NationStates Jolt Archive

ooc: this is a semi-closed thread. if you would like to participate, send me a TG. Otherwise, this is for Haraki and Underaloz

IC:
Why couldn’t she love me? That was the question that always played around in his head time and time again until it consumed his thoughts entirely and the world would fade into darkness. As it was fading, he’d answer himself; I’ll make her love me. Daja Shentavo: the first vampire of the Shentavo line, but by no means the most popular. He had been exiled by his one and only fledgling; Ravelyn, and destroyed by her lover, Michael Vaughn. It had been a long time since he had attempted the ceremony. His one desire had always been Ravelyn, Azrael being bound to the ancient would cause quite a disruption, for once she was bound to him, he would take her wings, and she would be his forever. Once both wings of an angel of death are cut from their backs, their body cannot regenerate them, and for what compassion they loose; becoming monstrous entities with complete apathy in their hearts and only loyal to the ones they are bound to. He was so close to making it happen; he was so close to taking her forever with him. Ravelyn never loved him, but there was another that loved her.

She was changed into a vampire against her will, tainting her blood and causing a painful hatred of her sire since she was turned. She learned what he taught her, but one day, he never returned to her. Part of her found relief, part of her was scared. She had taken up a leading position in the nation, and later became the Empress. She opened an academy, and it was then that she met Corothisia and Michael Vaughn. Both were competing for her interest at the time. Corothisia was an ancient, perhaps the age of her sire, and strong. She considered him very strong. He had a darkness about him she was keen to, and took an interest. Vaughn, however, seemed darker, and pushed her away at the time. What started as trying to help him turned into falling in love with him, and they fell hard for each other. With her decision, Corothisia disappeared from her life, but he did not leave her thoughts forever. As often as she looked for him, he could not be found. Also, with his disappearance, Daja returned to her. Seeing her with him infuriated him, and he dragged her down into the Abyss. He would complete the binding ceremony and have her for eternity to himself.

Vaughn and Daja didn’t see eye to eye, and the ceremony was abruptly halted by the Vaughn’s protest. Vaughn’s eyes were blue, but those who knew him knew that underneath they were truly an obsidian black of such darkness it was incomparable. They were devoid of light. He was what Ravelyn called a dragon king, possessing the abilities of a shadow adept, but those eyes, those black eyes held a great deal of strength. It was then that Daja was exiled and his essence thought to be destroyed, but they had no way of knowing then, that he would return. He would return for her. It was after this defeat, however, Ravelyn gained the tattoo of a rose upon her back, as a symbol of both suffering and love. It was a symbol of her love, not necessarily directed towards someone, but it was there, and she loved Vaughn.

During the Great Wars, Vaughn perished. As had as she tried to find him, remnants, soul, anything, she could not. Her nation went down in devastation stripped of her leadership, and hell found its way to the Three United Empires. She mourned for two hundred years, loosing much of her strength, until the angel found the strength to attempt to move on, and rebuild her nation. She reformed her family from those she had restored and gave the household the ability to retain its former glory. She was ready to move on; she was ready to lead again. She sent out a signal to nations she had formerly held an alliance with, and many responded. One of her former alliances was with Haraki, and the person who received the message was Corothisia. He had been facing his own trials after he had left. He had loved Ravelyn, but knew she had chosen. A woman fell in love with him, and would have done anything for him, but his mind was set on Azrael, and his heart as well. The girl knew, but it didn’t stop her from loving him. It was his desire to go after the angel he had lost, but it resulted in her death. He could never forgive himself, but found his forgiveness in the arms of his angel.

Ravelyn had loved Corothisia. Unlike Vaughn, he didn’t keep secrets from her, at least for the most part. Vaughn had always been pushing her away, worried she would get hurt. With a personality such as hers, it was a hard thing to do to push her away, but he managed. When he died, despite this, it left a permanent wound upon her heart. She took her chance with Corothisia, and after a trying ordeal while visiting a nation who was supposed to be welcoming them, that void began to fill. Were they a better match than she and Vaughn? Only time would tell. Their personalities were similar, but complementary in many ways. He was her elder by many centuries, and perhaps that intrigued her; like a competition. Whatever the reason, the two became unrepeatable. With Ravelyn’s voice, reputation, and appearance, and his strength, age, and stature, they could be quite powerful in the vampiric community as well amongst other nations. It was then that she received news of Vaughn. She went after him. Vaughn was resurrected, and the two met again for the first time in over two hundred years. She loved him, but she loved Corothisia as well. She chose Corothisia, despite her heart was breaking from loosing either of them. It was a horrible decision she had to make, but even so, it didn’t stop her from caring about him. She loved them both. Was it wrong to love two people?

Of course, to Daja, it was. Over the course of her sadness and torment, Daja had gained enough energy to reform his body, and he came back for the woman that he always wanted. He was the one thing she always feared.

Daja sat in the church with his feet up atop the pew in front of the one he sat on. It was an abandoned church, far from the nation’s capital. His glaring red eyes never changed from that sanguine color. His pale skin was the color of moonlight, and his hair reached halfway down his back in straight black tendrils. His fangs sat upon his lower lip, and he was lost in contemplation. Why couldn’t she love me? I gave her everything… a deep growl emanated from his throat. A young man stood in the doorway with short white hair and bright blue eyes.

“Everything is progressing as predicted. Our house is growing strong, and we have been well fed…” he said, licking the blood from his lips. “Do you want us to go fetch your bride?”

“No,” Daja said calmly, closing his eyes. “It isn’t time yet.”

Ravelyn walked back into her mansion, leaving her coat at the door and trailing up the stairs to her room which she sealed the door at her back after passing through the threshold. Corothisia was there, and she told everything through her eyes. Vaughn had returned…and she flashed the images before his eyes. Daja…was he real? Or just her imagination. All of this was happening so quickly, she was having trouble deciding what was real and what was not. The one thing that she knew existed was the man standing before her, and she threw her arms around his neck, nearly jumping him. Her eyes were still blood shot with tears of loosing Vaughn all over again, now in an entirely different way. She clung to him like a lost child, burying her head into his shoulder to shield her tears from his view. She would not let him see her cry; not now. Not after all that they’ve been through. Despite all of her shielding, she could hide nothing from him, and didn’t try to.

She kissed his neck, softly at first, then with a fit of passion to his lips. He was the only thing that felt real; the only thing she could sense. He was the only one not tearing at her heart, and the only one who had never broken it. The salty taste of tears soon dissipated into the metallic taste of blood. Had she been too careless with her fangs? Had he? She didn’t know who had nicked who, or if it really mattered, but she pressed her body against his and continued giving his lips and the smooth hard muscle along his abdomen attention. She wanted to escape the world; escape it all. She wanted to escape the loss, the bloodshed, the pain, if only for a few hours. They had been through so much in such a little time they had never had any actual time together. She had never been this way before, at least not as direct as now. Her passions had escaped her, and the only thing she wanted to do was drink his image down and praise the gifts he had been bestowed with, although she had many of her own. Lust is a powerful thing combined with love. It can make you forget, even for a few hours. It was what she needed. It was what she needed for a reprieve from reality, in his arms.

He opened his mouth to speak, but he was quieted by a solitary finger against his lips as she unlocked her shielding and let her aura wash over him like a heated wave.

Tempest lay there, staring up at the ceiling. The last few hours had been physically taxing, though his regained strength made it all too easy for him to simply ignore the aching muscles beneath his skin and operate on thoughts alone until he could get a chance to peacefully rest. She had not said a word to him, but he knew what she would have said if she had spoken. He could feel it. He's back. Just maybe, they're both back. The shit's hit the fan. Fuck.

Michael Vaughn. A name he hadn't paid attention to in two hundred years. Truth be told, and this was something he would never, never let Rave feel, he had been glad to feel Vaughn leave Tempest's plane of existence. He felt bad for wishing it, and felt glad now that the man was back, but he had hated the man with all his heart for winning Rave away from him. Now he was back, and he knew the choice Rave had made. He had felt it almost immediately, and he knew she had not made it lightly. He felt honoured, but at the same time threatened. The love of his unlife had nearly been taken away from him by her previous fiancé. It was a terrible feeling, to think it could happen again. He was happy in the way she had made her choice, but it made his blood boil to think of how torn up inside she was. Not for the difficulty of the choice - he understood that, and knew it was her choice to make - but rather for the fact that it made her unhappy, physically drained her. He had helped take her mind off it, but he could only do so much. The rest was up to her, though he could help her, guide her, and protect her. As much as she tried not to admit it, he knew he was her guardian, that he protected her from whatever she could not handle on her own.

She was lying with her head on his chest, her eyes peacefully closed, but he knew it would not last. Once she woke up, the feelings would return, her guilt over her choice would return, and her fear of her sire would return. He could help her with the last. The others, not so much. What he could do to help her now, in the moment, was to help keep her mind off it. He leaned his head up, careful not to disturb her, and kissed the top of her head gently before lowering his lips down to her ear and whispering in it, aloud. He knew she could not consciously hear him, being asleep, but he felt it would help. "Ravelyn Shentavo ... Don't worry about anything. I'm right here, and I'm not going anywhere. I'll always be here for you. Always. To protect you, to help you, to guide you, to love you. I'll always be with you, even when I'm not at your side. Remember that. I love you." He kissed her once more, gently, ran his fingers across her smooth skin, enjoying the feeling of it, and laid his head back down. Letting out a long sigh at the fact that he never seemed to get any proper rest, his eyes remained open, staring at the ceiling, thinking. Thinking about everything, long and hard. The past, the future, philosophers he had known. About Rave, about Daja, about the dreams he had been having. About his reclaimed sense of identity, of purpose. About his love. About the ocean. About everything.

After many hours, Ravelyn’s eyes opened slowly. She felt the tears well in her eyes, but no, she would not allow herself to cry again. She loved them both. Was it wrong to love two people? She had made her choice. Vaughn left her, he had lied to her many times, and yet she still felt something for him. She felt love, she felt betrayal. She didn’t know how to feel. Everything was happening all at once, but the kiss upon her forehead comforted her. This wasn’t a love triangle, this was a fucking octagon. She only reciprocated two, but she had decided to move on. After two hundred years she had decided, and Tempest had been there waiting for her. He was always waiting for her, and now, his waiting paid off. She loved him, and would not leave his side. Even for Vaughn, as much as it tore her up, she had made her decisions. She gradually turned over on her side and ran her hand over his abdomen, gently leaning forward towards him and kissing the bare skin before rising a bit. He was tired, regaining strength but lost in contemplation.

“For two vampires,” she started softly, her voice like an intoxicating melody playing over his ears. “Sharing blood is extremely intimate. I have never offered my blood to someone unless they were dying or in terrible need of it. The two times I’ve offered it to you it’s been because you’ve been injured. The times you’ve offered to me its been out of necessity. I’ve tasted your blood; thick, rich, like the perfectly aged wine and so much more. It coils around your tongue and slips down your throat in heated waves.” She raised herself and moved closer to him, hovering over him while not directly on top of him. “I’ve made my choice, Coro…” Coro; her name for him. “I don’t regret it. You’ve always been open with me, patient, protecting. You’ve never lied to me, you’ve never kept these dark secrets like he did. You never pushed me away. I was so blind back then…I didn’t even see…” she caught herself. The past didn’t matter anymore. “I love you. I always will, and I’ll never leave, not for Vaughn, not for anyone.” She bent down and kissed his lips.

She pulled back a bit and trailed her nail over the top of her left breast. Drops of blood beaded up immediately in a rich scarlet color and had just begun to trail down her pale skin. She kissed him again; the smell of her blood perfuming the air like roses. “I want to share this with you, not because you need it, not because if you don’t drink something will happen. I want you to, because I want to share that with you. Just us, just because I love you.”

He smiled warmly. He recalled her offering her blood to him. Both times he had refused, his pride standing in the way. He had always felt she needed it more than he did. He had offered his to her before, as well, in times of need, to strengthen her, to prepare her for what was to come. She had sometimes accepted, and sometimes not. Without vocalizing these thoughts, these memories, he reached up and traced a fingertip through the drops of blood accumulating on her skin, bringing it back to his lips and licking it off slowly. It was strange, powerful, very different. An angel's blood, and a vampire's blood. Unique. He did not know how to describe it. He didn't need to. He knew she knew how he felt. He was open to her, let her read his emotions. He had nothing to hide, and that which he did need to hide, what few secrets he would always need to keep, were so well hidden within him that no one would ever find them, not if he was broken and battered, not for Rave, not if he was dying. No one would ever know the few secrets he kept. He didn't need to be secretive.

He looked up at her, deep into her red eyes, and he knew that the moment could not last. The cynical, pessimistic side of him knew that in the past something had always happened to disturb their time together, while the sardonic side, for once taking an optimistic viewpoint, reminded him to enjoy the moment while it lasted. He smiled broadly, his teeth showing, not entirely accidentally. "I love you, Rave," he said quietly, his eyes never leaving hers, even as his hands reached up to gently take hold of the sides of her stomach, supporting her as she remained over him. "I've said it before. I'll say it again. I love you, I always have, and I always will. I don't even care what happens anymore, I'll always be there for you."

He reached up with his head to meet hers, kissing her passionately on the lips as he sat up, bringing her with him, raising her up onto his lap as he assumed his full sitting height, half a head taller than her, his arms wrapping themselves around her to slowly pull her closer to him, even as he continued the embrace. The argument inside his head continued, even while his physical body hushed it up and his conscious train of thought ignored it. But in the back of his head, the nagging voices kept reminding him. It can't last...

She smiled as he tasted her blood, smiling lightly. She wanted to feel him penetrate her. With his fangs, of course. As he smiled widely, she could not help to smile as well. “What ever am I going to do with you Corothisia?” Oh no, she said his full name. Something was working in her mind. “If you keep kissing me like this…you might start a fire.” Too late, the fireplace was already in flames. She looked back at it. Whenever she got heated, whether angry or otherwise, fire tended to start. Hence the fire place in the room. It took the concentration, keeping her possessions safe. She was quite surprised at it, she hadn’t known that it sparked with her kiss, or rather him tasting her blood. She laughed a bit as he held her close. Then, they were interrupted.

Shen-Jin opened the door suddenly, stammered and covered his eyes. “Oh my god …” he pretended to be scared for life in his old dramatic fashion. “I don’t think my eyes will ever be the same.”

Ravelyn mentally scolded him. Like he hadn’t been with half the women in the empire. Everything had to be about sex with him. There wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen, and her back was towards him, so all he got a view of was the rose tattoo trickling down her back. He was aware that she was hanging out with this Tempest guy, but he didn’t know that… It was strange, to see your sire with someone else, and even though Shen-Jin had no real relation except a fledgling sire relationship, he still found it weird, or at least pretended to find it weird. He spoke up again, turned away from them. “There’s been a few murders on the outskirts of Namadon, more progressing with each hour. It’s a vampire, or a group of them, we don’t know. We felt you should know…”

He turned and looked at Corothisia, whom Rave had shifted off of at the surprise. “You lucky bastard…” he said, and then closed the door. Ravelyn was mad that he entered, mad they were interrupted, concerned that there was vampire killings in her nation. It was a direct challenge to her house. Vampire politics. Shit…

She looked at Corothisia. “Five more minutes…”

He gave her a longing look and a wistful smile in response. "I wish, I wish we could," he said, a tinge of sadness touching her voice, and he leaned in to kiss her again, long and hard. As he pulled back, he continued the sentence as if uninterrupted, "but you just know five minutes will turn into ten, and ten will turn into thirty, and before you know it half the people in Namadon are dead. We should probably deal with it quickly, before it gets out of hand."

As he looked into her eyes, he could see the sense of disappointment already forming, and that made him grin widely. "I'll make it up to you, I promise. Whatever you want, but after we get some exercise."

Vampire killings? Inside the United Empires? That's just asking for trouble. It was a request for a fight, he could tell. It reminded him of the old days. Power struggles. Vampires killing humans inside his domain. He had killed them without mercy, made examples of them. It had been civilized. One didn't simply kill humans, especially not ones who answered to someone else. Much as they didn't want to admit it, vampires could not survive without humans, and the sooner they could all admit that, the sooner they could all survive. As it was, it was like the old days. Make an example. Show them just who holds all the cards. Make them realize they're not fucking with amateurs.

And yet ... and yet ... he already knew that they knew that. It was the domain of Rave Shentavo. Although not the most powerful vampire, she was certainly one who made it known that she was not to be trifled with. Anyone killing humans like that, within her demesne, knew she would be after them, and knew she would not take it lightly. It almost worried him. Almost.

“Whatever I want, huh?” That put a smile on her face as she kissed him back. What I want, is five more minutes… she thought openly and knew he would catch it. She sighed softly, and pulled away from him. It was almost painful to do. Why could they not just have one night together uninterrupted? He was right. Five minutes would turn into ten, and ten to thirty, and before they knew it, half the people in Namadon would be dead. Then she half a quiet thought; It would be worth it. It was selfish, but she had not wanted something so badly, and yet, she could not abandon her people. “Fine…fine, you are right. But promise to save some energy, all right?” She flashed her brilliant smile and headed to her closet, which she seemed to disappear in. There were a good amount of shoes on one side. God, women and their shoes. NEVER question a woman’s shoes. She will kill you, without question. It is a dangerous thing to mess with.

She came out wearing black pants which were tight and tucked into thick black-leather boots which had buckles running up the side of her calf and a place for a knife; which there was one. She had a silver metal belt with the insignia of her nation and a white sleeveless button down top in which she buttoned up very slowly, right in front of him, leaving the top few buttons purposefully while looking at him, as if to say ‘I’m not happy about this and you better be ready to undo these buttons when we get back or I might just have to kill you’. Yes, that could all be said in once look; her look. For the first time in a while, her hair was pulled back off her face in a ponytail which trailed down to her mid back and curled on the ends slightly. Around her neck she had her chocker, with the bead on it which held the scythe within that he had given her.

There was a knock on the door, a pause, and then a "Your car is ready..." then they retreated down the stairs.

As she emerged from the closet mostly-dressed, she found him in his pristine loose black clothes, as usual, but outfitting himself with something she had not seen him use in a very long time. Pulling on a long jacket, he reached into the inside of it and checked up on a very large handgun. The only weapon he had ever truly used for extended periods of time, its massive ammunition, especially with the anti-vampire rounds he used for it, was, quite simply, the only weapon he trusted. As he checked on it, checked the iron sights, made sure it was all in order, and slung it away under his left shoulder, he turned to face her as she emerged. It's been a while since I've gotten to have a fair fight with some vampires. Might as well be prepared.

