[J] Aurelius's Diary +Illusionist: romantic wishes+

[shibrogane]

[THE XIII SEAL]

Aure was so ready for sleep. With a weary mind and a weary body, she shuffled off to bed and tucked herself beneath the sterile white sheets, then deeper beneath the covers. She gently shifted about a little to find a comfortable space, then closed her eyes and fell asleep.

...

She was running, running as fast as she could away from something. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t turn her head to see her pursuer; all she could see was a chasing, grasping hand behind a mass of blonde hair. Who’s behind me, she thought, too out-of-breath to ask. Her hair wasn’t that long. It was that blonde, though, and her ears were missing. She tried to slow down, but couldn’t; her legs kept moving faster and faster and her muscles were burning. She didn’t want to run anymore, but she kept going through some inhuman burst of adrenaline. Whatever was chasing her, she didn’t want it to catch up!... Her lungs burned as she forced more and more air through them.

“You can run, Maweh, but I’ll pursue you forever,” called an ominous, teasing male voice, slightly immature and unripened. “I love you, you know...”

A strange wailing assailed her ears, beating on her temples. Her throat rasped, as if she had somehow swallowed broken plate glass. Something snagged her feet, and she fell; it seemed to take so much longer than it did before, but the taste of iron in her mouth as she rolled over convinced her that this was real. Stones entered her open mouth; she choked, because they tasted of salt. The force of the hands on her shoulders worked just as well to convince her as she was pushed back down to the ground. Whoever was on the other side of the hands was much stronger than she was, and forced her down.

A young man with eyes the color of sea salt and sandy brown hair gazed down on her, smiling, staring through crinkled eyes. “Maweh, Maweh. I wish you wouldn’t run away from me...” He leaned closer; the strange wailing persisted. “I wish you would stop screaming. You’re far more beautiful when you smile.”

Oh... that’s me?

A sickly sweet, intoxicating scent invaded her nostrils. Their noses were almost touching...

...

The grating sound of fingernails on plate glass. “Croatoan, please,” Aure said, though it wasn’t so much Aure as it was Maweh. “Help me cleanse this world of all its sins! Make Maweh disappear.” Cold metal bit into her lower legs, the glass was ice against her forearms. “Make me disappear!”
Silence was strangely deafening. Only bubbling from the tube could be heard.

...

Her fingers clattered across the keyboard as she worked on the results of the messiah-god project. She had recently been made head of the research team, even though she was a rookie; her results were just that good recently. But this project was... strange. Maweh was charged with creating a body for an already-existing creature, Croatoan. A messiah-god, she was told in the debriefing. Capable of creating an entire world if given the opportunity, which was why they wanted him to have the opportunity.

For Croatoan, that opportunity meant a body.

Maweh was determined to make it happen; she heard this child speak to her at night, whispering things to her that she thought only Croatoan could know. Like who was doing what when in the facility that she worked and lived within; her project was the ladle she used to drink from the fountain of knowledge. She had enough blackmail material to keep her on the project for as long as she wanted.

“I bet they’re all jealous of everything you know,” Croatoan had whispered to her one night.

“But jealousy can be murder, can’t it, Maweh?”

The door creaked open slowly; voices came from behind her. She ignored them; her team was late, again. A talk with the superior was apparently in order. Blunt force trauma, however, was not.

There was a flash of pain, over and over and over. “Let’s make it so that she can never speak to that abomination again,” a voice said, obviously male; “It’s not like it ever talked back!” There was a loud chorus of laughter, and she bit back a small gasp of pain as something cold and metallic sought purchase in her back and found it. Burning hands, far too hot for her to stand, pressed into her throat; she tried to scream, but somewhere it got caught in her throat and was came out was nothing more than a gush of air. Trying again, nothing came out. Let me go, her eyes begged the men, but they only laughed.

“We don’t want to kill you, Maweh,” said the black-haired man whose hands were wrapped tightly around her throat. A blonde behind him shook his head and laughed; the pain in her back intensified as she was shaken harshly by the black-haired man. “We wouldn’t deign to kill you,” he repeated. “We’ll leave that up to you, once we’re done with you. Don’t worry, though, it’ll be fairly painless.”

