Possible Small Group RP (2-4)?

[Reaver Of Souls Raziel]

"The Hylden, child. The old enemy of the vampires. Don't you read?" He muttered in reply, then throwing his hand up in frustration, looking positively frazzled. "Now if I could just find that blasted--! ... oh, here it is." Vorador located the needle, and after muttering an incantation over the antidote, it began to give off a soft glow. He wasted no time filling the syringe with the stuff, but when he turned around with it in hand, he frowned at Seth.

"Lass, this is going to hurt him very much... now can I trust you to be able to hold him still while I administer the anti venom?" He asked, referring mostly to her current condition; he would rather wait until she was up to the task instead of risking the chance of not being able to give Raziel the full dosage because he was thrashing around too much.  

[Fallen_Razielim]

"The hylden..." She played out the word, interested in its sound, because otherwise it meant nothing to her. "Sir, I was only a warrior in the clan before my second death. And before that a human gypsy. I have never been in the social class or had the prestige to read much of anything." She eyed the syringe in his hand and its strange liquid.

"I can hold him. Like I said, I have been trained as a warrior, a soldier. You could cut off both my arms and I would still have another twelve ways to hold and detain someone." Her voice was light, working hard to hide the pain she felt already. "Just do it. I'll do what I can, try to ease his awareness of it all, perhaps it will affect if he feels it, but I doubt it..." She pinned him with her body, arms locked around his torso and legs pinning him against the floor. She closed her eyes and began working on releasing his mind from reality, flooding it with serenity and euphoria... an interesting combination.

((Ya know, I just realized that "Hanging By A Moment" by Lifehouse is Seth's theme songin this storyline. Seriously, look at the lyrics and tell me if you can find any song that fits her situation better! heart ))  

[Reaver Of Souls Raziel]

((Oi... Raziel has a lot of songs xD; but if I had to pick one that suited him when it came to Seth, it'd it her eyes by Josh Groban. ))

"Really? Hmph, that's interesting. Perhaps you should take a look at my library when we're done here, to better understand what's going on." Vorador said as he waited for Seth to take her position on Raziel, pinning him down. "The injection will cure Raziel, but he should take a day to rest."

Raziel was still unconscious for the most part, though he was aware of someone on top of him. His brow furrowed together as he tried to understand what was going on. He tensed when he felt Seth try to take control of his mind. Normally Raziel would have a high resistance against such a thing, he was taught never to let another vampire into his mind no matter what... but this was Seth, and everything in his being was telling him to trust her... not had much of a choice regardless, in his weakened state, he couldn't resist much.

So when the needle went in, filling his veins with cold fire, his mind was too euphoric to feel any of this. His body still twitched from time to time, but at least there wasn't all the screaming and thrashing Vorador thought there would be, which the older vampire and his ears were thankful for.

When the antidote has finished its job and Seth released him from her mind control, Raziel opened his eyes.

"How are you feeling, lad?" Vorador asked

"...Terrible..." Raziel replied horsely, but it was a nice change from being hotter than the bowels of hell.

"Ah, that's natural then. You're cured." Vorador stood, going to return the syringe to his desk with the rest of his supplies.

"Thank you... Vorador." Raziel murmured, then glancing up at Seth. "And thank you as well... I would hug you, but you seem to have my arms pinned." he gave a wry grin, this being aftereffect of Seth's mind control, so despite the soreness, he was still quite blissful. If Raziel knew any better, he would have compared this feeling to be what one would experience after undergoing surgery and being on painkillers.  

[Fallen_Razielim]

Seth worked hard, each thrash of Raziel sent shooting pains through her injured body, but her ravaged face showed none of the pain and she remained perfectly silent; instead focusing on easing Raziel's mind. Seth could feel his spasms and twitchings become less and less, until the antidote had finished its loathsome job. She slowly extracted her influence from his mind, careful not to remove it all at once, or he would suffer an affliction similar to withdrawal symptoms. She'd learn that the hard way when she had attempted to help calm someone down only to give them a nervous breakdown when she broke off the contact too suddenly.

"...Terrible..."

Seth smiled, so at least he was coherent again. She breathed a quiet sigh of relief.

