Starstruck

Cyrus

Starhugger
Level 1
Joined
Sep 19, 2019
Messages
9
Essence
€2,703
Coin
₡3,000
Tokens
0
His eyes opened, and all he saw was red. The primitive part of his brain was the first to wake up, and it knew that something was wrong, but he couldn't place what. His senses began flooding in: a whistling and rustling, rushing up and all around him. Endless redness in all directions. A whisp of something pale and soft in the distance: the word formed in his mind as though from somewhere far away, "cloud", and close behind, "sky".

He was on his back, staring at the sky, and beneath...

He twisted in midair, and saw the chaos of a city rushing up towards him. He was falling. Was that all right? Was there something wrong? He didn't know anymore. He stared in rapt curiosity, now turned and parallel to the ground that was rushing to meet him. The buildings were rust-colored and dusty. People in the streets pointed, and distantly, somebody shouted.

WHUMP.

He paused for a long moment after he collided with the cracked street. People were screaming and he could hear the sounds of them running toward him. Why? Was something wrong? He pressed his palms into the ground and lifted himself up slowly. Gritty flecks of pebble fell from his forehead and nose, and he slowly sat back on his heels and blinked. A high sound stood out amongst the chaotic din: a tiny clink of glass. He blinked again, and slowly lifted his fingers to the glasses on his nose. The lenses suspended in the dark square frames had cracked magnificently, and half of one had fallen to bounce away into the street. He pressed the pads of his fingers gingerly along the sharp edges of his glasses, but a greater curiosity summoned him.

"Hey, man, are you okay?"

He looked up into the face of a horrified looking teenage boy. A crowd of people had drawn near enough to see, but only the dark skinned youth had been bold enough to come forward.

"I," he started, and stopped at the low and lovely sound of his own voice. "I'm fine, I think." He felt like smiling all of a sudden, and so he did.

"You just fell out of the sky, man! How are you okay? Uh.. does anything hurt? Feel broken? How, how many fingers am I holding up?"

"Four," he smiled wider, and unfolded himself upright to his full, lanky height.

The youth stepped back in alarm, and then again. "Shit," he breathed. The nearby crowd had begun to mutter and wonder aloud as well.

"Where am I?" He asked softly, looking all around himself in wonder.

"Whe-- Ladrillo." The youth responded.

"What planet?"

"Planet? Mesa Roja, what do y--"

"What system?" His voice was amused and he turned to smile at the boy with an excited gleam in his bright eyes.

"System?!" The boy's eyebrows came together in frustrated confusion. "Bro, where are you FROM?"

That was the million dollar question, wasn't it? And with all of the honesty in the world, the man smiled in a fatigued sort of way, and said, "I have no idea."
 
Last edited:

Cyrus

Starhugger
Level 1
Joined
Sep 19, 2019
Messages
9
Essence
€2,703
Coin
₡3,000
Tokens
0
Among the crowd gathered were the odd criminal and scoundrel: the was, in fact, Ladrillo. The sprawling outpost was a clustered and expanding tangle of warehouses, trading shacks, underground fighting rings, and bars. This was the sort of place you came for an easy target, like this jabroni, staring at his hands as though he'd never seen them before.

That would be fine, except the freak had fallen from the sky and had nothing to show for it, save broken glasses and a dusty shirt. And, as the sun was setting in its' bloody sky, the man was putting out a slight glow from his purple skin.

No thanks. The next guy can have him.

The man took a staggering step, and then another, and paused to witness this action, too. The crowd watched as he turned his ankle in his boot, observed its' motion, smiled. In time, he silently trudged away from the throng of people, and none dared follow the strange creature that dropped from the sky.

--

I can walk just fine, he pondered as he plodded through the dirty streets. Why was that fine? He couldn't remember. He knew how to walk, talk, he knew the boy was only trying to help, and he knew most of all that he was pleased. He felt as if he had accomplished something. Everything he did here in this strange, dry city felt like an exciting discovery, and in some way it was: the things his eyes roamed over took several long seconds to summon their contextual meaning, and the word that described it: Wall. Window. Street. Alley. Dog. Fire. These concepts took time to return to him. More than the pleasure of newness was another feeling, a deep and tickling ghost of something he longed to remember, because he could taste satisfaction and triumph. What had he done? He couldn't remember.

He walked for a long time, and pressed himself to find that gleaming seed of purpose in his mind. He was close, but searching for comprehension made him feel a little frustrated, and so he turned his attention to his environment.

Ladrillo, the boy had called it. The corners of the streets had an early evening shadow to them, and whisper of a night breeze was winding its way through the day's earlier press of heat. The man did not know what to compare this place to, but he did not feel as though it was a friendly city. Garbage cans and packed dumpsters crouched in the darkened, cramped alleyways behind clay and stone buildings. Long stretches of old laundry line crisscrossed above, and the man passed more than one alley fire, flickering faintly behind the hulking shapes of men who shot him conspiratorial looks as he passed.

Night was falling, and the man had no idea where he was going. His feet did not ache, and he did not feel sore fatigue between his shoulders, and that struck him as vaguely strange: another far-away hint of something he no longer understood. He pressed on through the streets, and the smell of something wonderful carried itself above the reek of neglect and abandon. The concept of somebody cooking flitted past his mind's eye, and he tracked the scent, moving through a winding alley and straight into a clumsy collision with a scrawny but feisty looking man.

"Hey, s-screw you, asshole, give me your money!" The man spat, immediately drawing a knife and brandishing the sharp little instrument toward the tall, purple man.

He looked down at the knife without flinching. "What is this?" He asked with a songlike tilt of friendly curiosity. His foggy reference of experience held only the faintest grasp of this concept.

The skinny thug snarled and jabbed outward threateningly, "You got a death wish, pal?"

"No." The taller man smiled and looked up to meet the other's frantic blue eyes.

"The-then give me your money! Empty your pockets!" The thief was rapidly growing impatient, and his gaze darted all across the alley. He was considering bailing. He could always bail, after all.

"My pockets," the tall man murmured in a dreamy way, as though he just realized he had pockets. He moved his long fingers to the slip of his trousers, and down into his pockets. An array of bizarre objects were plucked forth: a crumpled wad of small papers, a solid rectangle with colorful images stamped upon it, a few round, shiny pieces of--

"Give it! Hurry up, asshole!" The thief looked around and surrendered to the impossible urge to run: he rushed forward and snatched the coins out of the freak's open, purple hand, and took off at a breakneck sprint. The tall man didn't know it, but he was lucky to have encountered one of the least dangerous street rats in Ladrillo. What he did know, was something new: something that descended upon him like a flame warming his bones, something that begged to be understood.

He stared at the rectangle in his hands. It was white, and stamped with tiny black images in neat little lines. A red shape here in the corner, an embossed crest there in another, but most important was the dominant image that demanded half of the space on this little rectangle: the image of a man. Pale skin. Little dark spots on his cheeks. Brown hair tousled back from his broad forehead. A long, bony face with a great big smile. And glasses: dark, square glasses.

The man slowly reached up to his face with his other hand, touched the curve of the shattered lens that still clung there, and thought hard, for a long time.
 
Last edited:

Elise

Wiki Curator, Esq.
Staff member
Joined
Jul 31, 2018
Messages
94
Essence
€13,353
Coin
₡7,287
Tokens
180
World
Erde Nona
Profile
Click Here
The bleary, red-eyed sun of the Crossroads blinked off the flat horizon of Mesa Roja, allowing the blistering heat of late evening to sizzle off into the cold clutch of the desert night. Inside a long-empty water cistern on top of the old, abandoned Henry house, red eyes blinked on. A single, buckled, platform boot kicked a open the heavy lid of a coffin, shaking the empty water tank with a sharp bang. Dust fell and spiders scattered back to their corners as Elise stretched like a lithe cat. She smacked her mouth, which was hollow with accursed dryness. Black fingernails felt their way back along the left, shave side of her head as she contemplated her itinerary for the evening.

As she pulled on her fingerless gloves, she acknowledged her hunger and her thirst. Really, when you were a vampire, they were basically the same thing. As Elise methodically buttoned each one of the polished, silver skulls on her combination blouse and tank-top, she thought about where she was in her magical studies. Not far enough. Never far enough. Finally, the young vampire grabbed a clutch purse full of magical totems, knives, pins, and black makeup. She sat down next to a small, empty bucket that was covered with damp rags. Elise gently tapped the edge of it, causing three curious tentacles and a single, bulbous eye to poke up from the damp detritus.

You gonna stay here tonight? Elise asked the cephalopod in perfect sign language. The tiny arms wriggled and flashed a series of patterns in response. Greenstripes, her familiar terratopus, indicated that he was content to sit in his grimy little den and digest yesterday's meal of discarded viscera and rodents from Elise's experimentation. She nodded, but handed Greenstripes her lipstick and compact all the same, and the little terrestrial octopus dabbed and prodded her face with the black pigments until she was appropriately ghoulish. When one cannot rely on mirrors, or even reflective magic, for grooming purposes, it was really nice to have such a good friend around at all times.

