Midsummer Shadows

[MURDERcomplexx]

The beating in his heart pumped away the seconds that ticked by, each one louder, more fleeting than the last. The color in his skin had slowly faded, giving him a pallid splendor that almost seemed transluscent in the dim, flickering light. His eyelids felt as if they weighed tons each, and Breckin wanted little more than to curl up and sleep, never waking. Every movement he made, he felt the invisible strings of his puppeteer far away tug. It was as if every movement, every word, every thought was no longer his own. The dam he had constructed around his mind was withering away, like a sugar cube in an ocean of misery. The more he struggled, the further he was pulled, until under the weight of his own slipping sanity, he was crushed.

 

Seconds had become minutes before Breckin was once again aware of what was around him. His eyes scanned the room for Sadine, watching her offer the crying, dark skinned girl a hand, and barely registering the Umbralatronis’ near inaudible words. He carried the limp, dark haired girl in his arms with a look of crestfallen defeat, but deeper. It seemed like he’d fought a battle greater than any of them.

His words however, left a blow. As much as it was true, they couldn’t carry on long in the condition they were in. Certainly Breckin was beyond spent, and the idea of being rendered useless in battle felt much worse to him than the injuries themselves. He took a cautious footstep forward, ignoring the sickening squelching noise that came from the pool of blood below him.

”If I can lean against someone, I can walk fine. I’ve had worse than this before.”

He had barely heard Kathy’s words, but still felt the need to speak. The words came out robotic, rehearsed. Like once again Breckin was stuck inside a glass jar, and no matter how hard he screamed, no one would break the prison he was in.

He belonged to a terrifying limbo, and the mind of a madman was pulling the empty shell he left behind.

For a moment, he began to wonder if the descent to insanity felt like this.

 

A snappish, forever infuriating voice boomed across the relatively quiet hallway, dominating the attention of everyone. Typical of Carlie’s brutish nature, he thought. It was a mystery how such a fragile looking boy could be so remarkably arrogant, but Breckin knew better than to split hairs over the likes of him.

Still he felt drawn to provoke him, like seeing the infuriated face of the boy would somehow calm his nerves, and keep him Breckin. As long as he had something to hate, he was still Breckin. Through some ironic twist of sick fate, Carlie was helping his humanity.

Not that he’d ever admit it to him of course.

 

But he had hardly the energy to pick an argument with a boy nearly a head taller than him. Instead, he watched, gold flecked eyes taking in the scene of him and the dark skinned girl, passing choice words. With a sudden swift movement, Carlie had her pinned to the wall, an angry hiss escaping his lips as he leaned closer to the girl he so ruthlessly choked.

"Don't ever talk to me about death. I've survived cancer, so I know it better than you ever would!"

In that split moment, everything felt like ice. Things suddenly made sense, falling into place like a puzzle. His frail build, his lack of hair, the dark bags under his eyes. Everything made sense. And Breckin faltered. Was this the type of person he wanted to pick fights with? Could he intrinsically dislike someone who’d gone through such terrible tragedy?

In the back of his mind, he heard a tiny laugh. Breckin steadied himself against the wall, closing his eyes in thought.

No. Carlie was still Carlie. He was arrogant, infuriating, unapproachable, and idiotic. Cancer or not, he was still the same idiot who broke through Breckin’s laid back patience quicker than anyone he’d ever met.

And slowly, he felt less foreign.

The dark skinned girl was the first to speak afterwards, pushing past a Carlie who had stunned himself into silence, and prodded the group onward. Silently, he cast a glance toward the Umbralatronis, hoping he'd know where to lead the teens.

[Walker]

((This lovely RP needs a bump~))

[Odio]

Greg couldn't help but notice Kathy's scrutiny of his hand, as idle and passing as it was. He wrung his hands together, turning his glance away. He'd always been the shy type, but this, this he wasn't so sure about. He had become a monster.

 

Engrossed in his own self-pity, he took refuge in his mind, for a moment. He ignored for the most part the others' bickering and woe. They were all reflections of the same things he was thinking, and none of them knew anything at all what they were talking about. It was just as back in the forest. They were halted, talking and conversating as if this was the most natural thing, while outside the rain and wind thundered down on slit throats and half-devoured limbs. And the gullets were hungry, for their blood, for his blood. This was no time to stand around and debate. This was the worst time to stand and wring his wrists like a weak fag.

 

Greg forced himself to lift his eyes from the ground. Monster or no, he intended to survive this night.

 

There was one person who could lead them away. He'd said something about a secret passage. Well, Greg wasn't in the mood to be patient.

 

"Would you all just shut up already!" His voice hissed through the silence like a thrown knife. "These things - demons - whatever they are, they can probably hear us!" His green glare must have been fearsome, he imagined, but he refused to worry about vanity at a time like this. Just at that moment, as if to herald a responce to his whispered shout, a shrieking cry split the air from some nether regions of the manor. It may have been a cackle, or a final scream of death. Whatever the reason, it froze the boiling blood in his veins. He looked to Hadyn, who had been standing dejected and exhausted against the stone wall.

 

"You mentioned a secret passage?" Greg willed the older boy to re-energize, to pull himself together, to get them out of these forsaken marble walls.

 

 

((Suuuuuperduper short, I may try and edit this a new draft later.))

Edited October 1, 2010 by Odio

[Kira1]

Danni's eyes were glued on the spot where Hayden and Rhiannon were, wondering when the guy would do something instead of just sitting there mourning over the girl. He also didn't seem to be in his right mind, judging by the way he seemed to argue with himself. No one was speaking to him, and yet he was replying to some unseen presence. That couldn't be a good sign. It made Danni wonder if she should put any trust in him if he was crazy like that. Trusting someone who didn't talk to themselves was easier. Though, what was he talking about? He mentioned something about having his happiness taken away from him, and then mention of how someone had lost themselves. It seemed like Hayden was the one who had lost it.

 

Finally, Hayden addressed them all, telling them about how the place was crawling with those demons. She paled at the thought of the demons out there, waiting to kill them, and probably feast on their flesh and blood. A shiver went down her spine as she thought about it and her gut twisted uncomfortably. Hayden then made mentioned of a secret passage in the dungeons that would be their escape, and Danni began to think there was hope for them yet. Though the one who mentioned this secret tunnel didn't seem very positive about the whole situation, which wasn't going to help the rest of them.

 

Before she could say anything though, someone else spoke in a heated voice. Her head abruptly turned to find the source of the outburst and saw the boy who spoke. After he mentioned that the demons could probably hear them, he turned to Hayden and inquired further about this secret passage. Danni also wanted to ask more about the secret passage, mostly how to get there, but someone else spoke before her, so she saw no reason to ask further. She looked to Hayden again, waiting for his reply, or for him to lead the way. After all, he knew where it was, not them. And the quicker they arrived at this passage, the better. Danni was sure no one here wanted to see another demon. She sure didn't want to see one again. Those things were terrifying.

 

((I've noticed that Danni doesn't speak much. lol))

[Mangaholic]

People only have hope

........…….Because they do not see Death standing behind them.

-Bleach

 

F EAR. IT SEEMS THAT FEAR is everywhere, abound in this world without limit, without restraint. It is the plague that afflicts everyone’s heart, from infant to adult to crippled old crone. It is the plague without a source, the plague without a cure. Fear can be hidden away by denial, by pride and haughtiness, but never, never, can it be defeated. Fear shall dwell in the hearts of men forever, till eternity crumbles away and all turn to ash and dust at the apathetic hands of time.

 

There was no need for the two demon rats to come forth from the darkness like a pair of apparitions. There was no need for the grand entrance, for the wrenching-open of the door, for the resounding crash, for the smile that haunted the faces of the two demons. There was no need for their presence at all. Alina was already terrified, and it was not the sight of the two demonic creatures that terrified her so, but her own confusion. The greatest fear, after all, is caused by the lack of knowledge, of understanding. It is the suspense that kills the heart of the human being. To not know what will happen, to not how painful Death’s cold hands are, to not know what happens after the cloak of Death has stifled all breath. That is true cause of fear.

 

What was she doing in this terrible, dank darkness with these other teenage strangers, with these two demons who looked starved for blood? What was she doing away from home, out of her bed, with a broken hand cradled in her lap? What was going to happen to her? That was what she wanted to know most at the moment, and at the same time, what she did not wish to know. After all, who does want to know that they’re about to die?

 

Alina was determined not to move. By the looks of things, the attention of the two rat creatures was not focused upon her, at least not yet. But of course, gaining a predator’s attention was oh so easy. Predators noticed everything, after all. Their prey hardly ever escaped them, save for a clumsy, unfortunate slip that would lose them the hunt. But what here could possibly cause them to slip? There was nothing here, nothing aside from the hunters, the hunted, and the cold, stony walls that closed in on them, threatening to crush the life out of them, if they had not already driven their prisoners insane.

 

Oh, there’s another, too, Alina thought as she stared helplessly at the demons. This place reeks of blood and Death.

 

………………………………………………………………….☼ ~ ☼ ~ ☼

 

W HAT A MESSED-UP BUNCH of kids this is, Hadyn thought darkly as he watched the scene ensue between the Indian girl and the boy with the pallid complexion. Cancer, a dying father. What else is out there?

 

He felt no pity for them, though, no sympathy. It seemed that in the past few minutes that his world had begun crumbling down on him for the second time, his heart had hardened. Before this, he would have felt bad, would have sympathized with the girl with the dying father. He might have poked fun at the sickly, cancer-afflicted boy, just because that was how he had been. He might have tried to lighten the mood with his facetious pranks and jokes, might have tried to annoy everyone with his playfulness.

 

But not now. Everything had been drained from him. All his hope, all his cheerfulness, all his naiveté drained away by this single thing. Oh, how quickly the hands of Fate worked. How quickly She had torn everything from him. Oh, how he hated Her for that.

 

The only thing that she had left him to cling to, the only thing that kept him from simply ripping his heart out, was the sound of breathing. Sweet, beautiful breathing.

 

A voice sliced through the air, an air marred by the sound of thunder, and howling wind, and drumming rain, and utter despair. A voice ordering for silence. A mocking smile tugged at the corner of Háidyn’s lips as he slowly slid his gaze over to the owner of the voice. It was a boy, with green, scaly skin. Hardly one who could be called comely. But he had fey blood running rampant in his veins. Uncomely could never be a word to describe a fey.

 

Hadyn sighed wearily before he began speaking. “Its entrance is deep in the dungeons. It was meant for the Áilleachs, one of the royal households of our kind, and it’s only their blood that can open the gates. . . . But I can open them too. . . .” His voice drifted off for a brief moment. It sounded almost as if he was trying to tell them that he was the most important of the batch, that he was the one who absolutely had to survive; otherwise, they would be trapped until the demons came to spirit them away, to a living Nightmare, and then to Death. But that wasn't true. He wasn’t the one. He had never been the one.