When he addressed her, she was reminded of the fact that she was still pinning him in a rather awkward manner. She mumbled a brief apology and set to untangling her from his prostrated form. After a brief moment of confusion she was able to stand up, stretching her sore muscles out after having to hold them tense for so long. "I am sorry for that, Sire, but it was necessary so you would not harm yourself further. Now, unless you require my services to transport you to a more comfortable location to heal, I need to go and reset my bones." She bowed minimally, doing her best not to feel the searing pain as her bow stretched out the gash in her back and compressed the ribs that jutted inside her body at odd angles.  

[Reaver Of Souls Raziel]

Once Seth got off of him, Raziel found it was really hard for him to stand. But not wanting to strain his wounded fledgling further, he pulled himself back onto the couch where he was laying only minutes ago. "It's fine. Go, rest. You deserve it." He replied, knowing it must have taken a lot of effort to look after as well as save him from that demon.

He laid down, his body too exhausted form everything to not fall asleep instantly. It was a good thing the venom had delayed his need to feed or else lack of rest wouldn't be his main concern - but he was too tired to worry about much else regardless, and soon, he was sleeping quite deeply.

Vorador flopped down in a nearby chair, seeming quite drained from this whole ordeal as well. He pinched the bring of his nose, sighing. "Oh Janos help us..." He said under his breath, not thinking Seth heard him. He knew this was only the beginning of their troubles.  

[Fallen_Razielim]

Seth nodded to her Sire as he weakly settled himself onto the couch and passed out. After a moment of staring at her sleeping master she turned and addressed Vorador, "I would like to take you up on your offer to have access to the library, but only after I reset my bones." She inclined her head in a formal but limited bow, in too much pain to do anything more grand, and then turned and left the room.

She stalked away from her two companions, at times walking and at times climbing along the walls. She felt more comfortable when she wasn't on the ground, when she was verticle or hanging, but her wounded back was restricting her ability to bend her spine to the correct measure for wall crawling. She sighed and dropped to the window sill. She slowly unfolded her wings, glad yet again that they had received none of the damage her back and bones had. She focused on them, and felt an unknown energy surge for a brief moment. Then she launched herself off the sill, surprised to find that her wings were suddenly much larger and longer than they had been but a moment before. Seth decided not to worry about it just yet, she had other things to think about.

If crawling along the walls and ceiling hurt, flying was a million times worse. And yet, the wind whipping through her long bangs and short hair was a welcomed change from the stagnant world she found herself in. Her wings carried her along wind currents, cutting through the night sky like some flash of blue ice or the tail of a comet. Her mind wandered as her body searched for a forest clearing where she could scream out and not disturb either her master or Vorador. She knew resetting her bones would hurt, and she didn't doubt for a second that it would force her to phase back to the Spectral Realm if only to escape her form for a few moments... but she knew that was a tricky business, one which she wanted to avoid now that she had denied her 'god'.

Her eyes locked onto a suitable clearing and she went down, landing in a solitary pine hard. Her impact shook needles from the tree, but her claws gripped deep into the heartwood and she stayed firmly planted to her new perch. The strange energy she had felt before slowly receeded as she folded her wings in against her back and felt them return to their smaller size. So, I can really fly... She allowed herself to marvel at the thought for a moment before turning her mind to other things. She quickly dropped from the tree, putting it at her back to support her once the pain came in full. Time to begin...

She reached a tentative hand up into the bottom of her ribcage and was met immediately by the tip of one of the four disjointed ribs. She felt the break, fractured horribly with shards and splinters of bone falling down. She took a deep breath which she didn't need and then she suddenly snapped the bone back in place. Miraculously, she held back the heart wrenching scream, but only just. Three more bones to go, she thought wearily. Her hand reached further into her chest cavity and found the next two ribs were broken to a lesser extend. She snapped them back into place, whimpering as they pinched a spinal nerve. She waited for a moment, steadying her trembling hand. Finally she reached up and felt two things.

The first, she had expected, was the final rib that was broken out at a horrible angle that placed it deep into the second item. It was the second item that had her eyes fully open, horrified at what she felt inside herself. For there, in with the bones, tendons, and cobwebs, was a bundle of living flesh. At her very center, was a hub of nerves and blood... her heart still beat inside her, filled with nothing more than dust and memories of a live once lived. She lightly probed the heart, amazed at the slight pulsating motion. Surely it could perform no true function in her husk of a body. There was no blood for it, she had no need. And yet, the remnant remained, faithful until even after death and the grave. Something inside her mind trembled, why was it her heart was still present, even after all other organs had burned away?

