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Post by Admin on Oct 30, 2008 11:40:36 GMT -6
The sun sinks into the sea. The chill of the air grips the city with a leery sensation of sorrow and despair. From the mist swirl a figure dark and disfigured as it is dragged from another rift into the mortal realm. It's limp form in rags and it's hands burnt to the bone. It slams onto the ground, fallen, broken and in serious pain. The despair of agony and anguish make it writhe as if caught in a dream of nightmares as it lays in the ally of the forgotten streets.
Here is Bardiel. Fallen, disgraced, never to return to his beloved home among the blessed. A great weight lays on his chest. A crucifix of great power sears his flesh as he struggles to make since of where he is and the memories in his head make for a twisted mural as madness blinds him of his reason, and terror robs him of peace.
Here he lays as the pain dulls his wits his mind goes numb and his violent writhing slows and stops as he lays still as his life whips in his head as his condemnation is sealed.
The white figure that brought him here, had taken pity on him as it pats him softly and dissipates into the night.
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Bardiel
Bourgeois
Outlands Wanderer
Posts: 147
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Post by Bardiel on Oct 30, 2008 19:29:18 GMT -6
Beneath his closed eyelids Bardiel stirred. His eyes rolled beneath the surface, restless, eager to open those two heavy doors into the world. No thoughts touched his mind, yet. He was lost in a turbulent sea of warped emotions and sensations and he had no notion of self.
As the setting sun began its decent below the horizon, the last dying rays of light gently touched his face. The light was almost tangible, like glistening fingers of cobweb, and at its touch his eyes settled beneath their lids. Thoughts began to form from the mists of his mind.
Is this the end? He knew much of endings. The last thing he remembered was falling, he knew that’s what his kind felt before the end. Contradictory feeling exploded through his being and the curtains withdrew from his sight. Pain shot through his soul, heavy and leaden, to him it was reflected in the blood red sky he found himself staring at. No no no, this is not an ending.
He cried. It was painful. It was a beginning.
Slowly Bardiel started to take in his surroundings. He was lying on his back. His body was whole, he supposed. Shakily rolling from his back into a sitting position he stumbled to his feet but was immediately dragged back to the ground by an immense weight around his neck.
Lying there on his chest, facing the dieing sun, Bardiel reached out to it with one blackened hand trying to reach it, coax it into rising. But the sun continued to set. Helpless and broken.
His seeking hand balled into a fist and his eyes opened hysterically wide. “I’m broken. Broken little doll dance!” screaming his face broke into wide smile. He laughed at the top of his lungs, looking past the sun, past his ruined hand, looking at nothing. “DANCE!”
After a moment Bardiel got to his feet, this time wearing the weight on his shoulders. For a long while he stood, the smile falling from his face, looking at his cupped charcoal like hands. He imagined holding the smile there, before his eyes glazed over becoming hard impenetrable slate.
“Lost.”
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Post by Narrator on Oct 31, 2008 14:12:42 GMT -6
The bustling sounds of night fill the air. As the sun sets and slowly slips beneath the horizon, street lamps glow dimly at first as the light gradually brightens up sections of the busy streets. People drive fast to get home and the traffic noise becomes a pulsing low roar in the ally way.
A metallic clattering can be heard approaching soft at first it gets louder and louder. A car turns down the ally and drives up to the service doors of the warehouse across from where Bardiel rests in the pavement and mud. The lights beam into Badiel's eyes sending a ribbon of light to split his brain like a glowing needle in his eyes.
The driver gets out of the delivery van and screams to the fallen unknowing of his fallen state and mistakes him as the riffraff of the city underground.
"Hey you good for nothing bum, find someone else's ally to die in for Crissakes will ya?"
At that, the irritable man turns for the door to unlock it. Open the door slides where inside a smuggling ring of underage prostitutes are huddled like sheep can be seen briefly till he slips inside and the metal door slams it shut.