 

“It’s a maze down there in the dungeons. If you don’t follow me, you’ll get yourself lost in there for who knows how long. Forever maybe.” His voice lacked the cautionary tone it should have had when speaking those words. They were just words and nothing more. They lacked all meaning to him. “I have the whole path down in my head. I won’t lead us astray. But it’s pitch black down there. Someone will need to hold the flashlights, unless you’re all fine with walking blindly in the dark.”

 

Háidyn turned around, away from the group of teenagers, and began trudging down the hallway, down the path that would lead them to the dungeons. “When we get to the tunnels, we can rest for a bit, until morning hopefully, and then we can just keep walking until we reach the end. It’ll lead us off the estate,” he said before falling silent completely. He had nothing else he wanted to say. He hadn’t the will to say anymore.

 

He shifted Rhiannon’s body in his arms so that her head didn’t simply hang. Her long, black hair was coiled in a bundle on her abdomen; otherwise, it would have been dragged along on the blood-stained marble tiles. Her face had yet to regain its color. It was still ashen, ashen with fear.

 

What was she dreaming? he wondered. What was haunting her dreams at the moment? Was it what it had always had been, what he had almost failed to protect her from?

 

Was it Death?

 

………………………………………………………………….☼ ~ ☼ ~ ☼

 

 

OoC// Sorry for the short posts. They move the plot along (sort of) so I hope everyone's fine with them.

 

There’s an explanation for why Hadyn can open the gates. I just couldn’t figure out a way to add that in. I’ll probably explain it when he does go to open the gates.

 

 

[myahoo]

They were finally moving.

 

Mark pushed off the wall he had been leaning on and began to follow the teen. He looked around, noticing that he was the first person to react, and hesitated. They hadn't figured out who would be helping whom walk as they left and he'd just watched most of the proceedings anyway. Besides, most of the time had been spent deciding what to do and dealing with the aftermath of the battle. And the scuffle between the guy-who'd-left and the disappearing girl.

 

That had been interesting. The guy-who'd-left had survived cancer and, apparently, that was an extremely sensitive spot for him. Mark had seen him wobble after revealing that tidbit. He probably hadn't meant to say that out loud. Mark thought absently. The girl changed, too. She's not as...She's not like before. But then again, he didn't really know any of them, so who was he to judge?

 

Like Greg. The guy hadn't seemed like the sort to do cause a silence, but that was what he tried to do. His green skin and pointed teeth, along with the scream, had caused Mark to tense warily before Greg's gaze shifted to the teen-that-was-leaving.

 

Reminded of why he began thinking of all this, Mark glanced at that teen to see how far he was from Mark and the rest of them. He wasn't that far, but he wasn't looking back either. Mark wanted to follow that guy so that he could get out of here, but then nobody else was really moving yet, and he felt better in this larger group of people.

 

Well, he was closer to the leading teen than the others and everyone was supposed to get out anyway, so Mark decided that it wouldn't hurt to wait for someone else to go first. He was fine and someone would need to watch their backs.

[Odio]

There was something, lurking, just out of sight. Gordon's head was spinning with hunger and fatigue and fear, but he made himself stand and approach the iron bars. His feet shuffled dejectedly along the filthy stone floor, until he grabbed hold of the freezing bars. They felt cold on his hands and face. He didn't even mind the grime, the cold felt so good against his pale white skin. He opened his eyes and squinted in the dark. Did he hear squeaking? He thought he saw a shadow move, and his skin started to crawl. Just a rat, then. He felt the breath catch in his throat, and his pulse picked up pace. He glanced around the dungeon, at the brooding girl and the shimmering-skeined boy, then back again at the dark-haired girl. She was so odd, so fey. It was almost as if she sensed something...

 

Gordon didn't know why, but he suddenly felt very, very afraid. He wanted to cry and curl up in a corner. He wanted to tap his heels like Dorothy and wake up back home with his stupid parents bugging him about homework and his mothers' bird sqwuaking all day and night. But the cold and the slime beneath his hands reminded him of the reality of the dark world around him. It's just a rat, Gordon, pull yourself together! He tried to bolster his spirits, but he had never felt more alone his entire life. It was as if he was a speck, a snowflake, spiralling down, down, down into the clutches of a dark and powerful fear.

 

"Did you hear that?" he whispered into the cell, but before anyone could reply, a cackle of insane laughter split the darkness, and Gordon felt it coming, a scream creeping up out his throat. He tried to bite it down but he could see the rat's red eyes in the dark, only something wasn't right. The shadow was moving, shifting grotesquely, and Gordon found he couldn't bring himself to let go of the ice-cold iron bars. He felt glued to the spot, and as he fought the urge to scream, his hands began to tremble.

 

And then, a stinking, putrid beast of a thing was just inches in front of his face, grinning through its mask of evil, smelling like death and rot.

 

"Scream for me..." the disgusting thing whispered, and a tentacle reached through the bars to tickle Gordon's face.

 

"Ah.... ahhhh....." Gordon jerked his face away, revolted, but the slimy feeler against his face was too much, and he screamed. "AAAAhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!" And the thing only laughed, and Gordon was thrown across the cell, the clang of the broken iron bars ringing through his unconscious skull.

[Elsendor]

[[Just getting to know Sen... and deepening my understanding of his psyche a bit. Please forgive the shortness and disjointedness of this post. -facepalm-]]

• • • • • • • • • • • • • 

Children have an innate sense of whether they are wanted and cared for or not. They can see past your plastered smiles, they notice when you check your watch because you’re in a hurry and you would rather be elsewhere. They know, better than they will know when they grow older, whether they are loved or just a nuisance.

25th of June, 2010

An escape passage of the Ailleach Estate

 

Ugliness. Pain, hurt, fear. It was happening again.

 

He curled in on himself, his back against the wall as he clutched his bleeding calf, nursed his arm. Pressure. Apply pressure directly to the site of the bleeding. That was easy enough, he'd learned it in Boy Scouts. His vision was beginning to spin, but whether it was from blood loss or panic, he wasn’t sure. Sure, the purple cat had attacked him. Sure, it sliced his leg to the bone and left a long, shallow gash in his arm. But it was a cat—she didn’t have to kill it, did she?

 

A scream sounded in his head, separate and far different from the yelling and commotion around him. It was the dying scream of a plant; he turned just in time to see a very distraught Lakshmi picking herself up hastily from a small potted plant in the corner. Death, dying, despair. Utterly confused and overwhelmed, he made himself as small as he possibly could. The maddening chatter of grass and moss now seemed a pleasant, all-too-distant memory; it would have been a welcome distraction now.

 

Gradually he became aware that the chaos had settled to a quiet murmur. The horrible rotting beast had vanished without a trace, and some few had begun to try and assemble the group, instill some order.

 

He responded in the only way he knew how.

“Whattheheckwasthat? Aretheycomingback? Aretheremore? Whatiftherearemore?” The idiotic words tumbled from his mouth in a jumble, like from the fifth-grader he appeared to be. He tugged urgently at the sleeve of the nearest person—the tall, muddy one—sealing the image. “We gotta get out of here. Can we go? Please?” Edited November 28, 2011 by Elsendor

[lilyice]

The group was a mess. That was all she knew. Utterly chaotic, not the least bit pleasant, but they were all that she had. Kathy’s weary eyes swept over the scene, mutely taking in all the exchanges, all the information. It was a wonder what people revealed in times of desperation. Not like she cared, though. So that guy survived cancer, what of it? And the girl, with the dying father. At least her mother wasn’t dead already. At another time, another place, Kathy might have cared, maybe shed a tear or two; but they had all changed so much in these past few, short, agonizingly painful days. It seemed like everyone present had some sort of tragic past and unjustified woe. They were a sad bunch indeed.

 

Was this twisted irony all a part of Fate’s plan? That they were the ones who could save the world? What a laugh. Kathy half tossed her head and half snorted, turning her attention back to the half-bloods that she knew. Breckin needed help walking, so Kathy limped over to the boy beside the wall, seeing as how Sadine was busy with the ditzy girl – no, scratch that. The blonde reminded herself that she still needed to learn names, as she mentally corrected her image of the dark skinned girl; she, it would seem, had a whole other side to her – a much more likeable one at that.

 

Too tired for words, Kathy gently touched Breckin’s arm, looking questioningly up at him. He was almost a head taller than her, and if he accepted her invitation, he’d need to support himself on her shoulders while she herself balanced out the weight distribution by holding onto him and leaning as much as possible. It wouldn’t be too awkward a position, and really, Kathy thought that they were beyond that. They were trying to survive.

 

For a split second, from the dark entrance of the passage way, Kathy thought she heard a piercing scream that froze her heart. Taking deeper breaths, she steadied herself to prevent the rush of lightheadedness that threatened to wash over her.

 

With a grunt, Kathy nodded her head over to the male Umbralatronis, indicating her wish to follow him. “Will somebody pick up the flashlights, and let’s just go? I’m sick and tired of standing here,” she spoke to nobody in particular.

[Kira1]

Hadyn was speaking again, mentioning an underground passage that would lead them off the estate. What would await them there, he didn't say. Danni hoped that it would be at least safety of some kind, maybe a way to get home. She wished she could get home now. Her parents were probably very worried about her. It wasn't good to let her parents worry about her. She just hoped that they hadn't called the police or anything.

 

Since Hadyn had made mention of flashlights, Danni glanced around the room for any that were available to them. It would be dark down there, and Danni wasn't very fond of stumbling around where it was pitch black. To her, flashlights sounded like a great idea. Were there any in this room though? The only light that Danni had was on her cell phone and that didn't provide much. It would also kill her cell phone's battery so much faster. Right now her phone was off because there was no need for it. The phone received no signal wherever they were.

 

Danni noticed that motion of Kathy moving over to some of the others around the place, and the girl then made mention of getting these flashlights so they could get going. Sounding very impatient of course. It would be good to get going though. After Kathy spoke, Danni moved to find the flashlights. With a bit of looking, she came upon said flashlights and picked up all that were sitting there which made a total of five. Hopefully that would last them the length of this passage. She turned back to the others, holding the flashlights up for them to see. She offered to the bunch for them to take some by holding them out in front of her as she took a few steps towards them. Danni planned to keep one for herself, of course, since wanted to be in charge of where some of their light fell.