"What can I say?" he said aloud as she noted the gun, one which he had used many times in the past, including while sparring with her, helping her feel out herself when a relatively new vampire, especially compared to one such as he. "One thing must be said for humans; they sure are good at inventing weapons."

The knock on the door and announcement of the car's readiness brought back unwanted memories. The last time they had gotten in the car it had not been exactly pleasant. But still he recognized all that had changed since then. They were not going somewhere unknown, into the lion's den. They were going somewhere they knew to hunt a familiar foe. And it would most likely be ... fun.

He walked to the door and turned back to her, waiting for her to catch up before they started down the stairs and to the car.

Ravelyn grinned, and then rubbed her bead. “I think I’ll stick to my blade. It’s bigger than your gun,” she gave him a smile, and kissed him while pulling him towards the door at the same time. God, she did not want to leave, and knew that he knew it. In all honesty she would have rather pinned him to the door than to have crossed the threshold. Such desires crossed her mind openly, and then she stopped herself. What she would have not given for five more minutes. They headed out to the car, heading on the one hour drive to Namadon with the rock music blaring. She loved every second of it, and then, reality began to sink in. Someone was challenging her authority, and this she could simply not let slide. This is not a threat she would take lightly, they would all die by sunrise. The sun had just begun to set again, and she watched it on the horizon as they shot down through the tunnels which connected the nation together. They were only for government use; and she was the government.

---

Daja slowly got up from the Church pew and brushed himself off of the dust that had gathered. He had been sitting there for quite some time. His long coat covered his form nearly entirely, however it was clear that he was well built, and certainly not a pushover. It wasn’t his body that was the most intimidating, it was aura. It was scorching cold like a white flame against your skin. It would send burning shivers down your spine. That is what it did to Ravelyn. Now everything had gone perfectly, and it was time to intervene. He sensed it; her passion, her lust, and her love. A sire was always connected to his fledgling; always. He was pleased because of this, for if he weren’t connected with her, he would have no way of finding her. Now he knew she was on her way, not directly to him but he would meet her. My my Tempest…what are you doing messing around with my possessions? He questioned silently to himself, then masked his presence, and dissipated into the shadows. He had grown strong; very strong, all out of his obsession.

--

When Ravelyn skidded and parked on the corner sideways, not even caring, she saw a group of vampires, five perhaps. They were young, but there were older vampires in the area, perhaps a century old, perhaps a few decades. Hell, there were about twenty nine of them, and not all of them young. Someone must have been working to accumulate this. She wondered if they all had the same sire. If they did, this master vampire certainly his coven. She was the first out of the car, immediately shifting into her seraphic form, yanking the bead of her chain and her scythe forming in mid air. Her wings fanned out to the side.

“Come on you worthless punks,” she growled, taunting them without fear. “You want to kill something kill yourselves, it will be less painful then what we are about to do to you.”

Tempest followed her only a moment after, standing there in his long coat and loose black clothes, taller than any of the young vampires they faced. New. Worthless. Cannon fodder. Ground troops, capable of taking out humans easily enough but paling in comparison to a vampire of any age whatsoever. He grinned. They recognized Rave, but not him. He was masking his aura of power, his sense of smug self-awareness. He wanted to have some fun, and destroying them in a matter of seconds would be far from that.

Taking up a position to Rave's left, he grinned at the vampires they faced, his eyes widening. It had been too long since he had had a worthy opponent, and although he knew this would not be it, he could at least give it a shot. "Killing humans? You haven't even been drinking their blood for sustenance," he said to them. "You've been killing for fun. Pathetic."

He had not yet reached for his gun, although he would soon enough. The taunting was enough to get their enemies riled up.



OOC: That's it for me today. See you tomorrow.

The sound of gun shots rang out through the night as Tempest fired. Heads rolled to the ground as Ravelyn wielded her scythe skillfully, severing any part of someone’s body that got close to her, they were amateurs, but they were attacking, they were coming in waves. There were a lot of them. More started to head towards Corothisia then towards her. She arched her brow. There was something here; there was something that wasn’t right. They were following directions of some kind. She looked around trying to spot the master of them all, but could not find him or her. How could someone amass so many vampires in such a short time without her even knowing it? She could normally sense when they got made, where they were. It was her nation, and she kept tabs on them. This, this was something else. “Something’s not right,” she called out to Tempest, becoming a bit shaken. There should be no reason that she couldn’t sense a master vampire in the area. She should be able to sense them all. She lowered her restrictions and searched again, slashing her scythe through the air to lop off an arm of a silver haired vampire.

She pushed forward making her way to Tempest, and sending droves of fire towards the incoming vampires, incinerating them into ashes. More came, some of them not even vampires, and some of them were just ghouls. He hadn’t even bothered to turn them fully and give them some of his blood. So…so wrong. She had an aching feeling in her stomach. Something wasn't right.

Tempest hadn't had so much fun in several hundred years. It was far from a challenge, and they were pathetic weaklings, stupid to think they stood a chance against the two vampires in front of them, but still he enjoyed the carnage he could so easily wreak. Waves of vampires and ghouls, a veritable ground army of them, were coming for them, and it was so simple to just kill them. Noticing two from the left, advancing in tandem, trying to frighten them by baring their teeth and hissing loudly, he grinned, shifted his weapon to the left hand, and aimed out of the corner of his eye. It barked once, and the vampire to his right was suddenly headless, the one to his left suddenly nervous.

As he fired again out of his peripheral vision, one tried to leap at him, its fangs outstretched, trying its hardest to bite out his throat. he reached out with his right hand, meeting it with an outstretched and flexed palm, simply redirecting the vampire's momentum past him and kicking in the back of its head as it flew past the left side of his body. He followed it up with three shots into the back of the chest, to the heart, and the vampire stopped moving, quickly dissipating into dust and sand, like in his dreams.

He turned his head and his attention back to the main force, and saw Rave fighting her way towards him, sending waves of fire out to meet their oncoming opponents. He laughed as he watched them burn, taking the chance to reload his handgun. Turning to Rave as she approached, still firing out of the corner of his left eye at the approaching vampires, he gave her a grin, although it faded some as he saw the expression on her face. The comment he had been about to make died in his throat, and the grin slowly dissipated. He knew something was not right, too. This many vampires and ghouls, someone powerful had to be present. He couldn't passively sense them, though, and wasn't bothering to try hard because he was too busy, and having altogether too much fun, destroying the minions in front of him. It wasn't tiring at all. If anything, it was invigorating, and after the ordeals he had been through recently, it was almost a relief to get back to something that felt almost natural.

Ravelyn made her way towards him, not picking up the pace as she felt a cold breath on her shoulder, than stopped to turn around. There was no one behind her, and none of them were attacking her any longer. Some one had given orders; direct orders to just attack Tempest. She fought to keep to her senses, and keep the angel of death within her under control from going into a frenzy of slaughtering. She needed to think, needed to sense. “Where are you,” she growled aiming to no one in particular, but meant for the master vampire. “Where the fuck are you, you lowlife son of a bitch!” She growled, and sent out another wave of fire.

Before she could react, a strong arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her back roughly against a hard wall of muscle which lay underneath his clothes. Daja tugged at her ear with his lips. “I’m right here…” he had come out of no where, as if he had just simply formed from air. Her eyes widened, and she struggled, but she could not; not against her own sire, not against the one that made her. He could stifle her magics whenever he wanted to. His scarlet eyes flicked to Tempest, and he grinned as he whispered something in Ravelyn’s ear, all the while gazing towards Tempest. She struggled harder, but it was as if his arm was made out of adamantine, and would not bend for all the world. Good god…he was strong.

“You’re dead…you’re not real…” she stammered, gathering strength and trying to break free, but it was to no avail. She was as strong as a mortal within his arms.

“Am I now, my dear?” He laughed; that haunting laugh which resonated through the city. He never expected to kill both of them with servants. It was all a trap. “You’ve been quite busy…since I’ve been away.”

Tempest's gun was almost instantaneously back in his right hand and aimed at Daja's head, though his pulling Rave into the way caused the gun to falter and weave back and forth, seeking a clean shot. "You bastard," he said loudly and clearly. "Not only do you desire to deal with us, something I could understand, but you kill all these innocent people-" he waved his left hand towards the vampires and ghouls he was no longer paying attention to - "just to get to us? You could have sent us a gilded invitation and we still would have- Ow!"

One of the approaching vampires had gotten close enough, while his attention was distracted to attack him, and went straight for his neck. He responded by punching through its head with his left hand, it turning to dust and being swept away in front of his eyes, his peripheral vision keeping the gun trained on Daja and slowly beginning to walk towards him. Concentrating, he conjured a second, much smaller, handgun in his left hand, this one a .50 calibre pistol, which he used to put precisely aimed shots into the skulls of vampires and ghouls that got too close while he moved his way towards Daja. "You didn't need to get them involved in this," he said clearly. "They're innocents. You're no better than a common murderer, Daja. You coward. You disgust me."

His eyes snapped back to Daja as the threat posed by his lackeys diminished. So, what now? he thought to himself.

“They mean nothing. They are nothing,” Daja commented, and started kissing Ravelyn’s neck and she cringed and swore at him. He grinned at her. “Five more minutes Rave, huh?” he laughed at her and she cast her eyes downward. “I could hear that from across the nation, lusty creature.” He squeezed her tightly and she let out a sigh as the air was pushed out of her. “Time to complete our ceremony. It’s been prolonged for far too long.” He smiled back at Tempest. “You will come to the ceremony, of course, in The Abyss, tomorrow night. It will be beautiful…I can assure you, when a seraphic becomes a sephiwrath.” He bit down into her shoulder, which caused her to jerk and rip her flesh a bit in an attempt to get away. He slid his free hand up her abdomen to her chest, and lingered before bringing her neck to the side for a better angle at her blood. “She was always mine, from the day I made her…” He grinned. “See you there if you can survive the welcome.”

She screamed out for him, and he turned away, both of them dissipating into the shadows with Tempest’s name lingering in the air; Coro, her name for him. The vampires that remained were few, and retreated to the shadows as best they could. The ghouls had all been killed they were worthless. A phone rang on the ground; it was Ravelyn’s phone, dropped from the driver’s side of the car.

"Motherfucker," Tempest growled, a feeling of outrage and astonishment overtaking him. He quickly scanned around him for any other foes to face and, find none, turned to the phone. Dropping the second pistol, which disappeared before it hit the ground, and holstering his, he made his way quickly to the phone. Picking it up, he held it loosely in his hand as he took the driver's seat in the car and shut the doors, starting it and driving away quickly. He could not sense Rave, try as he did, but he wanted to get away from the site of the ambush. As he began to drive, he picked up the cell phone in the middle of its fourth ring, flipped it open, and held it up to his ear. His voice as he spoke was rough and angry, inquiring gruffly "Who is this?"

“Will you R.S.V.P now or later,” the familiar voice said over the phone, and with a laugh it was gone. They appeared in a large abandoned manner, and she knew it well. It used to be his manner, when she first arrived to this land. She let out a gasp as she was thrown onto a leather couch while he ignited the candles in the room simply by a wave of his hand and threw a cell phone down upon the table, breaking it in half. He leered at her.

“Bastard,” she cursed at him, and try as she may, her powers had no effect. He was her sire, he had control over her. It was this control that many people feared; and for her it was absolute. She stood up and lunched at him, punching him square across the face and quickly kicking him in the side. It only moved him an inch before he started to counter with a grin on his face.

“You know I missed sparring with you, Ravelyn, teaching you my techniques…” he caught her arm, twisted it, and kicked her in the small of her back to the floor. She rolled forward and flipped up. She was fast, really fast. When she turned to see him, he was gone. The shadows formed around her, and he solidified, grabbing both her wrists and wrapping them behind her back while standing behind her. “I also missed this…” He pushed her forward onto the floor, skinning one of her knees even through the black material. He placed both fingertips to her temples suddenly. “Sleep…” he commanded, and she did, and fell limp in his arms. He lifted her up, and took her into the bed room.

The phone rang again in Tempest’s hand, and already opened it answered automatically. “Ravelyn…this is Navi…what’s going on? You have to see this…Ravelyn?” she paused. “What happened Tempest?” She questioned, knowing it was him on the other end of the phone.

"She's gone," he growled. "Daja took her. We have to rescue her from the Abyss by tomorrow night." It was then that he realized just what she had said. "Wait... What are you calling about? What's going on?"

He wasn't sure where he was going, where he could properly cross over to the other side, to leave his familiar dimension and enter the one where Daja reigned. He was driving fast, very fast, but still slower than he desired. What he wanted was to wreck things. A childish urge, to destroy when something was taken away from him, but it was what he desired. To destroy the weights in his way, to destroy the things standing between him and his love, to destroy Daja once and for all, to stop him coming back. He did not know where he was going, but it was night, and he was the king of the night. Here and now, at least.

Navi sounded concerned. He wondered whether what she was trying to tell Rave had anything to do with Daja's return, and if it involved Tempest finding her as quickly as possible. If not, he found himself thinking that it did not matter as much. He had to find Rave. He had to.

“Oh my god…oh my god…” she repeated twice after s few moments of silence. “The ruins, from the Great Wars…an hour from Namadon…a doorway has opened there. My computers are giving high levels of paranormal activity in that section. It’s been abandoned for as long as anyone can remember, but it was there that had become the gateway to the Abyss during the Great Wars. Tempest, Lotus will be coming with you. I must stay as I am second in command of the nation should Ravelyn fall. He is already headed towards the ruins to check it out. He may seem like a meek young man, but he is a master at what he does. Hurry…time passes faster there. If he said tomorrow night, that means you have thirty minutes from now.” She paused on the phone. Where had everyone else gone? One Shentavo to assist? What the hell was going on. They would help in other ways.

“Thirty minutes to get to her, Tempest. If…if he should…she told me about him. If he should…if you don’t get there in time, she is lost to us, all of us, as is the nation.” There was a pause, and then a click. She had hung up.

An hour from Namadon ... Like hell an hour from Namadon. I'm not who I am for nothing.

He stopped the car, parked it by the side of the road, and locked it, stepping out and taking the cell phone with him. Standing at the side of the road, he looked around, blinked, and was suddenly standing in the ruins. Impressive things, the ruined buildings towered over him, and had the situation not been so dire, he would have been impressed, have spent time viewing them. As it was, he was in a hurry, and could not wait for Lotus to arrive. There was no time. He thought for a moment, and the young man appeared in front of him, looking slightly off-put. Tempest hardly even greeted him, simply giving him a look which, while admitting his presence, cleared up that there was no time for formalities. "Let's go," he said, and turned towards their target.

It was an impressive building, or had been once. Stone foundation with large walls now jutting up into the sky as jagged peaks of rock, it looked to have once been a cathedral. The irony would have made him laugh at any other time, that of the temporary portal to the realm of Daja Shentavo being found in a church. Stepping forward, he opened the rotting wooden doors by simply giving them a shove, sending the splintered wood creaking inwards and walking past the shredded doors. The pews had all rotted and would undoubtedly collapse, the entire church was in disarray, but it was not these hings that interested him. Beyond the altar, but before the crumbling organ, the air was different. Not visibly, but it he looked harder, used second sight, the air shimmered. There were two places trying to cram themselves into one space there, and he knew that by standing there he could shift the two vampires through from the first place into the second.

He made his way there quickly, standing in the space that made his skin crawl, and looked up at a metal crucifix on the wall. If I was a priest, I would pray for help here, he thought. As it is, I'm on my own. Once Lotus had joined him there, he closed his eyes for a second, and concentrated. The air changed, the temperature around him changed, and the insides of his eyelids burned from the sights he was about to see. Knowing whatever it was would be unpleasant, but that everything he held dear was at stake, he steeled himself in a fraction of a second and opened his eyes, his right hand drifting towards his left shoulder and the weapon housed there.

Lotus was an inch shorter than Tempest with bleach blond hair and light eyes. Thread formed in between his fingertips as he watched Tempest open the fine thread that linked the two worlds, and they were there, within another world. Fire roared up through the pits below and long winding pathways wove up to a large mansion, on top of which was a plat form. There were demons, vampires, the home of evil to every side of them, but they had not noticed. They were watching the platform, shouting and sending out calls. Ten minuets had already gone by. Twenty minutes left.

--

Ravelyn woke up, propped up in a chair with various people attending her. “What the fuck…” She managed to say before she noticed her wrists pinned down by adamantine chains. “How the fuck did he get these back on me…” she knew them well, and cursed. She looked a the mirror and watched them work, doing her hair up with black pins and smoothing the waves. There was a choker around her neck, and a red dress. “Wow…someone had this planned out…” she scoffed, and bit one of the attendants arms before receiving a blow across the face, by Daja.

“Do you not want to look absolutely beautiful my dear? This is, after a special day,” he grabbed her sides. “Now let me see those wings of yours, Azrael, seraphic of death.” She turned her head away.

“I’ll kill you before I hand over my being to a man like you.”

Tempest held out a hand to Lotus to urge him to be quiet as he looked around at the creatures of Hell that surrounded them on every side. He reached the same hand out to touch Lotus' shoulder, and the two vampires faded out of existence, invisible to all but their own eyes, and as they watched, the monsters faded out of existence as well. Now I know why I regained so much power, he thought. It was so I could use it all today. Turning to Lotus and seeing the look on his face, he gave a quick explanation. "We can't see them and they can't see us until I say so. It won't work for Daja, if he sees us it's broken. It only works on these pathetic creatures because they are weak and so single-minded they would not have noticed us even if I had not invoked the spell."

With that he turned and began to walk purposefully towards the mansion ahead of them. In this new world, he could feel Rave's presence. He could also feel the power emanating from ahead of them. In the other world, he was king, and he held no qualms about expressing his feelings of superiority over anyone, including Daja, there. Here, he was not so self-confident. He acceded that it would be a good show, a good fight. He did not pose victory in front of himself, and held no delusions of such a thing. Had he been an outside observer placing bets, he would have placed a significant sum on Daja's triumph in this world. Being on the inside, he tried to find confidence.