As she finished getting herself ready for the night, Elise cast a half-bored glance over at yesterday's meal and experiment. Several jugs of drained blood sat next to a vivisected and ritually brutalized corpse. Some junky drifter from the outskirts of town. Not to be missed, but she would have to ditch the cadaver at some poit. Nothing a high rock and some buzzards couldn't fix, but that was a chore for another night. No, tonight Elise's mind was on fire with her recent discoveries. She had just perfected a new spell, and had acquired an extremely large book to write her discoveries in. Finding hard-back, black leather bound book with blank pages had cost her a pretty penny in the intellectually deficient world of Mesa Roja, but she had scored big with some local contacts and a recent trade caravan.

Now it was time to put it into practice.

The violet gloam of early evening was practically daylight compared to the tenebrous depths of the water tank, but it didn't matter to Elise's heightened senses. She reveled in the silhouette she must strike; a cloaked, crouching figure cast against a dark blue canvas. She hugged her book tightly and crept down the side of the building, eager to set her new Ephemeris trap for the first clueless patsy who wanted to dawdle into it. Granted...granted they wouldn't be harmed, but then again, a cat doesn't always kill their prey when they first catch it, right?

Right.
 

Elise

Wiki Curator, Esq.
Staff member
Joined
Jul 31, 2018
Messages
94
Essence
€13,353
Coin
₡7,287
Tokens
180
World
Erde Nona
Profile
Click Here
As the night grew darker, Elise crunched down empty, half-lit streets, reviewing the ritual in her head. It brewed an uncomfortable bolus of excitment in her unbreathing chest. She had long grasped the basics of magic theory and arcana, insofar as she could perform a few basic party tricks and sling some basic 'defensive' spells, but the Ephemeris curse was her first real foray into proper wizardry.

Her enthusiasm demanded the spell be used tonight, or else she might actually be tempted to bite somebody for once. Not really. But it would feel nice to kill someone in a way that wasn't efficiently clinical.

Elise froze in her tracks, backed behind a small stack of rubbish bundles. At the far end of this half-road she could see a pair of figures bickering. It looked like any other common mugging in Ladrillo, but it appeared as if one of the participants was an amethyst. Elise began scrawling the magical circle in the dust, casting frantic glances at the two scabs. Just before the confrontation ended, heralded by the jingle of coins, Elise waved her hands over the Ephemeris and uttered the incantation.

The dirty, orange lights of the alleyway cast dense shadows for her cloaked form to meld with as she swiftly ducked behind the ragged heap of refuse.

Much to Elise's disdain, it appeared the normal-skinned, mundane street rat was the one dashing in her direction. She'd harvested a hundred of his kind from towns all over Mesa Roja in her years of solitude. He would make a poor test subject, and the young vampire didn't have time for scrubs.

"Sahj Itary Ohs!" she hissed. A gleaming soear of crackling orange crystal wove itself together above her head and snapped through the air towards the fleeing mugger. She smiled gleefully as she caught his wide-eyed panic before the arcane lance nailed him bodily into the stucco wall opposite her hiding place. Served the toothless codger right. Probably. It was fair to assume that any Ladrillo nightlife had what was coming to them.

As his last few heartbeats strained into the void, Elise stalked forward like a panther. The steaming crystal barb dissipated with a small fizzle, causing the mugger's body to lurch forwards. Elise caught his chin in a single, pale hand and turned his head this way and that, not bothering to make eye contact as his eyes fluttered shut. She dismissed the idea of feeding from his wound, and flung the new corpse behind her into the rubbish.

She was slightly self-conscious of her brutality, on some level. Part of her would always be that doe-eyed little deaf girl that had been raised to be patient and kind. Elise wondered if her disregard for life was some other aspect of the vampiric curse, or if it was just the result of a girl too jaded to care anymore. Probably both. But what had never diminished was her thirst for answers and power. To that end, it pleased her that the gem had stayed put during this sequence of violent extermination. Her black lips parted into a grim smile as she stormed towards the purple warrior, eager to examine one of these bizarre creatures first-hand. She had only heard about them anecdotally, and seeing one this deep in a scavenger town was a rare opportunity. Luring it into the Ephemeris was, therefore?strictly mandatory.

"Not gonna run, eh? I always did hear your kind liked to throw down." Elise jeered, approaching the softly gleaming creature. He was more svelt than she had been expecting, and his clothing didn't strike her as that of a warrior. She also noticed that he wasn't paying attention at all.

Rude.

"Hey, grape-face! What's y-" Elise stammered as the man looked at her with a dreamy, vacant expression. He was in fact, so damn harmless looking that she almost felt an emotion tangential to pity.

"Oh, hello." the man hummed. His features stretched into a placid smile upon seeing her. Elise didn't like it. People were supposed to get spooky and flighty when they saw her. This wasn't the case and she didn't like it. He wasn't scared at all. Was he just that confident? Elise peered at him with her shrewd intellect.

No. Just a literal damn baby. What the hell.

A silent moment passed, and a dog somewhere barked five times. A rat scratched and fumbled in a rain barrel a few feet away, and the orange sulfur lighting of the alley lamps hummed patiently.

Elise needed to experiment on this man-thing. Badly.

"Are you a gem? Amethyst? The hell are you doing here?" Elise said, trying to maintain her tone of violent authority. The man seemed to chew on these questions thoughtfully, for slightly longer than was reasonable.

"I don't think I am a mineral, no. It's possible. The place we are in is called 'ground'. I know this." the purple guy said, shooting a glance at Elise, as if to secure her affirmation that his statement was valid. The vampire just stared.

"I have a hypothesis." he said abruptly. The happiness and enthisiasm in his voice was upsettingly genuine, and Elise's goth soul was inspired to flee somewhere and smoke a cigarette.

"Okay." she said flatly. The man fumbled around with some junk in his hands before showing some sort of card with a photo on it. Despite her better judgement, Elise approached and glanced at the proffered token.

"I found these items in the pockets of the pants I am wearing. I believe this might indicate they are related to me, right?"

Elise opened her mouth, and screamed noiselessly. What.
 

Cyrus

Starhugger
Level 1
Joined
Sep 19, 2019
Messages
9
Essence
€2,703
Coin
₡3,000
Tokens
0
He trusted the girl implicitly as he stood there in the alley, hand thrust out, offering the most tantalizing and valuable item he possessed.
Money was far beyond his memory, fame and fortune even further. The thing to eventually be understood about this optimistic specimen was this: though he did not remember specifics, he knew the way things made him feel. In his spine, in his gut, in his fight-or-flight reflex, in the savage and lizard parts of his brain. His body remembered where his memory synapses were blank and nonfunctional for the moment. And yet, he had no context for any of the things he felt. The concept of ‘vampire’ was so far removed from the image of a young lady, albeit terrifically goth, that his innate hardwired instinct delivered upon him nothing but trust, kindness, and a little bit of protectiveness.

After a long moment of disbelief moved through Elise, she raised her hands to her face and massaged the whole damn thing. Temples, sinuses, eye sockets, cheekbones, all the way down to her chin in a dramatic pull of her face that exposed her sneering fangs.

“Are you fucking with me?” She asked flatly.

“Am I—" the tall man processed these implications with his eyebrows together.

"No, never mind, forget I said anything. You’re clearly not." Elise fanned one hand at him and squeezed the bridge of her nose with another and she thought about what to do. Her thoughts turned to Greenstripes, and she wished savagely that her familiar had come with her tonight. His presence gave her comfort, and this creature gave her headaches. She thought harder, and harder, but then she opened her eyes.

"Hey, uh, why don’t you come closer. I can’t, uh, see you well," she stammered an excuse that used to matter to her: being formerly deaf, lamplight was still an uncomfortable place to have a conversation. In reality, the girl had a plan.

The man began walking forward obediently, his fingers still dangling the little plastic card for the girl to take. Elise had to skip backwards a few steps, as she hadn’t expected him to comply so readily, and she shot glances around the heels of her platform boots as she reeled him in, perfectly centered.

They danced a few feet further into the alley, and before long, the man’s boot crossed an invisible threshold, followed by the next, and Elise stopped. A gust of light swarmed up and around the man: silvery-violet, illuminating him from the bottom up. His hair lifted at its roots and settled, and his eyes brightened in curiosity. He looked down at the light swiftly, but just as quickly as it began, the flare faded and the alley continued to exist as a stale, forgettable place, barely lit by low orange lamps.
The man continue to look at his boots, thinking, processing. He slowly lowered his outstretched hand to his side, and glanced up to look into Elise’s eyes. There was something new there, in his trusting and innocent face. He looked serious now, and slowly, he began to speak.

"Magic," he breathed inside wonder, and the corners of his cheeks moved. "I knew magic," he said slowly, and looked back down at his hands, to Elise again.

Elise stood rooted to the spot, and chewed her lip. She had been flooded with information that she didn’t know how to rationalize, and she thought about it for a few moments. Her own face held a newness as well: a look of burgeoning respect. She stuck her hand out, now. "Let me see that."

The man complied, surrendering his lifeline, the little square of plastic.

Elise brought it into the light and squinted at it. "I don’t think I know this language. It looks like ‘Cyrus’, though. Is that your name?’

"Cyrus," he repeated, feeling comfortable with the way the name fit in his mouth. "I think so. "

"Yeah, " Elise affirmed, passing the card back to the tall, purple man. "I like it too. I’m Elise. It’s nice to meet you." Her voice was a little gentler, her mind still firing on all cylinders with what she had gleaned.

Cyrus remembered something else: he took a step forward to take his card, and gripped her whole hand instead, in his great big palm and long fingers. He shook her hand once and clapped his other hand all around their grip. "It’s nice to meet you, too." He rehearsed in a long-forgotten way, and smiled.
 