 

The only thing left now was to get out of there. Hadyn needed to lead the way, but he often seemed a little lack luster in what he did. His only concerned to be for the girl who was in a very critical condition. It annoyed Danni to think that he hardly cared about the group of teenagers that was here. They had put some faith in the ones that brought them here and now they were treated as if they were simply specks of dust to be swept under the carpet until later. Would kill someone for them to get a little bit of compassion around here? Supposedly there was something about all those assembled that was important. Danni could only surmise, but wild speculations came to mind. However, after those weird horses, almost anything seemed possible.

[Mangaholic]

The Descent into Darkness

........…….Has Only Just Begun

______________________________________________________________

THE IRON DOOR WAS OPEN. It was ajar by only a crack, but it was still open. And that meant there were demons inside.

 

 

Hadyn stared at the door, his heart sinking ever further into hopelessness, if that was even possible. He should have guessed it sooner. What an idiot he had been to think—to hope—that the Myr, the Oschaert, and the Sidhian were all that stood in their way of safety. Of course the demons would have sent some of their own into the dungeons as well. The fact that Brunor had been trying to get to the dungeons instead of fighting should had made it obvious that the dungeons held some sort of treasure. Demons may be cruel. Demons may be wicked. But they aren’t dumb. By far, they aren’t dumb.

 

He had no idea how they were going to manage when they ran into whatever fiendish creatures were lurking in that gloomy darkness. Practically half of them were in no condition to fight, and the other half probably didn’t know how to fight anyway. And even if they did, they had no weapons, no means of defending themselves. Hadyn had already seen the toll using their inherited powers took from them. That short, blond girl was a good example. That blot of lightning she had sent streaking through the mansion’s roof had practically drained her of all her strength. It definitely would not be a good thing if all the hybrids all ended up temporarily crippled while they were still stuck in the danger zone, for obvious reasons.

 

Hadyn used his foot to fully open the door (since his arms were full with an unconscious Rhiannon). He turned his head slightly back to see if the other teens were following him, before he stepped inside.

 

In an instant, the cold, dank air of the dungeon was around him, engulfing him in its deathly embrace. He shivered, and held Rhiannon closer to himself. It was completely dark down here. Beyond the splash of light from the halls on the stone floor of this prison, he could see nothing. He could hear the sound of blood pounding in his ears, of Rhiannon murmuring uneasily in her sleep (if that was what one could call it), of the silence laughing and hissing at them. Breathing into their ears, waiting for their composure to fall apart. It was only a matter of time before that happened.

 

He slowly walked down the few steps, listening for any sign of danger above the sound of the footsteps of the others as they followed him inside. When he was little, when there was no true danger in this forsaken place, he had been frightened by its unending darkness, by the sound of whispers that seemed to echo throughout its maze, echoes without a source. Now, with demons loose and hidden in the shadows, he felt like a little child all over again, except now he didn’t have anyone by his side to keep him safe and comfort him. No Belynos or Brunor to lead the way. No Liliana to hold his hand. No Seth to joke around and lighten the mood. Not even Rhiannon, who had always clung to him or the others when they were down here.

 

The darkness suddenly brightened a little more, the pool of light growing slightly bigger. Surprised, Hadyn turned around. The light was coming from that wind girl—the one carrying Rhiannon’s weapons—or rather from what was in her hands. The flashlights.

 

Well, they weren’t flashlights, really. They looked more like oil lamps than they did flashlights. They looked like ovalish-shaped, clear, amber-tinted stones—sort of like a marble—with something like a little flame dancing in its center. But still, they accomplished the same thing. Providing light, that was. But that wasn’t the only thing the two had in common.

 

For a second or two, Hadyn watched as the girl held the lights out to the others, and then he spoke up.

“You should be careful with those," he warned. "They need a source of energy too, and they get it from their wielder. If you started feeling weak or lightheaded, you should immediately give it to someone else to hold. Otherwise, you might pass out.”

 

………………………………………………………………….☼ ~ ☼ ~ ☼

 

 

[myahoo]

Well, he wasn't the only one moving now. He stepped back to let Kathy pass him, not liking her tone, and felt relieved when he saw Sen move around. At least he could move on his own, though that leg would have to be cleaned and bandaged or something. Looking around, he noticed one of the teens he still didn't know was having trouble carrying...everything she was carrying.

 

He walked over to her, intent on taking something to lighten her load. That way she wouldn't drop anything and he'd have one of those lights to guide his path. He took three of the lights, slipping one into his pocket and carrying the other two in his left hand. Maybe someone else would want one.

 

Taking a glance at the other teens, he noticed that Sophia was still sitting in a puddle near the window. If she stayed there, she was bound to get sick and she probably needed to be in some sort of good shape to make it through whatever came next. He hesitated, scanning the others and checking on the position of their guide, before he reluctantly made his way over.

 

"Hey, Sophia," he began, uncertainly. He knew he wouldn't want help, if he was down; he'd make himself move on his own. Mark wasn't sure if Sophia was the same. "Need some help? I could carry you. Or, at least, support you, if you want," he offered, standing awkwardly while he waited for a response.

 

((Reeeeally short, but I got everything that I wanted to get done, done. Hope it's okay.))

[Skarx]

Sophia noticed that everyone was going somewhere and tried to stand to get to them, but her legs just didn't have enough strenght in them for now. When she hears someone walk toward her she noticed Mark. What did he want? Make fun of her? She tried once more to stand, but did not succeed again. She sigh and back off in surprise when she saw Mark's hand near her and heard him ask if she needed help.

"N-No! I can stand on my own!"

She tried to stand, putting her hands on the floor and getting on her knee. She was trembling from the effort, but when she tried to stand up she failed. Angry at her failure in front of someone she slapped some water from the puddle and glanced at Mark who was standing next to her. She sigh. Now was not the time, this place was dangerous and she didn't seem to be able to stand on her own for now.

 

"Fine... I need help... But I don't need you to carry me, just... lend me your shoulder or your arm since your taller them me..."

She extended her hand to grab his and get up with his help. She had problem staying up and had to put most of her weight on Mark just to stand. She took one step, then another to get used to the weak feeling in her legs. It was not so bad, but she clearly could not stand on her own for now. Being carried would be best, but she had way to much pride for that. The only reason she had accepted his help was because she didn't want to die in a monster filled place.

"Where are we going now?"

[Kira1]

Danni listened as Hayden made mention of the "flashlights" getting energy from their wielder. Which didn't surprise Danni since, the ones she was holding simply glowed from her touch. She could feel this pull from them, and it wasn't until one of the other teenagers assembled there came and took three of them did it subside to a light pull that didn't bother her at all. The others she left where the rest of the group could grab one if they wanted. She walked towards Hayden to follow, the light in one hand and Rhiannon's weapons in the other.

 

Well, at least these people seemed to ignore like most every sensible person did. It didn't and she wasn't about to let it bother her either. Right now, the only person that really mattered was Hayden because he was their ticket out of there. As long as he knew she was there, she didn't care if anyone else bothered with her. Though, if they planned to get out of there then it probably would be best to move along quickly.

 

The pathway behind the door Hayden opened was cold and dank, seeming more like a dungeon rather than a way out. Luckily, the light she held within her hand gave enough light to put herself somewhat at ease. For some reason one just felt safer when there was light at hand rather than creeping along in the darkness. She also had a feeling that Hayden was somewhat appreciative of the light, judging by his reaction to the darkness and then suddenly having the light when she picked them up. It wasn't something she was about to mention though.

 

However, she felt obligated to say something, since he had spoken and it was directed at her slightly.

 

"Well, lead the way," she said softly, quiet enough that only those near her, like Hayden, would be able to hear what she had said. Her face remained as calm as possible, even though she was slightly panicked. Given the situation though, freaking out would do nothing and she wasn't about to lose her wits around these fools.

[Mangaholic]

XXXXXXXXXXXX Sadine Leila PiromaneXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX♬ . ♪ • ♩´¯` ♬ • ♪ . ♫XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

 

╔═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗

XXThere are those who say I'm impatient,

XXimpetuous, uppity, rude, profane, brash, and overbearing.

XXWhether I'm any of those things, or all of them, you can decide for yourself.

XXBut whatever I am —and this ought to be made very clear—I am a very serious woman.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX —Bella Abzug

╚═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝

 

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX✿XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

It was strange how distant that fiery part of her seemed—that fiery, rash, headstrong part of her that had never really given a second thought, or even one, to her actions before she did them. How different that Sadine was from the Sadine that she was now, bending over the girl with the pink highlights, carefully picking each and every word out for fear that she mgith upset the girl. It seemed that everything that had happened in these past few hours had completely changed her into a completely different person. The polar opposite of the Sadine that she had been before she had met all of these people. Strange how little time was needed for a person to disappear and be entirely replaced by another.

 

Speak of the Devil.

 

Sadine had been too focused on the Indian female to notice the arrival of Mr. Smart-Mouth until the venomous words spilled out of his mouth. She didn’t need to look at his face then—or any part of him for that matter—to know exactly who he was.

 

Like a knife, his voice cut open the bag that had held prisoner everything that made her Sadine, and all that irritability and impatience came spilling out like refreshing water. She had never realized how good it felt to be herself.

 

Sadine stepped back, her golden eyes narrowed to dangerous slits at the towering teenager. Her mouth was open, the words What did you just call me? standing on the tip of her tongue.

 

But before she could get the thought out, she saw the expression of childish innocence and fear evaporate from the petite Indian girl’s face, replaced by a sort of terrible hatred that seemed completely out of place on her face. And yet at the same time, it seemed completely fitting.

 

Stunned, Sadine watched as the other girl whispered something—something scathing and cruel, no doubt—into Carlie’s ear, watched his own face transformed by the same wrath, watched him tackle her, pin her to the wall, and strangle her till her face literally changed color. And heard him scream out that he had almost died of cancer.

 

Silence followed those words, a stunned silence. Carlie, whose face had been so red, so furious, turned absolutely pale; his hand slid away from the Indian girl’s throat, seemingly too weak to do anything but fall limp to his side.

 

Sadine could have sworn she saw some sort of grim satisfaction as the other girl stepped away and muttered her earnest gratitude to her, before calling the rest of the group and walking away. It was shocking, Sadine thought, a chill running down her arms, how easily and how quickly someone could change when faced with this kind of reality. And how strange to think that Mr. Smart-Mouth had been the one to stop her from reaching the same fate. She wasn’t sure whether she should be glad or not.

 

She didn’t snap out of her thoughts until the other red-headed teen’s voice floated through the air—something more about the dungeon and the tunnel and flashlights. She wasn’t sure. It wasn’t like she had been paying much attention until the boy’s speech was already nearing its end. She just figured it was probably best in this situation to follow the crowd.