As they reached the mansion, the front of the crowd, and he knew that the time would soon come, he resolved not to have to deal with the horde of monsters there while he was dealing with Daja. He could not sway them to his side, could not control them, not here. What he could do was put on a good show, entrance them, and then kill as many as he could before the spell was broken. Turning to Lotus as they emerged out of the non-existent crowd, he spoke. "I want you to go and find Rave," he said. "Try and stay out of sight, I can't guarantee your invisibility will last long against anything within the mansion, and once I start up out here I can't guarantee it will last at all. I'm going to create a distraction to give you time to find her, and get rid of some of our enemies. If it fails, hopefully I will attract Daja's attention for long enough for you to get Rave to the portal. In such a case, do not worry about me, just pray for my soul once you're on the other side."

He sent Lotus on his way with a gentle and slightly sentimental nod of the head, and turned to his audience. Waiting ten seconds to give the young vampire a head start, he faded into sight standing in front of the doors of the mansion, and immediately attracted attention from the demons and other monsters he faced. Grinning slowly, he placed his right hand at his side and an old-fashioned gramophone faded into view, its speaker aimed directly at the horde. "You demons of Hell," he said loudly, his voice carrying through the cavern clearly. He knew there was not a single one there not paying attention to him. "You are a dying breed. As the earth grows more powerful, Heaven stronger, and more and more of your brethren retire for a life in the middle world, the dimension of the humans, to enjoy more comfortable lives, your numbers thin out. Soon enough, you will be extinct, and you who remain will realize that the next great war will not be between devils and angels, but rather angels and humans. I am not here for you. I am here for the one that resides in this mansion. But while I am here, let me play something for you. A requiem."

The record in the player began to turn, the needle descending on it, and a haunting melody filled the air. It was orchestral music, slow and winding, but very powerful. He had conjured it not knowing exactly what it would play, but it fit it exactly. As he used magic to work them into a trance, the music helped, driving his point home like a nail, and he realized that, as much as he had doubted his own plan, it was working so far. Admittedly, he had now exposed his presence to everyone and everything here, including Daja, who he knew would be less than pleased, but he did not care. He hoped for Lotus' success, as he watched the music do its work, and slowly reached into his jacket for the handgun, which he produced and held at his side., walking slowly down towards the first ranks of the army in front of him.

Blocking their way was a man with short dark hair and white eyes. He had one leathery wing to one side, and the other was half severed. God, he looked so much like Quissera. He grinned, exposing rows of fangs inside his mouth. Quissera…it was, he was Ravelyn and Daja’s son. If she only knew. He was a remnant of her son, controlled by the one who resurrected him. He used to be the Manavex teacher at the academy; the most feared. Lotus sighted, and pulled the thin shining threads in his mouth. He was ready to fight. They had twenty minutes to get to her, only twenty. Quissera walked right past him towards Corothisia, but glanced at him, letting him know he knew he was there. Lotus hurried off into the mansion.

The demons did not even look toward Corothisia. They did not know him, even though they could feel his power; Daja was king. Quissera had noticed however. Ah, the welcoming party. “Hello, Tempest,” he said with a grin curving around his lips.

Daja pulled Ravelyn to her feet, pulling her close to feel her heart beat rapidly against his chest. “Your lover is here,” he whispered. “We better get started, Quissera won’t be able to hold him for long.” Ravelyn screamed at him with that. HOW DARE YOU! she thought, and he laughed wildly, pulling her along by his side. These heels were so steep she could barely walk. You had to love Daja for his choice of clothing that only a famous supermodel could ever hope to walk in. Ravelyn managed to carry herself, nearly stumbling and pulling back in protest. “I WILL NOT GO THROUGH WITH THIS YOU BASTARD!” She roared, and that sparked the seraphic inside of her.

“Scream a little more, darling, I miss hearing you scream.”

As the music that Tempest had conjured continued to wind its way through the cavern, a single violin singing its sorrowful song, Tempest turned from the demon horde in front of him to Quissera. He had made his point to the demons, that he was not to be trifled with. Turning to Quissera, he gave him a look of utmost hatred. "Get out of my way, Quissera," he said softly. "If you do not stand aside and allow me to reach Rave, I will kill you so much as look at you. I will destroy you so that no one, not even your esteemed father, will ever be able to resurrect you. Now stand aside, before I make you."

His words were filled with hatred and malevolence, as he stood there waiting for Quissera to move or make his move. His gun stood at the ready, his skin tingling with the desire to release endless amounts of power, to simply blast Quissera away, into so many pieces, and scatter them to the wind. It would be most gratifying, but not the practical thing to do. He needed to save his energy. He would wait until after Quissera was dead and could no longer resist to completely destroy him. It would be much less taxing.

He could feel Rave's distress, and Daja's power over her, and it made his fury grow even more. Twenty minutes left. Twenty minutes to make his point. Twenty minutes to save his love. Twenty minutes to fight his way out of Hell with one defenceless and one young Shentavo. It was far from enough time.





OOC: Food time.

“I’m afraid I cannot do that,” Quissera said, his black hair falling over one of his two-toned eyes. He spread his one wing out to the side. Quissiera had been the second strongest Shentavo before the war. He had given up his life in pursuit of Vaughn, however he was unsuccessful. It was Daja which trapped him here, even though his soul was already gone. He was a remnant. He removed the large broadsword from his back and spun it in front of his form. “Let’s see those guns of yours get through an adamantine sword. He rushed towards him, dragging the sword against the ground causing sparks as he moved before brining it up towards Tempest. He was brutally fast, and strong. It was to be expected.

Lotus ran through the mansion, and hid in the shadows. He knew Daja was with her right now. There was no way in hell he could get her with him in the way. He wouldn’t risk his own life; that would hurt Ravelyn more than was needed. He had to wait, and be patient for an opportunity; if one ever presented itself.

I know you can't, Tempest thought to himself as Quissera approached. I just had to try.

He knew Quissera was strong, and fast, but Daja had made him better. Here, in Daja's domain, he was augmented by the energy flowing around him, while Tempest was hindered by it. If this was a fight on equal ground, it would be no contest, Tempest thought to himself hopefully, trying to make himself believe it would be an easy victory. At the same time he knew that all he had to do was attract Daja's attention to let Lotus get Rave and get her away. That was all that mattered.

As Quissera swung the sword up at him, Tempest dodged deftly to Quissera's right, his right palm sliding down from Quissera's shoulder to his wrist quickly, to remain in control of Quissera's arm for just long enough for him to get away a left punch aimed at Quissera's temple, as hard as he could manage. "Some of us don't need swords," he hissed. The menace in his voice could be heard plainly. He had no time for this bullshit.

“Some of us don’t have the ability to wield adamantine. Everyone who wants to be strong wields the unbreakable metal, even Ravelyn. Have you seen her chains lately, or does she keep them hidden?” he grinned, and rushed toward Corothisia again, black energy surging towards the ancient. Quissera’s black eyes flashed. God he looked more and more like Vaughn even though Daja was his father. He had said once that he wished Vaughn…that Vaughn was his father. He had no room for any more. He slashed at him quickly, hoping to get an opening.

“Just answer me this,” he growled, “Wouldn’t it have made more sense to send the boy after me, and you go after Ravelyn, hmmmmn?” he laughed.

"I'm not here to get good people killed," Tempest responded, as the dark energy got dangerously close to him. It felt ... good, as it approached. He hadn't tried this in hundreds upon hundreds of years, had never had to. His physical form had been enough for so long. And now, facing a fellow ancient, an upstart young vampire, his love being taken away, and the man in front of him looking so much like Michael Vaughn, he felt it coming out, and grinned as the dark energy washed over him, engulfing him in a wave that nearly consumed his physical body and hid it from view. He could picture the expression on Quissera's face as he did not even try to block, redirect, or evade the attack. As the dark energy faded, and Quissera swung the heavy sword, Tempest came back into view, the energy around him dissipating, and he was very different. His entire body had turned to dark energy, his face was composed of many different eyes, bright white with red irises, and a massive grin that showed all his teeth. His hair had extended and hung behind him, its ends swaying slowly although there was no wind. As the blade swung, it slashed across his stomach and, although the grin faded slightly for a moment, it soon came back, as a massive pillar of dark energy blasted out of the slash across his stomach and rose up in front of him like a giant cobra made of sheer blackness, three bright red, hypnotizing eyes adorning its head as it swayed back and forth in front of Quissera, its black tongue slipping in and out of its mouth, and its giant fangs showing hungrily. He finished his sentence, still not perturbed at all by what Quissera had said or done to him. He didn't have enough time, but still he was suddenly enjoying himself. "I'm here to finish off smug bastards like you." His voice as he spoke echoed and carried several haunting undertones with it. It was sinister.

He stood there, an eerie grin on his many-eyed face, the giant cobra formed of energy emerging from his stomach facing off against Quissera in front of him. "Some of us, boy, don't need admantine blades to do our work for us. We don't want to be strong, we are strong. Or did you not know the extent of power that those such as I or your father can summon? If you still think yourself my equal, attack me again. If not, run like the coward you are, and let me get to my bloody business."

“Heh,” Quissera sighted. “Very well then.” He was impressed at what Tempest had done, however, he really didn’t have a choice in the matter. He couldn’t run, he couldn’t just let him pass. He had orders, and he was not a coward. Electricity surged between his fingers, and a very tattered feathered wing broke from his back as he clutched the sword. The sword caught with bolts of electricity, and he dragged it against the ground as he ran toward Quissera with all of he strength, he barreled into the other ancient, ripping his sword straight toward his chest in the process. “You have fifteen minutes to get to mother, Tempest,” he commented with eyes devoid of life. They flashed at him as he threw another strike toward the man before him. “You won’t make it. It’s already starting.” His short black hair hung over one eye, and his gloves had ripped from the energy he was admitting.

~*~

Ravelyn stood at the end of a long corridor, eyes raging with her cheeks slightly flush. She was angry; very angry. She had still not let her seraphic form take over, and would hold off for as long as possible. She was half changed with longer hair, but not fully changed. She was in a dark crimson dress, hugging her figure tightly around the bust and waist and fanned out just a bit. It was short, too short for her liking. The fabric matched her eyes perfectly and was well suited to the very loose curls pinned. She cringed as she saw the man at the other end of the corridor walking towards her.

“Azrael, you look absolutely stunning when your angry,” he smiled that dazzling smile of his. His black hair was tied back and he wore a dark shirt and pants. His skin looked blindingly white with the contrast. He looked at the servants and dismissed them. “She hasn’t been too much trouble has she?”

“Seven of us dead, three critically wounded…” one them said with a scowl. A small smile played across Ravelyn’s lips. When they were gone, he pulled her close.

“If she had said no, I would have been worried.”

ooc: TG







Tempest laughed as Quissera closed and tried once again to stab into him with the sword. Once more, he did not even try to stop him. He simply reached out with his hand as Quissera swung the sword, grabbing the younger vampire's wrist and not letting him pull the sword out of Tempest's body after it swung into it and stopped at the surface. The energy forming his body turned sticky, engulfed the sword, and solidified. Pulling it would be like pulling at magical tar, while at the same time Tempest held his wrist in place. The cobra rose up, straightening itself out, and then lashed out at the arm held in place, its mouth opening up, rows of shark-like teeth being revealed behind its two large fangs. It closed over Tempest's hand and over Quissera's whole arm, biting down to sever Tempest's hand and Quissera's arm. It did not concern Tempest. He was consuming his own energy and could easily grow back another hand. Hopefully losing an arm and his prized sword would make Quissera much more concerned than the temporary loss of a hand would do to Tempest.

Admittedly, the sword stuck in his side hurt, especially the electric part of it, but he ignored it. It was not important. What was important was finishing this wannabe ancient as quickly as possible and getting to Rave. Fifteen minutes. He could do it. Or just to draw away Daja and let Lotus escape with Rave. She was all that mattered. She was ... everything.

Quissera sighted, and vanished in a wave of shadows. What the hell…father… he questioned, as he was pulled back into the mansion, screaming, until his father absorbed him, causing a feint smile to come across his lips. “Shall we, my love?” he turned to Ravelyn, taking her arm. She spat at him, and was dragged down the hall, and up a flight of stairs to the roof of the building. Demons started to roar at her presence. It was not often a seraphic was found in the clutches of the abyss. She walked slowly, trailing him as his eyes flashed his purpose in the center of a pentagram written in blood. Children; mortals from her nation, killed, and cast to the side for their blood. “Show them your true form Azrael…” She closed her eyes, and two black wings emerged from her shoulder. The back of the dress was cut low enough so that the fabric didn’t even rip. It was tight enough around the top to act like a second skin. If she would have to breathe, she could not. It was a good thing she didn’t need air.

Threads wrapped around his waist, but snapped. Lotus was on the edge of the arena, threads in his mouth, a bit surprised it didn’t work, but who was he to expect. Daja didn’t glance at him. “Get out of here…Lotus,” Ravelyn said softly. “You can’t save me.” He took a step forward, and a few of the demons turned towards him. Surprisingly, Daja had not given the order to have the boy executed. He was, after all, getting what he wanted.

Tempest, seeing the platform at the top of the roof suddenly occupied by Daja and Rave as well as Lotus in a corner, and found that Quissera was gone. Had the boy had a soul, he could have felt Daja absorbing it. As it was, he simply knew he was gone and it was most likely his father that had done it. Without even thinking, Tempest began to rise, levitating himself up towards the roof of the building, up above the horde of demons in front of the mansion. The dark energy snake, finding itself with no available targets to eat, withdrew slightly, back into Tempest's stomach, though still there slightly, just its neck visible, swaying back and forth, the large head and the flicking tongue still present, its three burning eyes focusing in on Daja.

As Tempest reached the roof, he found Rave being taken by Daja towards a blood-red pentagram in the centre of the roof's platform, Lotus in the corner, his threads broken against Daja's skin. Stay back, Tempest silently warned him. This is going to quickly become ugly. I need you in good shape to escape with Rave. As he drifted forward, he set out a foot and steppe onto the edge of the platform, energy coursing through his body, seeking a target, and finding Daja. Slowly, Tempest began to walk out into Daja's path, until he would be standing between Daja and the pentagram, facing the other ancient. "Back off, Daja," he warned, knowing the other would simply ignore him. "Let her go and give her to me."

“Ha,” Daja said, breaking out with laughter before pulling Ravelyn close to him, possessively. He kissed her neck, running her fangs along the skin and causing thin lines of blood to trickle down over her pale flesh. She looked at Corothisia, but could not speak. He had complete control over her. On the inside, she was burning up, wanting to kill him, but being useless as the dead bodies that lined the floor. She turned her head as he lapped up her blood and looked at them. Children... she thought silently. The bastard... Daja looked up towards Tempest with a satiated smile not only of blood lust. “Tempest, just wait five more minutes won’t you? Just five more minutes.”

Tempest shook his head sadly. "No," he said, speaking as he often did, loudly, clearly, and in a commanding tone. At once, he raised his hands, sending a column of force towards Daja to try and shift him backwards, maybe slam him against the wall, at the same time trying to break his grip on Rave and throw her gently towards Lotus, before stepping in between them to stop attempts to pull her back. As he did this, the snake shot out of his stomach and high into the air, all the way towards the ceiling of the cavern, shrieking loudly, a combination of a laugh and a very distorted shriek of delight. The energy within Tempest was going crazy. It had been a long time since it had been unleashed, and even now it fought with him, many more heads trying to escape the confines of inside him, where he kept them and had kept them for so long.

As the snake head finished its unnatural shriek, it turned is neck to look far down towards the ground, at the scene unfolding. Even as Daja reacted to Tempest's assault, the snake shot downward straight towards the ancient Shentavo, its mouth wide open, to try and bite his head off.

Daja threw Ravelyn off to the side, and she hit the wall instead. Her back ached as she dropped to one knee. Daja grasped the jaws of the snake, preventing them from closing and misted behind Tempest. "Is that all you got boy?" he grinned. They used to argue about who was older, and it was never proven. Lotus looked at them, then bent down to help Ravelyn.

"Should I get a ruler?" he asked her, completely serious. She scowled at him. What a horrible time for jokes. She stood up, but could not leave.

"I can't...leave..." she whispered softly. He nodded, like he knew what was going on. That boy was strange.

Daja's leathery wings fanned out to the side like those of a demon. She arched her brow, how interesting....

"Come on Tempest," he hissed as he kicked the man square in the back before misting again. "I've been waiting a long time for a fight like this. Don't disappoint me."

As Daja lifted his foot and kicked at Tempest, Tempest's body simply absorbed the impact, the dark energy eating away at the material making up Daja's boots, rather than the impact hurting Tempest at all. He seemed not to even notice, rather throwing his head back and laughing. "It's been too long, Daja!" he shouted, his voice still intertwined with his laughter. "I've spent hundreds of years fighting weaklings, fighting newly-turned vampires, fighting sons of bitches that can't even turn into mist or bats, that have no familiars, wannabe vampires that know when they're beaten." By this point his face had turned entirely black once more, from the skin tone that it had started to fade to as he was no longer fighting Quissera.

Spreading his hands, a wind blew through the platform, sweeping the mist back in front of him, where Tempest grinned widely and looked at it, his hair rising up and flailing wildly behind his head, the snake weaving back and forth once again. "Fight me like a man, Daja," Tempest said, still grinning. "I've waited so long for something so fun, I won't have it spoiled by cowardly fighting styles."

He could feel them trying to escape, and had to remind himself to hold them in check. They wanted to feed, to feel the same as their brother that had been released. He held them back. They were insubordinate, but they were still part of him, and he held them in as he might an insult he did not want to express. He knew he may need them later, and then he knew they would be more than happy to be set free.

“You haven’t earned the right to fight me,” he whispered, and blue vibrant energy rushed from him straight for Tempest like a dragon. His face became distorted. “Come on, Coro…” he said, mocking Ravelyn. “You bore me already.” His fangs lengthened and both the man and the dragon lunched at Corothisia, and with every one of his movements, he followed to counter it. He would not miss his mark. He never missed his mark. He could feel the energy from the demons around him. This man; this one man was preventing him from getting the one thing he truly wanted. Ravelyn; had always been his life, but she never accepted him. He would make her love him. Vaughn had interfered with the ceremony before, and he wasn’t going to let it happen again. This man, however, was not Vaughn. Ravelyn had been a bit wiser in making her decisions, but she chose wrongly again. It was him; it always should have been him. He let the words repeat over again in his mind and had a new found anger. His energy expanded. He was hungry; hungry for his blood.

