Vellum: Thou dawdl'd not bringing me fro Aether to Nether

[nicenewra]

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He's bleeding again. The knife in his hand is of some dark metal that isn't like any you would find easily in some weaponsmith's store. It is a jagged blade with uneven, serrated edges, and a thick handle wrapped with skin and topped with a blood red ruby. The marks in his chest are scarred deep from having been cut into on more than one occasion. This ritual is not one he has performed many times simply because of how dangerous it is. Perhaps that's why he does it. To assert his dominance. To prove that he can draw them into himself and expel them at will. He has bound himself within a rune-lined circle drawn upon the dirt floor. While a demon is inside him, he cannot break the confines of the perfect ring. The blood dripping from his body hits the ground to gather in tiny beads of blood-mud. His eyes are no longer that deep chocolatey brown, but fully black and without any life to them at all. His head tilts as he peers at the waifish woman loitering in the shadows. "Exactu prema verocci." Wikus' lips move, but it isn't his voice that emerges. It's something darker. "I remember you."

'Loitering' is a kind word for what the woman known as Vellum is doing. Trembling in terror might be a better way to describe it, but even then, there is such a lusty need in the way her breath hitches as she gazes at the demonic thing that is not-Wikus; this is a power she wants for herself. With the intricacy of the symbols, the blood being shed, the altered hue and sheen of his gaze, she knows well that this is not some simple cantrip of those disparagingly referred to as 'graveyard necromancers', hobbyists who play at the fringes of the fel and consider themselves masters because they can bind a simple imp to their weak wills. He is gorgeous and frightening all at once, and she skulks forward a few steps at the words spoken by the dark, malignant voice that emerges. As is her wont, she wears a neat, demure gown in the Gilnean style, in a pale yellow that does absolutely nothing for the sallowness of her skin. "You remember me?" It is the weak cry of a baby bird chirping for attention in a world bigger than can be imagined. "Why do you remember me?"

Not-Wikus smiles. The thing -smiles- at her. It is an unnatural, inhuman expression, despite the very human face it is displayed on. So slowly that perfectly straight body beings to slump, and he lowers into a squat mere inches from the edge of the circle that was drawn on the ground to keep him from getting free. "We used to play together," it says in both whispers and echoes. "Don't you remember?" His head tilts again, the other way.

She stares at it with those wet, dark eyes, and creeps forward another step or two. Nevermind what a frail thing she is, she holds herself straight and with shoulders squared; her mother taught her better than to slump. "We did not. You are not the Marquis." In her mind this is a statement of fact, but it comes out a question. We did not? You are not the Marquis?

"I am not the Marquis," he whispers to her, again smiling. "Little Bird. Little Bird. Little birdie. Come closer. I will tell you. We played. We played hide and seek." He shifts, dropping the athame and putting all of his fingers into the dirt. He creeps forward, pausing at the edge of the circle. The barrier is invisible, but it is very much there. "Remember? You could never find me. But I always found you."

She does not like that smile; a man's face was never meant to look like such a grotesque mask, a mockery of human emotions, as not-Wikus does with that demonic expression. "I will -not- come closer," she tells it, because she is not a fool. She is a coward and a liar, yes, but there will be no approaching the ritual circle and certainly no breaking the boundaries of it. She was always very good at hide and seek, she has always been so very small and slender that few places were inaccessible to her, she climbs like a monkey and slithers like a snake and prowls into the shadows like a mountain lion tends to the darkness while stalking its prey, and she was never one of the girls that tittered and revealed their hiding spots. Her hair is up in a loose knot, but thin black feathers are woven into the strands and they dangle freely about her gaunt face and collarbone. Whether it is that which causes the goosebumps to break out over her skin or the inhuman -- no, the entirely unnatural -- way the thing moves, she will not admit. There are memories, though. Memories of times when no one found her, but she knew someone saw her. Times when she thought she felt breath on the nape of her neck, or a clawed finger touching her ear, or something would tug at the hem of her skirt when nothing was there. "You must like me very much," she says, trying so hard to be strong and tough.

So suddenly he shifts, moving to the side in a sort of crab-like skitter. His neck cranes, head weaving through the air toward the invisible barrier and back, then side to side. He stretches up then, rising to his full height. Wikus is by no means a large man, but right now he is looming. "You aren't like the others. You aren't like us. I want you (he wants you)." The creature steps forward, then back, pacing in a semi-circle along the edge, and back. His head turns however he moves so his eyes are always on her.