 

She was about to head back over to Kathy and Breckin when yet another voice stopped her. She turned around, slowly, and was surprised to see a frail-looking, green-haired boy tugging at Carlie’s sleeve. Now that was a sight to see. She half-expected, or fully expected rather, Carlie to break out of his trance and do something to the little boy like . . . she didn’t know, grab his collar and slap him silly? Or at least yell in his face or something and make him cry. Seeing how Carlie had acted just now and back when they had first met Kiril and Emilia, she wouldn’t have been surprised at all if that really did happen.

 

But, much to Sadine’s astonishment, it didn’t. He just stood there, still paralyzed from the shock of his own words, his face still pale, his mouth even slightly agape. He seemed utterly oblivious to the ten-year-old boy on the floor beside him. The sight of him like that sent a small surge of pity through Sadine, one she instantly shook away.

 

Hey, it’s what he gets for being such an ass, she thought nastily. Just because he had cancer doesn’t give him the right to be a dick to everyone.

 

Stalking over to the pair of them, Sadine had to resist the urge to throw her hand across Carlie’s face and yell don’t think you’re any different from any of us here now! Instead, she reached a trembling hand—trembling from suppressed annoyance—out to the little boy (What is he doing here anyways?, she wondered) and said, smiling reassuringly, “Never mind him. I’ll help you. Don’t worry. We’ll get out of here safe and sound.”

 

She pointedly ignored Carlie the entire time, wondering all the while if that was the moral thing to do.

Edited April 8, 2011 by Mangaholic

[jaina]

"In the gloom of whiteness,

In the great silence of snow,

A child was sighing

And bitterly saying: 'Oh,

They have killed a white bird up there on her nest,

The down is fluttering from her breast.'

And still it fell through that dusky brightness,

On the child crying for the bird of the snow."

 

-SNOW by EDWARD THOMAS

• The soft patter of footsteps on hard stone marked the approach of one of the denizens in the mansion. Their rapid pace suggested urgency to the person, along with their rapid breathing. The higher pitch of their breathing and occasional curses let one determine the that the person's gender was female. With a sudden sprint, the female left the darkened corridor she had been running through to enter a lighted area, permitting one to see her features. Her hair was silver, like liquid platinum streaked with gold, while her eyes, flecked with gold like the pan of a gold miner, were a few shades away from white in their gray color. Her body was quite shapely and appealing beneath her black t-shirt and dark cargo's. Attached to her pockets were visible the clips of knives, two on each of the lower pockets, one on each of the higher ones. The girl's name was Shirayuki Amane, or 'Snow' as she had offered to be called. She was one of the fae hybrids gathered by the Umbalritonis the day before.

 

 

And now she was on the run for her life from demons hunting for her flesh.

 

 

God... where did the rest of them manage to get to? I just had to dodge off to avoid those things... Shira thought, her find amiss with frustration and more then a bit of fear. She paused for a moment to gather stock of her surroundings as sounds from other parts of the mansion echoed to her. She eventually swallowed hard and bolted off down the hall in the direction she had been going to see what else she could find that might still be friendly towards her. Eventually her efforts lead her down various flights of stairs, through darkened rooms, and into areas she desperately wished she could have avoided. Still though, she felt like she was making progress, and without encountering the demons.

Edited April 18, 2011 by jaina

[Mangaholic]

OoC// Bump. I'll be back . . . later

[Mangaholic]

/bumping again

[Mangaholic]

There sat amongst the darkest dungeon caverns, a dim light that wavered with a pathetic glow. Around it sat the only level of detail that any human could see, a tiny radius of water logged bricks, trailed down with cobwebs, and blackened with soot. It was a place so miserable, even hell itself could not compare. Every pin drop was deafening, every breath a gust of wind. The teens themselves were the only ones keeping themselves alive, feeding off each other’s composures.

None of them spoke to each other. Disoriented, confused, even angry, none of the imprisoned hybrids could begin to comprehend just what the severity of their deeds had been. They silently, blindly, hung onto each other, even as a thundering commotion nearby unfolded, fearing that should one let go, they would be swept away, with all the force of a speck of dust. Even as they heard themselves dissolving, they dared not speak, not even to breathe. For they knew danger was approaching, and misery was upon them.

The rapid skittering of mice tapped against the stone ground, claws ticking in tune with every droplet of water that had fallen into the godforsaken spit of land they resided under. Every so often, a whisper would resonate, just enough to tauntingly notify the occupants that they were not alone.

Movement on the wall—an intruder? Perhaps they were all slowly going insane.

 

==

 

Byrnedette carried with her a fury, one so unmistakably destructive as even to be called corrosive, just to lay eyes upon her tiny form. Wide, crystalline blue eyes reflected every sliver of light they caught, giving her both a luminescent, and arbitrarily unsettling air about her. With every movement, the faintest tap accompanied the resonation of her ascending heels, clicking like the ticking of one’s final moments. Her hair, yellow as the morning sunshine, even so could not detract from the absolute destruction that followed her every move. Like a shadow, it hovered over her svelte form, pressing upon her being with so much ferocity, that not even the purity of all the great gods could cleanse the bloodshed that stank the aura she wavered.

But none of that mattered to her, not a bit of it.

 

With tenacity rivaling an ocean wave, she stared at the surface of her hand unpleasantly, the surface of her flawlessly manicured nails uneven. Byrn snarled, her teeth little knives, marring the evenly applied surface of her lipstick, and held in a furious cry.

She had chipped a nail. On this dank, disgusting, pit of unholy dripping filthiness that the Umbralatronis called a basement.

“I am going to kill the first person I see!” she cried, holding it in as not to harm her appearance any further.

From beside, a tiny rat scuttled, blankly watching its comrade throw her tantrum, and standing beside with the utmost patience. When she had seemingly finished, it crawled up beside the wall, and the hand she inadvertently injured, neither daring to lay a finger on each other.

“Had you just stayed as a rat, your nail would have been fine. And only our victims would have been the wiser.”

“I wouldn’t be caught dead in that atrocious condition, Zye.”

She spat in disgust, scrunching her face as it collided with the ground in a strangely aquatic, hollow echo. Even coming from her perfection, Byrnedette had to admit it was disgusting. The two exchanged no more words, letting the sound of the rat woman’s heels click elegantly against the stone and fill in the silence that drifted betwixt the intruders.

And then the silence took over completely.

They had stopped, the two of them, engulfed by a familiar smell that drifted down towards them, stirring up a creature that was already stirring awake.

It was the smell of food.

 

==

 

The silence was gone. Completely.

Byrnedette’s footsteps echoed loudly throughout the dungeons, until the air seemed to tremble with the symphony of her heels. She didn’t care, though. Let the hybrids hear her come. Let them quake in the fear that she so loved to bathe herself in.

Fear.

The most delicious smell in the world. She could feel it calling to her, drawing her through the tortuous maze like a magnet. Her human face was stripping away, her blue eyes shrinking and darkening to bloody red, her golden tresses shriveling into ugly white strands clinging to her skull. The nails that only a second ago she had given so much of a damn about it were elongating, the glossy nail polish cracking and peeling off. But she didn’t care anymore. No, she didn’t care at all. All she wanted was to let that wonderful, wonderful aroma that was fear flood her senses.

Her smile widened.

They were finally there. She could smell them on the other side of the iron door, their sweat, their flesh, their blood. Such delicious, delicious-smelling blood.

Drool was trickling out of the corner of her lips, smearing the red lipstick. In the unstable darkness, it looked almost like blood. And soon—very, very soon—it would be blood.

She wrapped a clawed hand around the ice cold handle of the door. “Do you think He’ll mind,” she asked loudly, her voice still the sweet, silky voice of the blond woman her rapaciousness had eaten away, “if we just had a little, little taste? He wouldn’t mind, would he, Zie, if we killed just one? Just one helpless little hybrid.”

Alazie didn’t reply. She could feel him trembling with excitement, with hunger, with bloodlust, barely able to hold it in. It only made her more eager. Her grip tightened around the handle, and as the last shred of humanity fell away from her, she tore the door free of its hinges.

The smell hit her full-on, and she smiled, her human lips melting away, her human flesh falling free of those human bones. That smell. That goddamn delicious smell. She couldn’t have enough of it.

“No,” she drawled, her sing-song voice strangely emitting from the demonic creature that she really was. “He wouldn’t mind. He wouldn’t mind at all.”

 

==

 

The dream was different this time, and yet it was very much the same. She was in that forest, the forest she had dreamt her father had fled to, only this time she was the one who fleeing, fleeing from those three figures who followed after her like her own shadow. She could see, out of the corner of her eye, the glint of moonlight on the blades of their swords, hear the sound of whip snapping through the air.

 

She burst through the undergrowth. The branches scratched at her arms, legs, face, and somehow she could feel the slight stinging from their touch. That was strange. Weren’t you not supposed to feel pain when you were dreaming?

 

Her feet caught on a root or something—she wasn’t sure what—and she went crashing to the ground. She threw her arms out in front of her, stopping herself from burying her face into the leaf-covered ground. Ignoring the pain that shot up her limbs, she rolled herself over to face the three figures who had just cornered her.

 

Their faces were hidden away by the darkness, but she didn’t need to see them to know who they were.

 

“Varianne,” she heard one of the voices murmur, “You’re—”

 

 

Varianne awoke with a jolt again, her heart thumping loudly.

 

Damn, I hate dreams that wake me up like that,” she thought with a scowl.

 

It was strange though. She usually never had a dream like that. It was either some random thing or about her father. Her father.

 

Varianne felt another stab of annoyance at the thought of the man who had left her and her mother without a word. She didn’t know why she even bothered thinking about him when he probably never even gave her or her mother a single thought. How dare he leave us like that.

 

She reached down to pull up her blankets: it wasn’t cold for her, but she could still feel the chills on her skin. Only, the blankets weren’t there anymore.

What the hell? Did they all fall or something?

 

She sat up, grumbling inwardly, then froze. This wasn’t her bed. Her bed usually creaked loud enough to make her ears go deaf. It wasn’t this hard either. And this definitely wasn’t her room. Her room was dark, but not this dark. This was freaking pitch black. And where the hell was her clock?

 

It hit her then, all the memories that she could hardly believe were real. The impossible pegasi, the annoying Alley-Cat Girl, the cultists who weren’t cultists, the giant wing in her face before everything went black. If she wasn’t sitting on the cold stone floor of what she was pretty sure was a dungeon, she could have thought her memory to be severely impaired.