Tempest's grin widened unnaturally as the dragon approached him, his eyes opening wide as well. "That's more like it," he replied, almost excited. As the dragon got closer and Daja reformed and leapt towards him, Tempest's enthusiasm came out full force. As he spread his arms, two more massive snakes burst from his body under his arms, lashing out and grabbing the dragon around the sides of the neck, ripping its head off, quite a feat since it was made of energy. As the snakes finished their gruesome work, the dragon seemed to almost die, and by the it hit Tempest it did nothing at all to him. By this point they were all clamouring inside him, trying to escape like their brothers, to feed on the energy their brothers were consuming, wanting to fight the enemy. The original, from his stomach, simply put itself in the way of Daja, leaping towards him, and Tempest raised his right hand, his massive favoured firearm appearing in it, and he sent a hail of exploding, magically-charged silver bullets towards Daja as the Shentavo leapt towards the other ancient.

"Yes ... yes ... your anger feeds me, Daja," he taunted, the massive grin and widened eyes remaining on his face. "I haven't had this much fun in hundreds of years. If this is what hell is always like, maybe I should visit more often."

Daja took the bullets and grinned. “Maybe you should just stay away from my fledgling,” he growled, and blood began to seep through his chest. Ravelyn glared at him. This had to stop. This had to stop right now. She knelt down on the ground and paced her hand together while closing her eyes. Enochial words passed through her lips, gone unnoticed by her sire who was too busy dealing with her suitor. Daja had a good many chunks torn from him, but parts of his body regenerated, and he leered at Tempest. He raised his hand but it was caught by a massive amount of shining threads. Lotus was on his feet, controlling the threads. He grinned, then cut them, and wielded his strength against the demons who were coming close to Ravelyn. Daja smirked at the kid. At least he had guts.

He turned his attention back to Tempest. “You think this is hell, Tempest? Ha…have you ever been there?” He grinned, and slammed pure energy directly into Tempest, throwing him back a good ten feet. The bullets from his body were sent straight back at the vampire who had shot them. “How do you like your own medicine?”

Tempest laughed at Daja as he tried to throw the bullets back. "Exploding bullets, Daja, remember? There's nothing left to throw." Straightening up after the blast of energy, his grin remained. The three snakes growing out of his body weaved back and forth to the sides and in front of him, and he began to walk purposefully towards Daja, not focusing on attacking him as he moved, but simply batting aside or blocking any attacks Daja made. He would fight him once he got in close. As he walked, however, he kept firing the weapon, aiming at blasting off Daja's limbs to stop the vampire from attacking him while he moved. he knew they would regenerate, and fairly quickly, but for the short period that they were gone, he could not use them against Tempest.

Tempest reflected on the fact that they were in Hell. Had they been anywhere else, he could have most likely done something to finish Daja off once and for all. A melted blessed silver cross, or a stake through the heart, or something. As it was, anything he could use to kill Daja would have to be conjured - and, given that anything that could be used to kill Daja could also be used to kill Tempest, it would be nearly impossible to summon any of those things, due to their sheer anathema to vampires. It seemed as if Tempest would not get an easy victory by simply killing Daja quickly. If he killed him it would be slow and most likely involve devouring or incinerating his entire body, something that took time. That was, of course, if he won. At the moment, it was essentially a stalemate. Both were enjoying the fight far too much to admit any pain or aggravation at the other's attacks.

Daja melted into the ground as a pile of blood, and all was still for several seconds. Lotus’ threads lashed out around Ravelyn, protecting her with his life as she knelt and whispered her angelic words to which the demons were throwing a fit. Daja’s blood circled around Tempest, forming a pentagram, and slowly began to rise of the floor. Laughter rang out, bouncing from wall to wall. Ravelyn opened her eyes, then squeezed them shut, pressing on even faster. Luckily, Daja’s energy went to fighting Tempest, and he had not been paying attention to her. Now that the pentagram was rising, she had very little time, thirty seconds to finish those words, and she did. White light gathered in her chest, and she set her hands forward, aiming. The white light shot straight through Tempest into Daja’s form, which solidified across the room. His eyes widened. She had seen him. She knew that ritual. He used it on Vaughn. The white light felt warm to Tempest, comforting. She looked at him desperately. Daja cried out in pain as his reforming body stopped repairing and he tried to move away from the white light that pinned him.

“Let’s go!” she screamed at Corothisia. She was still kneeling, and had just begun to get up as she said those words.

Tempest looked longingly at Daja even as Rave said the words, but Daja was not his purpose in being here. Still, he could not resist one final blow, and as he turned the snake under his right arm lashed out, biting off whatever part of Daja it could manage to get to and devouring it quickly and messily. Looking down, Tempest could see the demon horde suddenly angry and violent, Daja defeated, angelic words antagonizing them, and the ceremony interrupted.

As he moved to Rave, quickly, and grabbed her, he looked to Lotus and gave him a scant few words. "Hold on." Picking Rave up in his arms, the snake under his left arm wrapped itself around Lotus' waist and bit its own body, the teeth hanging on tightly to prevent Lotus from falling through the slippery dark energy. With the two Shentavos secured, he moved rapidly to the edge of the platform and leapt off, cushioning their fall, and then released Lotus, not recalling exactly why he had picked up the younger vampire in the first place. They were still surrounded by demons that blocked their path to the exit, but he had not gotten his full fight with Daja and was still consumed by pent-up aggression and the power tingling under his skin, aching to be set free. Urging the two Shentavos with his mind to get behind him, he raised his arms to the sky, all three snakes he had unleashed rising with them, waving back and forth, their mouths open and hissing, and he unleashed the energy within him.

His body seemed to explode, many more dark being unleashing themselves from pieces of his black skin, snakes, like the hydra of legend, and they lashed out at the demons in front of him. Those close to him not destroyed by the initial blast of energy were soon devoured by the jagged beings emerging from his body, and within ten seconds he had destroyed all the demons within fifty feet of them. The rest, by nature selfish creatures, were doing their best to backpedal and get away from him, even as the creatures were sucked back in, screaming for a chance to devour more and more energy, and in an instant it was all gone.

The first sign of his reappearance was a voice behind the two younger vampires, calmly stating "Let's go." As they turned they could see him, back in his human-like form, a look of annoyance across his face, the emotions of the energy he had contained once again. His handgun was in his right hand, and as he started forward he raised it up, firing at any demons that blocked their path back to the world crossing.

They ran. They ran faster than they had in many long years. Ravelyn started shaking, the effect of using magic of that nature causing her body temperature to drop, and her body to shiver. Lotus grabbed her hand and pulled her forward, keeping her from falling. Her wings evaporated into the air as black feathers. As the feathers drifted behind them, they turned white. She let out a sharp cry as the shackles reformed around her wrists. She had been hiding them so well, until now. They were light for her, but it was something that she had not wanted Tempest to see. She would have to do some explaining later. When they reached the crossing, Ravelyn took both of their hands and burst through. She knew where she needed to go so she led it. They ended up back in the old church; and Ravelyn collapsed.

The three of them were back in the church. It was cold; too cold. The night had become much colder since he had last been there, and he supposed a day had passed - probably a cold one. The church, with no roof and only half its walls, provided no protection from the cold or the wind, and rain dripped down onto their heads as they stood behind the altar and Rave collapsed, shackles having appeared around her wrists.

Tempest's gun was gone, and he was fully human-shaped again, although not without slight annoyance at the most fun he had had in hundreds of years being taken away. This emotion was vastly overshadowed by having Rave back, though, and he ignored the undercurrent of aggravation. At least the energy within him, now that Daja was no longer near, was no longer fighting to be released. Crouching down to Rave, who was still in the extremely tight dress and unnaturally high heels, he turned to Lotus. "Get the car. It's down the road a ways. Turn the heat up as high as you can and get here fast."

He turned his head back to Rave, and reached a hand out to run a finger over one of the shackles. It was cold to the touch, metal in the night, but he quickly dismissed it. It wasn't important, not now, not after all that. He had no jacket, or he would have put it over her, but did the best he could. The wood was rotting, but the trees outside the church walls were not, and he hurriedly rushed over, broke off several large branches, and hurried back with them to Rave's side. Piling them together underneath one corner of the church that still had a roof, he conjured fire over them and, before long, a small fire was burning brightly beside the two vampires. Then he turned back to Rave, lifting her up and wrapping his arm around her, sitting her up beside the fire to warm her up.

There was various sized holes in the ceiling, exposing the night sky which was quickly turning into morning. The first snow of the season had begun to fall, and it seemed like those first snowflakes drifted down from the opening directly above the two vampires. The snow drifted through the air at a graceful pace, and the first few snowflakes touched her face. Her eyes opened, and when they did, each snowflake above her turned into small white feathers starting with the ones closest to her and rippling upward towards the opening. She watched, and waited a few minutes to get used to her surroundings before speaking. She shifted in Tempests arms and resettled herself. She hadn’t even been aware of his presence until now. She touched the shackle on her left wrist; both looking identical. At the right angle you could see words engraved in enochial; the language of the angels.

“Coro,” she whispered softly, that damn dress restricting her ability to breath, so she shifted to a better position with her head on his shoulder.

He could not help but take notice of the words marked on the sides of the cuffs that fitted themselves around her wrists and ankles, and his eyes narrowed slightly as he read over them, stopped suddenly by her speaking his name. He could tell she was having trouble breathing in the dress, and it seemed to be restricting her ability to talk as well. He reached across with his right hand, the left already draped across her shoulders, and traced a thin line across her stomach with his finger. Behind it as it travelled, a small slit appeared in the dress, opening it up slightly so she could breathe more easily. He did not ask about the shackles. She would explain to him when she was ready to.

"Rave," he whispered back to her, kissing the top of her head and not moving, closing his eyes. He felt relieved to have her back. So relieved, he could barely express it in feelings, let alone in words. The prospect of losing her forever had been ... grim, to say the least.

Still, he looked forward to a rematch with Daja. Without anything hanging in the balance. No holds barred, simply a fight. Not even to the death, necessarily. He had felt it while he fought Daja. They both had sought something like that for too long to squander it on a one-shot encounter and have it be over. He didn't know about Daja, but Tempest hadn't fought another true, ancient vampire in over five hundred years, since before his retirement from vampire politics. Since the ancient feud that he had settled by killing an entire family of vampires. It had been a memorable occasion. It had almost been a challenge. It had frightened him, what he was becoming. He had retired, and gone into seclusion. Others had forgotten about him, thought he was dead. He could no longer feel his own children; whether they were dead or not he did not know. He had returned slowly, now under a different name, and bided his time. Perhaps, someday, he would return to the world of vampire politics for real. Perhaps, someday, he would meet his children again. Perhaps they would be great vampires by now, and would want to fight him the way, once, he had fought his sire.

But that day was not this day. This day, he took care of Rave. Took care of her, watched over her, loved her, and wanted to fight Daja again.

“He likes the silent girls,” she managed, with a laugh. She paused for a minute, and rested her head against his chest. Lotus was at the side of the room, watching curiously, his thoughts whirring in his mind. Who was this man she was with? He was not Vaughn…He reluctantly went outside and pulled the car around. There was a loud screech as he slit to the curb. When he got out he was shaking. How the hell did she drive that thing? He sighted, and walked back inside and rested his back against the door frame, waiting for them to rise and get in the car. He was ready to go home.

“Coro…it’s not safe for me as long as I’m here…” she whispered, then sat up, and turned towards him. “You mentioned that you have a place near the ocean. While its ‘not a place such as the Shentavo Mansion,” she continued, quoting his words, “I’d like to go there, to be safe. To have some alone time. In the past week we’ve been lured into a trap, nearly beaten to death, I nearly destroy a city, Vaughn just comes back out of a ceremony that Daja accidentally conducted the wrong way, oh, and not to mention my sire wants to cut off my wings and tie me to him forever.” She let out a sigh of exasperation. “Please…” she took his hand. "I need to get away from all this, with you."

He nodded silently. The shack on the cliffs. Not what he thought of as the most romantic getaway, but it was the most secluded place he'd ever been to in the real world. No one had ever found him there. Something about the land, maybe, it masked him, kept him safe from predators and enemies. He owned it, and it owned him. He protected it, it protected him. It had remained untouched by urban sprawl, primary industries, and political or military affairs, primarily because people just tended to avoid it. Although it would be perfect for any one of those things, people tended to simply point to other places on the map and say 'No, let's build it here instead.'

"Besides," he said, thinking out loud, "the mansion's missing a wall and has a lot of bullet holes and explosions in it. Probably wouldn't be the best place to be. Drafty. Well, my place it is then," he said with a sheepish grin. "So ... do you want to go now, or later? Should we stop by the mansion to get some more fitting clothes, or do you want to wear my workman's overalls?" He almost laughed as he said the last sentence, hoping she would get the joke, and continued in a quieter voice. "I'm mostly worried about what might happen to your car if Lotus has to drive it back."

Ravelyn laughed, smiling. He always knew exactly what to say. She looked at Lotus. “Lotus, leave my car where it is. If you wreck it I just might have to kill you. You can make it back by yourself?” Lotus nodded, and with the first beam of sunlight he faded. He moved with the light like Corothisia moved with the shadows. Ravelyn looked down at her garb and laugh. “I think I can deal with one of your shirts for a while, though I’m not sure about overalls, for I have never owned a pair in my life,” she nuzzled his neck gently, kissing his skin. “We should go now. I don’t know…that what I did to him will hold for so long. We have no time to stop back." She stood up gradually, not wanting to move from his embrace, but having to. Her rationality took over. She needed to get away from there as soon as possible.

Tempest stood up as well, kicking a foot into the fire to scatter it and put it out. "Then let's go," he said, wrapping an arm around Rave's waist and pulling her close to him, into one corner of the church. She blinked, and they were standing somewhere else, behind a wooden wall, still in nighttime. The sounds of the ocean, evidently a calm night, could be heard around them. Opposite the wall, lush, fertile green foothills rolled off into the distance, towards the west. Turning to the north, they could see in the distance massive, jagged, snow-peaked mountains. As he took Rave around the wall, it turned out to be part of a four-cornered, one room wooden building, with an open door facing east, creaking as the wind made it swing on its hinges. "Been meaning to fix that," Tempest muttered.

Towards the east, the lush green ground continued past the building for about twenty feet, gently sloping up, before suddenly dropping away. The cliff fell about two hundred feet before it hit the ocean at the bottom, which after that stretched away to the eastern horizon, all blue water. To the south, the cliffs carried on, rolling up and down with the foothills, all the way the eye could see. Tempest took a deep breath of the air, fresher and cleaner than any he had smelled in weeks, since he had visited Rave's sanctuary. It made him happy. This place was his. Showing Rave the door as if it was a fancy hotel, he urged her enter with a cheeky grin on his face. Inside, the corner opposite the door was taken up by a small kitchen unit, mainly for aesthetic value but also just in case he had human visitors. The small fridge there was mostly filled with an interesting assortment of alcohol. To their right as they entered the door was a desk and chair pushed up against the wall, looking out a window that currently had blinds pulled down across it. Most of the remaining wall was taken up by a twin bed, above which two large, very high quality paintings sat; one of a large, dark, foreboding mansion, and one, a landscape of a thick forest in which, in the distance a woman playfully urged the point of view to join her sitting on a magnificently carved bench. The second one was by a very famous Harakian painter from four hundred years ago, and would have been worth millions upon millions of dollars to an art collector.

Tempest smiled, nodded, and exhaled deeply and satisfactorily at seeing that the inside had not changed since he was last there, weeks or even months before. "It's not much," he said aloud, "and certainly not the Shentavo Manor, but fuck it, I like it."

“I like it too,” she countered with a glimmer in her eyes that he had come to known meant that she had plans. She pushed him against that creaking door, closing it in doing so before kissing him. The shackles on her wrists had disappeared by that point, seemingly slipped from this reality. It had been a while since she had gotten away from her mansion. Too much had gone on. She was always surrounded by her things, her energy. This place was different. This place felt like him. It was hard to explain. It felt like all around he protected her, held her close, while having yourself around doesn’t always comfort you the way you want it to. She turned from him and looked out the window. She remembered that blue ocean. The ocean in her empire had warm waters, but it was more of a green turquoise hue. She had never seen water that blue.

“I’ll leave you to find me those overalls, I’m going to go check out the ocean,” she kissed him quickly with a smug grin and walked outside to the edge of the cliff. She looked at the waters below. There was a window from the house facing her, and she knew he could see her; knew he was watching. If she had not the ability of compassion, she would have been a sadistically deadly weapon. She undid the back of the dress hook by hook. She didn’t care if the water was cold, it was ice that really bothered her. It was nighttime, who would see? And she wouldn’t care. The only one who could see her was the one that stood between her and her sire. She jumped off the edge of the cliff, zipping towards the water before her wings expanded from her back to catch her. The impact would not be a quick one. She was a few inches above the water, and let out a deep sigh before her wings dissipated into hundreds of feathers, and she dove beneath the surface.

As he turned away from the window, she having dove into the water, a feeling of relief washed over him. He knew nothing would dare touch her here, not without his knowing about it, and he let his concerns over her leave his mind as he wandered around his house, first going to the refrigerator and removing from a shelf above it a dust-covered bottle of very old Armagnac. He removed two small glasses from another shelf and poured a small amount into the bottom of each glass, humming a small tune to himself as he did so. Becoming a vampire had made him unable to eat food; it had not dulled his taste buds, had not made the enjoyment of high-quality liquor any less enjoyable. Carefully replacing the bottle, he set the two glasses on the counter and moved to the window, drawing the blinds and looking out at the moon, high in the cloudless sky, and the stars that peppered the blackness all around it.

He looked down at the desk, its barren wooden surface almost daring him to put something on it. He ignored its calling and went to the small wardrobe positioned at the foot of the bed, which he opened. A small selection of clothes greeted him; a couple button-up shirts, one white and a couple black, the overcoat he had used to wear, a necklace hanging on the back wall, a simple silver one chain with a single letter A hanging from the bottom of it. That brought back memories. Some fond, some not. Pinned to the wall was a white piece of paper with a rough charcoal sketch of his face on it. Not done by him, but he kept it to remind him of someone else, and it too brought back memories, some fond and some not. The A was for someone he had loved, and he had killed. The drawing was for someone that had loved him and died because of him.