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Post by Zypheron on Oct 31, 2008 14:32:57 GMT -6
The sounds of metallic rain pour into the ally. A sea of rusty little figures rush the van and stop looking like a puddle of mud that pulses and breathes. Thousands of tiny eyes burn like a cigarette embers as the search around the van.
"Tis the one, here he sets foot, soon his life will end and his soul to the master will be to freely take."
A choirs of tiny metallic voices purrs into the night from the tiny imps as they rush the door like a tide of bugs.
Like a twisted dream the many meld onto the other as they flow from the puddle of thousands into one giant indistinguishable form in the darkness. It now towers the door as it enters through the door silently. It's only sound is a deep pulsing mummer.
"Soon it will be, harvest shall we."
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Bardiel
Bourgeois
Outlands Wanderer
Posts: 147
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Post by Bardiel on Nov 1, 2008 6:40:43 GMT -6
Bardiel turns his head to slowly face the approaching car. The blinding glare of the headlights hit him almost like a physical force, and somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind something stirs and finally wakes up.
Memories came flooding back to him all at once, in a mad rush. Faces, places, flying to Hell and back again, his final battle… With a creeping horror Bardiel raised his hand over his heart to trace the scar he knew he would find. But instead found his hand resting on something hard and burning. Recoiling he noticed the crucifix, that hung by a chain around his neck, for the first time. Now that he acknowledged the cross it seemed that one thousand hands were reaching in through his flesh to tear out his bones. He would never take it off.
The voice of the man in the car breaks Bardiel out of his reprieve.The mortal realm
His stone green eyes follow the man through the warehouse door before it closed. What do I have left? Bardiel looked down at the rusty breastplate and grieve leggings, his heavy armoured boots and bare, sinewy muscled arms. He lifted the crucifix to lie against his skin, beneath the breastplate, then after a moment withdrew it again wincing. He thought back to the man in the car. Play with the broken doll
The metallic rain comes down and Bardiel looks on confused. He flexed his wings and noticed he could not feel the air move through them. Still shaky and disoriented Bardiel began to walk toward the warehouse door, he remembered every lesson he had ever fought and would never make the same mistake twice. Veiling himself from mortal eyes he follows the formation of metamorphic imps into the warehouse.
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Post by Angeni on Nov 1, 2008 13:40:46 GMT -6
A woman in a dark coat with the hood pulled low over her face turns into the alley, walking quickly. Her black boots slip a little on garbage and debris, the bright rainbow colors of her knee high socks jarringly out of place in the dank alley. She spots the open door and breaks into a run skidding to a stop in the door way. Her nose can be seen to twitch a couple of times before she sneezes.
"Demons... " Then she pulls the door shut behind her and takes a look around, breathing heavily.
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Bardiel
Bourgeois
Outlands Wanderer
Posts: 147
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Post by Bardiel on Nov 2, 2008 5:05:55 GMT -6
Still veiled, Bardiel studied the interior of the warehouse paying particular note to the young prostitutes, searching for the man or the imps. It was possible the imps were after the irritable man in the car who, he supposed, was responsible for the seemly state of the young women. What does “We” want? He smiled at his improvised name for the imps.
At the sound of the door closing behind him Bardiel turned to look back the way he’d come to see the hooded woman standing in the door way. Something about how she held herself, how she placed her feet on the ground, was disturbingly familiar. He caught her words and immediately concluded thst she was not human. Bardiel stared intently at her, studying every detail, all thoughts of the man and the strange metallic monstrosity forgotten for the moment. Gingerly he turned and bowed to her deeply, a bow a student gives their master or a master gives their opponent. Beneath his breath, barely audible, he mumbles, “I’m not a…” he looks down and to the left “Y-yes… demons,”
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Post by Narrator on Nov 2, 2008 12:53:50 GMT -6
Shouting is coming from down the service hall as the man is clearly upset about something. A loud banging and falling objects make a huge crash as the main shutter slams down in the front offices.
"I told you ifin you were tryin' to escape you'd be sorry b*tch." A loud slap rings through the air and the sound of more crashing and broken glass come from the offices. The frighted girls in the back begin grouping together and start to warble and cry silently not to be heard as if they know exactly what is going on.
