used to punch him with that was now stinging and bright red. Though not a serious burn, it did hurt.
She swore up and down about it, but watched as the daemon lord seemed to not burn from the fire, and then just…shut it off. Heart racing and on the verge of popping out of her chest, wild blonde hair messy from the sudden movement, Raven took a deep breath and lowered herself to the ground with an obvious look of guilt. She was gripping her burned hand and was eyeing the ground as he scolded her. Raven folded her wings back in, but her whole body was still tense.
“Bloody hell. I’m so sorry. I just..” She sighed and adjusted the strands of hair that were in her face so that they weren’t tickling her face as she spoke. “Sorry. I…forget that I get really excited and well…yeah.” Whatever the daemon lord had done, it seemed defensive and not offensive from the punch she’d given him. “Erm, ever since my emotions were heightened, I’ve never been able to get control over it. So uh, I kind of get carried away.” It was with the final realization that she’d push too far that helped Raven gain some form of hold on the way she was acting.
Honestly though, she’d just asked him a simple question and really didn’t need the details on politics. They bored her, but she tried her best to seem interested with a forced smile. The question he asked her though seemed like an odd one. “Um, I don’t know how long it’s been. I know my siblings have all grown old and died. I think their children have children now? So a long time. I’ve never gotten the chance to visit the tunnels, but the lady that turned me told me about ‘em.” Maybe Raven’s attention span had been worse when she’d first been turned, but a lot of stuff that she’d been taught was mostly a blue. There was so much.
Okay, whatever it was that the daemon lord was looking and stopping for was killing her. “Okay what are you looking for? Am I interrupting some important daemon lord mission or something?” It was mostly curiosity that led her to ask, but also annoyance.
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Got Em
Aug 16, 2017 8:43:05 GMT
Post by Gabriel on Aug 16, 2017 8:43:05 GMT
Carried away, huh? Yeah, Gabriel could agree with that. He hadn't meant to burn her - his reaction had been instinctive, not deliberate. It wasn't even that it was uncontrolled - when his fire magic had first started developing it had been intrinsically linked to his emotions, and very hard to regulate. When he was angry, especially, he'd been prone to setting things alight. Now he had a much better feel for the magic but it still tied in irrevocably with his instincts - often, when angered, flames would flicker through normally blue-green irises. And, apparently, it acted as a kind of touch-activated armour when he was surprised. Gabriel didn't think this was a problem, or something he needed to change - it was quite handy, actually - but it still meant he'd burned the other Daemon unintentionally, and now she was looking at him all shocked and wounded.
Oops.
"Just...maybe don't touch moody, snarky people you've only just met without warning them, yeah?" Lesson learned, he supposed.
Longer than a Human life span, then. The girl was young still though, seemed to have been changed as a teenager or child. Long enough to be well-used to being a Daemon, so this jumpiness was an inherent part of her personality, apparently. Gabriel didn't make the connection between her avian influence and this tendency - Calandra had been calm, effortlessly dignified, unflappable. Nothing at all like Raven, despite their physical similarities.
"You should. Visit the Tunnels, I mean. They're our home here, collectively. You feel the pull of the portal, right?" All Daemons did, changed or Litharian born notwithstanding - something about this being their ancestral home meant it had that effect on all Daemons. It was handy, once you started paying attention to it, like having an internal compass that always pointed towards the portal.
"It's worth seeing, our Portal. And the Tunnels themselves. The old Lords are interred there, and the Tunnels are beautiful in their own right." Though largely nomadic, if Gabriel thought of anywhere in Litharia as a singular home, it was the Crystal Cavern of the Tunnels, and the spire where he'd killed Rah a century ago especially.
Setting back off through the trees, Gabriel was unsurprised when Raven continued to follow him. He was also, apparently, undeterred from his mission, though she wasn't making it easy.
"No mission. I'm hungry, so I came here to hunt. You're scaring everything off, though." He didn't sound so moody now, though, the sarcasm and biting tone having faded from his voice. He seemed distracted, listening for something - because Raven might have scared off more traditional game, but some things in the Tangle liked to hunt also, and hunting people wasn't out of their repertoire. All her noise might scare some things off, but other things it would draw close...
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Got Em
Aug 22, 2017 2:33:32 GMT
Post by Raven on Aug 22, 2017 2:33:32 GMT
Now much more calm than she was a few moments prior to being burned, she smiled with snark once Gabriel admitted he had been moody. She knew nothing about him, but so far he seemed alright. Actually, he seemed pretty cool with the whole ‘saving her from kidnappers’ and ‘I can make myself catch on fire’ thing. For an old guy, she figured there could be a lot worse. “I’ll..make sure to take that into consideration next time,” she joked.
Despite her level of calmness now there, there was always that sense of anxiety she naturally had from her specific avian influence. Any crack of a twig or brush of leaves from anything other than her or Gabriel made her tense and nervous. She hadn’t even realized that her claws had extended, curved and shaped similar to a bird of prey’s and black in color. Raven looked down and retracted them. It didn’t seem that out of the ordinary to her to be so jumpy, but she had always noticed other daemons were never quite like that.
Cocking an eyebrow, she looked over to the daemon lord and pondered on the question. Did she feel a pull? Maybe. It was hard to tell, with so many emotions always on the verge of nearly being out of her control. “Uhhhhhh, I don’t really know if I feel the pull. It takes everything in me to just keep my emotions under control.” She paused and then frowned. “Er well, most of them in control.” The very idea that she was anything less than a near perfect daemon though completely eluded her. He managed to grab her curiosity though. Hearing about these tunnels was different than actually seeing them for herself. “Where are they at? Maybe I can go sometime! Not like I really do anything productive. I kind of just…travel around. Eat. A LOT. And uh. Harass the locals.” Maybe that’s why the people had been trying to capture her. She was known to playfully shoot her bolts at passerbys while in the air, laughing like a madman.
“Wait so tell me if this is right. This portal leads to…some place called the Dream Land, right? And daemons are like, immortal there? I don’t know much about it….” Immortality sounded like a dream to her. “Were you born a daemon then? You must be really old then.” The last little bit was mostly a jest to irk him, but she thought nothing much else of it.
With a pout, she stopped in her tracks and studied her surroundings. They were still in a small opening that was large enough for her to spread her wings. The trees ahead were not nearly as tightly bunched as the part of the wood they’d just emerged from, so she was fully capable of using the branches to her advantage. Raven felt no remorse for interrupting his hunting, but she always loved an opportunity to show off her skills with her mini-crossbows. “Oh sorry.” It was blatantly obvious she wasn’t that sorry though. “Maybe I can make it up to you! For, you know, annoying you I guess??? Would be good practice for me too since moving targets are a lot different than stand-still ones.” Wouldn’t have been too terrible idea for her to grab herself something for later either.
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