“Fairly,” he repeated, his mouth widening into a deranged smirk. She- Maweh, or was she Aurelius? Shouldn’t she remember that at least?- gasped again, her voice eerily silent but for the whoosh of air.

“Can’t promise anything, you understand.”

She was so out of it, the candlestick to her temple didn’t even sting; she crashed to the keyboard, face down. “Aw, Jareth, you killed her,” whined the blonde man. Her bloodstained fingers groped around her as they gathered around her soon-to-be corpse. “We were gonna have some fun!” he continued, as she finally located it.

Her hand rammed backwards into the gut of one of the men, a scalpel clenched between slick fingers. Adrenaline fueled what she thought would be her last moments, but the second the last man died her vision went white.

She woke up in the room where Croatoan dwelt.

...

“Okay, Maweh,” a child’s voice said, eerie and soft. The abomination in the tank, floating in swirling green fluid, was speaking; the messiah-god she was creating, that had spoken to her and listened to her as she sang for it during her efforts to give it a good, strong body, was fully awake. “I’ll make you disappear, but you have to trust me.
“I’ll make you disappear forever, Maweh, I promise.” She smiled at the abomination through the shifting green light. It made everything so much spookier. But she didn’t care; her wish, her ache inside that longed to vanish, was going to come true.

“Because I love you, Maweh. You gave birth to me.”

...

She was back at her computer, room filled with flowers and marked with condolences of her comrade’s deaths. Though security cameras showed her murdering them, they also showed her extenuating circumstances. The only question was about how she was still alive; medical experts had said that she should have died after the hatchet was buried into her spine, or at least been paralyzed...

Maweh knew it was Croatoan. He was a messiah-god, a miracle-worker. He was grateful for all the work she had thrown into this project, how she had abandoned her entire life to give him one.

The promise he had made to her was foremost in her mind as she worked on this report. But you have to trust me, he had said. She didn’t know what he meant, but she threw her faith into him with as much abandon as she had thrown her life when she had been assigned to this project.

“Help me, Croatoan,” she said softly, saving the file. “Aid me in making this world a pure, clean white. Let me play god, just for a little. I’ll make it my own Eden, and save you even as I save the rest of this dirty, stained world.”






Okay, Maweh.













The world went black, and Aure slowly opened her eyes. Pain seared through her body from toes to crown, and she sobbed. This was her dream, and she could hurt if she wanted to.

Are you hurt, Maweh?

“I’m bleeding,” the small girl marveled, looking around. Handprints and splatters of dark matter covered the dusty walls that were fading into place. “Was I hurt?”

You cracked your head pretty hard.

A large spider, the size of a dinner plate, skittered into the meager light. Instead of having only eight legs, it had at least twelve; it wasn’t furred, but made completely of human faces, all in varying stages of negative emotion. Death’s been kind to you, Maweh.

Aure stared at it, eyes questioning.

You can still create your white world. I made sure of it.

“What are you talking about?” she rasped, reaching out towards the spider-thing.

...

Don’t worry, Maweh, you’re still beautiful.
Aure’s eyes were drifting closed again.


Sort of.

[w a k e ▬ u p]

 

[shibrogane]

[THE XIII SEAL]

Appointment with Keirro

[a n d ▬ d i e]

 

[shibrogane]

[THE XIII SEAL]

"I'm still bee-you-tiful, sorta," she grumbled, pushing at Ku as the persocom buckled her into the back of the Chevrolet coupe that her grandparents had sent to fetch her. "Yeah, well, when was I ever beautiful, huh? Stupid weird stupid stupid stupid dreams, I hate it." The man driving the car looked over his shoulder, the soldier-style cap shading his eyes over.

"The young miss is being strange," he said carefully as he pulled away from the renovated cathedral where she lived. "Her grandparents believe she's quite pretty."

Aure huffed, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring out the window. She really hated it when she had to leave the home, if she wasn't going of her own will. In sheer annoyance, she kicked the back of the unoccupied seat in front of her. "Can we just get there soon." The rest of the ride was spent in complete silence, except for the sounds of the classical music station the chaffeur was listening to. Upon her arrival at her grandparent's home, she would wish to be back in that car.