Elise

Wiki Curator, Esq.
Staff member
Joined
Jul 31, 2018
Messages
94
Essence
€13,353
Coin
₡7,287
Tokens
180
World
Erde Nona
Profile
Click Here
Her book, where was her damn book. Fucking bitch-ass black book. Elise half-mindedly pawed at her various straps, bags, and pockets, looking for the freshly pressed, bound volume she had just purchased. After a moment she clenched her hands and allowed a minor shudder of rage to filter through her body. She must have left it back in her lair. She could feel a flood of self-imposed chastisement creeping into the back of her mind. All the times her instructors and parents had told her that she was too quick to rush. Always rushing out the door half-dressed and never thinking of the consequences. She slapped them back into the dark pits of her psyche with a frustrated snarl and jerk of her head.

"Are you okay, Elise?"

The vampire's smoldering red eyes snapped back to the cosmic oaf standing just a foot away from her. The Ephemeris curse had worked perfectly, and now she could feel his radiant, pulsating soul as easily as breathing in a useless, undead breath. But this Cyrus guy was more than just a glittery, purple schmuck. There were two souls in there; one was in a man, and one was ricocheting around inside his mortal body like a fiery pingpong ball, just itching to explode and burn and shout and learn. It was scary, and not like anything she had ever felt before. Whatever Cyrus was, he was dangerous and harmless at the same time. A scintillating, lanky enigma that provided no immediate answers. He was also still looking at her with concern.

"Uh, yeah man. Also sorry about the..." she said, waving vaguely at the ground, "...the magic. Ladrillo is a dangerous kinda place. Shit keeps me informed on threats and such." she finished, folding her arms.

"Like the man you killed." Cyrus said with a solemn, understanding look. It wasn't possible for Elise to blanche, or for that matter, blush, but she felt her cheeks grow hot all the same. Why though? This guy didn't fucking know her deal. Fuck him.

"Exactly." she said flatly. Her entire night had been derailed. Elise hated that. But here was an arcane find that would have made the entire Nona Board of Arcana piss themselves with excitement. What to do with him though? She was feeling suddenly out of her depth, despite her feeling at the top of her game an hour ago. She glanced back at the collapsed garbage heap where the mugger's corpse had been buried. So he knew but he didn't care? No...he cared. He just trusted that she knew what she was doing. What should she even do with this guy?
 

Elise

Wiki Curator, Esq.
Staff member
Joined
Jul 31, 2018
Messages
94
Essence
€13,353
Coin
₡7,287
Tokens
180
World
Erde Nona
Profile
Click Here
In all her years of arcane study and trudging through the underworld of the Crossroads, Elise had never once been tasked with babysitting any sort of creature, let alone a grown man with a wellspring of cosmic energy inside him. Sure, she took care of Greenstripes well-enough, but a Familiar was savvy! They knew a thing or two, even if it was Elise who called all the shots.

Now, as the vampire stood there staring at the gleaming gentleman, she had no idea what sort of decisions she needed to be thinking about, let alone what the right decision was. She kept checking jer own loss for initiative, trying to tell herself that this guy wasn't worth the effort. Chalk the Ephemeris up to a success and move on with her life, and possibly end his...and yet...she couldn't bring herself to ditch him. Cyrus, as he was now called, brought out the sympathetic, appeasement focused person she had been before the Bite.

Elise rubbed the scars from Jules' fangs. It was a subconscious tic, but she was aware of it all the same, and defiantly crossed her arms.

"Well, Cyrus, guess we'd..." she trailed off, looking him up and down for the fifth time in as many minutes, "...better get your glasses fixed, I guess."

It wasn't said in her usual tone of predatory confidence, but Cyrus smiled in tacit agreement. He removed the cracked frames from his face and turned them over in his hands, peering at them with all the interest of a jeweler.

"I suppose, though, I seem to be able to see adequately without them. I wonder why I have them...?" he happily mused, testing the hinges on the black frames. Elise set her jaw in mild frustration and grabbed Cyrus by yanking on the midriff of his sweater.

"Just shut up before I change my mind. I know a place." she grumbled. Cyrus trotted along behind her stomping, steady pace, and glanced down at the pale, brown hand clutching his clothes.

"I can walk myself, Elise." he said, gently touching her hand to dissuade her grasp. His soft, glowing skin sent a joly through Elise, like touching a hot stove.. She jolted violently away from Cyrus, causing her cape to billow handsomely as she spun around with a sharp hiss. A hiss? Had she really just had a full-blown dracula moment?

The pain was unmistakable though; like getting exposed to the burning sun. She grit her sharpened teeth at Cyrus, who was wearing an expression somewhere between fascination and mortification.

"Can you turn down that gleaming bullshit?" Elise snapped. Cyrus frowned and blinked softly.

"I'm not sure. I will try. It may take some practice-"

"Whatever! Later. Just...don't touch me until you...figure it out." Elise growled. She glanced down at her left hand, which she still clutched tightly. Tiny wisps of acris smoke wafted off of her skin. There was no mistaking it; Cyrus was a walking star.

The pair made their way, now in silence, down the darkening roads of Ladrillo. The town's main stretch consisted of a series of shops and vendors who mostly dealt with traders and caravans. People who lived in town tended to do their shopping down at the bazaars, but this decaying, neon-encrusted lineup of storefronts was what Elise needed. She aggressively approached a store whose porch was littered with debris and scrap, and bore a sign that simply read "Fixer's".

Elise shoved the wooden panel door aside like it owed her money, causing it to slam loudly and the halogen lighting to flicker. The old, gray-haired Skaven man behind the counter jumped straight up and dropped what appeared to be a fairly complicated clockwork gadget. The foul-smelling, mangy rat man turned and glared at Elise as she barged towards him.

"Neh! Shop closing! Come when sun!" he snorted, trying to scrape together the scattered fragments of his work.

"Sign says open, Kit." Elise said flatly, nodding back at the posted board which leaned against the front window. It was indeed turned to say 'Open' to customers on the street. The skaven glanced at the board, then back at Elise. His nose twitched continuously, and his hairless paws worried and tugged at an oily cloth.

"Neh! Closed! Leave! Skitter-leap! Get!" " Kit growled, waving his hands towards the door. Cyrus held up a finger, trying to interject.

"We can come back in the morning, it's not-"

But his soft words were cut off by Elise's sharp retort to the shop-owner.

"Kit Bash, you fucking owe me. You know it." Elise said firmly. She reached out with lightning-fast hand and grabbed the greasy rodent's ear.

"Owowowowowfine!" Kit Bash croaked, slapping her hand away. Cyrus wasn't even surprised when Elise snatched his broken glasses right off of his face.

"Fix 'em." Elise said, placing the spectables on the dusty table. Kit Bash poked his snout at them and sniffed. The Skaven looked at Cyrus and blinked.

"Neh?"

"Fix the glasses." Elise said, her patience constantly wearing to dangerously thin levels. She pointed at them for emphasis. Kit Bash seemed confused.

"That all...?"

"Do it!" Elise shrieked.

"Neh!" Kit Bash snorted. He snatched the frames up and skittered into his back room.

--

Half an hour later, the black-furred ratman shoved Cyrus and Elise back into the night air.

"You things! Never squeak to me again! You go-go!" Kit Bash snarled before slamming the door shut. An abrupt silence fell upon the increasingly cold evening. Cyrus glanced down at his new companion, who did nothing but angrily stare off into the distance.

"Well. Um. Thank you."

"Shush. Are you hungry?" Elise snapped, in an admittedly tired voice.
 

Cyrus

Starhugger
Level 1
Joined
Sep 19, 2019
Messages
9
Essence
€2,703
Coin
₡3,000
Tokens
0
Neon lights cast angled shapes across cyrus and Elise’s faces as they lurked through the evening streets.

The night was young as far as Elise was concerned, and there was comfort in the nightlife crowd of vagrants and ne’er-do-wells that skulked and glanced their way through Ladrillo’s main stretch. Muffled club beats snarled and purred in a distant cellar, and small, suspicious groups of bodies huddled away from the prying cut of electric lights that splashed across the dirt-packed street. To the outside observer, Cyrus and Elise made a fitting pair as their shapes glimpsed between doorways and barred windows: Cyrus was tall and slender, while Elise was short and plump, and they appeared to be in a uniform of solid black. They looked like they’d been a team for a long time. They looked like they had an agenda.

Cyrus was not consumed with any mission, however. He removed and re-set his glasses several times on their walk in a small, private experiment. He was curious: he remembered what glasses were for, but he didn’t seem to need them. His eyes seemed to adjust to the magnifying lenses when we wore them, and refocused effortlessly when he removed them. To an observer, the man’s eyes never seemed to look the same. Relatively normal, white sclera hugged dark, circular wells of impossibly shifting beauty: at one moment, his irises yielded darkness with a ring of gold, deeply centered and far away, and at other times a moving cloud of kaleidoscopic gas and sparkle furled and arched in the depths of his pupils.

Elise wasn’t thinking about Cyrus’s eyes right now, though. She was storming alongside harshly, nearly two steps to one of Cyrus’s strides, and the little belts on her platform boots clinked and jangled with each stomp in a way that made her feel a little stronger, faced with the agonizing softness that lived in her unbeating heart. The sounds of her boots made her remember a book she liked as a kid, one about cowboys, and she thought fondly that this would be a good scene for a shootout.