 

Now that she was fully awake and aware of the unpleasant situation she had somehow landed herself into, Varianne could now hear the little sounds made by her fellow “prisonmates.” Someone was crying quietly—a girl, by the sound of it—and another, this time a guy, was mumbling unintelligibly beneath his breath. It didn’t sound like sane mumbling either. A third was raising his voice over the two of them, yelling at them to both shut up.

 

Varianne wasn’t so much frightened as she was irritated. Part of her—or maybe all of her—still refuesd to believe that she had just been kidnapped and locked away in some random medieval dungeon, because who in the freaking world locked teenagers—insane ones at that—up in a freaking ancient stone prison (she was assuming this place was all that)? Maybe in the back of a van, but definitely not in a dungeon.

 

Maybe it’s a van made of bricks, she told herself sarcastically.

 

Despite her terrible urge to join the third in his quest to shut the “Annoyings” up, Varianne decided it was best not to attract any attention to herself. She recognized the second guy’s voice—he was the one who had been carrying that dead/unconscious girl. For all she knew, he could be a cold-blooded murderer. Still, it didn’t make much sense. If he was in a league with those mannerless adults, why would they lock him up down here with the rest of them? Maybe he wasn’t locked up with them. Maybe he was a guard. That explained why he was telling them all to shut their mouths.

 

With that conclusion reached, Varianne longed to tell the “guard” to shut his own mouth; with much effort, she swallowed the nasty retort back down, figuring that it would be best if the “guard” thought her to be still knocked out cold.

 

She reached her left arm out and stretched; her fingers brushed against something warm and very human-like. She snatched her hand instinctively, adrenaline beginning to rush through her limbs.

She heard the sound of shuffling cloth as the other person drew away, as well as a curt apology. The voice was new, unfamiliar, and was as exasperated as Varianne felt. She wasn’t sure whether she was pleased at having found another person who wasn’t insane, or ticked off by his rude tone. No matter. It wasn’t like she was planning to give him an answer of any sort.

 

Varianne leaned back against the stone wall, attempting to shut out all the little annoying sounds from those annoying teens. It was a futile attempt, though: even with her hands clapped firmly over her ears, she could still hear them. This damn place had to magnify every single stupid little sound.

 

 

Then suddenly, everything went quiet. Deathly quiet.

 

A chill fell over Varianne; she suddenly wished those other people hadn’t stopped being so annoying. She slowly, cautiously, lowered her hands down to her sides. There was still the faintest sound of mumbling voices, of shifting persons, but it was different this time. It was all bordering on silence now, as if everyone were suddenly anticipating the coming something—and not something good either.

 

She heard it then. Footsteps. Slowly coming closer, getting louder, louder, louder. The footsteps of some sadistic killer searching for his prey. I know you’re there. Come out, come out, wherever you are.

For the first time since she had awoken, Varianne felt fear. True fear. Fear that she could not longer hide beneath a mark of irritation and indifference.

 

Tmp. Tmp. Tmp.

Why are you so afraid?

Varianne hugged her knees, shivering.

Tmp. Tmp. Tmp

I’m not going to hurt you.

The guard dude will save us, rose the desperate thought—the thought Varianne knew would not come true. It was hopeless. All so hopeless.

Tmp. . . .

lEt’s pLAy.

The door flew open, wrenched free of its hinges.

 

And Varianne saw a woman—a giant—at the doorway, her skin peeling back from the muscles, her shrinking back into sockets too big for them, her cracking nails growing longer and longer by the second. A monster. A demon.

 

Varianne bit back the terrified gasp rising up from her throat. I can’t let her see me. I can’t let her see me.

 

The woman—the monster—swept her gaze over the cell and smiled a horrible, vicious smile.

“No,” she said, almost happily, “He wouldn’t mind. He wouldn’t mind at all.”

 

A rat slipped down from her shoulder, long and white and ugly, with the same red, beady eyes as his mistress. Varianne watched in frozen horror as the creature crept up to the boy beside her—a tall, pale guy with black hair and even blacker eyes.

And suddenly he screamed. The boy screamed. Screamed and writhed and screamed. In utter, utter fear.

 

“Why won’t you look at me?” a playful voice purred.

 

Varianne’s head snapped back at the front. And she found herself staring straight into a cracked porcelain face.

“Let’s play,” sang the doll. It pulled out a knife and raised it to Varianne’s ashen face. “I’ll make you look super pretty.”

Varianne screamed before the blade even touched her face.

 

===

 

The cold was seeping in, burrowing deep into his bones, his heart, his flesh. A cold that felt so foreign, so alien. It seemed so long a time since the last time he had actually felt cold, felt the need to draw his jacket tighter around himself to keep out the chill. But now, he was freezing. Every breath seemed to take in shards of ice, freezing over the membranes of his lungs. It was hard to breathe. So hard to breathe.

 

 

His heart was thumping, thumping in the far, far distance and yet somehow, thumping only in his ears. His hands were freezing, freezing with a cold that felt so foreign, so alien. It seemed so long a time since he had actually felt cold, felt the need to draw his jacket tighter around himself to keep out the chill. But now, he was freezing. Every breath seemed to take in shards of ice, freezing over the membranes of his lungs. It was hard to breathe. So hard to breathe.

 

The muffled thumping grew louder, echoing in his head. He heard the sound of metal tearing apart, felt the earth rock beneath him, throwing him about.

 

Then everything was still and silent and deafening.

 

Open your eyes, someone was screaming. Open your eyes. Open your eyes. Open your eyes.

He opened his eyes. And froze.

 

People were everywhere, their bloody, mangled bodies strewn across the seats and ceiling in all different angles. Legs where they should not have been. Severed arms. Split skulls. Gaping mouths and rolled-back eyes. Frost coating everything so that it seemed the entire scene was made of diamonds. It was like a perfect painting.

And in the middle of the perfect painting lay his mother, her stomach slit perfectly open by shrapnel. The blood spilling from the gash was like a crimson cascade, trickling ever so slowly toward him.

Mama! he screamed. He struggled, trying to free himself. But he couldn’t. He was trapped. Trapped beneath a thousand other dead bodies, all frozen over, all dead because of him.

Mama! Mama! Mama! His hand reached out, trying to touch his mother, trying to grab hold of the little hand that peeped out of his mother’s stomach.

Mama!

Edited July 20, 2011 by Mangaholic

[lilyice]

It was so comfortable – so safe, so secure, so…unaware of everything – in the state of unconsciousness. What had woke him up? Back into this world of ugliness, of fear, of screaming people? …Wait. Screaming people? And all of a sudden, he was aware that there were, in fact, screams all around him. The blood-curdling sound made him wince and shiver in the coldness of the dungeon, as he attempted to gain some warmth by rubbing against himself. Gordon had never once heard this kind of spine-chilling, agonizing screech. It sounded as if whoever was screaming was being tortured in the worst kind of way imaginable, and some more.

 

Overcome with an urgency, the white-haired boy started groping around, trying to find in his surroundings a landmark, to tell where he himself, and the others, were. For some reason, Gordon found it hard to speak. The atmosphere around him didn’t allow for it. He felt as if when he makes a sound, the whole world will come crushing down on him, merciless and swift. As his fingers touched the cold, hard iron bars, Gordon realized that he was at the very edge of the cell, in a corner. The steely coldness of the bars reminded him of something…why did he pass out? The malicious voice, the tentacle…something bad was happening. A demon, perhaps? Was it attacking the others? Did it abandon him? Was he dead? A whirlwind of thoughts swirled in his head, and he squeezed his eyes shut. No I’m not dead, you idiot. I wouldn’t be calling myself an idiot otherwise. I think I am going crazy though.

 

Since it was hard to see anything more than a foot away, Gordon started following the length of the bars by touch, crawling with shaking steps. If he could just see where the others were…and suddenly, in front of him, he could see two furry forms. Their fur was so white that it seemed luminescent in this dark, dank dungeons. The rats… Gordon involuntarily let out a little squeak. From the marrow in his bones to the blood running in his body – all of his being was telling him that these creatures, these disgustingly abnormal rats, were demons. What was strange, though, was that they did not seem to give him a damn. Sure, he was frozen, but Gordon didn’t think he had any sort of invisibility skills. Surely they’d sensed him by now? The only explanation was that…they already had targets. Rats were simple-minded creatures after all, no matter how demonic they were. Maybe they could only focus on one victim at a time? Victim. That word sounded so ominous. Gordon didn’t dare think about who they were.

 

Straining his eyes some more, Gordon could see that the rat demons were just blocking the door to the cell. Great. Just great. So I have to creep past these freaks? If he could just get out, he could go get help. Nevermind how he was going to get out of this goddamned place, or how he was going to find his way around. He had to get out.

 

As he came closer and closer to the creatures, the feeling of revulsion rose, even though they still didn’t seem to notice him. Gordon was afraid, yes, but his disgust overshadowed his fear. There was a moment where he could have actually reached out and touched one of them, but the loathe he had for these things wouldn’t allow him to. Swallowing back a mouthful of bile, the boy forced himself on. He was skinny enough to just slide past the demons and out into…what? Darkness? Freedom? As Gordon stared down the long hallway from where the demons had entered, he felt hopeless. How could he get out? It was more likely that he would lose himself in this underground maze. If he was going to die searching for a way out like a coward, he would much rather die fighting the demons.

 

Gordon’s blue eyes swerved back to the rats. They were defenseless against him. He’d killed tons of rats in his life, and that’s what these demons were. Overgrown and albino, but still rats. The only problem was that he didn’t have a weapon. Oh but I do, a crooked grin came over his face. Being the rebellious teen that he was, from watching TV shows, Gordon learned to make a secret compartment in his shoe where he stored a tiny knife. Back at home, he just thought that it was cool; here, it could be life-saving. Quickly retrieving the sharp object, Gordon went up to the smaller of the two rats, the continuing screams making his knife hand shake with uncertainty. As he stood over the demon, Gordon tried to place where the heart was from the back, but he was certainly no expert. Deciding that any place was just as good, as long as it distracted the damn thing, it would have to do. With that resolve in mind, the boy struck his knife down and embedded it into the body the rat demon, hoping like hell that this decision won't be the one that could cost him his life.

 

[Mangaholic]

Beauty is a sin...

... But Sin is beautiful...

 

THE GIRL STOPPED SCREAMING.

 

Byrnedette paused, her porcelain doll face crestfallen. “Awww, don’t tell me you’re dead already,” she said, staring at the dark-haired teen with mild disappointment. “That was hardly any fun at all!”