He -is- looming. Vellum might have grown up around the fel, she might have tried to dabble in it, and she might have seen it used to accomplish some truly dark tasks, but that does not mean she can stand face-to-face with a demon of this power and not be intimidated or downright terrified. Her skeletal fingers pluck-pluck-pluck at the lacy cuff of her gown. "What do you mean?"

Once again, that smile spreads tight across his lips. "I think you already know." And then his face twists. The blackness does not leave his eyes, but a shine spreads across them that was not there before. Ever in these moments there is that initial instant of exhaustion when Wikus is trapped within himself. The rise to control of these creatures when they are -inside- you is not the same as when you simply summon them externally.

His entire body flexes, those tight, ropey muscles tightening to painful rigidity. The veins on his arms and neck stand out. There is a roar that emerges from him, dark and growling and unnatural, though in moments it melts into a mixture of two different worlds. It is Wikus who speaks to her a moment later, pointing at her -- no, not at her, past her. "The fetish," he gasps. "Give me the fetish."

On the altar behind her, where all of his various tools and items are spread, there is a doll bound of sticks and straw, faceless and sexless. "Give it to me."

Does she know? What does it -- what does he, the Marquis -- want with her? She is not naive enough to believe it is some leftover sentiment from a childhood where they were forced together by circumstance and not necessarily choice. She was Audrey then, and he might still call her by that name, but now she is Vellum. Now she is a blank, weak, fragile thing that the world can write upon and she will just soak the ink into her skin. She can change into a beast? A mindless thing of fur and claws that walks on all four legs? So what. He can possess demons, and be possessed by them while still being the master. He can call on the shadows and the fel and weave them into wonders she can only stare at and long for.

And then he is returning to himself, not being only the demon, she thinks. She recognizes his voice, the sound of velvet caressing steel even though the demon's voice wars with it, and he wants the fetish. She can get him that. Skittering backwards, her hands find that faceless, genderless creation that might easily be mistaken for a child's toy by those who know nothing of who and what they are dealing with, and although she holds it so firmly out of fear that she will drop it, her grip is delicate. If aught should happen to it, what would happen to him? What would happen to her? Hastily she thrusts the doll towards him as she scurries forward. "Here, I have it, it's here."

She's either far too trusting of her childhood friend, or far more naive than he first realized. Considering the world they are from, one would think she would be stronger; that she would be steadier; that she would be more -cautious-. She fascinates him greatly, and that simple fact is the only reason he tolerates her embarassments and foolishness. Since they were children, the Marquis has looked upon Little Vellum with a sense of wonderment and jealousy. So he has a power she does not, a power that she craves? Well, that river of desire runs both ways. He wants what she has. He wants that power over the earth that she has, that ability to turn herself into something else. He dreams of flying high. He dreams of ripping a person apart with great claws and teeth. Suddenly his hand shoots out and wraps around her wrist. He jerks her to him, into the circle. A sickly yellow glow chases through the lines in the dirt, spreading around them and under their feet. From that glow lifts a warm heat that carries on it small sparks, as if hell were opening up behind them and reaching through the clacks to lick at her just enough to stir her skirts around her ankles.

She is an idiot. She should have known, she should have stayed well out of his-its reach, she should have thrown the fetish at his head instead. The beast inside that has been growling as long as she is in his presence is suddenly a roaring, snarling thing, but now it is too late. Now he's grabbing her and pulling her in and the only thing she can do is try to lift her feet so she doesn't scuff or smudge the ritual circle. "Wikus, what are you doing?" she gasps, but there is no struggling. There isonly her in his arms, and she stands on her tip toes as if somehow lifting herself away from the floor, far from the floor, will save her from whatever that yellow glow is. She's trying to summon her magic to her hands, it itches so badly that she has to be muted here, but she tries nonetheless.

"Yes," he hisses at her. He growls at her. He says gently. He screams. His voice is not his own. His voice is thick with wrongness. "Give in to it, my love. Pull it up." He wraps around her so tight, his hands gripping at her body, twisting her dress, lifting her. His face presses into her cheek too roughly to be a nuzzle and he is breathing her in so deeply. But is it really Wikus, or is it the other thing? Is it both of them that could want her so badly? Even as he's clutching her, that binding on her very soul is coming loose. Her powers are flooding back to her as that sickly glow rises around them and he forces her to her knees in the middle of it. "Feel it. Take it. -Be it-." His right hand lifts to her hair, pushing beneath the unkempt strands and feathers to grip at her neck. His fingers are too long, or perhaps only look to be by extension of the metal spike fitted on his pointer finger, which quickly presses at a soft spot on her throat with the intention to puncture her thin flesh.