She shook her head violently to clear her brain of the hated memory. That soft life was no longer her reality. She was alone, and she had purpose now. Remembering days spent curled up with her parents, dreaming of fantastic futures, was far behind her. Cyrus reminded her of that part of her a little. He reminded her of teachers who looked at her softly, holding secrets in the flat lines of their encouraging smiles. He reminded her that she once had potential. That she use to be a nice girl. A good girl.
Frustration still gripped her when she blindly turned into the narrow doorway of an old building. Dust from the road had scruffed up the bottom half of the slim window that faced the road, but a low warmth emanated from the place. It was mostly a bar, but she knew the place served food, too. Pub food. The place was tight-walled and skinny, but A path stretched back between a few little chairs and tables after the bar. The place was fairly full at this hour, and a few gnarly folks glanced up and back down into their drinks.

From the exterior, the place had no sign or herald of the nature of the establishment, but a great big tubular curl of neon hung on the back wall over the bar, winding a script that said, "The Standard".

They settled into a pair of creaky chairs, and Elise laced her fingers under her chin and turned her smoldering gaze onto Cyrus again.

He met her eyes immediately and smiled.
Ugh.

"So, Cyrus, tell me everything. Where are you from?” She asked, first with a sarcastic little toss of her head, but then her eyebrows furrowed with a thought. "Do you remember?”

“No,” he answered immediately, with sleepy but unflinching eye contact. "I fell out of the sky."

"You—" Elise sat back in her chair, and opened her mouth again, but a shape emerged from the darkness and encroached upon their table. They looked up in time to see a huge chakat: four heavy, furred paws supported a column of a torso that branched upwards from between its front legs. The torso was humanoid with a cat’s head, and the supporting body was like a great panther: covered from toe to ear in dark, sealy grey fur split by a few scars here-And-there. The creature was feminine, wearing only a band across her tightly muscled chest: She was strong, that much was for sure. Her facial structure was entirely feline, and a human expression was hard to pick out around her small blue eyes and bristling whiskers, but if there was emotion in her grizzled muzzle, it was, ‘do not fuck with me,’

The chakat flicked an ear. ‘Drinks?’

Elise knew her. "Hey, Gale. Cyrus, this is Gale," She gestured across the table.

Cyrus tucked his hands between his thighs and leaned forward in a little bow, smiling, of course. "Hello, Gale. I’m Cyrus. It’s Nice-to-Meet-You."

Gale shot a look at Elise and pinned her ears to her skull, then looked at Cyrus again. The sagging corner of her black lip flinched.

"...Drinks?” She repeated, lower. She held a tiny notepad with one heavy hand-paw, and the other pinched a slim pen between its pinkish pads.

"N-nothing for me, thanks. Cyrus." Elise prodded his clothed elbow carefully. The man was utterly swept up in observing Gale, and she didn’t want him to get a face-full of claw.
"Oh! Um.. it’s night time, but I do have a craving. I do want it. I want coffee? May I have coffee please, Gale?” He chatted through his desires, and supplemented a larger smile.

"Sure." She turned away, glad to be far from probably the weirdest guy she’d see tonight, and that was saying something. When she had turned, she glanced over her long flank. "Food?"

"Oh, something sweet, please. A pastry?”

Gale blinked. Of course the freak wanted a pastry in one of the toughest bars in Ladrillo. "I’ll see what I can do," she gruffed, and padded away through the tight establishment. Cyrus found it amusing that the massive creature worked in such a crack in the wall, since it must be quite difficult to maneuver the proximity of body and chair. Elise knew Gale, though: the bartender-meets-bouncer was not claustrophobic, and preferred tight quarters to keep an eye on her business. Elise had seen the chakat use the walls on more than one occasion to race a quick turn down the bar to chase out a fight with a ferocious snarl.

"So," Elise pressed the subject, having not forgotten. "You fell from the sky.”

“I did, yes.” Cyrus turned back in his seat and placed his hands on his knees.

"What did you fall..out of?” Elise tried.

"Nothing, I do not think. I woke up in the sky."
"You woke up in the sky." She repeated. Fine. Okay.

Cyrus moved the conversation, this time. "I remember nothing before opening my eyes, but I know there are memories. I know I have forgotten where I came from, and who I am. I want to know this, Elise. You do magic, and this seems familiar to me. I feel like I knew magic. I wanted..." he held his hands up, slowly, palms up. "I wanted to know more." He gripped his fingers to his palms tightly. Desperately.

"Yeah. I think you did know magic. There’s...definitely something very magical about you." She murmured, chewing on her bottom lip with a fang.

"How about you?” Cyrus asked gently, and Elise frowned.

How about her, indeed.
 

Elise

Wiki Curator, Esq.
Staff member
Joined
Jul 31, 2018
Messages
94
Essence
€13,353
Coin
₡7,287
Tokens
180
World
Erde Nona
Profile
Click Here
"Yeah. Yeah I guess you could say that I've got something magical about me." she murmured. Her mouth was half covered by her hands, due to her compulsive habit of prodding her fangs with her thumbs when she was nervous. Gale was looking good tonight, and she wasn't talking about the chakat's lack of clothing. She really should have had a feed on that extra blood in her lair before leaving. Always rushing into things. Eager. Eyes on the prize, but not on the road to success. Fuck them all...but...what she wouldn't give to just plunge her teeth into Gale's meaty, round flank. It wasn't even about the Thirst at this point; part of keeping a low profile was knowing how her affliction worked. The Curse wanted to be spread. Feeding herself with drained blood kept her up and running, but the itch, the need to get her teeth into warm, living flesh was positively aching. How long had it been since she'd done a proper bite?

She realized she was watching Gale with keen interest as the chakat swaggeted back to their table with a mug of black coffee and what appeared to be a hastily thawed slice of pie. The fuzzy, hulking waitress locked eyes with Elise, and raised her lip in a silent snarl. The vampire was tempted to demure and look away, but in her current mood, she stared back at Gale with a sharp-toothed grin. For a fleeting moment, Elise wished her vampiric powers were more mature, so that she could dominate her prey's will with a glance, but pulled herself back into the present. Elise may have few scruples about magic and its myriad applications, but she would never stoop to the unfettered evil of mind control. Such things were the shame of the wizarding world, and she'd be damned in more ways than one if she allowed her Curse to force her down that path.

Gale half-tossed the coffee and pie onto the table with a loud clank, and Elise responded by sliding a few clumsy Karim Dollar coins across the sticky table at her. A few fell onto the ground, but the chakat was not the sort of person to bend down to scrape change off the floor...at least not in front of customers. Gale trotted away with a furious swish of her tail, and left the to mages to their business.

It occurred to Elise that she hadn't technically answered Cyrus's question, but the lavender man hadn't pressed the matter either. He daintily nursed his coffee and hungrily ate forkfuls of pie, all while keeping his swirling eyes locked on Elise. He was irritatingly patient. She decided to settle for a comfortable half-truth.

"People been saying I've got magic in me as long as I can remember. Lots of pokes and prodding, but no one can put their finger on it. Good enough for a wizard's tuition." Elise said, trying to sound noncommittal. Despite this, Cyrus leaned closer to her, which naturally caused her to lean away.

"Tuition? That means...you are a student? I believe?" he asked with glittering, earnest eyes.

"Not anymore dude, take it easy. Shit." Elise said, bashfully looking off to the side. She idly wondered if her makeup was starting to smudge, and dabbed a finger at the edge of her mouth. Somehow it found its way back to her right fang again. Predatory eyes flicked back to Cyrus, sizing him up. Just the slightest touch had burned her. Did she dare have a taste? She could probably handle it. She was tough.

That wasn't the only thing bothering her though. Elise wasn't some idiot; she had pegged Cyrus as an amnesiac basket case within the first few minutes of talking to him. Despite that, she kept acting surprised when he stumbled across his own inner nature. She knew better; why did she insist on condescension? He was clearly of no active threat, sunshine skin notwithstanding. He just bothered her for reasons she simultaneously knew and refused to think about. Elise sighed sharply. That and the Thirst were becoming to much for her patience.

"Look, Cyrus, I know you just...fell out of the sky and can't remember your name but this wasn't what I had planned for my night. I gotta...go..." she said slowly. When she met his gaze though, she was met with such sincere, if subdued, grief that she instantly changed course.

"...go do some stuff. I can be back here in like, an hour. Okay?" she said in a breathy tone of resignation. Cyrus blinked away his previous, morose expression and gave her a babyish smile. The neon lighting behind the bar, coupled with the false-chrome trimming of The Standard seemed to fill the room with violet radiance, and it kinda made Elise want to fucking puke.

"Okay! I'll be here. With Gale." Cyrus said warmly, gesturing towards the chakat behind the bar. Gale glanced up from polishing a beer glass with slightly horrified, yellow eyes. Despite her hesitance, she offered a tip-worthy, if toothy, smile. Elise did not look at Gale. Not with her brain full of red.

"Great bye." Elise said, clomping out of The Standard with a swish of her cape. The jingled once, and the young woman was gone, leaving Cyrus alone in the long stretch of the bar. He tucked into a few more bites of pie before he felt Gale approaching from behind. The hulkig feline placed a silky, heavy hand on his table and looked hard at him.

"You with her?" Gale said in her baritone, husky growl. Cyrus thought about the question for a moment, glad that the pie gave him time to think.