 

She let her hand fall to her side, leaving another deep rent in her latest victim’s face—one among so many others. She leaned back on her hands, admiring her “artwork.” One cheek was torn completely off. An eyeball hung out of its socket, the other smashed in. Byrn had carved a pretty little heart on the girl’s forehead and her nickname on the girl’s other cheek, only she had only just managed to start on the “n” when the girl died. The girl’s blood, which gushed from literally every inch of her face, coated Byrn’s nails quite nicely (and her fingers too). Byrn had to admit, the blood was of a much prettier shade of red than her old red nail polish. If only she had thought to bring an empty bottle with her. Oh well, she could always grab a bottle of bloody nail polish some other time.

 

Sitting up straight again, Byrn finished the “n,” being sure to add a fancy little curl at its end.

 

“There,” she said aloud, in innocent satisfaction. “Now you look absolutely beautiful. Don’t you agree? Zie, don’t you agree?” she began to ask as she turned to her demon/rat/ugly thing companion. She broke off, wrinkling her nose in distaste. Zie’s victim was dead as well, and Zie . . . well, Zie was grabbing a few quick bites out of the poor little hybrid.

 

Byrn passed a bloody hand over her eyes, averting her gaze as if the sight was too much for her to bear. She never ate her victim’s flesh. That was nasty. Disgusting. So unladylike. So unrefined. Byrn preferred to drink her victims’ blood. That was what those outrageously gorgeous vampires did, wasn’t it? Byrn had always harboured a secret hope: that drinking blood would one day make her permanently beautiful. It never worked, of course, but that didn’t stop the demoness from trying. Besides, blood was delicious. She loved the saltiness that accompanied each and every drop. One could even say she was addicted to it.

 

“Zie, you’re revolting,” she muttered, a shudder passing over her body. The other demon’s head snapped up; he narrowed his beady red eyes at her.

 

“Stop playing with your food,” he retorted.

“Stop eating your food,” she shot back, as if food was for everything but eating.

 

Zie rolled his eyes. He didn’t bother to dignify her idiocy with a reply. Quickly licking his claws clean of blood, he turned away from her and slinked up to his next victim, yet another boy. There were a lot of boys in here, Byrn noticed. A lot more boys than girls. She didn’t mind, though. She liked boys. The more of them, the better.

 

A flash of movement caught Byrn’s attention. She spun around and spotted yet another boy—black-haired and red-eyed this time—cautiously crawling toward the entrance. Aww, Byrn, Byrn, Byrn, she chided herself, You forget completely about the door. You wouldn't want your precious toys getting away now, would you?

 

She fell onto all fours—she was a rat again, or at least until she caught that wayward hybrid. The boy was watching Zie at the moment; he wouldn’t notice her creeping silently toward him. She was almost there, almost upon him when his coal-black eyes flickered in her direction. Damn. Caught already.

 

She launched herself at the boy, striking him in the side. She may have only been a rat, but she was an abnormally large rat, and besides, her inhuman strength was enough to cause some major damage. The boy went flying several feet through the air—or at least Byrn fancied he had. He struck the wall and crumpled to the ground like a sack of bricks, his body twitching and shuddering in pain. He was still conscious, though. That was good. It was no fun to kill something that was practically already dead.

 

She started toward him, and as she did, his fear hit her. And a smile stretched across her face.

 

“Well, well, well. How nice.”

 

Her nails were shrinking back now, her fingers elongating. She felt her shriveled ugly rat hair falling from her scalp, giving way to long blond locks. Her jagged canines became straight, pearly white human teeth, her beady red eyes blue human ones. Her legs stretched up, higher and higher, until she was towering over the boy. Boy, was she grateful to him.

 

Because now, she was back.

 

Byrnedette let out a loud giggle, one that rang throughout the maze. “My, my, my,” she said, bending over the boy. He had sat up now, but he hadn’t moved from his spot. He couldn’t move, for that matter. He was tied down by chains crafted by his mind and by Byrn’s presence. “What a quaint little fear.”

 

She blew softly on his face, a mixture of disgusting rat breath and sweet human perfume. “I should replace you with Zie, shouldn’t I? I’ve grown bored of him already, and besides, you’re so much better-looking than he is.”

 

Another girlish laugh escaped from her full red lips. “I think I’ll leave you alive. Who knows? Maybe His Highness will let me keep you. There are so many others of you. He won’t miss you.”

 

She lifted a hand, paused a second to admire her long writer fingers. Then she pressed one bloody fingernail against his left arm, ready to carve her name into his flesh. Ready to make him hers.

 

Zie screamed.

 

Byrn ignored him, trying to focus on her new masterpiece.

 

He screamed again, louder this time, more desperately, more ferociously, calling out her name.

 

“Damn it, Zie,” she cried impatiently, twisting her head around to glower at her idiot companion, her dagger-like nail still burying itself into the boy’s arm. “What do you—”

 

She broke off. Zie was bright red—red with blood, that was. And for once, it was his own blood.

 

Byrn took in the scene quickly; the puzzle pieces snapped into place in the blink of an eye. Well, well, well, the hybrids were starting to fight back now, were they? The corner of her lips twitched in amusement, in spite of herself. This was going to be fun. She watched as Zie launched himself at his assailant, his life quickly spilling out from the gash on his back. It was lucky for him, Byrn noted, that that white-haired boy had missed his spinal cord.

 

She turned back to her own problem. It would be best to knock him out, she decided, just in case he had any tricks up his sleeve too. She wasn’t going to kill him, of course. Now that Zie was probably going to die soon, she really needed someone who would keep her forever in her beautiful human form. The kid’s worst nightmare wasn’t an absolutely gorgeous female, but Byrn had learned from years of killing and tormenting to twist her victims’ most dreaded fears into something of her won satisfaction. His fear worked extremely well for that. The only problem with him would be the matter of transportation. Zie was so small, so easy to hide and to carry around. Plus, he had never tried to kill her (except for that one time when she had tried to put makeup on him and make him beautiful). This human boy, on the other hand, thought nearly four feet shorter than she was, would be a pain to lug around. Maybe she should cut off all of his limbs. That would make him a lot less cumbersome, wouldn’t it?

 

Something flew past her head, shattering her thoughts. A tentacle. A black tentacle. What the hell.

 

Byrnedette leapt backwards as a long, wild tendril of shadow whipped toward her, snapping her dress strap. Damn it. He ruined her dress. She loved this dress. Another struck her across the cheek, cutting it. Blood flowed out, dripping into her mouth.

 

She bared her teeth savagely, suddenly pissed beyond the point of no return. She had it. These brats could be boring, they could be disgusting, they could even kill her comrade for all she cared. But hell! no one was going to mess with her appearance. No one.

 

Up against the massive tangles of tentacles, the only thing Byrn could think was: “He is going to die ugly.”

Edited July 4, 2011 by Mangaholic

[Mangaholic]

ㄨㄨㄨㄨㄨㄨㄨㄨㄨㄨㄨㄨㄨㄨAlina Aderyn Tomescu ㄨㄨㄨㄨ

She wants to go home, but nobody’s home ㄨㄨㄨㄨㄨㄨㄨㄨㄨㄨㄨㄨIt’s where she lies, broken inside

ㄨㄨㄨㄨㄨ With no place to go, no place to go to dry her eyes ㄨㄨㄨㄨㄨㄨㄨㄨㄨㄨㄨㄨ Broken inside ♪

 

 

Do something, Alina. Do something. Do something. You can’t just sit there and watch them all die like last time.

 

But she couldn’t. She couldn’t move at all. The demons hadn’t even reached her yet, hadn’t even made her their next victim, and she was already paralyzed with fear.

 

She watched as the two grotesque albino rodents slunk up to two teenagers, a boy and a girl whome she had enver seen before—not that she had even seen of any of these people here before. Almost instantly, the dungeon rocked with their shrieks, magnifying their fear, their pain, their terror, as if it had gone so, so many years without inhabitants to torture. Their blood spilled out onto the cold stone floor, cascades that roared somehow as loudly at the screams.

 

Stop it. Stop it.

The screams stopped. Their heads lolled to one side, their bodies limp as rag dolls. They were dead.

Dead. Dead. Dead

You couldn’t do anything. You can never do anything. What’s wrong with you, you coward?

 

The demons moved onto their next victims, but Alina’s eyes no longer followed them. Her horrified gaze was plastered ont eh dead girl’s face. Or rather, the face that should have been there. It was ripped off. Gone. On one side, not a sliver of skin ws left ot hide the red muscle. It was all blood. Blood. So many blood. Dripping, dripping on the floor.

 

Do you remember seeing all that blood before? Do you remember what you did?

No. Stop it. She clapped her hands over her ears, screwing her eyes shut to block out the images. But it was no use. The images were already painted inside her eyelids.

Stop it. Stop it. Stop it!

 

There was a chilling thud amidst everything else—human flesh and human bones against stone and brick. She opened her eyes before she could stop herself, saw the teenage boy pinned down by one of the rats.

 

Another face ripped off, Alina. Another face ripped off. Do you want to see that?

Stop, she begged. Stop! I can’t take it anymore!

Then run away. Let them die. It’s not like you can do anything anyways.

 

Something cold and deathlike brushed against her skin, sucking the warmth from her body. And suddenly the things were all around her, whipping her arms, stinging her face, dragging her into their sickly embrace. Go away! she wanted to scream, to beg, to cry. Go away!

It’s your fault, Alina, her thoughts whispered, but this in a different voice. A voice that was driving her insane.

 

The storm around her picked up, spinning, twisting, tearing at her limbs. Shadows whipping all about her, joining in with the writhing tendrils. Their screeches resonated throughout the darkness, twining with the screams of children and the howls of demons and the groans of a dying dungeon.

 

It was the harmony of the insane.

 

 

[Mangaholic]

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX ⇒ Ｈａｄｙｎ ⇐ XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXAnd in the quiet night XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXIX hear a V O I C EXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXlXXXXXSweet and stirringXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXlXXX

XXXXXXXXXXXXSinging the sorrowful song of the dEaDXXXXXXXXXXXX

 

█████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████

Hadyn remembered the first time he had been down here. It had been with Ceth, when they still were wee little things, still afraid of the dark—not that either of them had wanted to admit it at the time. He remembered how terrified they had been, how certain they had felt that some child-eating demon would somehow break loose and eat them both alive. They had jumped at every noise, flinched at every touch. Part of them hadn’t even thought that they would make it through the night alive.

 

It had been a punishment—getting locked up in the dungeon overnight. Hadyn remembered thinking that it was the worst possible punishment in the world. But they had been young, naïve then. They didn’t know what true punishment was. They didn’t know what pain was, what Death was, what heart-wrenching grief was. They didn’t know anything.