The sounds of extreme abuse come from the front in the sounds of more smacks and crashes that chain together to simultaneous screams from the young girl being beaten half to death by the infuriated criminal. "I'll show you... who... is ... boss..." he pants as he tires from beating the poor girl.
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Post by Zypheron on Nov 2, 2008 13:10:15 GMT -6
The giant imp is drawn to the commotion like a hungry hound to a dead animal. It lumbers past the girls huddled to shield themselves from the dread of it all unaware of the presence of the three who have entered the warehouse.
The giant Imp suddenly cracks and shatters into smaller multiples of itself that begin to giggle uncontrollably. They become smaller still untill there are literally hundreds of 6 inch tall metal imps climbing over themselves to make for the front offices. The tiny voices pur more into the echoing hall.
"Muhahahahahaaaahhh... It seals it's fate and as sure as he shall take his last breath we shall be there to harvest. We takes his black soul to the Gate... to the gate we seals it's fate..."
The little imps chant with glee as they pour down the hall and clammier all over the man as they laugh and poke at him till he is covered by them like flies on a dung heap. Still he tires from exhaustion by their sheer weight though he is completely unaware of the multitude of imps that cling to him. They play on him like a jungle gym as they all laugh maniacally at his pending doom, filling the offices with their shrill laughter.
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Bardiel
Bourgeois
Outlands Wanderer
Posts: 147
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Post by Bardiel on Nov 2, 2008 19:11:43 GMT -6
The girl’s screams pieced Bardiel’s ears, moreover the sound of flesh striking flesh reminded him of battle. But no, it didn’t sound like a fight, it sounded like torture. Pausing for the briefest of moments, uneasy of turning his back on the woman in the doorway, Bardiel spun on his heel and headed for the pitiful sounds mingled with those of rage. Make the noise stop, crush her pretty throat, smash his skull, make them numb, turn them to ash.
Bardiel thought he was walking, but the ground moved too quickly beneath his feet, guiding him down the service hall. Coming to the main shutter of the offices, without breaking a step, he bends down and lifts it open all in one motion. He sees the man covered in the joyful imps, over the bloody woman. Still concealed to mortals, Bardiel swiftly closes the distance between him and the man. With practiced care and martial skill, he reaches out for the man’s soft pink hands, intent on crushing them in his own burnt ones. He sees the glint in the imp’s eyes and in an earnest, almost childish voice tells the man “Death gathers around you. You are claimed.”
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Post by Narrator on Nov 3, 2008 13:34:08 GMT -6
With a look of confusion and utter surprise the man falls to his knees in agony. The expression on his face contorts so badly he looks like an caricature of his former self. His hands bend and crack from the nothing that crushes them effortlessly and whispers like a harbinger of his fate in his ears.
His voice once lost from the terror he is experiencing finally finds its cord as his screams of pain fill the office as a blaring trumpet of judgment. His eyes redden from the agony and he pales from the shock. The girl looks up to him in bewilderment at what is answering her prayers that this monster gets what he deserves. She is also terrified at the supernatural force that is exerting such unnatural pressures that turn the man's hands into pudding before her awe struck eyes and she screams from the terror of it all.
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Post by Zypheron on Nov 3, 2008 14:05:45 GMT -6
The Hydeancek laugh with relish as Bardiel crushes the man's hands. They goad him on to finish him in hysterical laughter as the hordes of imps that climbed onto Bardiel leap back and forth from Bardiel and the man.
They beam up to the tall fallen with the look of evil in their molten eyes as they laugh so hard they can barely stand.
"Now is it clear the bringer of death, finish him, we are here to claim his soul in rightful judgment. Crush him, fulfill his destiny of sin so we may take his soul from within... A new life in hell to begin, another soul claimed by Hydeancek in the name of Zypheron again."
The steely imps laugh and play like gremlins in a machine shop as they look on at the man slowly loosing conciseness and his eyes roll up into this skull.