As soon as he is wrapped about her with his hands working at her body and dress, Vellum is -screaming-. Not that it is a sound he is unfamiliar with, a woman screaming in fear, but he has never heard her being this loud. The sounds pealing out of her are absolutely inhuman, a mixture of yowls and shrieks and the whistling of a tempest through tree branches, and her frail hands are battering against his form. "DON'T TOUCH ME," she's commanding, when words are found in that cacophany. Her heart pounds so heavily that her throat is throbbing with it and her head is spinning. She doesn't want to be a part of this. Let him have his demons but let her observe, don't touch her, and she can feel the sweet verdant flavour, so rich and alive, flooding the back of her mouth like bile, but no bile has ever been this herbal and needed. "Comecomecome," she babbles, begging for that magic, that taste and feeling she hasn't experienced in what seems like so very long. But she's on her knees, and it's not coming to her quickly enough, his hands are on her throat and something hurts, something hurts very very badly. She doesn't know that he's punctured her throat with whatever implement he's wielding.

It is not coming because he's holding it just at her fingertips. But the blood is coming. It is coming from her throat in a small, but steady stream, flowing forth in bursts that match her racing pulse. With that spout of blood his binding relaxes more and more, faster and faster. His arms are still about her, her blood spilling onto his bare body, into the wound carved into his chest and splattering on the twisted woody flesh of the doll trapped between them. She is free at last, he would have her believe.

She's bleeding? She's bleeding. Ysera bless, she's bleeding everywhere, she can smell it and it's in every gasping breath she takes. "Wikus!" she shrieks, but there's no pleading, no bargaining. She is in his arms and in his circle, and the room is glowing yellow, and her magic won't come fast enough. She could mend this wound if it would, she could rip him to shreds if it would. Blood is sacred. Everyone knows this, and he is -bathing- in hers.

And then it comes. Blessedly. The green flares to life about her hands, her arms, those writhing, wild tendrils of magic wreathing her arms and torso with all the hunger of an invasive species taking over a helpless host, but this at least is an invasion that Vellum welcomes. The herbal taste of the wilderness melds with the deep metallic twinge of the earth on her tongue. And then she begins to transform there in his arms, not into the raven that is her favoured form, but into the predator that gets her out of situations like this one, the slinky skulking feline with her claws like obsidium and her teeth like diamonds, a creature that stalks and walks on all fours and rips open her prey. This thing that Wikus is (or is it he? it was his voice? if he wanted her blood he could have asked) is now her prey. The transformation -hurts-, the stretching and thickening of bones, the impossible bending of joints being made into something they should not.

He could have asked for her blood, but it would have been without purpose to attain it on her asking. She never would have allowed him to do what he is doing, and he has captured her blood now it all its forms. He has captured her blood at the very peak of her magical ability. That crimson lifeblood was spilling onto him and his doll while it was transforming from woman to feline. He can feel that powerful surge of the -earth- on his skin, and for a moment that taste passes over his tongue. He lets out such a cry, a roar, a sob, a rejoice. Just a simple taste and he is reverent of her power, and she is grown too strong for him to hold, and too slippery with her own blood. His grip is loosening, and he is battling inside himself to complete this thing he has started, and he has been made vulnerable for the moment because of it.

The predator likes this very, very much. Even in this form where she ought to be all thick muscle and powerful body, she is instead whip-like, spare skin sagging heavy and furred from her belly, dragging about her throat. She looks unhealthy, but how she knows to fight and feed when she is like this. Her back legs are powerful when they leverage her off the ground and her paws come to his chest, even though there is a wound in her throat and she did not mend it, it is bleeding and she is operating off adrenaline and fear. The predator is panting. The woman inside is screaming. There are claws trying to rip at his chest, to add new tears to it, and her teeth, yellowed ivory, coming for his throat.

Every successful master must take a certain humbleness in the taming of a new pet. He is weak to her because she is a feral creature of muscle and sinew born of the wilderness with claws and teeth like daggers. His flesh is rent by those shining black claws, gashes tearing in his marked skin wherever she sees fit to place them. His throat is exposed to her, but those cries are coming thicker and darker than ever. There is a reason he did not come into this circle alone. There is a reason he called a powerful other into himself. That reason is because he does understand that, despite his own greatness, he has limitations. Wikus Ambrose the man stands no chance against a creature such as this. Magic he may have, but his body is not strong on its own.