He knew all the clothes he had would be too big for her, but didn't really care. Pulling out the white shirt, he wondered whether or not to actually conjure a pair of overalls, but decided that would be too much. He walked back to the counter and picked up one of the glasses there. He walked out of the small house and over to the cliff edge, where he picked up the dress she had left behind and placed the loosely folded shirt where it had been, the glass of Armagnac sitting on top of it, before he went back inside and threw the dress down in front of the building's small fireplace, opposite the window and between the bed and the kitchen. Once that small task was complete, he picked up his own glass of the hundreds-year-old brandy, and walked over the the bed, where he sat down on the edge, near the head, and leaned back until his head rested against the wall. Taking a sip of the drink and letting it slosh around in his mouth, he closed his eyes. He was suddenly fairly tired, something he had not noticed until now. He supposed it was only fair, only fitting, considering what he had done in the last two days - although it had only felt like an hour or two had passed.

The water felt soothing over her pale skin. The moon was full and stark white, much like her complexion. It hung over the ocean like a beacon, signaling to all things that go bump in the night that the full moon had arrived. After a good half an hour, she swam to the shore and panted lightly. She began her trek back up the cliff to Corothisia’s house. The heels had long since been discarded since they are rather useless unless you’re a mannequin. Ravelyn might be beautiful, but she would never pass as a mannequin. Her skin might be that alabaster hue, but she was a full bodied woman. She was; well, gifted. Albeit she might have had the same measurements as a few, but there was an athletic edge underneath her smooth skin, even with such a petite form. She looked down at what remained of her clothes; white lingerie, go figure. It seemed that every time she went somewhere with Tempest, on the way back home she ended up wearing lingerie. She sighed, figured it was a conspiracy, considering, one: all times have been a life threatening experience, and two: there were no sexual connotations for it. Speaking of which, she had left Tempest alone to find her clothes. Best see how that is coming along.

She walked up to the door and opened it slowly. Her long brown hair trailed over her shoulders, and even though she had wrung the strands out, the salty water still dripped along her skin. He didn’t get a chance to open his eyes as she was already right in front of him, bending towards him like a flower to the sun, and stopping just inches away from him, her lips hovering over his before kissing him gently. She tasted like the ocean; still damp from the azure waters. She tasted the brandy which he had sipped moments before, and couldn’t help but to smile. It was strange for her that he drank it, as it provided no substance. She had never had alcohol before she became a vampire, and after such she really saw no point in drinking it. There were different breeds of vampires. Perhaps Corothisia could still taste the lingering flavor that she could not.


She pursed her lips, drawing away from him for a moment, but still remaining near. "Coro," she said in a sweet melody. "You know how you made a promise you would do anything when we got back?"

"I do indeed remember," he replied, setting the glass of brandy down on the table beside Rave, its contents barely touched. Staring up into her eyes, he wrapped his arms around her waist and rolled over on the bed, mainly to get his head off from the wall, where his neck had been bent at an uncomfortable angle, but also to take her with him down to the same level. "The question is, after all that, just what do you have on your mind?" he asked, now looking down at her, a sly smile crossing his face. He bent his neck down and kissed her.

When he pulled back, the smile remained, and he cheekily asked her "So, what were you thinking of?" as if he didn't already know.

“Well I thought this would be a good time to rearrange everything in your house,” she said, looking around with seeming purpose within her eyes. She couldn’t keep that up for long. She caught his gaze, and quite literally got caught up in it. “What do you mean after all that, Coro? I mean, I’ve only seen the end of the world a few times, been kidnapped, trapped in an alien nation, raised a child, had random gates of hell open up all over my nation, and you think that I just can’t handle anything after such a traumatizing experience.” She pushed him off of her, roughly, and got up from the bed. “I mean, you would think over time I would build up some endurance, or something of that sort.” She turned towards him sharply, and her gaze was alight with anger so real you could taste it. God, she was stunning when she was angry.

“And now, after all of that,” she continued walking towards him with a deliberate gyration of her hips as she walked. “After over two hundred years of saving the world, closing hell dimensions, and attempting to murder my sire…” her voice had become quieter with each step as she got closer and closer to him. “I just five minutes with the incredible man I fell in love with. Albeit five may turn into ten, ten into thirty, and so on and so forth…but we have eternity…” She flashed a smile at him, now crawling on top of him and pushing him down onto the bed. Her skin was still moist from the ocean, and she could feel even the tiniest drop fall over her curves as the change in posture brought on gravity. Won’t you give me that?

Later...

He was lying there, as he often did, looking up at the ceiling. It was still night outside, and beside him Rave lay still. He thought absentmindedly that she was asleep, and contentedly so, as he slipped his feet out from under the blankets covering the bed and pulled on his pants. Standing up, he turned and smiled at Rave's prone, unmoving form, and he bent over and kissed her on cheek before straightening up and walking in his bare feet to the door. Slipping it open, it began to creak, and with a sigh he pulled it open all the way quickly, to make it as short as possible. He knew, with this door, that the slower you tried to open it, the louder it creaked.

He stepped through it, letting it hang on its hinges for fear of it creaking again, and walked to the cliff edge. Deep down below, small waves lapped against the cliff's base, the occasional whitecap smashing into it with force he could hear from so high up. Silently, he sat down, his knees in front of him and his arms wrapped around them, and he looked out at the full moon, casting a ray of white light over the water directly towards him, which danced and rippled underneath it. Turning his head to look down to his left, he saw the shirt he had left out for Rave, which she had not noticed, or declined to put on, and the glass of brandy sitting on it. He couldn't remember why he had put it there, but he picked it up and contemplated drinking out of it, then set it down again on the other side of him.

After some time, he shifted forward slightly, letting his lower legs dangle off the edge of the cliff as he sat up, and reached out for the brandy. He swirled it around in its glass, took a sip, and then raised it to the moon. "To you," he said in a hoarse voice, and threw the contents of the glass out into the ocean. They disappeared from view, and he did not see or hear them hit the water. He set the now-empty glass down beside him once again and exhaled a sigh of relief. It was a symbolic gesture, to be sure, but the land around him enjoyed those from time to time. It enjoyed knowing he respected it, and revered it, and thanked it for what it gave to him. A tree, now massive, growing beside the house had been one of his first-ever gifts to it, and in return it had made the tree grow big and strong, until now it overhung enough of the house to provide natural shade through all times of the day. He was grateful.

Then he sat there, lost in thought, for quite some time, his eyes periodically panning across the water below him, occasionally drifting up to the moon and back.

It took her several tries before she could open her eyes; bathing in the lingering warmth between the covers. “Coro?” she whispered, when seemingly she couldn’t sense him next to her. She attempted to get up, but fell back down with a soft groan. She was going no where for a while. She found it strange for him to not be there. She didn’t think last night could have scared him off. Hell, that was amazing. She absentmindedly touched the bite mark on her inner thigh; healing but still there and he wasn’t. She managed to sit up and gaze around the house but there was no one there. After a good half-hour of simply staring into the darkness, she gathered the strength to move and took the liberty to rummage through his clothes. She should have brought that white shirt up with her, but honestly, she didn’t want to get it wet at the time. She had no idea where the remains of her own clothes went, but would save the search party until after she found out what the devil was up to. She chose a plain black shirt, button up is always good, considering she could leave the top few open. She never understood how men could wear high colored shirts like these. They bothered her.

She lingered in the doorway, looking up at the moon. He wasn’t Vaughn. He wasn’t anything like Vaughn. The only similarity was that both of the men loved her. She was glad he wasn’t Vaughn. Looking back on it now on what she was too blind to see then made her feel ignorant; ignorant of what had been there all alone. She leaned against the door frame for support in a moment of weakness. She was grateful.

She finally made her way down to the beach where Coro sat, looking out over the ocean, lost. She sat at an angle from him, slightly behind him, and wrapped her arms gently around him while resting her chin on his shoulder. “Did I…scare you off?” she said softly, trying to conceal the fact that she had nearly lost her voice.

"No, no," he said quietly, not wanting to disturb the tranquility around them, "I just needed to think about some things. I didn't want to disturb you." He looked up at the moon again, leaning his head slightly to the left, towards hers, and his hand reached up to gently rest itself over hers and stay there, gently holding her hand to his body. He kept watching the moon. He had seen it, here, in this place, for over four hundred years. He had lived in the same wooden building, looked down from the same cliff, and looked upon the same moonlight on the same ocean. And he loved it. He never wanted to leave. Sometimes, when he was somewhere else for too long, he lost touch with it, but all it ever took was one evening, one night, and he loved it again, and once again never wanted to leave.

“You can think after that? I applaud you,” she smirked a bit. She couldn’t help but notice that something was on his mind; something that ran deeper then he would like to expose. She didn’t pry purposefully; it was something that just happened ever since her resurrection. Thoughts would always buzz in her mind when she was around another person. Corothisia was different though. She sat down next to him in the sand hugging her knees close to her. She sat there a long time, looking at the water, remembering how good it felt against her skin. It was not the warm waters of her nation. It was somehow…more refreshing, more clean in feel, even though the empire’s water was almost all pure thanks to private interests. Her dried hair still smelt of sea salt. She wondered how long he had been living here, if he had brought anyone else with him out here, or just her. She wondered if there would be things he kept from her like Vaughn did. Everything was a secret with Vaughn. She hated it. A few secrets are fine to have as anyone is entitled to, but ever where she turned…no. No, she was done thinking about him. She had made her decision, and he helped make it for her. It is best to no longer think of those things.

“I’m thinking about resigning as empress of the Three United Empires," she said, still looking at the water.

He sat in silence for a short while after she stated it, still looking out at the beam of moonlight cast on the water and the waves it highlighted. After some time, he decided not to ask the obvious why, but rather focus on other subjects. "In favour of who?" he asked quietly, and a short time later, "What would you do after stepping down?" He considered telling her she 'would always have a home here', or something very close to that, but decided against it. She would most likely want to stay in the United Empires despite her retirement.

The statement she had made, and the implications it brought with it, suddenly jolted him back to reality. In all the excitement, everything that had happened to them recently, he had forgotten she was the head of a massive empire, and suddenly it came crashing down on his head. He loved her and wanted to spend time with her. He knew she felt the same about him, but if she was the head of a nation, would that be possible? He suddenly worried. He did not want her to be sacrificing other things to spend time with him, to be harried and stressed by having to micromanage her time. It dawned on him that perhaps this, her retirement, so to speak, could be the best thing to happen to them, and he relaxed again. The feeling he had now, of peace and tranquility, just might continue. It may not be replaced by hectic, worrisome schedules, state visits, and internal disputes. Secretly, after running the thoughts through his head, he hoped she would decide to step down. It felt selfish somehow, but he thought it would be best for both of them. Or, at least, that was his justification.

“I’m not sure, I would have chosen my daughter but…” she paused. She had not told him about her having a daughter. “She’s been gone for so long I think she is dead. She went to war in Der Fuhrer Dyzel’s territory in my absence, and no one has heard word since. Her name was Sarah.” She paused for a minute, thinking things over, rolling around various ideas in her mind. “Since she isn’t an option, I would probably say Navi. I don’t trust either of the males. Shen-Jin, while an amazing lightning adept he has a horrible weakness with women. He would be too easily bribed. Lotus can’t drive my car. Out of the women Hevn is far too young, and Jin-Shina cares only for combat and training with her sword. Navi…is intelligent. She does rely on her machines from time to time, but well, she made my car. She acts as a second mother to them. She’s a born leader, and well, I want to keep rule within my family. I’ll be there occasionally, behind the scenes, of course teaching them what they need to know.” She watched the sun begin to rise over the crashing waves. The sound of it soothed her.

He brought up the topic of the future, after she stepped down. She ran her fingertips over her left hand. It wasn’t there anymore; she had given it back to him. She wondered what the future held in store. If he ever had the intention of… People’s beliefs were so different, she really couldn’t be sure, and she was too afraid to bring it up at the moment. “Oh,” she started, desperately trying to think of an answer. “I don’t know. I’ve been Empress of my nation for God knows how long. I need a break, something different. It’s funny, I wouldn’t mind spending after out here. It’s soothing.” She stopped speaking and nervously arched her shoulder forward to rest her head on her knees to watch as the sun rose. She wasn’t sure

He nodded as she discussed handing the reins of the nation over to Navi. He did not know her children very well, but from what he had heard she would be a good choice. When she turned her attention to answering his second question, seeming slightly taken aback, not knowing what to say, her eventual response made him smile. It gave him a chance to say his line, which sounded like something out of a bodice-ripping paperback. "You'll always be welcome here, Rave," he said, a smirk creeping over his face unintentionally. "After what I imagine is the hectic life of leading a nation-" I led a house of vampires once, and that alone was far more hectic than anything I would wish on someone else "-I can see you could use some down time. And, since you seem to like it out here, Doctor Coro prescribes a liberal dose of 'being here' for you as soon as your condition - empress of a nation - goes away. The revolutionary treatment should get rid of all - or perhaps none of - your symptoms, such as stress, or megalomania, or, I don't know, a hatred of politics." He knew he couldn't keep it up for long, the smirk going to break out into laughter soon.

The first rays of daylight were playing themselves across the waves and the cliff, and the few clouds present on the horizon were illuminated in vibrant colours of orange, red and pink. Another thing in favour of this place: It had great sunrises. "Should the symptoms ret-hah-return, the Doctor will-" at this point he burst out laughing, instinctively raising a hand to his face to cover his eyes, though for the life - unlife? - of him he could not figure out why.

She snickered. “The doctor will what? Do tell me, there is little you can threaten me with,” she faked passing out in the sand, but continued talking with her eyes closed. “Oh, well I just simply can’t wait for another physical. Darling if you are my doctor I fear that I may fain ill for the rest of my life.” As she opened those crimson orbs of hers she looked plain, no angelic. It was a fine line between the two. Anyone could have her long dark hair with those subtle waves in it. They could have her body if they worked for it and had the right genes. They could have that delicate smile that just curved ever so slightly exposing just enough of her fangs to let you know they were there. Those crimson eyes had once been a different color. Anyone could have any of her traits; but very few had all of them put together. When it came down to it, she wasn’t a seraphic when it came to emotions; when it came to simply being. She was normal; with the same wants and desires as anyone, give or take a few things, but she was.

“You always going to let me in for the rest of your life? Eternity is a long time…” she trailed off. If he was offering, she would take it. She knew he loved her, there was just a feeling though. Just a feeling like it couldn’t last forever. Like he was hiding something that would be detrimental to their relationship; like Vaughn. She couldn’t help it. After spending so long with him; being engaged to him and never actually seeing the groom on the wedding day…yeah, she couldn’t help it. As perfect as she may seem from time to time, there has always been a piece of her that has been broken, and when it starts to get repaired, it gets broken again. She couldn’t help but to hope she had found her soul mate, and not another Vaughn. Vaughn had always loved her, but there was too much he did wrong that cost both sides so much in the end. He was right about what he said when they first met and he turned away from her. He would destroy her life, all the while loving her.

"Oh, I wasn't talking about me," he said matter-of-factly, but the expression on his face, a broad smile he was trying to contain, resulting into a half-smirk, betrayed his playful attitude. "I was talking about the land. There haven't been any tidal waves or volcanic eruptions yet, so I assume the land likes you. 'You'll always be welcome here, Rave', it says." As he finished talking, he set his hands back behind him, leaned back onto them, and laughed. As he stopped, he turned his head over to face her. "But in all honesty, of course I'll let you in for eternity. Eternity isn't long enough." His voice trailed off somewhat. He could see something else was on her mind, and he let her think it as he watched her, clad in his black shirt which was too big for her, several of the top buttons undone, her bare legs stretched out beside him. "God, you're beautiful," he said softly, looking into her eyes. "The, uh - the doctor might have to make a house call, or something. I've run out of doctor metaphors," he said, once again trying not to laugh.

”God, you’re beautiful,”

Those words she had heard so many times before, but coming from him, it was the first time that she had heard him say it. Some how it meant so much more coming from him. She blushed lightly, but turned away so he wouldn’t notice it. It was a strange action to be sure. She looked back at him. She smiled at his futile attempt to wrench another joke out of the metaphor, and quieted him with a kiss before pushing him back into the sand. She let out a soft sigh and sat up. She hadn’t moved very much and had forgotten just how much her body ached. That brought a laugh to her lips. Either she had lost a great deal of endurance, or, well…something else. She kissed his neck softly.

"So why did you leave me this morning? I wasn't expecting to find you gone."

"I didn't think you'd be awake so early," he responded, lying on his back and looking up at the sky, the light from the vibrant sunrise casting itself across it. "I wanted some time to think, and so I just came out here to watch the ocean for a while before heading back in. To be honest, I thought you'd still be asleep when I went back inside. Guess I was wrong."

She curled up next to him and closed her eyes, nuzzling her face into his chest like a cat. “When I don’t have warmth around me I tend to stay awake,” she commented, getting as close to him as possible. It was slightly comical for her to switch positions so many times until she was satisfied. “I mean, we could go inside now, but soon the sun will be hitting the beach, and the sand will warm like a thermal blanket.”

He laughed, and reached his arm out around her, reaching down her back and holding her in close to him, letting his body heat warm her up. "That's true," he said quietly, turning his upper body towards her and leaning his head down to kiss her hair, tasting the saltiness of the dried ocean water. "It can get pretty warm down here in the early morning, and it would be a shame to miss out on a morning like this." He leaned down farther, and kissed her on the mouth, remaining there and letting it linger.

After some time lying beside her, his arm around her, he said musingly, "I'll remember to put something warm in the bed next time I sneak out at night. A hot water bottle or something."

“Nothing can replace you, Coro.” She whispered softly. “A hot water bottle is only so large…” she grinned with her eyes closed. “Unless you can be in two places at once I don’t believe that you will be able to sneak out of bed without me waking up and shivering. That’s just how my body is.” She continued. “So…if you ever want to sneak of into impending doom, there is a good chance I will follow you.” That had happened before, several times. She didn’t know why he felt the need to sneak away back then. He could have just told her, and they would have gone together. Maybe then things wouldn’t be as complicated as they were now. Complicated? No, no…they were getting simpler. She gazed out as the sun finally broke the horizon, then let her eyes gradually fall and she fell asleep huddles against him.