The Hydancek jump up and down eagerly as Bardiel stands over the man still crushing his hands causing the man to go into cardiac-arrest.
At this the ones that had climbed up onto Bardiel also begin to eagerly leap back onto the man's body again in a frenzy. Thousands of tiny steel claws dig into the man's flesh and grasp his soul to tear it from him when his life expires. The glowing mass is being extracted by the little imps that begin pulling at his soul like a wet sheet being extracted from a twisted lump of clothes in a broken washing machine.
The soul hangs on in desperation when it sees the demon smashing his hands and the little imps that drag his life from his broken body. "OH no, no.... NNNOOOOOOO!" his soul screams as the Hydancek grip him fast and slowly tear him from his flesh laughing manically at his cries like a thousand evil squirrels.
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Post by Angeni on Nov 3, 2008 14:48:14 GMT -6
"Ouch...." The cloaked woman says from the doorway. Suddenly almost everthing in the room changes, the man nothing but a lump of wet clothing to the girl's eyes, no blood, only dirty water. She glances at Bardiel and the little beasts from under her hood, and for good measure the Fallen suddenly appears to be a tall well-dressed business man and the tiny demons a multitude of scurrying mice.
Then she reaches up and pulls back her hood, smiling comfortingly at the beaten girl as she moves forward, and takes a cellphone from her pocket.
"Hey, it's okay, come on. Let call the cops and get you out of here." The face she reveals is sweet, with a stubborn jaw and pale skin. Bright pink bangs that seem in need of a trim, hang over green eyes the color of the very first spring buds. Those eyes are full of compassion as she dials a number on the phone and it begins to ring.
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Bardiel
Bourgeois
Outlands Wanderer
Posts: 147
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Post by Bardiel on Nov 3, 2008 20:20:16 GMT -6
Bardiel stares down at the man’s mortal remains, his face emotionless. He tried to ignore the “We”, no, Hydeancek as best he could. “I’m sorry, you didn’t even get a chance to give up, did you?” His voice sounded raw and gravely in his throat “You’ll forgive me right…?” The mangled corpse remained silent “Right?” louder, desperation creeping into his voice. No, what hope do you have left? None! “I’m not that far gone,” the body remained still, silent. Halfway there, halfway there.
Suddenly Bardiel’s eyes began to feel a little strained, his perception of reality was changing. That’s a powerful illusion…Kitsune? Looking himself over he didn’t mind, he now looked far cleaner then he actually was. Bardiel wrapped himself in his wings, but couldn’t feel the touch of his own feathers, only a smoldering ache with every breath. He stares at the woman as she counsels the frightened girl and saves her smile away for later. He even appreciated the gleeful chatter of Hydeancek as it worked.
His jaded eyes search out the woman’s spring bud ones. “If you don’t mind me asking… what are you doing here?” So familiar, are you Inanna? The emphasis on the words was clear, even if his voice sounded a bit meek. He smiled at the swarm of imps turned mice "I know why my little friends are here at least."
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Post by Angeni on Nov 3, 2008 22:04:09 GMT -6
She spares a glance at Bardiel and shakes her head, as the phone continues to ring. Her eyes meet his, and he can see she looks both tired and sad. She mouths "later" as some one picks up on the other end of the phone.
"I'm at the corner of Bell Yard and LaCompte and there's been a well... an accident of sorts in the first office on the left. There's some little girls here who need help." She pauses.
"Yes, yes. No. I'll stay on the phone."
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Bardiel
Bourgeois
Outlands Wanderer
Posts: 147
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Post by Bardiel on Nov 4, 2008 3:40:54 GMT -6
He nods his head at the woman’s unspoken message. He would remain silent and patient. Some things Bardiel knew he didn’t understand, and he accepted them without worry. He understood plenty of other things.