"Not really, I suppose. I'm fairly sure this pie is very good, by the by." he answered, trying to be honest. The response he got was unanticipated.

"I'd stay away. Some folk came into town today lookin' for her sort. Said there was a she-vamp lurkin' around. She seemed to fit the bill." Gale said in her strong, soft murmuring. Cyrus took a polite sip of coffee.

"I see. Thank you for letting me knowm" he said in a sweet, if not somewhat stiff tone. Gale patted him once on the shoulder, and went back to her post. The purple gentleman rubbed glittering fingers on his chin and pondered...
 

Elise

Wiki Curator, Esq.
Staff member
Joined
Jul 31, 2018
Messages
94
Essence
€13,353
Coin
₡7,287
Tokens
180
World
Erde Nona
Profile
Click Here
Elise scrambled up the side of the half-collapsed house that her lair was perched on, cursing silently under her breath. She honestly didn't know how to feel about how this situation had turned out, but she knew that she hated it when she didn't know something. An absolute magical anomaly literally falls out of the sky, basically into her lap, and she had almost nothing she could do with him. Sure, the Ephemeris curse had revealed his two souls. Two! And the fact that he was nearly invulnerable to physical damage. The hell? Elise knew that she couldn't let Cyrus slip out of her grasp, but she didn't know why he was important. And she still had no idea where her grimoire was! The vampire practically tore the roof of he old cistern off and dropped down to the aluminum floor with a resonant bang.

She didn't bother to say hello to Greenstripes, simply marching her way over to where the cold, stiff body of yesterday's victim lay. She braced her gut for the unpleasant ritual of drinking cold blood, looking at the dark, stained canisters with a flutter in her stomach. Gross. But it had to be done. She couldn't think straight in her current state. With a soft growl, Elise snatched one of the bottles up from the floor, tipped it up and blinked.

It was empty. She shook the metal can once to confirm that it was depleted, and tossed it against the wall with a dusty clang. She snatched another bottle off of the floor, tipped it up, and found that it was also empty.

"What the fuck..." she murmured, kicking the blood cans around with her platform boots. A sudden click from the far side of the water cistern caused her glinting red eyes to widen. Elise ducked just in time as a thundering shot shook the whole metal reservoir. Shotgun, 16 gauge. Slug round. With a reflexive hiss, Elise vaulted to the far side of her dissection table and peered over it, into the deeper shadows.

"Looking for something, Elise?" came a smooth, upbeat voice. A similar pair of eyes gleamed back at her, and the sinuous shape slipped into view. A lithe, black-leather clad woman stood, shotgun shouldered, vignetted in amber light from the fresh hole in the lair. Her hair was sprayed to be voluminous as possible, and a wide, malicious grin stretched across her sharpened features.

"Kelly the Skull. You were seriously the best the coven could send?" Elise snapped. The other vampire laughed. It was a strained, angry sound.

"Ha! The coven sent a dozen of us to Mesa Roja looking for your traitor ass, and there aren't as many ways off this slab as the other Worlds. You're not getting away this time!" Kelly spat, pumping a fresh round into the gun's chamber. Elise tilted her head and clucked her tongue. It was always so damn trivial to goad information out of Jules' old thralls.

"Still dumb as shit, I see. Greenstripes!" Elise shouted. Before Kelly could fire her next shot, a blur of movement burst from out of a nearby bucket. With a heavy, wet, smack, the terratopus wrapped his flashing arms around Kelly's muffled, screaming face. The hunter fired a stray shot into the ceiling of the cistern, causing an entire section of the old structure to fall on to both of them.

"Sahj itary ohs!" Elise barked. A blazing lance of magic energy crackled into existence over head and whistled into the pile of debris. There came another muffled scream, but the wizard knew it wouldn't slow Kelly down for long.

"Stripes! We're upping sticks!" she shouted. The terratopus slithered out of the debris and launched himself at Elise, suctioning onto her shoulders like a sack of meaty pudding. Elise hefted the dissection table up with two hands, causing the hollow cadaver to thud onto the floor, and threw it at the already damaged wall with a grunt. The oaken table crashed through the rusted aluminum like a battering ram, and Elise followed it moments later. She momentarily lamented all of the alchemical supplies, notes, personal belongings and cozy coffin she was leaving behind...but in the end, she was a survivor, and this was no time to get sentimental.

Elise had just started sliding down the old drainpipe when Kelly appeared on the cusp of the roof, pointing leveling the shotgun again. Elise yelped and let go of the pipe. She hit the ground hard, stumbling slightly, as another immense bang echoed over the quiet homes of Ladrillo. A spray of dirt on her face told Elise that Kelly had missed again. On a slightly upbeat note, Elise saw her black-bound grimoire sitting on the ground, just at the bottom of the drainpipe.

"Wow! You suck!" she shouted at Kelly, scooping the book up as she began dashing down the alley. A sudden flare of light and the roar of a four-stroke dirtbike engine caused her to slide to a halt, covering her eyes against the sudden brightness. She felt herself tugged sharply to the left as Greenstripes latched onto a nearby dumpster and pulled her. A machete blade opened up a gruesome gash on her face and neck as the dirtbike snarled past, but if not for her familiar, it would have taken her head clean off. The whining bike kicked a rooster tail of dirt into the orange light of Ladrillo's night as the rider pulled it around. She squinted at the goggled rider, who sported a long mustache and short, red mohawk. Was that...Young Steven?

Man, they really had sent the shit-tier squad.

"Tao Ruhs!" she chanted. A crackling wall of magical force sealed the alleyway off, at least for the moment, as Elise turned on her heels and sprinted with all the speed her bloodstarved legs could muster. This sucked! If she had bothered to feed before these shmucks had shown up, they'd all be dead by now. As it was, the gaping wound on her face was barely healing. Her mind raced as she tried to figure out what her next move was, and heard Kelly screaming over the engine.

"Go around! Around! We'll cut her off!"

This was followed by a hail of gunfire, which tore up the dirt around her and put a fairly sizable hole in her left leg. Elise shrieked in pain and blindly took off in the direction away from the bullets. Guess the bitch had more than just a shotgun. Where could she go? Who could she go to? As she sprinted down the alleyway, she could see Young Steven on his dirtbike, keeping pace with her on the main stretch just one row of houses away. She was about to turn left, to stick to the squalid, narrower streets, but another engine was roaring down this side street at her. Three? Who else would it be. It didn't matter, because another spattering of gunfire from the vehicle confirmed that they were after her. Against her better judgement, she was flushed out on to Ladrillo's main stretch.

"Tao Ruhs!" Elise screamed again, directing the arcane shield in the direction she anticipated Young Steven to be coming from. A peal of gunfire did audibly rain against the barrier, but that was from Kelly the Skull on the roof of Kit Bash's shop. Young Steven had already gotten behind them, but his clumsy firing position, combined with a quick roll from Elise, caused his shots to hit pavement. Between the biker, Kelly's suppression, and the beat-ass jeep that came crashing into the street, there was only one direction for Elise to run, which was across the street and towards the glimmering beacon which was now magically pinging her senses...
 

Cyrus

Starhugger
Level 1
Joined
Sep 19, 2019
Messages
9
Essence
€2,703
Coin
₡3,000
Tokens
0
Before all of that, Cyrus pondered.

Vamp. What was that? The word completed itself in his mind: Vampire. A strange flood of images came surging into his processing brain, and he struggled to find meaning in them: A snickering man, peering over the top edge of a cloak, and it made Cyrus chuckle. After that...something about blood. Something about necks. Cyrus rubbed his throat compulsively, and felt his own twitching artery against the pads of his fingers.

Most of all, the thought of "Vampire" elicited feelings that Cyrus did not like, and it was easy for him to deny this correlation with Elise. Gale was mistaken. Elise had nothing to do with this concept.

Still, Cyrus pondered.

"Gale," Cyrus said softly as the chakat plodded by. The burly creature glanced down at him while holding a pawful of several empty flagons, each dangling between her fingers.

"Nn," She grunted, "More coffee?"

"No, I still have plenty," Cyrus smiled and lifted his cup, which was indeed half-full of the black liquid. (Cyrus had realized that his perception of "wanting coffee" was not satisfied by this bitter liquid. He realized now that he preferred it with cream, but now was not the time to request peripherals. )

"I wanted to talk. About Elise." He set his cup down on the table.

The chakat lifted her lip in a subconscious snarl. Busy. Too busy for this gleaming twig. There were two parts to the hulking cat: the part which she had worked to hone and shape about herself as an impenetrable, grumpy barkeep, and another side: the mother. Gale was a proud mother of several litters of grown-and-gone cubs, and she was indeed older than she appeared. The man could have been one of her many sons' age, and while the feline barkeep was ferocious, she was also just, and a good judge of character.

Cyrus's open face gave her pause.

"Whaddaboutter?" Gale finally growled as she settled onto her hind quarters and lashed her tail. A passing patron had to skip mid-stride to avoid getting swept off his feet.

"Why do you believe that she is a vampire?" Cyrus asked, and leveled his starry gaze onto Gale.

"I've seen her coming around my bar for oh, three or four years now..." Gale finally started after a long, thoughtful quiet. She set the empty mugs down on the small table. "She don't eat, first of all. And not to toot my own horn, but I'm suspicious of any creature that turns their nose up at a plate from MY kitchen. Let's see..." Gale scrunched up her scarred muzzle in thought.