 

The day had started out like any other day, only this time Ree hadn’t suffered from her nightmares the night before, hadn’t rushed over to his and Ceth’s room (back then, the two of them had been forced to share a room despite the outrageous number of vacant bedrooms in the mansion) to find sanctuary from the blood and death that plagued her day and night. She had still been sound asleep in her bed when the first ray of sunlight had pierced through the curtains, when the rest of the household had already risen and begun preparing for a new day.

 

That day, the adults had had to leave for an errand of some sort. Hadyn never did know what kind of errand it was: they’d never bothered to fill him in. The only thing they had told him and Ceth before they had shut the front door and left was: “We’re going out, you two. Make sure to watch over Rhiannon when she wakes up.”

 

He and Ceth had been so childishly excited to have the entire house to themselves—the entire estate, for that matter. What kind of child wouldn’t be excited to be home alone? But they had soon found out that there was practically nothing for them to do. Nothing at all. The weapons room had been locked up, the vases and statues all hidden away. Even the silverware and plates had been cleared completely from the cabinets. The discovery had outraged the two of them. Didn’t the adults trust them enough to know they weren’t going to break anything?

 

The only thing that had been left to them was the library (they couldn’t go tot eh stables because the horses would rat them out just for laughs . . . and for revenge too, but that was a different story), and who in the world wanted to read books when they could be doing anything they wanted?

 

Hadyn and Ceth had decided to go outdoors. After all, there had been plenty of places on the estate that they hadn’t yet explored. They had figured that the adults wouldn’t be back for quite some time, and that Ree probably would still be asleep by the time they got back. They hadn’t planned on being gone for long. Just a little venture around the huge estate. They’d have been back before anyone would miss them.

 

How wrong they had been.

 

Belynos had been standing at the front door when they had arrived back at the mansion. Hadyn remembered his expression clearly. He hadn’t been pissed. Pissed was an understatement. A major understatement. Even now, Hadyn couldn’t help but wonder why he and Ceth hadn’t just tried to run away.

 

Instead, they had walked straight to Belynos when he had beckoned to them, both of them well of aware of the hole they had dug themselves into. How they had wished that another hole would just appear out of the ground and swallow them up. Of course, that was only possible when you didn’t want it to happen.

 

They hadn’t been surprised when Belynos had grabbed them by the ear and dragged them into the house—not that that had stopped them from yelping aloud in pain. They hadn’t been surprised when he had started on how he and the other grown-ups had taken the time to put away nearly every breakable item in the house and how the two of them (Hadyn and Ceth) had still managed to screw things up. Heck, they hadn’t even been surprised when Liliana and Brunor (who had always been so calm and patient) had been absolutely livid as well. What they had been surprised at was how Ree, who had been crying away in Liliana’s armsj, had leapt up and ran to hug them, tearfully exclaiming, “Hadyn! Ceth! You’re alive! I thought—I thought—”

 

Everything had made sense then. Terrible, terrible sense. No wonder Belynos had looked as if he had wanted to strangle both of them to death. It hadn’t helped that Ree had been making them feel utterly awful and guilty by clinging to them as if she were afraid they really were going to die.

 

The rest of the day, needless to say, had sucked. Well, even that was an understatement, because the day worse than sucked. Ree hadn’t followed them around everywhere, but every time one of them had left her company, she would have asked, “You’ll be alright, right?” in that innocently fearful voice of hers. They had eventually stopped leaving her side, except to go to the bathroom. Belynos, Liliana, and Brunor, on the other hand, had been absolutely cold to them. It hadn’t exactly been the silent treatment, but it was a hell of a lot worse. Hadyn had even gotten the notion that if he had somehow managed to trip down the stairs and split open his head, none of the adults would have been able to find the heart to help him.

 

But all that hadn’t been the actual punishment. No, the adults hadn’t wanted Ree to see what they were going to do with her dear brothers. The punishment had come at ngiht, when Ree had already gone off to bed. Hadyn remembered how he and Ceth had trudged off to bed, feeling so relieved that the day had finally come to an end and dreading the coming of tomorrow. Only they had never managed to make it to bed. They had been carried off and locked in the dungeon.

 

Oh! how they had begged not to be left alone, how they had cried and wept (not really, but pretty darn close to it). But it had all been to no avail. The dungeon had slammed shut, trapping them in the unmarred darkness.

 

They had barely been able to sleep that night. When they had been able to drift off into Sleep’s realm, some awful nightmare about a hideous demon ripping them to shreds had always jolted them awake. The entire night, Hadyn remembered hearing—or imagining that he had heard—the dungeon walls moaning and creaking, demons growling menacingly, iron manacles clanking away against each other. Every little breeze—yes, even in the dungeon, there were breezes—had felt like the ghastly touch of a killer. Was the night ever going to end? they had wondered. Then had come the even more dreadful question: What if they’re leaving us in here forever?

 

Morning had eventually come, of course, and Liliana had then come down to liberate them. They had found out then that Belyons had stayed with them in the dungeon the entire time, just to make sure that nothing really happened to them. And as a result, he hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep at all. When Liliana had told him to come up and go to bed, he had yelled at her to leave him alone and let him sleep wherever he wanted to sleep. And he had gone ahead and fallen asleep in the dungeon on probably the most uncomfortable bench in the world. But being a lord of the Umbralatronis, he had only been able to sleep, like, three hours (literally) before he had been forced to run yet another “errand.” He had been in the worst mood ever for days after that. Not to mention that he had looked awful too.

 

In spite of the situation that they were in now, Hadyn couldn’t help but smile a little as the memories poured in. If he could have had all the pieces of his world back, he wouldn’t have minded being locked up in the dungeon for an entire month (they would have to feed him, of course).

 

He reached another fork in the maze and headed straight for the right path, not hesitating for a second. He knew the way to the secret tunnels even better than he knew the back of his own hands—not that he even knew the back of his hands that well. He wasn’t the type to study his hands all day for fun.

 

He glanced at Rhiannon without slowing down. Did she still remember that day? What would happen if those events had played over again—if she woke up from her nightmares to find that everyone was gone—only everyone really was dead this time? She would go insane. That was what. Insane.

 

The dungeon groaned.

 

Hadyn stopped, alarmed. He could hear screams in the near distance. He must not have been paying attention to have not heard the noises till now. There were screams. Terrified screamsm reverberating down the dark passage, twined with bloodcurdling shrieks. Demons. They were there already.

 

The dungeon groaned again, more loudly this time, and suddenly a wall collapsed. Shadows came whipping out, tearing at everything, devouring the insides of the dungeon. They were a storm, a twister, sparing nothing in their paths. They were the fear and anger and hatred of the Dark fey. And they were what Hadyn and the others would have to get through to survive.

 

“If we go through that,” Hadyn said to the others through gritted teeth, “we might die or we might live. But if we turn back now, we’ll die for sure.”

 

And he marched straight into the chaos, clutching Rhiannon close so that she wouldn’t get hurt.

 

 

█████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████

[lilyice]

• • 

 

 

♥

Good God, rodents are hard to kill. No wonder they swarm every single corner of the Earth. In the blink of an eye, Gordon’s blade had struck home. Though not even close to being knowledgeable about animal anatomy, the white-haired teen knew in that second, that he had missed something fatal. The stupid rat wasn’t going to go down quietly. But in that moment of revelation, Gordon wasn’t thinking about how he should prepare for his next move, nor what his fate would be if the rat should overpower him; no, he was contemplating a question he had since childhood – why rats were always used in science experiments. Now he fancied that he knew.

. . . . . . . flashback“Momma, isn’t it so cruel that those little things have to act as drug testers, and have those scientist people perform experiments on them? Isn’t it?”

 

“Dear, that’s very well and all. Put that book down now, will you, and come learn your multiplications table.”

 

For days afterwards, the six-year-old little boy ransacked every related book he could find in the library, that he actually understood, and every one of them told him the same thing – that rats were commonly used as testers. Why? the boy asked. Why rats? It wasn’t so much that he sympathized with the rodents, which he did only to a certain degree, but the boy was curious and didn’t understand why it had to be rats of all things.

. . . . . . end flashback

Someone had said that your life will flash past your eyes as it’s coming to an end. Gordon wondered if that was what was happening to him now. Before he knew it, the demonic rodent had turned, screeching in an unearthly sound of anger and pain, and had launched itself at the teen. Though Gordon felt its grip getting weaker and weaker with exhaustion and blood loss, the demon, as a fact, was still very much alive and looking to take a chunk off of the teen. Quite literally. Shaking with an unrestrained fear, Gordon found himself staring into the red, beady eyes of the beast. Suddenly, he felt his surroundings change. What was happening? Where was he? It wasn’t the dungeons anymore…where the hell wa- oh. He recognized this place. It was a scene that appeared frequently in his nightmares as he went through adolescence.

 

He had somehow fallen into a hole dug deep into the ground. His friends were there, just above him, staring down at him with cold, unrelenting eyes filled with hatred and disgust.

 

“You’re so superficial,” one of them said, haughtily crossing his arms. “We never wanted to be your friends. It was just all for the money, because your parents are filthy rich. You’re useless now. We’re leaving, so go die in that hole.”

 

Useless.

 

Superficial.

 

Leaving.

 

Death.

 

The dirt was falling, it was pouring in. He was going to be buried alive in this small, claustrophobic hole. Nobody care, nobody was coming to save him. The pile of dirt reached his shoulders…his neck…it went beyond his ears… aaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH-

 

The scenery changed.

 

He was in his house, only it didn’t look like his house. The walls were splattered with a decorative pattern in red. Was it paint? Did his parents suddenly decide to paint the walls in an abstract way? They were unpredictable, after all.

 

He walked into the kitchen, and there they were. Were they sleeping? No, their bodies were twisted in a grotesque way, at impossible angles. Bones jutted out, limbs twisted in 180 degrees, their eyes clawed out, their blood decorating the walls in beautiful, extensive patterns of swirls and dots…

 

He was going mad.

 

He felt his own body give away as he fell onto the wooden floor. His body convulsed in sobs, but his could not cry. When he did, they were tears of blood. Crimson red blood running down his face… He thrashed out, his body automatically going into a state of seizure. He kicked his legs out, waved his arms wildly-

 

-and connected with something. Gordon opened his eyes, his labored breathing and pounding heartbeat as loud as thunder itself. Waiting for everything to orient itself once again, the teen rested his face in his hands, telling himself to calm down. He didn’t know what had happened, but… Deep breaths, Gordon. You can do it. Count to ten. Little by little, the world seemed to have righted itself, and Gordon turned to survey the scene around him.