She closed her burning pits of light and remained perfectly still. Then, ever so carefully she maneuvered her hand around the foreign object, and clenched the rib that pierced it. She steadied herself and then jerked the bone out and back into place. The world waited on baited breath, the calm before the storm. And then she began screaming and fell to her knees, pain lancing up through her knees and down from her wounded heart. Her scream doubled in on itself, reverberated, and split through time and space, audible in the corporeal, the ethereal, the metaphysical, all at once. Her scream became another and another, the pain overwhelming anything else. And her final lucid thought before her mind entirely separated from the pain of her body, for the being, was, Amazing, I've died a hundred times over, and yet my heart lives on... only to be broken each time... Her burning eyes extinguished and a corpse was left firmly erect, hearlding the presence of true pain to the world.  

[Reaver Of Souls Raziel]

It wouldn't be until a few hours later that Raziel woke up, his hunger returning to him and rousing him from his sleep. Regardless of hunger pains though, he was feeling much better, rejuvenated even. He sat up from the couch, stretching and scratching his mess of black hair that had somehow become even messier while he slept. Raziel looked over to see Vorador asleep on a chair across the room, so he crept by the older vampire, heading downstairs to where the prisoners were kept.

One devoured soul later, Raziel was feeling quite like himself again. He did his best to organize his hair as he looked through the mansion for Seth. She was nowhere to be found and he wondered if she was alright; she had been pretty badly broken up after the fight with the serquite eater and she said she was going to get some rest, but where exactly?

Raziel, for some unknown reason, felt himself being drawn outside. And through the early morning air, he could hear a cry being carried. It was a horrible sound, like some poor being was being tortured, but that wasn't why it was so horrible to Raziel... like his coming out there in the first place, he didn't know how he recognized the screams being that of his fledgling, but he did, and now he was sprinting through the trees toward the sound of Seth's agonized cries.

When he found her, Raziel couldn't remember a time he had been more terrified in his life. Here was the person he thought of like his own flesh and blood and she was screaming like that and he didn't even know why. He dropped down beside the other, gathering her up in his arms and trying to offer her some comfort as he forgot all notions of personal boundaries, searching her body thoroughly for what was causing her such torment. Raziel even felt up inside her chest cavity, and that's when he felt it... her heart

Part of him wondered how such an organ could've survived the abyss on a form more skeletal than even his own, but he could care less at the moment as he was entirely focused on finding out what was wrong and stopping his fledgling's suffering. But after awhile, his searching proved useless and he couldn't think of anything else to do for her. So he cradled her against his body, his own heart hammering in his ears as he murmured concernedly to her. "Seth, please, tell me what's wrong...!" He just had to help her somehow...  

[Fallen_Razielim]

Seth's consciousness flitted, straying for moments that stretched into eternity, continually cycling through the memories of her deaths. Seth was a creature who had defied Fate repeatedly. She had not been meant to live, and yet, every time an end came to meet Seth, someone or something had saved her, all with varying degrees of pain and price.

Her mother had never been meant to have children. She was the instrument of pleasure for many a man in the gypsy troupe with which she traveled. A whore who plied her trade to save her own skin. Her existence was a miserable excuse for a life, each man she gave herself to took a piece of her soul until she was a mindless creature existing only out of necessity. She was supposed to be infertile, because after nearly twenty years of being a Lady of the Night, she had never bore a child. And then, she made love to a creature who very easily could have taken her life. He had been more than human, a tall figure whose very presence sent the bravest of men fleeing. She had been drawing water from a well nearby the camp, in the middle of the day while others were resting, and that was when she first met him.

He had stalked up to her slowly, examining her as one might appraise a piece of meat hanging in a butchers window. She gazed at him with sunken, sullen eyes that lacked any spark. "Why is your gaze such, that even the light does not reflect?"

His voice roused her from her stupor, a melodious harmony of pleasure and pain, a dichotomy of seduction and revulsion. She shivered slightly but screwed up courage enough to answer him, "My gaze has been dulled by a thousand lovers with nary a kind thought among them. I am a whore, Sir. A filthy whore... nothing less, and NOTHING more."