Cyrus waited, and watched the chakat's face unflinchingly.

Gale, however, turned her icy blue gaze off the purple man's face. "She meets folk here, the odd street folk, and I never see 'em again. I knew something was off about her, but when those...characters," Gale spat, "came in and described her and asked for a vampire...well, let's say I wasn't surprised."

Cyrus stared and listened, and thought before asking the next question, "What did these people want with Elise?"

At this, Gale chuckled sardonically. "In Ladrillo, when someone comes for you with your name in their mouth, it isn't to offer warm regards."

Cyrus's blank face made Gale frown deeply.

"Boy, are you following what I'm saying?"

"I am," Cyrus smiled thinly. "I just cant remember who I am, or where I came from, but I am starting to understand a bit about this world."

Gale felt inmediate pity, followed by annoyance. "Well, Ladrillo is a terrible place for an amnesiac. I'd stay far away from Elise and her pack of hunters. I'd hop on the first ship to Erde Nona I could, if I were you."

"How many?" Cyrus suddenly asked.

"How many..?" Gale squinted and put her ears back.

"How many people were looking for Elise."

"Oh, uh, three, I think. One of em was a crazy looking bitch with big hair and bigger teeth." Gale shivered all over: the woman just looked wrong.

"Listen, I gotta keep an eye on the bar. Come by tomorrow morning before opening and I'll sort you up with a pilot who owes me a favor. Get you off of this godforsaken rock." Gale stood up and began to gather the empty mugs she had set down.

"Gale," Cyrus said, just before she turned to go. "Why do you stay? You show no love for this planet."

The chakat grinned at his question, and shook her great head. "That," she said, and turned to step away from the conversation, "is not your business, bright boy. See you tomorrow."

The great feline caused Cyrus to think, and he decided he liked that about her, and that he'd like to talk to her again.

But Elise was so small and that translated into a sense that she was helpless, and Cyrus decided that he needed to find her before this tooth woman did.
 

Elise

Wiki Curator, Esq.
Staff member
Joined
Jul 31, 2018
Messages
94
Essence
€13,353
Coin
₡7,287
Tokens
180
World
Erde Nona
Profile
Click Here
Elise bustled down a the small split between buildings on the far side of the road as angry shouts echoed through the alley. There was a swell of engine noise, punctuated by her own heavy bootsteps as she sprinted headlong towards Cyrus's signal; the Ephemera curse had turned out to be a resounding success. The bouncing weight of Greenstripes on her back, however, spurred her faster. Her familiar may have been tough for a mollusk, but he was far from bulletproof.

The vampire drove her boot into the glass-pane door of the bar, and skidded inside with a tremendous crash. The entire patronage, and one very angry chakat, wheeled around with wide eyes to look at the noisy intruder. Despite the tight confines of The Standard, Gale maneuvered with deft strides and pounced at Elise. The vampire went low, and rolled beneath leaping predator, but was immediately clotheslined by her own cape as Gale stomped on it.

"What's the rush?" Gale growled as she wrestled Elise into a headlock. She was abruptly answered as a storm of gunfire filled her bar, detonating half-filled beer mugs and ripping through vinyl upholstery. The vampire cringed, reflexively, but did not feel the sort of stitching pain she had expected. Instead, Elise felt sharp, stabbing tingles over every inch of her body. It was a sensation that made her want to crawl out of her own skull, and she fucking hated it. Opening one eye, she saw a glittering skein of lavender energy weaving itself around her body. Being as she was a student of the arcane, Elise followed the gossamer thread of energy back to its source, and confirmed that it was originating from Cyrus.

"Gale will you fucking let go!" Elise grunted, trying to squirm free from the chakat's choking grasp.

"In here boys, come on!" came a sharp cry from outside the door. Kelly the Skull, Young Steven, and the third mystery mercenary bustled into the bar with several automatic weapons between them. The vampire hunters took stock of the mystical scene before them, and Kelly spoke first.

"Alright, hand over the girl and no one gets shot." she sneered. Gale padded her large bulk around, with Elise still wriggling in her grasp, and raised an eyebrow at the hunters.

"What, so you can squish her instead of me? What's it worth to you?" Gale boomed.

"Eat a dick, Gale!" Elise snapped.

Someone quietly cleared their throat. It was a sound that somehow managed to be audible, thanks to the tension in the air. Cyrus stood next to his bullet-ridden bench without so much as a scratch on him.

"I would really prefer it, I think, if no one got hurt at all." the enigmatic man said, with a sad smile.

"Is that why you shielded me?" Gale asked. Her tone was of soft surprise. Cyrus looked confused, and Elise scoffed.

"He shielded me too!"

"Unclear." Gale replied sharply. But she did relent her sleeper hold on Elise; partly out of respect for Cyrus, and partly because it was apparently having no effect on the clammy young lady. The chakat had never gotten a really good look at Elise, but now that her hood was down and her teeth were bared, there could be no doubt. But she also noticed these same incriminating traits on the girls' pursuers, and to be frank, Gale had no interest in whatever this mess was.

"This some kinda vampire thing? Some gang feud?" Gale thrummed. By this point, most of her customers had shuffled out the other exit with all the rush and silence of a crowd used to violence. Gale spat a disdainful wad onto the ground.

"Vampire's ain't welcome in here...but at least this one..." Gale said, gesturing at Elise with a thick hand, "...pays her tab. You punks owe me damages."

Kelly the Skull shrieked with laughter and racked the hammer on her submachine gun.

"What, you think we're gonna write a check? How about you give us the bitch and we don't burn this shithole to the ground?" the hunter snarled.

"They've got a motorbike, jeep, and a small arsenal. Probably would cover most of it." Elise shrugged.

"You're probably right." Gale chuckled. She picked up a nearby wooden barstool and ripped it apart like a pile of tooth picks. This yielded two, jagged rods of pinewood that caused all of the vampires to flinch.

"Please, can we all just...cut our losses and move- oh dear." Cyrus lamented. He squeezed his eyes shut and grimaced as the sounds of shouting, gunfire, a roaring chakat and whirling magic flooded the tiny venue. He felt a small tug around his ankle, and looked down to see some sort of strange, slimy creature trying to pull him towards the rear exit. He turned and watched his acquaintances - the only people he really knew - and felt conflicted. Currently, Elise was hurling a javelin of crackling light at a retreating marauder, while Gale was pinning Kelly to the wall and trying to skewer the hideously grinning woman with the leg of a stool. The third interloper was being held on the ground by the chakat's paws, and desperately emptying the magazine of his pistol into her belly. The fruitless shots slammed into the glittering barrier with no effect.

It dawned on him that this power of protection has something to do with him, but how or why escaped him. He was not allowed any more time to think about it as Elise stormed towards him and grabbed him by the scruff of his sweater. He looked past her to see Young Steven lying lifeless on the ground as Gale chased the cackling woman out of the front door of the bar.

"Let's go sparkles, let's go!" Elise snapped. The overwhelming strength of the young woman's grip was startling enough to the point that Cyrus could barely figure out a response before she had hauled him out the back door of The Standard. The strange, sticky creature had scuttled up onto her shoulders, and regarded Cyrus with quizzical, swiveling eyes. The girl led them to a corner looking out onto the street, and she slowly peered around it. A wash of clean bright light spilled across her lacerated neck as Elise eyed up the jeep.

"Elise..." Cyrus whispered. She held up a hand and shushed him violently. She couldn't hear any more signs of struggle, which was not comforting. Elise had been hoping that Gale and Kelly would keep each-other occupied for longer, but it appeared that she would have to make her move now. She tugged on her glimmering comrade again, and stormed towards the idling jeep.

"Get in. C'mon, let's go." Elise hissed, half shoving the mysterious man into the passenger seat. Greenstripes leaped from her shoulders and landed on the dashboard with a wet thump before sliding into the driver's seat. Cyrus watched with deep fascination as the gelatinous mollusk extended his arms and thorax onto the foot pedals and gearshift. The jeep revved, and began to move. Cyrus looked around in panic, and tugged on Elise's arm as she rummaged through the contents of the open-top trunk.

"Elise! What about Gale? I thought you said she could have-"

"I don't owe her shit! Greenstripes, floor it!" the vampire hissed. Cyrus looked up at her with a pleading expression, but found no trace of guilt or regret in the young woman's blazing red eyes. She yelped girlishly as the vehicle roared into motion, causing her to stumble backwards and smash into the tailgate. The jeep was beginning to pick up speed, and the edge of Ladrillo was closing widening ahead of them. Elise popped back up with a manic grin, and immediately took screamed as her shoulder opened into a tangle of mangled flesh.

She sank back to the bottom of the jeep, and Cyrus looked behind them with rising panic. Kelly the Skull, grinning viciously, was coming up behind the jeep on the growling dirtbike. An immense firearm was poised to fire another blast. The starry-eyed man looked down at the slimy mollusk, but the creature was too focused on keeping the vehicle in motion. More ramshackle buildings whipped past them in a blur as the engine roared louder.

Cyrus didn't know what to do.

But then he saw another shape flow out into the gravel strewn street. It was Gale. The chakat was running at a full tilt; her powerful, loping strides easily keeping pace with the sputtering dirtbike. She took an immense leap, and the sound of a thunderous roar was just audible over the competing engines. Gale came down on top of Kelly, dirtbike and all in a tremendous, rolling melee that devolved into a sparking dust cloud. Cyrus looked forlornly back at the violent brawl as Greenstripes kicked the jeep into a higher gear, and then down at the hissing, panting form of Elise clutching her shoulder.