 

The rat lay dead, with a knife sticking out of one of its eyes. Whatever that…vision…was, Gordon’s body must have actually been moving. He had forgotten that he still held a knife in his hand, and that little stroke of luck – or was it fate? – had saved his life. Still shaking profusely, Gordon did the breathing exercise again. The vision was too real; it struck too close to his heart. The white-haired teen had never imagined seeing something like that, not even in his worst nightmares. They had never gone to that degree. The things he saw were the fears buried in the deepest corner of his heart, which he didn’t even let himself access. So how? While contemplating the question, Gordon felt the earth around him rumble. The walls shook. Another vision?

 

No, it was real. He realized it as he felt the vibrations through his hands, to his body. Bizarre shadows whipped past his head, almost like a twister about to…tear this place down. Oh God. I have to get the hell out of here. In total panic, Gordon jumped to his feet, only to find himself collapsing down once again. His legs wouldn’t physically support him…that damned vision. Resorting to a slow crawl, Gordon began his journey away from the cell, down the long stretch of darkness. He just wanted to get as far as possible from that cell door, from whatever was inside, from that dead demon. For an instance, Gordon thought he saw a shimmer of light ahead. Rubbing his eyes, he deemed that he must be hallucinating again. Before I go totally insane, I will get myself out, the teen clenched his teeth and continued to move forward, hoping against all hopes that someone would be coming, that someone could help.

• • ♥

Edited July 5, 2011 by lilyice

[myahoo]

The huge dog was back, watching him with an amused, feral grin on its face. His surroundings were the same as before, shifting shadows and flashes of crimson, like blood spilled on a moonless night, with the only visible thing being that red-eyed, pitch-black dog.

 

“Did you like my surprise, little hybrid? Quite…unexpected, right?”

 

Its grin widened and its eyes glinted malevolently, as Adrian bared his newly-acquired fangs at it. He knew that it was aware of his current situation and that it had known what would happen when he went to Forest Park, but he couldn’t help replying in mock confusion, “Surprise? Oh, you mean the scuffle with those people and the other teenagers that ended with me in this cell?” The teen scowled, rubbing his bruised cheek and remembering his short…interaction with his captors. “Don’t you mean nightmare?”

 

“Hybrid, this isn’t a nightmare.” The dog was still grinning at him, canines gleaming in the dreamscape. “Not yet, anyway. You’ll learn what a real nightmare is in a bit. And it won’t be pretty.” He thought he could hear anticipation and glee in the dog’s voice, causing Adrian to glare at it.

 

“This whole thing is your fault. If you hadn’t shown up, I would still be at home with my parents, who I was just getting used to,” he accused. “And what do you mean real nightmare, anyway?”

 

It stepped forward, prompting the teen to take a step back and eye it suspiciously. “Ah, but I wasn’t the one who gave you those bruises and cuts.” It took another step, ignoring the hybrid’s question about his previous statement. “I only wanted you to learn something about your ancestry.”

 

He snorted. “Which, apparently, is practically the spawn of the lowest level of Hell, according to these people, and the source of the mess that the world is in, right now.”

 

It growled at the mention of his current captors and began to pace. “Why would you listen to them? They don’t trust you, they hate you. If you died right now, they wouldn’t care, even if the prophecy speaks of you.” It locked gazes with him, its burning crimson eyes meeting his own wary maroon ones. “Look at what happened to the raven girl. Why would you care what they tell you, when they were the ones to harm the other hybrid of your Court?”

 

“I never said I cared,” he retorted. Adrian crossed his arms and leaned back, a solid wall materializing behind him. “Besides, they’ve given me information. Indirectly, but I still got it. All you’ve given me are the changes and the treatment and more questions.”

 

It snarled menacingly, this time, and turned to face him, baring its teeth in a promise. “Fine. If that’s what you’ve decided, I’ll end you right now.” It leaped, eyes furious and mouth open in an attempt to catch him in its hold. Adrian allowed the wall behind him to dissolve back into the shadows of the dream and fell into a backwards roll that briefly took him out of the dog’s reach, coming up into a crouch with his knife in his hand and his teeth bared. As he watched, though, it melted into the shadows of the dream, the red glow of its eyes the only thing remaining, and he suddenly felt something hit him. He fell, losing his breath and his grip on his knife, and hit the floor, hard. Blinking the spots out of his eyes, he looked straight into the eyes of the dog, feeling a thrill of fear at seeing its triumph…

 

…and woke up to the echo of approaching footsteps. It took a few seconds for Adrian to shake the last cobwebs of sleep from himself, but when he did, a quick glance confirmed what he already knew: everything from the last twenty-four hours was real. He was really sitting in a cell in the basement of a mansion, some distance from New York City, with a few other teens, who were all told practically nothing about what was going on and who had all gone through physical changes. While his weren’t as bad as some of the others (he would count himself lucky that he didn’t have some obvious change, like some of the others’ hair and skin), he was still disgruntled to learn that his black eyes had turned dark red and his teeth had become jagged fangs. And all he was able to learn from his sneaking and eavesdropping was that there was apparently a prophecy about them, they were all part-fey hybrids, and they were supposed to save the world. Wonderful. And now something (or someone) was coming to their cell.

 

The Dark hybrid quietly got up, shaking out his limbs, and backed into one of the far corners of the room. He was getting a bad feeling from whatever was approaching, and he didn’t want it to realize he was here. Whatever was coming could go for the other teens first, he decided. Maybe he’d be able to get out, while it was distracted, but he doubted it would let him.

 

Just as he was finishing that thought, the cell door was ripped open with a shriek and the…woman-creature? made her comment, which sent a shiver through his spine. Its statement was full of ominous intent, and both the woman-creature? and her rat-creature (he spotted it as it approached the other Dark hybrid) were acting like wolves in a flock of sheep, confident and self-assured in the knowledge that none of their prey could hurt them.

 

He flinched when the Dark hybrid began screaming, his eyes darting to the writhing form and then away, while he tried to ignore the other’s screams, only to land on the girl. She was frozen, not moving an inch until the female-creature’s hand moved up, and then she screamed too. Adrian averted his eyes when he saw the first drops of liquid splash on the dungeon floor and, gathering his courage, began to creep along the cell wall towards the door. A quick glance towards the exit showed him that one of the others had made it out. At least two of us will survive this, Adrian thought, flinching again when one voice fell silent. While he didn’t know the others at all, he couldn’t help feeling angry on their behalf. There was no way to take revenge when you were dead, after all.

 

Only a few more feet…The girl wasn’t screaming anymore, he slowly realized with another shiver. She’s dead, too. He swore mentally. He was going to have to check to see if the two…things were occupied. Tearing his gaze from the door, he forced himself to actually look at the cell and almost emptied his stomach at the scene.

The…rat-thing was eating the dead guy, actually eating him, and it was holding a conversation with the other thing, as though nothing was wrong. It finished up the conversation and turned towards the other boys, which had Adrian looking for the other one. A flash of white and movement; his eyes flickered down, widening at the sight of the other rat-thing; he cursed and then found himself hitting the solid cell wall, stars bursting as his head, in particular, met the wall. That was going to hurt tomorrow.

 

After his vision cleared itself, he tried to push himself up, keeping an eye on the creepy, disgusting shape shifter approaching him, but found he couldn’t. In fact, once he’d sat himself up, he couldn’t move anything. His legs refused to be drawn back to his body; his arms wouldn’t push him up; he couldn’t lean forward, lever himself up, or even scoot around. And she/it/whatever-it-is was right in front of him now.

 

“My, my, my. What a quaint little fear.” It sounded like she was just commenting about his situation, and his own fear rose as he realized she was making his fear real. But a small spark of defiance ignited against his fear when she blew in his face. She’s playing with us, he realized and that defiant spark spread, increasing and turning partly to anger. Yeah, well, I refuse to die, screaming my lungs out at the hands of this creature.

 

“I should replace you with Zie, shouldn’t I? I’ve grown bored of him already, and besides, you’re so much better-looking than he is.” She laughed and he shivered again. Yes, he could feel his own defiance and anger, but the fear was still dominant. He couldn’t get away, couldn’t move, couldn’t even protect himself from the pain he knew she would inflict on him. No; there must be something I’m missing, something more. I want to live.

 

“I think I’ll keep you alive. Who knows? Maybe His Highness will let me keep you. There are so many others of you. He won’t miss you.” And as she examined her blood-covered fingernails, Adrian’s emotions were spiking. He still couldn’t move, but he refused to die screaming at her hands and he wanted to get back at her for the other two dead teens. He could feel her nail on his skin, but he couldn’t pull away, no matter how hard he tried. Stay away. Keep your filthy fingernails away from me, he thought, unsure whether speaking would make her begin faster. Instinctively, he bared his teeth, though the gesture was wasted as the woman wasn’t looking at his face and he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to lunge forward to bite her anyway. He tried to shrink away, but a third scream caught his attention.

 

A quick darting of his eyes showed him that the other thing had been stabbed by the guy he saw exit and that, more than whatever he’d been telling himself, was what pushed him to really look for a way to fight back. Even the pain of the nail piercing his left arm didn’t distract him, though his fear rose again.

 

“Damn it, Zie. What do you—“ She wasn’t paying attention to him! Adrian immediately closed his eyes and searched for anything that would help. Surely the fey people had some sort of magic or ability or…or something that could help him. Desperately, he searched, and, distantly, he heard the female-thing turn back to him, but she didn’t do anything.

 

And then he found it. Taking hold of it and directing it towards his tormentor with the simple command of “keep it away from me,” he allowed it to do as it wanted, as long as the things were away from him. He felt it respond, trickling through his back and legs, and melting into the walls, before forming into tentacles that rose from the floor around him. One passed the thing’s head, missing it by a little, and Adrian scowled. The point was to hit her or keep her away, not just look scary.

 

Almost as though they heard him, the next tendril snapped her dress strap and the one after slapped her face. Another thrill of fear rose, combating his defiance and anger, when the teen caught her expression and he urged the dark tentacles to multiply, which they did and blocked her view of him. Shifting into a crouch (most of his fear lifted when he found no restriction to his movement and he was tempted to jump around to make sure this was true, but his sensible part urged him to leave before he celebrated), he ignored the slight pain in his arm and began shifting towards where he remembered the escape was, though the tangle of shadow tendrils did not show this. He was hoping she couldn’t tell where he was, as the tentacles were extremely draining to hold, when he heard what would either be very useful or very…unhelpful.

 

A loud, echoing groan. From the dungeon itself.

 

As if things couldn’t get more complicated, he groaned silently. A quick examination of the walls, ceiling, and floor showed cracks that were steadily growing in number and size. Alright. Wrapping himself with another layer of shadows (just a little longer…), Adrian darted towards the cell door, hoping that these shadows wouldn’t show his movement and struggling to keep his footing in the chaos that his desperate reaction had triggered. He was almost there…