Ooc: that’s it for me tonight. I have work tomorrow. Will be back early morning and late tomorrow.

"Shucks," he muttered quietly, and he let her drift off to sleep. His arm, wrapped around her, held her close to him, and he knew she was tired; his absence had prevented her from getting the sleep she so desperately needed. Well, not this time, he thought. No reason I can't think now. Everything's becoming so clear.

He could feel something else, something different. It was not the change in the air since Rave had arrived here, nor the different, more subtle one since she announced her desire to cease being Empress. It was, rather, his feeling of a presence, a familiar one. Not quite benign, though completely harmless in its intentions towards Tempest and Rave, but good nonetheless. A friend, and one he had not sensed in many, many years. He could not quite place it, but he reflected on just what it might mean, as he sat on the beach, holding Rave close to him and watching the sun make its slow ascent past the horizon and up into the sky, its rays warming his skin at their touch.

She shifted positions several times without really knowing it. She used him like a cat would a warmed blanket, and if there was some way she could lay to soak up this warm, she found it whether laying next to him, or perpendicularly across his chest with her back arched slightly and the rays of the sun sifting through the shirt she wore to warm her own chest. By her expression she was the most content person alive. Stretching languorously, she awoke, realized she had worked herself across his chest and gradually sat up to the noon sun with a sheepish smile. She didn’t have to explain herself. She liked being warm and did unconsciously anything to attain that.

“Sorry if that was uncomfortable for you,” she noticed she wasn’t sore anymore. Heliotherapy truly did help the fire elementalist. “I’ve decided that I’m going to resign when I return to my nation. I will then proceed to bring my sword, some clothes, and my wolves...” She grinned, and looked at him imploringly. “Lachesis, Nyx, and Odin are well behaved, I promise.” She nudged his chin again in plea. Who knew the empress had pets?

He laughed. The closest he had ever come to a pet since becoming a vampire was a mythical creature he had eaten and absorbed. "All well and good," he said. "Though I don't know about the clothes. I kind of like how you look in that shirt. As for the wolves ... I think there's a forest a few kilometres behind the house, there's probably plenty for them to eat in there. As long as they don't try and eat me or soil my nonexistent carpets, I don't see any reason not to have them here. It's been ... a while since I've had a pet."

“If you want me to continue wearing your clothes I don’t have a problem with it, though sooner or later I will need to find something to wear underneath this shirt,” she commented. Like he didn’t know. Or hadn’t he noticed? She smirked inwardly. “I’m sure they will like you. I mean, I had a python for a long while, but then it ate one of my shoes…and I kind of chopped it in half to get my shoe back.” Proof there; never come between a woman and her shoes. She will kill.

“When do you think we should go back? Do we have to go back?”

"To the Empires? Whenever you want to. Whenever you're ready. Unless, of course, you can abdicate by mail, or something. Like chess." He paused for a moment, as if thinking hard about a ponderous subject. Then, "So does this mean I'm allowed to kill your wolves if they try and eat something of mine, like my paintings or my arm?" he asked playfully. "I just want to get the ground rules out of the way before we bring them in. You know, just in case."



ooc: TG

“No,” she said in return. “They will be good I promise. You will like them.” She grinned. “They are very protective of me, and used to curl up next to me when I slept like fur blankets. I think that have gotten used to not doing that for a while though. I trained them well, don’t worry. As long as you aren’t afraid of them they won’t see your possessions or your arm as food and would more likely nuzzle you then bite you.” She paused, then deferred back to the first question.

“I mean, I guess I could have a few things mailed. I should wait a little longer though, to go back. If Daja is still on his rampage, He’ll be looking for my aura, and if its in the mansion, chances are he’ll go there.”

"Why don't we wait a week?" Tempest asked, his joking about the wolves all-but forgotten. "He won't find you here, and a week should be enough for him to give up for now, if he still hasn't found you. Besides which, I definitely don't think you've rested enough. You need more time, ah - in the doctor's care." He grinned and laughed.

When he finished laughing, he musingly said "So I guess next time I sneak out to go meet my impending doom, I'll put a wolf where I was lying. Hmm.... All right, they can move in with us."

“You won’t get away from me that easily, Coro,” she squeezed him tightly around his waist with a playful grin. “I’ll wait a week, I suppose. After that he would have probably started searching elsewhere.” She sighed softly and got as close to him as possible. The heat really did help her.

“So tell me why the hell you have an excessive amount of alcohol. I’ve never known a vampire to drink.”

"It's a taste I never quite got over," he admitted. "Once I became a vampire, I didn't lose my taste buds, and I can still taste it, even if it doesn't get me drunk anymore. I suppose it's lost a bit of appeal, but I keep it around anyway. I have some now and again. It's high quality stuff, what I've got stirring around in there, too.

"Besides, drinking only blood can get ... boring, after hundreds of years. Admittedly, it varies from person to person, but still. It would be like eating different kinds of, I don't know, pizza, or bread, every day for your entire life. No matter how different it gets, it's still pizza or bread. I like the change it brings to drink something stronger, harder-hitting. Let me know if you ever want to try any."

She trailed her fangs carefully along his next and her breath whispered against his skin, “Well, some things I can never tire of,” she smiled against his skin. “Albeit I hadn’t a drop to drink in quite some time. I admit sometimes it gets old, but I never really had anything to eat before I became a vampire. I was washed up on a beach after having escaped from the lab and well, Daja found me and that was the end of my days amongst the living.”

"You've missed out on so much," he said. "Not that I'm a glutton or anything, but I always found eating very rewarding. When I became a vampire and it didn't really do anything for me at all, well, I was sad. I've gotten over it now, and I can still taste the liquor, so it has to suffice."

He reached out a hand and ran it down from her shoulder to her hand, his fingertips brushing gently against her skin all the way down. "There are some things I can never tire of," he said, smiling, "and at the risk of sounding hackneyed, you're one of them."

“Ne mozhet beet!” she said with a laugh, and realized he didn’t understand. “It cannot be,” she continued. “that you would not tire of me. Sooner or later you’ll be saying who is this woman who puts me in life threatening situations and keeps gnawing on my shoulder.” She grinned, then turned and looked out at the blue ocean.

"So what do you do for fun out in the middle of no where?"

"For fun? I don't know. I never really thought about it." He paused, looking up in the sky, apparently deep in thought. "I tend to sleep until something happens elsewhere, or I spend my time thinking. Or getting drunk," he said with a laugh, then as it died away a murmured "I wish."

"I swim a lot," he continued, "and I just tend to sit around not doing much of anything. Like the ancient hermits. Like Bodhidharma. I meditate." He paused. "No, not really. I sleep. When I get bored of it here, something tends to happen while I'm sleeping somewhere else, and conveniently enough, I whisk myself off to see what's going on. Though that could be me adjusting the length of my sleep unconsciously.

"I suppose when it all comes down to it, I don't do much of anything. After the hectic hundreds of years I had before I came here, the peace and quiet was very welcome, and being bored was the most fun thing I'd done in a long time. Then a while later some exciting stuff happened, then some boring stuff again, and now it's back to exciting. It's a nice little cycle."

“My whole life has been one tumbling ball of “HOLY HELL THE WORLD IS ENDING” and vampire politics. I’ve never got the chance to breath with running a nation, a family, and traveling between my empire and Underaloz. I never really got a chance to just sleep. Even for those two hundred years I was awake a good amount of time, though I don’t really count that.” She laid back down in the sand, letting the warmth encompass her once more. “I’m glad I finally get a break. It’s been long over due. You know if I were you I would sleep out in the sun all day and curl up by a fire at night and sleep some more. It is such a luxury to be able to sleep. I don’t know how much I have to catch up on, but I assume it is a lot.” She ran one hand through her dark hair, which, in the sunlight, had subtle hues of red running through it.

"Well, sometimes I sleep down here, but I tend to come down here to think or to swim. When I sleep for long periods of time I do it in the bed, predictably enough, because then I don't need to worry about large waves or other such unpleasantries rudely awakening me.."

He placed his hands behind him and leaned back onto them, stretching his legs out on the sand in front of him. With a chuckle beforehand, he spoke again. "Ah, vampire politics. That's what made me come spend a couple hundred years relaxing here anyway. The first 'boring' stretch. And damn did it feel good."

“Did you ever bring her here?” she said suddenly, folding her hands gently. It wasn’t like she would be jealous or anything, or would she? She had no right to be considering the circumstances back then. She had no right to feel that way. It was such a sudden topic, but this place was peaceful. It was calming to her. She wondered how many people came out here. If he had any visitors, which she doubted. She wrapped one arm over him and inhaled his scent as if it were her salvation. Had he made peace with her? Had she made peace with Vaughn? She didn’t know. She wanted to, but something in her was pulling at her saying ‘we aren’t through yet’. She wanted to break away from it once and for all.

He looked up at the sky and closed his eyes, exhaling deeply as if thinking on a heavy topic. After some time, he opened his mouth to speak. "I didn't bring her here," he said, and paused, though that was no the end of his speech. "She came here on her own. I met her somewhere else and spent some time with her, then I left to come back here, without telling her where I was going. I had explained to her about you, you see, and I knew it would be best for both of us if we ended it then and there.

"Cue the chase music. Five days later, I woke up in the middle of the night to find her there, embroiled in the worst storm I've ever seen this place produce. She was soaked through and through, her teeth chattering, and she told me she didn't care that I didn't love her. She wanted me to be happy, she said, and if that meant helping me find you, it would all be damned and she would sacrifice her love for that. I let her in, I was concerned for her well-being. She spent some time here before we were called away to search for you. For several months we searched off and on, coming back here in between to rest." He kept his eyes closed, the memories flashing before him on the back of his eyelids. "Then we got called away one day, and that was it. I came back here alone some time later."

“Sorry for bringing it up,” Ravelyn whispered softly, and held him a bit more tightly to her, as if the closer he was to her, the less he could hurt. This woman was mortal, she would have died anyway. If her spirit still rested upon this earth, she could send it on, but didn’t feel it was the right time to tell him that. He would talk more of his own accord. That was enough on the subject for now. There were many mortal women who would fall head over heals in love with a vampire simply because of what he was, and the draw of it all. If you were old enough you could influence without even knowing it. There had bee n some men she had met that would have followed her blindly, and because of that she could have never loved them. They were like puppets. Still she spoke none of her thoughts to Tempest. If he had done so and never realized it, it would be best left unsaid. It would have just given him more guilt, but it would have made her love false. She didn’t want to press any further into the issue.

"It's not a problem," he said, waving his hand in the air to emphasize the point. "Better to get that out of the way sooner rather than later."

He sat for a short while, looking up at the sky and using one hand to ruffle her hair, before a sly grin came over his face. Suddenly his usual self, he nearly leaped to his feet. "I have an idea," he said, looking down at her. "I think it's time you tasted something marvelous. You can still taste things other than blood, right?" He didn't even wait for her answer. "In any case, let's head back up to the house. I'll fix you a stiff drink," he said, laughing. "And then, I'm going to go ... exercise a bit. Work off some energy."

If you like, you can come along, he added silently. Or you could stay here and see more of what the house and the land has to offer. Your choice.

“Okay, I’ll try the drink, as for the exercise…you aren’t tired?” A look of shock had crossed her face. “You know, if they could package you, you would be a best seller.” She was tired. She could even sleep for another few hours, but maybe it was just the heat. She walked with him back to his cabin. Had the endurance of Miss Ravelyn Shentavo finally come to break? This she simply could not deal with. In her defense, she was out of practice. How could she not have tired him out? She exhaled deliberately. She would try harder next time.

"That's the point," he said, pushing open the door, which creaked loudly, and walking to the cabinet over the fridge. "I'm physically tired, but underneath that there's too much pent-up energy for me to be able to physically rest. I need to let it out, or I might just go mad." He lightly bit his bottom lip looking over the liquor, then finally reached up to the top shelf and pulled down a dust-covered bottle of yellowish liquid. "This might suit your palate," he muttered, blowing some of the dust off the label. The top was unopened, but the label identified it as a bottle of scotch over four hundred years old. "This," he said as he pulled down a small, round glass from one of the cupboards to his left, "is something I've been saving for a very long time. It's possibly the most expensive bottle in that cabinet, which is full of expensive bottles. But it'll all be worth it if I can get you to understand why I still drink the stuff."

He opened it and poured a small amount into the bottom of the glass, swirled it around for a moment, and poured a bit more in. Recorking the bottle, he set it back on the shelf, picked up the glass, and turned back to Rave. Raising it reverently, he held it out to her. "To you, my good Ravelyn."

“Coro…I’ve never had anything but blood before,” she admitted and noted the astonishment on his face with a look of complacency. She raised the glass to her lips and took a sip, then smiled a bit, blinking twice. “It’s good…very strong…different.” She laughed. “Thank you for spending your most expensive bottle on me,” she whispered, ever edging closer before kissing him, the taste of the liquor still upon her soft lips and on the tip of her tongue. She tugged lightly at his lower lip.

He laughed and kissed her back, embracing her and holding her to him. When he finally let her go, he was grinning. "Well, I guess there's a first time for everything," he said softly, leaning in and kissing her again. He could taste the whiskey, and it tasted good. Of course, he had never tried the contents of that bottle before either, he had been saving it for sometime special. Sometime like now. He resolved to drink some before sleep, even if it meant slipping out of bed once more.

Pulling back again, he kissed her forehead and whispered "I have to slip away for a bit. I'll see you soon. But I have to go. It's like my skin is itching underneath, and no matter how much I scratch it doesn't go away."

“What if I try?” she questioned, flashing her long nails with a grin, then shooed him. “Go, go…I’ll be here waiting. If your lucky, all of your booze will not be gone by the time you return.” She shot him a playful smile, then crawled up upon the bed like a cat and slipped underneath the covers. Yea, she was physically exhausted. The sun beading down on her skin from the window was heavenly. She would stay this way for a while.

He watched her curl up under the blankets, and surreptitiously noticed she had left the glass of scotch out, sitting on the counter. He picked it up and took a sip, forced to blink his eyes hard right after. Damn. Good stuff. Very strong, but the flavour was only accentuated by the hundreds of years of aging. No wonder it was so valuable.

He set the glass down again and walked out the open door, closing it slowly behind him despite the loud creak and walking to the west, towards the forest there. As he reached the edge, maybe twenty minutes later, he stopped and looked up at the burning midday sun. Any satellites watching were about to get a rude surprise.

He closed his eyes, opened his mouth, and emitted a low shout, that boomed and rolled through the forest, echoing back towards him, getting louder and louder as time went on. As he did so, his arms spread wider and wider, the skin between his shoulder blades shredding and two enormous snakes, black as nothingness, burst out towards the sky, twisting and turning around each other and trying to bite each other's heads. From all over his body, more and more of the creatures smashed their way through his skin, until eventually he had turned entirely black, like a hole in the air, and a multitude of the snakes were emerging from his body, three eys on each of their heads flitting back and forth, their dark tongues slipping in and out of their mouths. His face, covered in numerous red eyes, all open, was dominated by one massive toothy grin.

He could hear and see something panicking and running in the forest even as he radiated dark energy and the snakes screamed, glad to be free of the body that was their prison. The animals were frightened by the presence outside their domain, and he did not blame them. He stood there, letting the creatures inside him, the beast he had once absorbed, the different heads and bodies of the snakes that emerged from his body, do as they wished, to let them vent the energy that he did not want to contain inside his body. He had wished to use it on Daja, but it no longer seemed a possibility. Not any time soon, anyway.

Throwing his head back, he laughed, a maniacal cackle that echoed and resonated through the forest. One of the snakes, lashing through the air, smashed through a thick tree trunk as if it was nothing, felling the tree, which crashed against two more, thicker trees and stayed upright, though listing at an obtuse angle and nearly severed at the base. He could feel it all dissipating, and he could feel himself relaxing.

Suddenly it was over, and he could feel the physical exhaustion taking its toll on his body. he was back to being himself, his regular skintone, only two eyes, and all the snakes gone, but the itch, the tingling under his skin, was gone. He grinned at the workout, the exercise. He had released the beast only once in hundreds of years, the previous day, when in five seconds he had allowed it to annihilate half a horde of demons before containing it again. This time it had run amok for nearly a minute, and he could still hear its screams and wails in his head.

He began the walk back to the house, visible in the distance. It took longer with the tiredness in his body and the lack of urgency in his step, and it was nearly forty minutes before he arrived back, pulling open the door, stepping through, and shutting it again. He did not even pay heed to the scotch on the counter that he would have loved to taste again, instead beelining for the bed and collapsing onto it, barely having the energy to remove his clothes, now tattered, although he knew they would be perfectly normal next time he decided to wear them. He did not even pull the covers over himself, instead simply putting an arm over Rave as she slept and closing his eyes, drifting away into a deep, dreamless sleep.

As she woke, Ravelyn paid heed to the scotch on the counter. She poured herself a glass. What was he going to do, kill her? Hardly. She grinned and crept over to the bed quietly. She had no idea how long she had been asleep for, but she was rested. She took a sip of the liquor, and set the glass down on the counter. Silently, she wondered if he would wake up if she were to tie him up. Then it would all be hers. She couldn’t help but to laugh at the thought, then searched the nape of his neck with her lips. It was almost midnight she figured; the beginning of the new year.

He was asleep face down, but his eyes tried to open as he felt her brush her mouth over his neck. Pulling his head up a bit, he blinked several times, trying to clear the sleep from his eyes. As he did so, he instantly regretted it. Every muscle in his body ached, even muscles he didn't know he had. He groaned quietly, not wanting to let on the fact that he was exhausted, but he knew she knew. It was night outside, he could tell. They had been asleep for maybe twelve hours.

He rolled up onto his side, looking up at Rave from where his head tried to fall back down onto the pillow, and he grinned wearily. "Happy new year, Ms Shentavo," he said.

She pushed him back down. “You have to rest Mr. Coro…you know, I have no idea what your last name is, or even if you have one, So alas I must call you Mr. Coro Shentavo. Welcome to my family.” She grinned, and bent to kiss him. “You are so weak,” she said in but a whisper while nibbling upon his ear with tentative kisses. “All that liquor is now unprotected and at my whim.”