She was clued in by the statement, "Oh, dear, the skirt's going to be much too short." Kate was giving Aurelius a prospective look over the small stack of presents that Raziel, who was apparently her uncle- ewwwwww- had said were Christmas presents. Delayed ones. Uh-huh, that had to be true.

"What.... skirt." Without waiting for her grandchild to finish the question, Kate whipped out a uniform set in what had to be school colors. Her grandfather was staring out a window, massaging his temples. "You're going to boarding school," Kate said cheerily, shifting the boxes to the side and measuring them against Aure's body. "Your hair's gotten much longer since I last saw you, dear. You are growing so fast!-"

Rosiel beckoned to her, and she hurried over only-too-gladly. "I am very sorry for this." He gestured to Kate, who was writing down the changes that would have to be made to the skirt so it would fit properly. "She has a very forceful personality, your grandma." A gift-bag made its way from his hands to Aurelius's. She jumped onto Rosiel's lap and opened it slowly, her annoyed frown not changing at the sight of something soft-looking. Regardless, she dug deeper into the mass of paper, fastening her hands around a smooth neck and pulling the thing out.

It was a white teddy bear with a large red bow fastened around its neck. One eye twisted slightly in a loose tie, but Aure's grumpy face vanished into a smile and she hugged it close. "It's perfect!" She threw her arms- and her teddy bear- around Rosiel's neck and squeezed. He hugged back, an action that didn't go unnoticed by Raziel.

The peace of the moment was shattered by Kate's call of "Aurelius~" and her gesturing to a full uniform. "Your first term starts on the fourth!"

[y o u ▬ l i e d]

 

[shibrogane]

[r i v e r c o n t e m p l a t i o n]

The Playdate

[d o n ' t ▬ c r y]

 

[shibrogane]

St Martha's School for Young Ladies-> In Which Aure Becomes an Eighth Grader  

[shibrogane]

[t h e s c a b b a r d o f t h e s w o r d]

Bold New Steps

[s h u t▬i t▬u p]

 

[shibrogane]

[t h e r e v e r i e o f a d r e a m]

Reverie of a Dream

[w a i t ▬f o r▬m e]

 

[shibrogane]

[f a t e s m o r n i n g s t a r]

Fate's Morningstar

[t h a t ▬e n c o u n t e r]

 

[shibrogane]

[l e t s h a v e l u n c h]

Two Cents and a Swing

[r i n▬r i n]

 

[shibrogane]

[c h i l d r e n s h o u l d n t p l a y w i t h d e a d t h i n g s]

Two Cents and a Swing

[m o r n i n g▬d o v e s]

 

[shibrogane]

[wintergreen]

Talking to Shen

[s t a r s ▬ d i e]

 

[shibrogane]

[t h e b u t t e r f l y g i r l]

What are friends?

[l i t t l e▬p i n k▬o n e]

 

[shibrogane]

[THE QUICKENING]

[PART ZERO]
|november process|

In the grand scheme of things, there are many series of tiny moments where things could change drastically. This is just one.

Let us begin with a setting. Imagine that we are in the bowels of an ancient castle. If it pleases you, imagine the five-pointed layout of Tintagel; the room is shaped similarly, with a circular main area. There are five circular spaces just off the pointed of a pentagram laid in white stone against the uniform black that forms not only the floors, but also the walls and the windows. At the northernmost point of the white stone pentagram is a throne in silver and garnet. Small pillows of the same shade as the stones lurk from their places against the wall. Candles burn brightly in wall brackets, but can do little to combat the gloom. Most light comes from elaborate stained-glass windows set in the five circles, but thin curtains usually stand in the way of the light.

Now we shall add our cast. There are many small bits; pale, ghostly figures set against the wall on the garnet pillows with hairs of many colors. Red eyes glow from under the thick, shining hair on their heads, but all the attention is focused on the man in the throne. He is handsome, well proportioned. Once he might have been tanned, but he now looks chalky from the bloodless pallor beneath his skin. His hair is long and well-cared for, tame as a newborn kitten atop his head. It is a shade of black that any Japanese man would be proud of. Slitted eyes appear sunken into his finely-boned head; black kohl makes the red glow stand out in the gloom. He is finely dressed in white linen; a golden necklace rests along his collarbone. A brilliant earring in the shape of a fleur-de-lis glittered in his right ear. His fine, straight hair is swept back by a circlet. Fingers wrapped by small gold chains tap impatiently on the arm on the throne in a random rhythm.