The last of the Ladrillo adobe hovels slid past, leaving only the cold, desert night ahead of them...
 

Cyrus

Starhugger
Level 1
Joined
Sep 19, 2019
Messages
9
Essence
€2,703
Coin
₡3,000
Tokens
0
The jeep rumbled down the craggy road on squeaking suspension which rocked and jostled the trio with every bump.

The octopus, Greenstripes, had settled itself into a smear across Elise's lap once the vampire had crawled up into the driver's seat. Greenstripes kept one tentacle mushed into the gas pedal, one collected near the clutch, and another wrapped around the transmission stick, and Elise steered: though presently, she rested her cheek in her left hand as she watched the desert nightscape pass them by.

The sky was velvety and smooth against the fading blur of citylight that bled into the sky like blood in water, further and further behind them. The twinkling of early night stars glistened in the darkness above and in front of them: The sky stretched out in a wide expanse of furthering darkness that melted into mountain ridge and road in every direction. The great dark beyond them seemed even more vast by the pathetic weakness of the jeep’s headlights as they illuminated only the tracest few feet of road in front of them: Though there were streetlights along this highway, they had been disconnected from any kind of grid for a long, long time. Nobody paid for these roads, and the slender poles only served as support structures of winding desert shrubberies.

Cyrus sat in the passenger seat, dutifully silent through his misery. He watched as the lines of the road entered the short radius of the truck’s illumination, and swiftly vanished. Line after line.

He had been thinking about Gale, and how he had watched as the powerful cat took a spray of gunfire to her belly. Presently, he took a long look at the exposed mess of Elise’s shoulder, and frowned.

This world he had awoken to was riddled with inconsistencies, and his scientific mind didn't like it.

"Elise," Cyrus began slowly, many miles from the last fringes of Ladrillo. His throat was dry, and her name cracked a bit before it breathed past his lips.

"What." The girl snarled. She had no interest in anything the man had to say. Not yet.

"Why were those people chasing you?" He predictably asked.

"Really don't wanna talk about it, sparkles." She sneered, and drew one leg close to her chest. Greenstripes oozed from her lap, and twined his spare tentacles around her for purchase as he drove.

"Why did you take me with you?" was the next question, without hesitation.

This one took Elise off guard. She knew why, in her own private head: the amnesiac grape was a powerhouse of magic, plain and simple. It made sense to keep him nearby, at least for the time being.

Strategically speaking, of course.

There was also the little, good side of her that felt sorry for him, and she heaved a dramatic sigh and rubbed her forehead.

"You and me, we're not like all those people,” Elise growled as she flicked a loose hand in his direction.
“It makes sense to stick together. You don't know anyone else, and frankly, I don't know a lotta people either." She cut herself off, unwilling to reveal even the most basic of hints toward some semblance of trust that she was beginning to feel. She supposed she could chalk it up to the man's easygoing naivety, but there was something more.

Something for later. After she’d fed.

She was parched and starving: she had intended to start her night with an easy meal and a long, satisfying night of research. That plan had gone tits up, and now she was on a long road to who knows where, without a victim in sight. Her body felt dry and slow without the life-giving blood of another’s that she so desperately needed. Worse, she was injured: there was no way she could heal herself without blood in her belly.

“We gotta find a city to stop at,” Elise muttered to herself with furrowed eyebrows as she squinted ahead into the road. “I need to eat.”

“Vampire,” Cyrus remembered aloud, and Elise shot him a sidelong look.

“Yeah, that’s what I am, allright,” she leaned back into the gunshot-spattered leather bucket seat. “Do you remember what a vampire is?” She was beginning to feel too tired to be snarky, and she was curious as to just how helpless her magician friend was.

“I remember some things,” Cyrus hummed in his low, monotonous way. “Mmm… Blood, you need blood. That is what you eat.” He pressed his fingertips together, and nodded.

“I could let you,” he suddenly offered, and held out his wrist without fear. Elise’s eyes widened as she regarded the throbbing vein of his wrist artery beneath his purple skin. Tempting. Way too tempting. But what would it mean? What was he? Would it even work…?

Elise tore her gaze away and shoved the man’s arm, careful to only touch the clothed parts of him. “Nah. You burn me, remember?” She shivered as she thought about the graze of his fingertips across her hand, and the sizzling heat that racked her: it was a taste of sunlight, and the thought of sinking her fangs into that was not worth the immediate satisfaction of whetting her bloodlust.

Not yet, anyway.

Silence pulled between them, until Cyrus spoke.

“I will keep trying to turn down the gleaming bullshit, so that I can help you,” he referenced her words from earlier in the night as he looked at his hands. “It seems as though I have some power, and it feels new. Everything feels new, though, but this is newer.” He worked through his thoughts aloud before he turned to Elise. “I think I protected you and Gale.”

“You did,” she confirmed carefully, and Cyrus listened. When Elise noticed his eager eyes on her, she snarled, “What?”

“Tell me,” he pleaded, with a weak smile. “You have some understanding of me that I don’t. I want to understand.”

Elise recoiled from his warmth, and rolled her eyes with an annoyed sigh. Since when was she the expert? Still, it encouraged her to feel like she was the boss of their little pack, and so she relented into the satisfying superiority of her research and intellect.

“My Ephemeris spell lets me know everything magical about you, and what it tells me is that you have two souls inside of you. For some weird reason.” she supplemented with a shrug, and continued.

“The first soul is just run-of-the-mill mortal human. Basic bloodbag. Easy hunting. But the second is what I’m interested in. It’s way bigger than what you should be. I’ve never felt anything like it.” She sounded almost in awe. “Ephermis also tells me that you have some kind of protection on you, it’s probably damn impossible to hurt you, and apparently you can extend it to other people.”

“Like you and Gale,” Cyrus breathed.

“Like me and Gale,” Elise nodded, “Or anyone else you felt like. I don’t know if there’s a limit to this power. But I think it’s in both of our best interests if we figure it out, because it’s kind of awesome having a walking shield.”

“Whoever I feel like--Elise, I don’t know if I could just make it happen,” He began to stammer, and looked pained. He didn’t want to let her down.

“That is a concern,” Elise agreed with a tight hand to the steering wheel, but when she caught his look of sadness she growled. “Ugh, don’t look at me like that. I won’t ditch you. Not until we figure out what the hell is going on with you.”

It was a satisfactory commitment for both of them: For Cyrus, who appreciated and cherished Elise for reasons he didn’t understand yet, and for Elise, who now had a convenient justification to cork her loneliness with Cyrus’s company. He needed her. He would be helpless without her.

Good. Fine.
 

Elise

Wiki Curator, Esq.
Staff member
Joined
Jul 31, 2018
Messages
94
Essence
€13,353
Coin
₡7,287
Tokens
180
World
Erde Nona
Profile
Click Here
Except not really.

She may have been a supernatural creature of the night, but that didn't mean she wasn't grinding her teeth through waves of radiating pain. Most of her unnatural healing ability had gone to waste on the more minor injuries of the evening. Now, with her shoulder little more than a tangle of dark, sticky flesh and gray tendons, every bump in the desert robe caused her to suck a sharp breath through gritted teeth. In truth, she had no idea where they were going, or what they were looking for. So many of her belongings; dingy and eclectic as they were, had been fairly important. Now they were just extra rubbish lying among the rubble of another wasted shack.

Normally she would have been furious, and probably taken it out violently on the gently glowing wuss to her right. As it was, she was too distracted by agony and fatigue to muster anything more than general crabbiness.

They drove on through the darkness, for what Elise assumed to be several hours. It should have been well into midnight at this point, although the lack of moons around Mesa Roja made this harder to gauge than Erde Nona. The dumb, busted jeep had a broken dashboard too, so the gauges, clock and radio were all inoperable. There wasn't even a map in the glovebox! Just more stupid guns. There was no way of knowing how much fuel the vehicle had, or where they were.

The wizard glanced over at her companion, who was staring solemnly at the far outer horizon. There was no way she would be able to pull off one of her usual tricks to lure in a potential meal. He would either protest, or cock it up with his babyfaced innocence. No...the best way for her to satisfy the needs of her vampiric metabolism were to humiliate herself in a way that neither required, or invited, an audience. After deliberating for another twenty minutes, she pulled the jeep over with a snarl, yanked on the brake, and began stalking off into the darkness.

"Where are you going?" Cyrus asked slowly.

"Just...stay with the jeep. I'll be back in an hour or two." Elise shouted without turning around. Cyrus pouted slightly, but breathed a sigh of polite resignation. There was very little he could do to object or change the situation...and besides, it wasn't as if he was alone. The Elise's pet mollusk, introduced to him as Greenstripes, scuttled and slurped back onto the driver's seat in Elise's absence. He flashed a couple of earthy colors in Cyrus's direction, and stared at the enigmatic man with glassy, alien eyes. Cyrus reciprocated this stare in the diffuse glow from the headlights, and apparently lost track of time.

Greenstripes abruptly slithered back into his place at the pedals as Elise noisily lifted herself into the drivers seat again. She didn't bother greeting or acknowledging Cyrus, but the man could already see her shoulder was healing nicely. In fact, the girl's movements on the whole had become sharper and more fluid.