With a sigh he sat down, cross-legged, from where he stood. Keeping a sharp eye on the Hydeancek Bardiel turned to face the hysterical girl. He wasn’t sure if the illusion of the businessman was veiled to her as well as his Fallen self, but he spoke anyway. “Hello little Quail, I’ll protect you,” His voice was as gentle as he could make it, like he was slowly talking down a startled horse. False, the words of a hunter, fooling their prey. “Where are you at home?” What he said didn’t matter, as long as it was slow and reassuring and ready to fly away from Hydeancek. He respected the little golems like a thunderstorm or a great beast. He respected the forces of nature, not the least of which was harvesting death.
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Post by Narrator on Nov 4, 2008 10:02:22 GMT -6
The familiar crackle of the dispatcher chatters over the cell phone into Angeni's ears. "Alright ma'am, units have been dispatched to your vicinity, please stay on the line. Is there any further information to assist the officers when they arrive?"
Sirens sound distant at first. The flashing of red and blue shatter the still of the dark smattering a flickering mural of twisted images of light about the warehouse store front through the plate glass.
The girl is visibly scared to death at what has happened and she can't make since of the visions in her head of the man and his violent death that now no longer exist to her eyes. Sure that it will return she latches onto Angeni for fear and the hope of clinging onto the only hope of aid not out to kill her.
In fact the body of the man has dropped to the ground picked apart from the Hydencek and the soul has been nearly removed by the infernal beasties that eagerly rend the husk to free the soul they have claimed.
Several officers storm the warehouse with weapons drawn demanding everyone down on the floor as they clear the scene. A female officer claimers into the radio of the girl needing medical treatment and requesting paramedic assistance.
The officers don't notice the dancing mice right away. Perhaps it is a good thing as it would be horrendously bad for them to try to catch any of them.
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Post by Zypheron on Nov 4, 2008 12:01:41 GMT -6
The marry little imps play tug of war with the soul and body to separate them. Marred and mutilated the man's body lets loose of its doomed soul with a sicking slurp. The monsters laugh as they bounce it back and forth like a hockey team toting their cup trophy back to the locker room. They leave swiftly and nosily out the shudder door as they sing in a demonic tribute to their catch.
One of the Hydencek stays looking at Bardiel. It bows theatrically to him in thanks as it clicks it's teeth together in a manic grin for the fun and skips after it's brothers laughing hysterically.
"Body torn and forever maimed. What was black is now claimed. Forever the wicked to bear it's demon chains!"
They sing as they march in a joyful parade dragging and tormenting the soul like a discarded scrap. The lost soul screams and claws the door jam in futility begging for mercy as the Hydancek drag him out of the back door.
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Post by Angeni on Nov 4, 2008 14:36:25 GMT -6
The black haired woman murmurs softly to the girl lowering her to the floor, and detaching her clinging hands with more than mortal strength. The cellphone she'd used to make the call falls to the floor unnoticed.
"Stay here, they'll help you. I have to go now. I've already stayed too long." She shivers a little fear in the back of her eyes as she turns her gaze to Bardiel.
"Can you veil me?" she whispers, "It's time to go, now. We've done all we can here." Slowly and carefully she reaches out to him stepping away from the girl. Her gaze flicks briefly to the police and a mischievous smile starts to form.
"They're going to be really confused."
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Bardiel
Bourgeois
Outlands Wanderer
Posts: 147
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Post by Bardiel on Nov 4, 2008 22:46:50 GMT -6
Bardiel nods his head respectfully at the departing Hydencek, knowing that they might meet again. So long little friends.
He looks up when Angeni addresses him, his face neutral but his eyes swimming with questions. Her feet said she could destroy but in the woman Bardiel had seen tenderness, fear, compassion, and concluded she was not a fighter. But still if you’re not a fighter, what are you Inanna? A murderer? A soldier? What?
Without speaking he raises to his full height and envelopes his grandiose wings around her, drawing her close, shielding them both from mortal eyes. Ash settles on Angeni’s cloths where the feathers touch her. Effortlessly he picks her up, gently guiding them both to the open doorway, outside and past the chaos of flashing red-blue lights.
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