Standing outside the black doors of the circular room is a tall female. Her skin does not look as unnatural as the man on the throne’s does. One hand, her left, is to her mouth, exhibiting a silver ring with a simple green stone inset. Black fingernails are pressed to bloodless, pale lips; one finger picks gingerly at a tooth. Her nervousness shows in the way she is pressed to the wall and staring at the door, as if she knows she has done something wrong. Bright red hair, worn loose to the waist, spills over her shoulders in a careless, waterfall fashion as she picks harder at her lips. She knows they are waiting for her inside, but she does not want to go in.

With the setting and characters established... let the scene begin.



“Where is Dice?” A wave of murmuring flashed its way around the room. One single garnet pillow sat unoccupied by either man or woman; it was at the tall man’s immediate left. He seemed perturbed about it, but with him, there was no telling. “You cannot tell me you do not know. I thought I ordered her watched after she arrived here?” He paused and placed his chin in a cupped hand. Some of his people looked quite nervous; possibly the ones assigned to watch her? If she didn’t show up soon, he supposed he would have to start knocking heads. “Am I mistaken? My memory has never failed me before.” Another wave of soft murmurs pre-empted his continuance. He took a deep breath, seeking to steady his temper before he continued to berate his coven.

The door at the far southern end of the room creaked open slowly before he could take another breath. He instantly recognized who it was simply by the shape of her fingers. “Dice, you are late. Quite late. We have been very delayed by your absence...” The head- full of the vibrance of eternal youth and health- dipped slightly, and she emerged fully from behind the stone door. She pushed it close behind her, then folded her hands in front of her. Her head dipped in submission to the elder vampire. “Come and sit,” he said, and she walked towards her place with a barely-concealed relief. “Not in your place. Here. At my feet.” He pointed with one regal finger to the stones at his feet. After a brief pause, she changed course to kneel at his feet, bowing her head. With a smirk on his face, he looked around. Stricken faces stared back at him, worry in more than one of them. If he did what usually happened... “Say my name,” he said softly to Dice, one hand pressing on her head.

“Akenha.” It was a mere gasp of sound, barely worth the breath it would have taken had she been alive. His face shifted into a mask of displeasure and he grabbed hold of her chin, pulling her up to face him. “Lord... Akenha,” she corrected herself hurriedly, hands starting to drift up to try and deflect his painful grasp. “Please...” There was a pitiful note in her voice that he didn’t like, but he understood. The dangers of taking a freshly-turned girl as his consort...

He released her and settled back into his throne as her head dropped, the red hair falling to cover her face. “You had a child with your Obiel, did you not?” It wasn’t really a question; she started to raise her head again to answer it. “No. It doesn’t matter if you two never consummated your relationship. Aurelius- that is her name, is it not, Dice?- was called into being by you and your Obiel. You see... I have seen her recently, on the subway.” This time Dice really did look up, red eyes full of hope. Akenha raised one eyebrow in question.

“Is she okay?” Her voice was dry and it cracked in her worried state. A finger tapped against his chin for a moment; right now, Dice was not his consort, but a worried mother.

He sighed. “She is fine. Living with your Obiel’s parents. She has Obiel’s eyes.” It was disgusting to see how much she craved this information of a mortal child who would soon be as dust. Dust in the wind. Akenha had hoped that Dice would have forgotten about the child by now...

A trembling sigh came out of Dice's mouth. "Aurelius is alive," she said, with unbearable relief. With an offended look, he pushed her head to the floor.

"Let us continue..."

[mother, may we...]

 

[shibrogane]

[m i r r o r m i r r o r]

Of Risk and Moralities

[s i m p l e ▬ v e i l]

 

[shibrogane]

[t u t o r i n g]

The Adventures of Pinky And The Brain

[s t a r ▬ s p i r i t]