He had not stopped stalking towards her, as she had supposed he would. Most men, at least most men at this time of day, would have stopped, and turned away. But he continued towards her, slowly closing the distance between them. "I would like a drink, My Lady."

She scoffed then, the irony of being called a lady too great. "I, a Lady, sir? You doth grace my maligned form with MUCH too great an honor. I am a Lady in word only, my form is no such vessel." She smiled a weary, knowing smile, and then dropped her bucket into the well, "But a drink I can help you with, Sir." She turned her back to him, pulling up the bucket at an even pace. When the bucket finally reached her hands, a sudden touch on her shoulder made her turn, splashing water down the front of his shirt. She stared in horror, "I am terribly sorry, Sir!"

He smiled, something akin to a feral gleam of fangs sparkled through. "No harm, no foul." He put one hand on the grip of the bucket, and the other on her chin, forcing her to really LOOK at him.

And what she saw amazed her, he was like nothing she had ever seen before. His beauty was unparalleled. His eyes shown with an animal ferocity as they drank in her lightly clad body, startlingly blue, one overly dilated, lending him a further inhuman air. His face was all planes and angles. Hair like spun gold and silver, cascading over his shoulders like a mane. His mouth curled up seductively and revealed fangs. Then he spoke in his mythical voice and she was bewitched anew, "My Lady, I believe I might require more than a single drink..."