In a flare of bright light and then consuming, swirling darkness, he comes at her again, only now as his arms circle her, a pair of purple-black, leathery wings burst from his back and flare in a booming rush of air behind him.

And Vellum simply passes out. Whether it is blood loss, exertion, or the absolute fear that thunders in her chest at the sudden explosion and appearance of wings, the cat's eyes go from polished black stones to showing their whites and she slumps in his arms. Slowly, so very slowly, the transformation is beginning to fade again, now that she is not in control of herself.

That is when he sets to work. Quickly. Quickly. All things are already in place. This could not have worked out more perfectly if he'd been puppeting her himself. He grasps the doll from the dirt, both it and him soaked in her blood. Though he lifts that doll above his head, he leans in to press his hand over the wound in her throat to stop the blood from spurting out of her any more than it already is. The words that lift out of him are now more Wikus than anything else, slowly fading from multiples to a single smooth tenor that spouts the incantation fluidly. His metal-spiked finger begins to glow hotly, the tip heating with those words until it is blazing orange. Even quicker he is to put it to her furry shoulder, where he begins to burn yet another mark on her to keep her from shifting back to a woman, or hurting him.

In her mind, she is in the Blackwald. She is climbing a tree, wishing she had claws because the bark is so very slippery and her teachers all know how to shift, but they will not show her. One of them is a stormcrow, sitting on the very crown of the spindly thing, staring down at her with dark, unblinking eyes. She must reach the bird as the girl before anyone will teach her how to be the beasts, because the beasts are all she is good for and right now, she is not even good enough for that. This time, once again, the branding is not enough to pull her from her reverie. Thorns sprout from the wildly flailing branches of the tree (this is not the way it happened, she tells herself, but maybe it is, what is memory but a construct of idealized imagery?) and lash at her, at her shoulder especially, it stingshurtsburns, it is carving into her. Something is marking her and claiming her, she knows this, but she must be the girl who climbs the tree before she can be the girl who walks on paws.

It takes little time at all, considering what he's doing. When he is done, he rises from her. The wings are gone, his back also torn now. He is pushing, pushing, pushing that thing out of him, drawing back from her and wretching into the dirt. Harboring a demon is a painful and nauseating thing. No one has witnessed him take one in before -- Miss Vellum is privvy to all sorts of firsts with the Marquis. He is glad that she is passed out and cannot see him ridding himself of it.

It is an oily sort of blackness that he vomits, both liquid and smoke, in great, violent heaves. It drips from his nose and from his lips. He is bellowing so loudly to expel the other thing, though he is exhausted and growing paler as the seconds pass. When it leaves him, he collapses half out of the circle. To see him now anyone else might think him defeated, but the Marquis is humble, and he knows that with any great success must come great sacrifice. One does not gain all of his desires without hard work. One does not tame a wildcat without taking a few scratches. Weakly, his hand lifts the doll into the air. His little imp scurries from the darkness to take it from him, and then away again to hide it where she will never find it. It is he also that returns to squat at his master's head, to watch over him while his mind and body are overcome by the exhaustion.

There in the centre of the circle she is a fallen thing, sprawled out and defeated. The first sign of wakefulness coming to her is the twitching of extremities, the tip of her tail and the pads of her paws, a trembling that suddenly shudders through her legs. She is scrambling against the floor to stand, stumbling as she does so, weaving and bobbing as her weak, tired muscles try to move her. How many times has she forced herself to get up and keep moving for the simple sake of survival? If she could do it in those circumstances, she can do it now. Sideways, she lurches out, stepping in the oily vomit because she simply cannot avoid it. She doesn't have the balance for that yet; all she is trying to do is not fall over. Eventually she comes to circle about to Wikus' side; he was not far from her, but it was a laborious trip for her nonetheless. Those bird-like eyes are completely unnatural on a feline creature, black on black. Did she hurt him? She hurt him. The cat flops down at his side, her paws rest on his chest (heedless of what she stepped in), and her head dips to his chest. Her delicate, scratchy tongue laps at the wounds she gave him. Why doesn't she even want to hurt him, and take advantage of this weakness?

Because, despite his limitless cruelty and perversion, he is a good master. He is unconscious now and breathing slowly, and bleeding slowly from the myriad of wounds inflicted on him by both her and himself. He does not stir.

But he is safe. She is unable to harm him. His imp is petting the unruly hair now matted with blood on the side of Wikus' face, but his amber-green eyes are on the cat lapping the blood from his chest.