He grinned. "Coro Shentavo, eh? I think I might like it better than my old last name." At the mention of the liquor, he laughed out loud. "I knew I shouldn't have let you taste it. Once bitten ..."

He pushed himself partially upright with his hands and kissed her neck as she was bent over him. "Nevertheless, you are the rich empress, and could easily replace the liquor in my collection with your vast stocks of money. It might take you a while, though, but I'll hold you to what you drink if I don't get to taste at least part of each bottle." His tone of voice was playful. Deadly serious in a playful way.

"Holding me to it? My dear, my dear...is that supposed to be threatening. You holding me is not something that I fear. Are you giving me more incentive?” She picked up the glass and twirled it at his eye level before downing the glass. “I wonder if I’d ever be able to actually get drunk. I mean, it doesn’t affect you, it could affect me. But I doubt it. I am perfectly sober.” She shrugged. “Oh…I didn’t let you taste that, did I?” she questioned, and threw him a playful laugh, with a bit of challenge behind her voice. This was exciting. Strange, but true.

His eyes narrowed slightly but playfully. "Plenty more where that came from," he muttered, pulling himself to a position sitting up on the bed and placing his legs off the side of it, so he was sitting on the side of the bed. "You don't even know what it's like to be drunk, you probably wouldn't even notice if you weren't sober," he said, his mouth opening into a grin. "Most people don't, their first time."

Too bad it won't happen. Ah well. I can dream.

“How much would a person of my size have to drink to be considered “drunk” by your standards. Let’s test this out…” she said with a laugh. Yeah right. Honestly, she did not know if it would even have an effect on her system, however, in never having tasted anything but blood, she honestly didn’t know. She handed him the glass.

"Hmmm." He tilted his head to one side, sizing her up. "I'm not going to go so far as to examine your teeth or anything," he said. "But back in the time when I was alive, we didn't get drunk very often. It was, you must understand, the past. And, given vampire nervous systems ... I have no idea."

He stood up, very close to her, tilting his head down towards her, shifted his eyes from her to the glass in his hand, then back up to her face. "Let's find out if vampires can get drunk," he said quietly. "To ring in the new year.

“Let’s,” she agreed, and swiped his glass, downing it instantly. It was strong, very strong. She felt her throat burning and cursed. As it dissipated, she smiled at him. “Oh I guess I didn’t let you taste that either…” she laughed, and pushed him lightly, looking up to him with a mischievous glint in her eye.

He grinned, lowering his body slightly to kiss her upturned head, and then walked over to the liquor cabinet, taking down the open bottle of scotch and pouring it out into the glass in his hand. He poured out much more than he usually would, filling the glass more than half full, and handing it back to her, before taking the empty glass from her hand and filling it even more liberally than the first. Recorking the bottle, he left it sitting on the counter and turned back to her, raising his glass in a mock toast and hurriedly taking a large sip of the liquid. It burned his throat, but it tasted better than anything he had had in years.

She finished half the glass, and wrapped one arm around his waist. “Nothing is happening,” she said, and nuzzled against his chest, free hand slicing off the buttons skillfully. “Why are your clothes torn?” she asked taking another sip before running her free hand once again down his chest. “It doesn’t suit you,” she whispered, and smiled.

"Eh?" he asked, slightly confused. He looked down, past Rave, and saw his tattered clothes. He chuckled quietly. "I guess I was too tired for them to subconsciously recover," he said. "Don't worry, they'll be back to normal whenever they're back to normal." Switching his glass of whiskey to his right hand, he wrapped his left around her shoulders as he lifted the glass to his lips and drank deeply, the burning liquid sliding down his throat. He took a moment to shake his head violently, and looked down at her again. "On the other hand," he said, "I think your clothes suit you perfectly as they are."

“What you mean this?” she said, glancing downward before laughing. She straightened up and finished off her glass. “Oh I just found it lying around somewhere.” She pushed him back a bit, and grinned. “I hope they never go back to normal. So that you can’t wear them and therefore will remain without a shirt forever. Spledid idea…hmnn?” she laughed. Oh god... it wasn't...possible right?

He laughed, and noticed her empty glass. "I think," he said, pausing to collect his thoughts, then noticed his glass was still partially full, and drained it. "I think," he continued, "that we need another drink." He reached around behind him somewhat awkwardly with his free hand, eventually finding the bottle and clumsily uncorking it with one hand, reaching around and pouring some into each of their glasses, very meticulously to avoid getting any on the floor. He raised it again, and cleared his throat. "To us," he announced, louder than necessary, and drank deeply.

She laughed at the toast, and repeated it, then downed her glass as if it were nothing, and moved forward a bit, as if an unseen hand had pushed her. She had both hands around his waist. “Mmmmmmn.” She laughed again. “Still nothing happens, and yet,” she laughed again, “and yet you think that you coulda…” she didn’t finish her sentence; it was cut off by laugher and the movement of her body against his.

ooc: happy new year

He laughed with her, draining the rest of the drink and finding himself surprised that the glass was empty. He reached behind him, dropping the glass on the counter and finding himself relieved it didn't break, and he grabbed the bottle itself, raising it up in front of him and taking a drink directly from the mouth of the bottle. Once finished with that task, he turned his head down to Rave's, his left arm wrapped around her and his right holding a mostly-empty bottle of scotch. Still finding it hard to control his laughter, he finally managed to silence himself by reaching down and kissing her passionately.




OOC: Happy new year to you too.

And she kissed him back. She jumped up on him, supporting herself with her own strength and continued to kiss him. In the midst of passion, she used her right hand to masterfully yank the bottle free from his hand which had then gone to support her. She finished off the bottle, and with no where to put it, held it in her hand and returned her arms around his neck. Oh, it was a good New Years.

Well this has been an interesting experience, he thought, his thought fuzzy and slightly off, as they embraced, him supporting her and her stealing his bottle of scotch. I guess it does work. I haven't tried since I was alive.

When their lips finally broke contact, he grinned, gently let her down, and turned to the liquor cabinet. The room was slowly spinning, shooting back to its original place, and spinning again, and as he reached up to take down another bottle his head pounded once in protest. The new bottle was one of hundred year-old bourbon. Turning to her and pulling out the cork easily with his free hand, he took a deep draught from the mouth of the bottle and held it out to her, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. "Tonigh - Tonight is a nigh' for whiiiskeyy," he said, savouring the last word and drawing it out not entirely intentionally.

With a great deal of strength she grabbed from him. "Not for you," she laughed and stuck out her tongue at him. "Ya know Coro anything your going to take I'll steal first..." Did that make sense. "because..." she continued looking as if she were trying to explain. There was an elegant look upon her face, as if she were going to give some death defying reason why. "That's why...and don't do it again." She shook her finger at him, laughing all the while.

She poked him in the chest. "I bite my thumb at you sir."

He sighed, and, taking advantage of his slight advantage in coherence, snatched the bottle away from her and shook it slightly at her as if to emphasize a nonexistent point. "Alas, poor Ravelyn," he said, slurring the words slightly. "Now is the winter of your discontent." He drank deeply, and felt it in the pit of his stomach and the roof of his mouth as the rough liquid went down. He blinked his eyes several times as a fuzzy outline of the room and the woman in front of him began weaving slightly in and out behind the one he could tell was real.

"I hate winter," she snapped, and before she could take it back, he downed it. She looked as if she were about to cry, and turned her back on him like royalty, stumbled over to where a good amount of bottles rested, and took one up. Having no idea what it was, nor caring. Everything seemed to move with her, like the world revolved around her litterallly, and bent to her every move. She stumbled back to him, knocking him down and falling down with him.

He laughed uproariously, and found it hard to stop, as she ran into him and they collapsed. "Not used to be - be - beingdrunkare we Miss Shntavo," he said, mispronouncing several words and raising the mostly empty bourbon bottle in front of his face. It pleased him that there were two of them. Twice the drink. When he tried to pour the one on the right into his mouth, however, he heard it splash against the floor, and some of it hit his shoulder. He hurriedly adjusted the bottle to pour it into his mouth, but not without spilling a good deal of it.

"Fuck," he muttered. "I lost the - I dropped the - fuckin' bottle. That w's good whiskey. Shit."

"Whatev you talking, Mr. Coro? I swear to drunk i'm not god..." she said, on top of him, content that he spilt some. If it was closer, she would have licked it off the floor just for the fun of it. "What the hellz," she glared at him...and wasn't quite sure why. It seemed like the room was spinning.

He laughed out loud again, the empty bottle of whiskey falling against the ground and rolling away from him. "That tha' that was a good one, Rave." He looked around for more, and discovered that the liquor cabinet was all the way up above the fridge which he was now lying beside. It seemed quite an effort to stand up, especially since Rave was practically on top of him. "I think," he said with an effort, then stopped, wondering what he had been about to say. After a moment, he caught it again, and continued. "I think - I think that's it for me. Toooo much. I'm drink-drunk. Drunk. And you are too."

"Nu-uh," she said playfully laughing before suddenly licking his neck where some of the liquor had spilled. She licked his neck tentatively, trailing her fangs over just slightly, perhaps not even meaning to. She tried to stand up, but fell. "Imsotired," she said, still on top of him she curled up half upon his chest. poked him. "Yurjustupset cuz...I drnk more thna you and i ish still stnding."

"You dint drink more'n me," he replied, his eyelids slowly closing. He raised a hand and poked her in the ribcage in response. "I drunk the whiskey, I finished the bourbon. I drank you unner th' table." He took the hand he had poked her with and laid it over her, letting it relax and just go limp as his whole body relaxed. "Fuck'n'm tire. 'll see though. I'm gonna - gonna outlast you. Just let me ... let me get t'my feet."

He didn't even try, instead his head dropped back against the floor heavily and his eyes closed, passed out. He was still tired from the day before.

She, having drank less than him, had passed out before him, lying on top of him with an empty bottle spinning out of her hand. She snuggled against him as if he were a blanket. The shirt she was wearing; his shirt, had a bit of the liquid spiled on it, but not much, and three more buttons had come undone in the fray, but she didn't really notice.

Her eyes fluttered open. It took her several moments to realize she was lying on top of Tempest, curled around his chest like a cat absorbing his warm. She reached up and grabbed the blanket off the bed and brought it down to the floor, pulling it around herself. She felt a little out of it, like everything that had happened was a bit fuzzy in her mind. She didn’t remember how they got here, then looked at the shattered bottle a little ways off and recalled some of it. Tempest must have gotten drunk or something. She had only had a few sips. She looked at the sunlight pouring in from the windows. How long had they been asleep?She felt the warmth of the sun across her skin and proceeded to stand up, pull the blanket with her and go outside down to the beach. Upon the sand she laid down the blanket and undid the buttons of his shirt, pulling off the long sleeves before lying on her stomach and letting the sun hit her back. It was so damn warm.



He looked again at Vaughn.

"You're wearing a kind of mask, aren't you?" he asked Michael. "That's not your true appearance, is it?
- No. This is like a separate part of myself, why?
- Oh, nothing. I just find that quite impressive. I mean, this is like a power isn't it?
- Not really.
- Hmmm."

For once Smith was as confused as she had been, and she smiled at this silently. She noted the look in both their eyes. Something was recalled to her, though she did not realize what it was. "Are you familiar with each other?" she asked melodically.

"No," Vaughn replied simply. "I just don't like how he's looking at me."

Smith smiled at Rave.

"Oh... it's nothing, you know. Just have the impression I saw someone like your friends before. Someone with purely black eyes. Nothing important."

Vaughn's eyes widened.

"I... I beg your pardon?"


Ravelyn’s eyes shot open. I’ll never be able to get you out of my head will I? I’ll never be able to stop… she sighed.

As Tempest woke up, he felt a feeling he hadn't felt in hundreds of years. Of course, that was becoming commonplace, spending so much time with Rave, but this one was not pleasant, was not a natural or benevolent feeling. It was only a mild hangover, but it was still more hangover than he had had in five centuries. He groaned, and stood up, steadying himself against the counter with both his hands, leaning forward and gently setting his head against the door of the cupboard in front of him. "Damn..." he muttered, long and low, and he absentmindedly reached out to turn on the tap. Who paid any water bills for this place was a mystery, but water there was, and he grabbed one of the glasses they had used for scotch, ran it under the tap until it was full, and drained it in one motion. He did this again, and then turned to look at the rest of the room, feeling slightly better. Where's Rave? he thought, flashing through his mind, then a split second later, She's at the beach. He sighed with relief as he turned his attention back to the liquor cabinet. Hair of the dog? Ancient hangover cure, or old wives' tale? Worth a shot.

He filled the glass a small way with one of the opened bottles of vodka, much newer, but still high quality, and very quickly gulped it down. He had chosen the vodka because it was such high quality that he didn't even feel it. It had even less taste than water, and didn't even burn his throat. He couldn't tell whether it was making him feel better, but he put a and to his head and absentmindedly pinched the bridge of his nose as he figured out what to do. Realizing he was wearing very little clothes, - and wondering if the ripped clothes on the floor had anything to do with last night - he made his way over to the wardrobe, slowly. Two of his shirts were missing, the good white one and one black one. He grabbed one of the few left and threw it on, not even bothering to do up any of the buttons. A pair of pants followed, and he stepped out into the sun, blinking several times as it hurt his eyes. He yawned, and pushed the sleeves of the shirt up past his elbows as the warmth from the sun heated the black fabric.

He made his way down to the beach slowly, admiring the midday sun. They had slept another half day, plus or minus a few hours, and as he looked down at the beach, walking down the narrow path that wound its way down the sheer cliff face, he saw Rave lying face down on the sand, and grinned to himself, admiring her beauty from afar as he descended. As he got closer, he thought - though, a voice reminded him, his senses were thrown off by the mild hangover - she sensed his presence and decided not to move. He sat down beside her and watched the waves - larger than yesterday and peppered with a whitecap here and there. "How long have you been up?" he asked her.

“I’m not quite sure,” She said languorously, as if she were at a spa in the middle of an appointment. “I didn’t realize we had a clock, and haven’t thought about it because time doesn’t seem to matter that much here. There are no deadlines, no meetings, no politics, and no students.” She shifted slightly, turning just enough to see him. “You know, by the end of my visit, I have a feeling you won’t have any of your shirts left,” she smiled, but the sun was too heavenly upon her skin to truly laugh in such a relaxed state. She was truly thankful that her line was immune to the sun’s rays, unlike other lines of vampires in which the sun harmed them. Her daughter, Sarah, had a bit of a problem with that. She just needed time to adjust. There is no reason it cannot be taught so long as she has the same blood, but she disappeared in a war on another nation, and Ravelyn had not seen her since. She assumed her dead, for she could not even sense her any longer.

"...7 6 Alpha 8 Teta 9... Yes I'm waiting."

Michael Vaughn sat on the chair, his finger repeatedly tapping his lips.

"Good," he said to the person on the phone, "What's the balance?... Perfect... Yes... A red-blue operation would be perfect... Thank you."

He put the cellphone on the table. The sunrays were inspecting the small woody room through the door. The air was hot and salty. The soothing sound of the waves was stubbornly repeating itself.

Michael walked to the bed. He was dressed with white trousers and a half opened shirt. He contemplated Ravelyn, as her eyes had finally opened.

"You don't need to speak," he said softly. "I know everything. Where I was, I could see, I could hear, I could feel. All I needed Kurosaki for was to talk."

He gently passed his hand in her hair.

"I don't know how to tell you... I mean... How much I love you."

Sadness passed into his eyes.

"I know you need to think. I know you made choices. I know all of this... and I don't ask you to change everything for me."

He paused and looked at the sea out the door.

"That's what love means I guess."


“I don’t think…I’ll ever drink again,” she said to Tempest. If this was the effect, she didn’t want it. She wanted to forget; part of her wanted to forget. She sat up quietly, and pulled the top of his shirt over her shoulders and put her arms through the sleeves, leaving the top few buttons unbuttoned as normal, she stood up, a bit shaky, but managed to give him a smile. “I just need to walk a bit and collect my thoughts.” She bent down and kissed him briefly before walking down the beach. The sun cast ribbons of auburn through her hair as she walked. Once out of sight she climbed amidst the rocks and sat down, looking out toward the ocean. They were the same waves that were outside Vaughn’s house, when she left him. She knew that it would be hard to leave Vaughn. The two could not be separated when they were together. He had been with her through the first years of the academy. It was rather that chance meeting, brought together by Genesis and Witz, in a coffee shop of all places.

Seems like it was yesterday when I saw your face. You told me how much you loved me, but I walked away. If only it had been a week earlier, I would hold you in my arms. I would take the pain away. There's nothing I wouldn't do to hear your voice again. Sometimes I want call you but I know you won't be there. Some days I feel broken inside but I won't admit it. Sometimes I just want to hide because it's you I miss. It's so hard to say goodbye when it comes to this. She wrapped her arms around her knees, pulling them in tightly. Tempest didn’t understand how she could feel such a loss; why she would be so upset when he had him. He and Vaughn were two different people. You can’t replace a part of something if the two pieces don’t match up. They were not the same, and they held different halves of her heart in their hands. Why was it so wrong to love two people so much? What a vicious world to have to choose.

Would you tell me I was wrong? Are you looking down upon me? Are you proud of who I am? There's nothing I wouldn't do to have just one more chance; to look into your eyes and see you looking back. If I had just one more day I would tell you how much that I've missed you since you’ve been gone. It’s dangerous to try and turn back time. “I’m sorry for blaming you for everything I just couldn’t. I’ve hurt myself by hurting you.”

He watched her walk away and couldn't help but feel that something was troubling her, and he wondered if he should be with her before deciding against it. He knew that some things were her own to deal with, and him intruding would not help at all. Besides, he knew she was safe - there were no outside threats in this place, and even if something did threaten her, he would feel it. So, he let her walk away, though he watched her, admiring her beauty even from afar and from behind her.

Once she was out of sight, he turned back to his surroundings. He needed to clear his head and could use some time to think. Latching onto an idea, he stood, walked forward, crouched down, and felt the water with his fingertips as a wave rolled in. Nice and warm in the midday sun. Standing up and retreating slightly, he removed his shirt and pants and walked forward into the water, letting it wash over him and crash against his body as he walked deeper and deeper into the ocean. Once his feet no longer comfortably touched the ground, he launched himself forward into the water and began slowly swimming out towards the horizon, letting the natural and rhythmic motions of the water help him relax as he swam out with ease, his eyes fixed on the horizon. He knew he would never reach it, but what it represented, endless possibilities, new chances, that was something he would always strive for. And so he swam, and he thought, as usual mostly about Rave, towards the horizon.