Seth's mother never saw him again after that fateful meeting. But just because he had left her life, he had not left her with nothing, for she was soon pregnant. No other human woman had ever carried the child of one of the First Immortals, and so Seth was a being of unkown potential. However, Fate had not wanted her to survive, but it was powerless against the machinations set in motion by that fateful afternoon. Seth nearly died three times in her incubation. First her mother had taken a particularly violent customer, who had beaten her within an inch of her life, but she had protected the life growing inside her from the worst of it. Then Seth's mother had fallen ill, influenza, fatal in those days. How she survived and kept herself alive through the delirium could only have been described as a miracle. And then... well, a baby is never expected to survive when their mother is murdered while they're still inside...

~~~

Seth's mind suddenly was drawn back to her body. The alien feeling of arms around her lent her mind something to focus on through the pain. Her eyes blazed to life, burning furiously with pain. Her screams had not ceased and her hollow throat ached from the strain of the hours of yelling. She screwed her strength together and was able to communicate one quick thought through her scream. "THE HEART! CLOSE THE HEART!"  

[Reaver Of Souls Raziel]

Seth seemed more aware now of her surroundings, but the end to her agonizing screams seemed nowhere in sight. Raziel hugged her tighter, her next words making him even more frantic and worried.

"Close... the heart? What do you mean, Seth! I don't understand!" He had to shout for her to hear anything over her own screaming. How was he suppose to close her heart?  

[Fallen_Razielim]

Seth barely heard Raziel's questions over the roaring in her throat and the ringing in her head. She pulled her consciousness together, willing her mind to stay with her body. A tiny rational part of her mind was puzzled by the fact that her body had not merely shifted back to the spectral realm to escape the pain, but... it almost felt as if she was cut off from that reprieve. The rest of her mind forced her to scream comprehensible words.

"THE HEART! THE WOUND IN THE TOP!" Her body thrashed suddenly, arching away from his touch unintentionally. Tears of spectral ether were pouring down from her hollow eye sockets as her blazing eyes would burst into flames and then extinguish in throbs that coincided with the amplitude of her screams. "YOU NEED TO CLOSE IT! PLEASE! STAB IT WITH THE REAVER! PLEASE!"  

[Reaver Of Souls Raziel]

Raziel thought she must have gone deranged from the pain. He shook his head. "No... if I do that, Seth, you will die! Do you understand me? It will devour your soul until there is nothing left!" He explained, his tone becoming more desperate as he watched her convulse and sob.  

[Fallen_Razielim]

Seth's body arched painfully again and her screams increased in measure. "RAZIEL! JAB INTO IT! MY SOUL..." She took a ragged breath in between her screamed warnings, "IT WAS CONDENSED... TETHERED TO MY HEART! THE LOW SPIRITUAL PRESSURE IN THE MATERIAL REALM... IS PULLING MY SOUL APART! EITHER YOU STAB MY HEART AND ABSORB SOME OF IT, OR GET ME INTO THE SPECTRAL REALM... BECAUSE I CAN'T PHASE BACK!"  

[Reaver Of Souls Raziel]

Well what she said sounded like it made sense, but Raziel was terrified to follow through. What if she was wrong and the reaver really did try to devour her soul? The second option seemed like the less dangerous one... but even that was hard for Raziel. But seeing her suffering like that, he guessed he had no choice. He took a hold of either side of her head, closing his eyes so he wouldn't have to watch.

"Please, forgive me...!" And on that note, with a quick movement, he painlessly snapped her neck.  

[Fallen_Razielim]

Seth wondered by Raziel switched his grip on her, and she couldn't understand what she would have to forgive him for. At least, she didn't understand until her neck snapped and her material body instantly phased away, not because she had died, but because it was suddenly drawn through the veil. She laid on the ground, motionless, her body in an odd contorted angle from her last seizure. "And each time I die again..."

A slimy, cold tendril slithered over her leg and wrapped around her ankle. Suddenly her limp body was lurching upwards, being hoisted by the tentacle suctioned onto her ankle. She was raised until she was eye to eye with... Elder God's main eye. "Ah Seth. You seem to be having a problem, my foolish Soul Reaver." He tossed her into the air, spinning like a pinwheel, and then gently caught her around her neck with another tentacle. "You defied me Seth. I thought I could trust you to annihalate Raziel, and what did you do? You joined him." He tsked lightly and slammed her body into a stone column.

Seth was sure if she had a physical form at that moment, her own bones would have crushed her, puncturing all the way through. She stood wearily and winced at the pain the Elder God was able to inflict, even in the Spectral realm. "You honestly expected differently? He is my Sire, and my bind of servitude to him trumps any claim you had by reviving me." Her words were silenced by a thick tentacle slammed her head back into the wall.

"Silence Seth." A suction cup caught her on her shoulder and hoisted her up again. "Now, I was generous with you. And I will remain so. I will help you to return to the Material realm, as long as you carry out a purpose for me."

"I WILL NOT KILL MY SIRE!" Seth screamed emphatically, "DEATH FIRST!"

Elder God's eye rolled and he clamped another sucker over her mouth and throat. "Silence." He bashed her against a stalagmite, driving it through her leg and leaving her hanging from it like some macabre statue. "I realize you will not serve in that capacity. However, I still require you in the Material realm."

Her eyes narrowed.

"And I do not need you to attack Raziel." Something in his voice seemed off.

Seth didn't hear it though. "What would you have me do?" She didn't trust the Elder God, but she had promised to serve Raziel until her final death, and now that she knew he was alive, she could not knowingly not take the chance.

A silence permeated the room for a moment before the Elder God answered her, "Your presence, will be enough."

Seth still didn't trust this, but... Raziel. "What about my heart..." She looked up at her ribcage hanging above her, into the cavity where her heart was still gaping wide.

"I will siphon off some of the pressure, allowing you to exist in the Material, however I can not heal the wound completely." He pulled her off the stalagmite and held her in line to his eye once more. "Do we have a deal?"

She was going to regret this; she didn't know how, but she was. Then she suddenly found herself on the ground next to her mourning Sire. How long had she been gone? It had felt like an eternity, but for him to still be here? She stalked over towards him silently and knelt down, laying a hand tentatively on his shoulder, "Raziel?"  

[Reaver Of Souls Raziel]

As she phased out of the material realm and into the spectral realm, Raziel wasn't too far behind her. He shifted, wanting to make sure Seth was alright now that she had been freed from her tortured body, but when he arrived in the spectral realm, she was nowhere to be found... that was impossible, she should have been there, why wasn't she? Raziel felt panic start to grip his chest, there was no way she could have wandered off in that short amount of time or even shift back. Something was wrong...

He had no choice but to return to the material realm in case Seth did come back and he wasn't there. But for each minute he was there and she wasn't, his worry only increased. Raziel started to feel that maybe he had done something wrong in killing her, that he really did kill her. He was on the verge of despairing... that is until she finally returned minutes later.

Raziel was so relived, he wasted no time in wrapping his arms securely around her once she was knelt. "Seth! Thank the pillars you're still alive..." He said, then pulled her away, holding her by the shoulders as he looked her dead in the eye. "Are you alright? What happened to you?"