"Did you...find blood?" Cyrus inquired slowly. Elise clucked her tongue angrily, and switched the jeep on with a moderate effort. When it finally turned over, she let out a long sigh.

"Played dead for a while. Some...stuff showed up." she muttered, and left it at that. Cyrus nodded, and filled in the rest of the story himself.

"We need to find somewhere before morning. Probably about four more hours 'til daylight." Elise continued in her dusky mumble. Cyrus did his best to intuit her greater purpose of this, aside from basic need of shelter, but could not think of it. He tried to rummage through the haze of darkness clouding his memories, and managed to recall another snippet of vampire lore.

"Vampires...avoid the daylight. Yes?" Cyrus asked hopefully. Elise banged her head into the steering wheel for a moment, then gathered herself again.

"Y'know I just...really don't feel like talking about it." she said. Her tone was snippy and condescending, and certainly not inviting of further discussion.

The jeep rumbled off into the darkness, and just as the sky started turning from black to navy, they spotted a glimmer of light over the next hill...
 

Cyrus

Starhugger
Level 1
Joined
Sep 19, 2019
Messages
9
Essence
€2,703
Coin
₡3,000
Tokens
0
The city’s walls drew closer, and at a nudge to Greenstripes, the Jeep slowed to a crawl as it approached.

What they had assumed were city lights were in fact harsh, bright spotlights usually reserved for construction crews. That was, in fact, what they were: Positioned up beyond the walls, the lamps were pointed down into the city, illuminating the whole place in stark light. A pair of massive bulbs were pointed down toward the road, and as the Jeep approached, Elise twisted the headlamps off. It was probably a pointless gesture: if the city had any useful guards, they’d’ve spotted the twin headlamps from miles away. Still, it felt appropriate.

As the thick tires of the jeep crunched in the raw gravel and the vehicle squeaked to a halt several feet from the spotlight, Elise paused. She squinted up at the open gate: the walls seemed to be made from solid bricks of some sand-colored rock, and stretched around the entirety of the small city. Elise sat still in the car for a few moments, and her eyes roved the tops of the walls. As far as she could tell, there were no guards. No sentries. And certainly no gunfire to meet them.

Weird.

“This wasn’t here last time I came this way,” Elise said.

Cyrus reached next to his thigh, opened the car door, and took a step out.

“What are you doing?” Elise hissed, and grasped out for him too late. She fell across the passenger seat and snarled. “Where are you going?”

Cyrus had begun a slow and loping walk toward the gate. “These walls are amazing. You said it wasn’t here before...I wonder how long it took to build?” His voice had a trace of dreamy curiosity.

“Cyrus!” Elise whispered harshly, and prodded Greenstripes to accelerate. The jeep rocked forward with the sudden jolt of the Octopus’s tentacle, then slowed to a crawl as the vehicle caught up with the man.

“Cyrus, get in the damn car! You’re going to get us both killed.”

Elise slammed her foot on the brake before the Jeep entered the wide spotlight that was cut across the dirt road. Cyrus walked into it, and Elise flinched back…

Nothing happened.

He approached the wall and laid a hand upon it. “Wow. This is quite the work.” He remarked, and smiled at Elise.

Elise tore her fingers through her hair and wanted to scream, though she supposed Cyrus’s little jaunt answered at least one question. The place seemed abandoned.

That, or everyone was asleep.

After he was satisfied by his tactile exploration of materials, Cyrus lifted himself back into the jeep and shut the door. He frowned, and looked down at his knees with his fingers interlaced.

“What’s wrong now?” Elise grumbled as the jeep moved through the open city gates.

“I realized something. I realized that I wished I had...something. A pen and paper. I don’t know why, I just suddenly thought that I wanted to write this all down. I think I could write if I needed to.” He nodded in resolute clarity. Further, he reached his hand back into his pocket, and fished for the little square of plastic that he’d had earlier. The memory came flooding back, piecemeal: when he looked upon the identification card, he realized he could read the words.

“Cyrus...Fielding.” He stroked his thumb across the dominant line of text.

“Oh, good, you can read, too.” Elise’s voice dripped with mockery, but she was a little bit pleased.

Cyrus continued to read aloud, “3 A 14N 180K, 4th Level. Remus University of Mars. Doctorate in Magical Theory, Emphasis Interstellar Metaphysics. Male. Six Foot Six. One hundred and ninety pounds. Eye color: Brown. Hair color: Brown.” His thumb moved across the card, to the photo of who he presumed was himself. He watched it as they moved through circle after circle of harsh spotlights, slowly, silently through the street.

The man in the photo was pale-skinned, certainly not purple, with moles covering his neck and chest. He smiled tiredly from behind his glasses. His brown hair was tousled back and stringed through with grey here and there. A crest in a corner bore the shiny gold insignia of MARS SCIENTIFIC AUTHORITY 2204: FIRST CLASS.
Elise listened in practiced silence: It made sense. Interstellar metaphysics, though. What was that about?

At length, Cyrus spoke, and it was with a soft chuckle that he finally asked,

“Why am I purple?”
 

Elise

Wiki Curator, Esq.
Staff member
Joined
Jul 31, 2018
Messages
94
Essence
€13,353
Coin
₡7,287
Tokens
180
World
Erde Nona
Profile
Click Here
The only sensible response Elise could muster was a miserable scoff.

She rolled her shoulder experimentally, feeling the freshly knitted sinews and tendons pop in and out of place. A phantom of pain arced through her, but it was mostly easy to ignore. The eerie sense of looming danger was much stronger than the twinging sensations in her arm. As far as she could tell, the entire settlement was abandoned...but at the same time, there was the scent of concrete and freshly turned earth in the air. The architecture looked ancient, and the materials were primitive, but the angular corners of the doorways and clean lines along the walls indicated new construction.

A gigantic gate loomed up in front of them, built from new timber that was stained to look ancient. It reminded Elise of a movie set; a prop town where no one actually lived.

Something was off here, but they didn't have much time until sunrise. This looked to be as much a safe haven as any, and there had to be a way inside. The vampire idly rubbed and squished Greenstripes' flabby mantle, and then smirked. She had an idea.

"Let's go. Stay close..." Elise murmured to Cyrus, and began stalking down the length of the imposing walls. She may not have been a civil engineer, per se, but every city on Mesa Roja needed a way to get water. Trade shanties like Ladrillo usually got it trucked in, but a huge project like this probably had some form of irrigation or pumping set up. If they had found an aquifer, well, then this current plan was fucked. But standing around and guessing had never been her style. She glanced back to make sure her insurance cum problem-child was indeed following, and saw him stumbling along without a sense of urgency. It occurred to her that Cyrus probably couldn't see in the dark like she could, and they had left the stark illumination of the settlement lights. She sighed and swept back towards him.

A look of soft delight and mild surprise bloomed across Cyrus's face as Elise entered his dim radius of starry light.

"I could see your eyes approaching. They look like-"

"Later, dude! Hurry up!" Elise grunted, and resumed her now customary grip on the scruff of the enigma's grey turtleneck. A few minutes of walking delivered the pair to a conspicuously large ditch that had been freshly dug into the dusty clay and grit of Mesa Roja. It ran under the walls, through a small arched tunnel that could easily be traversed by someone crawling. Elise had already sent Greenstripes ahead to scout, and he reported that the far end of the opening didn't even have any sort of grating on it. He also noted that it was painfully dry. The whole situation was gradually becoming more and more surreal, and Elise was beginning to second-guess her choice of staying here for the night.

"Looks like it's hands and knees, sparkles." Elise said in a resigned voice. Cyrus hunkered own on all fours without complaint, and the two sallied through the irrigation tunnel with few words shared.

As they dusted themselves off on the far side, the under-construction nature of the silent town became even more apparent. They walked through darkened alleyways, with their footsteps echoing audibly off of the half-lit...houses? Structures? It was hard to know what to call the densely packed, shallow buildings since they were all, more or less, completely empty. Who even had the money or arrogance to build a giant, brand new but also ancient city right on top of a major desert road? As Cyrus and Elise neared the corner of a main thoroughfare, her question was partially answered.

"Someone's committed to a theme." Elise mumbled.

A long promenade, half paved with tessellated sandstone cobbles ran nearly half a mile from the nearest gate to a giant, garden-encrusted ziggurat. Unlike the city itself, which was strewn with forklifts, lumber piles, and loose power cords, the palace was immaculately finished. Whispering palms bent and swayed in the mild breeze, and warm braziers cast rippling light up the individual layers of the palace. Yeah, a completely narcissistic megalomaniac had decided to set up shop here. The abundance of Syntech labeled construction gear also indicated why the town's appearance had been so sudden. Anyone working on a purple budget could get big things done in short time.

"C'mon Cyrus, let's see if they have a crypt or burial yard or something..." Elise whispered, and turned back down the alley. She abruptly stopped, and instinctively turned around to see Cyrus standing still, smiling at her.

"Thank you." he said plainly. Elise tilted her head.

"Wha? Sure? You also sleep in tombs?" Elise chuckled with a confused grin. Cyrus shook his head slowly.

"Not that. You used my name. For you, this is kindness. Thank you." the glimmering man responded. Elise shot Cyrus an annoyed glance, but chose not to retort. He wasn't wrong. It was the fact that he was right that bothered her.

Fuck this toddler-man.
 
Top