Ravelyn looked out over the ocean. It seemed she was doing that a lot lately. She sighed heavily, placing her head on her knees. She really had no idea what to do. She knew if Vaughn ever called to her, she would come running to help him; regardless of the fact she was no longer with him. Deciding which half of her heart to go with is like deciding which you like best out of your children. You just couldn’t. You love them both equally, even if one screws up more than the other. She stood up. The calm was over her nation, everything had been restored. For all the turmoil, and everything it had gone through, it was over now. The nation was safe, and she was resigning. As she looked out over the ocean, she folded her hands behind her back. She was half waiting to here, “hey, beautiful…” Zacharian’s greeting to her every time Vaughn shifted. The only thing she heard was the wind whispering through her hair and caressing her cheek.

She started heading back toward the beach where Corothisia was, taking her time listening to the waves.

He turned onto his back and lay there for some time, waving his hands idly to stay afloat as he took deep, relaxing breaths in and out. Above him, the sun shone its rays down upon him and upon the entire scene around him. The ocean, the beach far in the distance, the waves that made his body bob up and down, the cliff, and the wooden building he could just barely see the top of sticking over the edge of the cliff, since he was so far out. Looking back, he saw a Rave-sized figure moving back towards the now-empty beach, where his clothes lay in a heap.

He had had enough. The swimming had been relaxing, and his hangover was all-but gone, but the salt on his skin was beginning to irritate him, and he longed to spend time with her. Even just sitting with her, enjoying her presence, feeling her energy near him. He dove underwater and resurfaced on his chest facing towards the beach, swimming back towards it with much more purpose than he had swum away from it with.

As Ravelyn walked by his pile of clothes, she picked them up and walked down to the beach, hiding them behind her back. She waited at the shoreline, bent forward slightly, waiting for him to get the hell back to the shore. He looked better than he did this morning; perhaps a little more coherent. She smiled. “Have a nice swim?”

He smiled and bit the left side of his bottom lip to keep from laughing quietly as he noticed his missing clothes and her one hand remaining conspicuously behind her back, using his hands in vain to try and give himself some modesty. "Yes, I did," he said, trying his best to maintain the illusion of normality in their conversation. "It was quite refreshing." He paused for a moment. "You know, if you're going to hide my clothes, I might just, ah, have to take them from you," he said, raising his eyebrows at her, to convey both a feeling of very slight and faked dismay and shock and of suggestion.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she looked up toward the sky, and for a moment, contemplated setting them on fire. She took a few steps back from him, so that he would have to walk forward more, her eyes devouring his form every second of the way. “I think you had too much to drink last night, you didn’t have any clothes out here.”

He put his head to one side. "Hmm. An interesting point," he said, continuing his slow and steady advance on her. "But, on the other hand, I distinctly remember wearing clothes out here. So, it appears we are trapped in a pretty situation. Besides," he said, squinting his eyes slightly for effect, "I didn't drink that much last night. Maybe you did, and so you can't remember that you're not holding some clothes behind your back."

She couldn't help but to laugh, but continued her advance backwards. "I think you need glasses or something," she grinned. "I wasn't the one who had a hangover this morning, and I was pretty sure," she continued, eying him and up and down to further catch his eyes. "that you weren't wearing any clothes..."

"Glasses I may need," he said, taking the opportunity and the excuse to look her up and down, "but I'm pretty sure that you were imagining my lack of clothes. I wouldn't put it past you, I'm sure me, like this, has been on your mind a lot. Don't deny it." He grinned. He was enjoying himself teasing her. "But just so you know, stealing my clothes while I'm out swimming is ... ah ... decidedly dishonourable. Try saying that ten times fast."

"It might be dishonorable," she gave in, "But I would do it all day." She grinned, turned on her heel, and took off running down the shoreline of the beach looking back toward him. It was a ways to his house, and he would have to pass her before he got there. Well, this was entertaining.

"Aha!" he shouted as she turned, revealing his clothes behind her back. "You liar! Thief!" He shouted as he ran up the beach after her, towards the narrow path leading back up the cliff. He knew he could outrun her, especially as she was slightly overweighted with two peoples' worth of clothes, but he did not sprint after her, merely running fast enough to slowly catch up. He had no desire to turn the farce into a race. "I'll get you, Rave Shentavo," he called out, letting his voice trail off comically, "if it's the last thing I doooooo..."

"Uh-huh," she said, then eyed him before letting the ebony feathered wings emerge from her back, and immediately she leapt up into the air. she rotated, and hovered, looking down at him. She waved his clothes in one hand in the air. "Dating an angel sucks doesn't it?" She grinned.

He stopped, looking up at her, and threw his hands up in resignation. "Perhaps," he said, a false tone of weariness creeping into his voice, "I shall just be naked." Then he grinned and lowered his hands again. "Or, I could not give up." Without even concentrating, he rose into the air relatively quickly, rising rapidly towards her same level, his arms crossed over his chest. "Dating a vampire sucks, doesn't it?" he asked her in turn, giving her a cheeky grin to match the one she had given him.

“Not one like you,” she grinned showing her fangs, and briefly looking down. Oh god, she was having too much fun with this. She took the clothes from behind her back and handed them forward, “accidentally” dropping them, and catching them on fire. She grinned as they burned, and pushed up the sleeves of her shirt, well, his shirt. “Oops…”

His eyes narrowed. "Ooh, Ms Shentavo ... Those were good clothes. You'll pay," he said slyly and quietly. "Maybe I'll light your clothes on fire? But they're really my clothes, so ... damn." He found himself out of ideas, and shrugged. "I guess you win this round."

Suddenly he was behind her, and wrapped his arms around her, kissing her neck passionately and drawing her attention to that by brushing his fangs lightly against her neck, then deftly sliding his shirt from her arms and slipping it away. Retreating quickly, he grinned widely as he pulled it on and pretended to admire himself in a mirror, tugging on it gently. "Hey, what do you know. It fits!" he said excitedly, as if it were a surprise.

She was distracted by all the attention on her neck; that one point which made her purr. Then, the shirt was gone. She had no time to find the lingerie she had lost the first night they were here. Somehow she think it got tangled up with the sheets. She took the bead off her necklace and snapped it. A scythe appeared in her hand, and her hair extended and became all the more red. Dark armor clasped around her body, including high boots and just enough sufficient coverage for the rest. She had bracers and metal gauntlets. She arched a brow at him, and grinned, flashing now a double set of fangs. Her wings seemed to darken, expand a bit. She lowered herself to the ground, and began to walk toward the cabin, a bit frustrated that he had teased her so, and hadn’t bitten her. Strange, how one could ache for that.

“You win this time…Corothisia,” oh boy, she used his full name.

He raised his eyebrows, this time in genuine astonishment. "Was it something I said?" he mused to himself, lowering himself down to the ground. He took a look at the sun, now on its way down, and then down at his shadow, cast on the ground, and was suddenly in the cabin. He knew she was walking up and would be a few minutes, which gave him time. He turned, and to his surprise a vase which he had not noticed before, a single red rose sitting in it, was on the counter beside him. He loved this place. It was the little things.

He grabbed two glasses and a piece of paper which he folded in half and grabbed something to write with. A pen. In flowery, flowing writing, trying his hardest to make it look formal, he wrote on the outside of one of the folds "Ms. Ravelyn Shentavo", opened it up, and didn't know what to write. He left it blank, grabbed the rose, and made his way to the edge of the cliff. Making sure she could not see him, he set the card, folded over so her name was visible facing the path up from the beach, and set the rose underneath it. With that, he hurried back inside, leaving the door open, and looked around for something to justify the attempt at an elaborate card. He failed.

Ravelyn stopped with the notice of a red rose in the center of the ground with a note. She couldn’t help but smile. Her favorite flowers were roses; hence the rose tattoo on her back, but that meant so much more than her favorite flower. She picked it up, and breathed in its scent in. “Oh what ever am I to do with you?” she questioned to the wind, and opened the door to the cabin and leaned on the door frame, with the rose in her hand.

Tempest stood there, a smile on his face, just looking at her as she stood in the doorway, and then stepped forward without words and stepped in behind her, wrapping his arms around her, closing his right hand around hers which held the rose, and he leaned down, kissing her neck. As he drew back for a moment, he whispered softly "I tried to think of something romantic to put on the inside, but my mind blanked," and went back to kissing her from behind.

She let the card fall from her hand and nearly the rose as he kissed her neck. She leaned back slightly. He sent shivers down her skin. Immediately with her seraphic form quelled, she returned to normal, her shoulder now completely exposed to him due to the lack of fabric. "Words aren't the only way to tell someone how you feel."

"I ran out of words to describe how I feel about you a long time ago," he whispered into her ear, and instead of elaborate, he stuck to his words and shut up, holding her close to him and kissing her neck and shoulder, his hand holding hers closed around the rose to make sure she did not drop it. He didn't care about the card. But the rose was a gift from the land, a gift to Rave, and not something to be taken lightly.

In her hand the rose bloomed, the brilliant crimson matching her eyes. She tilted her head back in ecstasy. Taking in his warmth; his tentative touch and lips upon her skin, she let out a breathless sigh. With such a well placed touch he had complete control over her. She had let her guard down significantly. Her words were stolen from her.

He continued kissing her neck, but his attention was drawn briefly to the rose which had bloomed in her hand, and he inadvertently stopped for a moment to smile and stare at it. It was so beautiful, and he saw that the gift to her had been accepted by both parties. He had nothing to say; he had told her how he felt so many times before, and he had run out of ways to describe it. He stepped slightly to the right, leaning in and kissing her on the lips, his hand still holding hers around the now bloomed rose, and he pulled it in close to her heart, holding it tightly there, even as he remained locked to her, holding her in an embrace that he never wanted to let go.

She leant up to him, the rose now opening fully in her hand as her wings spread out behind her. She leant up, and kissed him. The ebony from her wings was chased away by a blinding white, the feathers ruffled and a wind swept through the door as the light spread from the bone to the tip of the wing, turning the feathers the purest white and causing the rose tattoo on her back to shift to a white fill rather then the black ink. She stumbled forward, and fell weakly in his arms.

Was this…was this the white seraphic? Azrael…was this…

What have I done? flashed through his mind as she assumed the white seraphic form and collapsed into his arms, and he bit his lip nervously, wondering just what had happened. Just because he was occult did not make him an expert on it. He lifted her up, placing one arm underneath her knees and one under her back, and walked to the bed, across the small room, where he laid her down on it peacefully, her head on the pillows. He took her hand, still holding the rose, and placed it on her stomach, the rose still there, clutched in her hand. He then crouched there beside the bed, not knowing whether she was even awake, holding her hand.

Rave? he inquired, though gently, and softly, in case she was sleeping he did not want to wake her.

She opened her eyes slowly; and they sparkled like diamonds. The irises were a stunning violet color reminiscent of the sky at sunset. Her nails were clear and glasslike. Strands of white ran through her auburn hair mainly in the front with some underneath. She was still continuing to change, white fabric spreading up her calves forming boots, most suited to a caster. A skirt followed, a light fabric; flowing. It was violet, like her eyes, but faded into white towards the further downward. White lace gloves trailed up her hands, fingerless and intricate. A white tight blouse which seemed to be painted on; backless, exposing her wings and rose tattoo.

I'll reach out my hand freely to grasp destiny
There's no decided tomorrow
Even being quiet, I know that our meeting on that day wasn't by chance
In your distant eyes, I felt eternity
As the cold wind shines through the beautiful fading sunset
I just barely hear your soft voice
It hurts so much not being alone in my heart that my soul is made passionate
The proof that my feelings are alive starts from my belief
I'll be reborn as a new me in this sky that spreads into the endless future
I'll show you the snow of happiness falling all over the world, while holding your hand
The flower petals drifting in the water are chasing the distant moon
Farther than the dreams I used to see
On this journey full of unpleasant things, I gaze up at the blue sky alone
I don't want to lose because of being weak
The warm love and the future that I was searching for
Are with my feelings inside my heart
If I can only do one thing, even if I'm puzzled I want to grant this wish
That my beautiful heart will fall down and pile up over someone like snow
I'm confused, but I don't regret a thing. If we lead each other, I won't be afraid
At the touch of your hand on my sleeping form, I awaken.

She stood up, and walked to the door. The rose had turned white in her hand. She opened the door, and snow fell down from the sky. Beautiful.

He watched her go, standing there dumbfounded until she reached the door and it was suddenly and spontaneously snowing. The door, much to his surprise, had opened smoothly and quietly. His mouth hung open slightly, agape, and the shock of wondering what had just happened hit him hard. He closed his mouth, swallowed nervously, and took a tentative step forward, reaching out with one hand. "Rave?" he asked quietly, unsure of whether or not she would even answer to that name.

She twirled her fingers around one of the white strands of hair and looked at it. “Well, that’s interesting…” she said quietly, and looked at the white gloves and garb. That’s interesting as well…, she thought quietly, for the rose in her hand had turned white. Another thing was strange; the snow was not bothering her. Was it snow? She looked up and saw small spheres, no bigger than marbles falling from the sky, disappearing into the earth and rising up again, as if there were no gravity. They were glowing dimly various shades of colors. She leapt up into the air, and was caught by an unseen force, lifting her as if she weighed nothing as her wings fanned out to the side. The air was vaguely warm; the night sky illuminated by the myriad of different colors.

“I feel so weightless,” she whispered. She straightened up in mid air and looked down at Tempest. She could see the questions forming upon his face. “This…Calm…” she said quietly. “How can you not help but to feel tranquil; peaceful…with all of this materia around you…”

As she leapt off the ground, he hurriedly rushed to the door and stood there, one hand on the frame, staring up at her, the small orbs falling all around her. As she looked down at him and asked a question, he stood still for a moment, pondering in his mind the question. "I ... do feel tranquil. This is the most peaceful place I've ever been," he said. "And I love it here because of that." I don't really understand what's going on... he thought. If I had spent time learning about things like this, instead of just taking it all in stride...

She closed her eyes, the seemingly weightless environment to her picking up strands of hair as if she were submerged within water. The glowing spheres continued to travel through the air slowly, as if flowing through honey, seeping into the ocean, rising up above the clouds. It was as if they were in a snow globe. The ocean looked like a sheet of mirrored glass, for the waves had calmed as if it were a lake. She slowly contracted her wings and the movement pushed her to glide slowly; playfully over the ocean as she was seemingly lost in her own bliss. She straightened up again, still drifting slightly, and looked at him; and the reflection below was a fiery eyed hell angel; Azrael’s apathy. What Tempest gazed up to was her empathy; the two states. One which would bring life, and the other death.

She met the shoreline and touched down upon it, her feet not making indents in the sand and her cool violet eye glowing dimly. “You spend so much time trying to analyze what is going on when you already know," she said, looking peacefully at him, and moving towards him. She was still floating as she reached him, half horizontal, and her face at the level of his. She kissed him softly, and grabbed his arm, pulling him up from the ground into the midst of the glowing spheres which seemed to occupy the night sky like drifting snow. For an instant, he was weighed by gravity, but she pulled a bit more, and he was free of it.

I may know what's going on, he thought to himself, but I still don't know what's going on. I can feel it, but I can't describe it, even to myself. Regardless, he let her grab him and pull him upwards, and as he felt gravity's pull leave him he smiled. It was a wonderful feeling, and no matter how many times it happened to him he never tired of it. Still, his attention did not focus on any of the peripheral things such as that, instead concentrating on the woman in front of him; her newfound brilliance shining through the sky and the air that surrounded them. She would have seemed out of place elsewhere, or at a different time, but here, now, it felt to him as if this was how it, how she was meant to be. He didn't understand it and couldn't place it, but it felt right.

“This is why Daja wants me,” she said suddenly, drawing herself close to him to whisper those words into his ear. She moved away from him, but held his hand. “All of these spheres are life; life force. A strong lifestream runs through me, enough so that I can pass it on to others, give them vitality or a rebirth, or even life as with a phoenix’s tears. This part of me is normally concealed, only showing briefly in a moment or too, but most strongly through my compassion. I have shared this lifestream with my nation, with the land, with my children, with people throughout this existence, with Vaughn, even with you and yet you do not realize it. It is a never ending life force that can be shared over and over again; but this is the first time I have ever slid into this form.”

“As the hell seraphic I wield that lifestream within me to give me power; to kill, to destroy, to absorb. There is nothing giving about it; nearly devoid of emotion, but it is that form which I have been most often familiar with having to defend and protect those I have shared it with, and those who need it. Even though the lifestream I carry is limitless, my body is not. Even though Daja covets my body, he would more likely want to possess my life force so that he will do with it what he may For all that can give can take, for all that can create can destroy.”

She looked around at the spheres which went on as far as the eye could see, then back toward Tempest, and pulled him up so that he was on the same level as her to wrap her arms around him. “It was first with Vaughn that I took my darker form, but it’s with you that, for the first time, I became a white seraphic.”

"I feel honoured," he said with a small grin, before the weight of the rest of her words sunk in. He wrapped his arms around her. "I wish I had that power of life," he said sadly. "All I have ever used my power for is to destroy; even becoming emotionally vested in it. There is emotion in what I do, but what I do is destroy, and kill. I guess, in a sense, my equivalent of this form was retreating to this place, to stop the killing back where I come from."

He turned his thoughts back to what she had said. "Don't worry about Daja. He can't touch you here, or anywhere else as long as I'm around. I'll die before I let him get his hands on you." He fell silent again, still thinking, then decided to, rather than letting his thoughts remain silent, bring them to the surface. "I don't really know what to say," he conceded. "I love you no matter what form you're in, but I'm at a loss for words. Is this what being an angel was like? This white seraphic form?"

“Originally how I was designed? No. I was only meant to be a punisher, or so I was told. This form is one I have never been in before. I’m not sure if I were ever meant to attain it. To make this “snow” fall over the world…I don’t know how to react. I was never meant for this.” She said passively, calmly. “I’m about as confused as you are. Seraphic are only designed for one thing normally. I've never heard of this.”