Best Of

Premise: Lin has been having a hard time processing the loss of el'Jazira and her cultural heritage. Sib(Esry), Haern's Fang of Destruction and all-around death-obsessed Shaman, decides on a bold and frightening move.
Starring: Sibatti and @Lin
Content warning: gore
Context: Both characters can read thoughts, so they can see all of the thoughts in orchid. I like to use illusions for added ambience.


In a deep, gravelly voice, you impart to Lin,, "You are in el'Jazira."
Lin the Chaos Eater tells you,"My people are roaming the sands, looking for their bodies to return to. I have to send them off."
Lin the Chaos Eater tells you, "I'm exhausted."
In a deep, gravelly voice, you impart to Lin, "You should take some time to heal."
Lin the Chaos Eater tells you, "But the... shades, there are so many, I..."


< Sib portals to Lin >
Before a large, sandstone estate. (ruined village of El'Jazira) [desert village] (v4150)
Sunset falls upon the arid landscape, the reddish light filtering across the horizon. A pair of eunuchs stand post at either side of the gated entryway to the estate that looms over the northern horizon. Cacti line the sandstone walls of the estate, their segments hungrily upwards as they lean against it for support. Chiseled into the sandstone is a massive collection of various scenes of El'Jazira's proud culture - from tents and estates, to nobles and camels alike, all skewed together in one massive work of art. A low fence creates a barrier between the building and the path, preventing any unwanted solicitation. The windows are high up and small, allowing its inhabitants to see out but preventing nosy passersby from seeing anything they shouldn't. A pile of burnt bodies lies smouldering in the village center, little remaining of their former selves. Erupting from the ground and engulfed by a funnel of sand and stray earth, a lesser, clay statue of a wyrm thrusts upwards, an ebon egg clutched in its maw. Subjugating rebels under a heel, the monument of Elene Arcan presides here. Resting on the ground is a cube-shaped silver sigil. There are 2 promising chunk of stones here. Lin the Chaos Eater is here. She wields a pulsating handaxe of blade-edged sinews in her left hand and an arterial handaxe of blood-drenched bone in her right.
You see exits leading east, south, west, and in.

Sibatti:


Lin:


Lin greets you with an outstretched axe, halted in the middle of its swing, an arc aimed for your heart. Human consciousness wins out over sheer reflex. She lowers her grisly weapon, meeting you with apologetic eyes, panting for breath.

You have emoted: Sibatti barely even reacts to the swing, standing still in attire ill-suited for desert ruins. She tilts her head to the side, resting her cheek on a fist, looking at Lin with a thoughtful stare.

There are no shades to haunt Lin for the moment, but you can see their handiwork, the mutual dance between living and dead: crescent slices of black ash that spatter the brickwork, radiating from Lin at the center, as damning a collection of evidence as there ever was. She's beyond tired, her arms sagging, the weight of her own axes a burden.

Lin just thought:
[She's going to make Esry ask her to come home. But she can't say no.].

A dark shade appears near you.
A dark shade snarls angrily at you and moves in for the kill.
A dark shade turns its void-like gaze upon you, draining forth your will to live.

<<Cutting out combat spam but Lin hacks at the shades with her axes>>
-- Lin has slain a dark shade. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You have emoted: "These are the people?" Sibatti inquires mildly, watching over as Lin butchers and sends back another shade. Part of her has paled temporarily from its effects, but it is a short-lived malady.

Lin lays into the ghastly thing with joyless and neurotic calm, slash after slash after slash, chopping at it until it discorporates, leaving little more than a curved blade of ash that litters the ground. She doesn't move, doesn't speak until she's sure another won't come, and only then, she offers an unnerved, "Yeah."

-- Lin has slain a dark shade. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- Lin has slain a dark shade. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You have emoted: Sibatti shakes her head, watching another shade fall to Lin's handaxe. She goes to open her mouth to speak, and waits, no sound coming for a spell. Her eyes drift off from Lin, to the sand, the passing lizards and other creatures of the desert, and then back again at Lin. "You know you can't -do- this," she ventures.

"They just won't -die-," Lin says, through her gritted teeth, stumbling toward you, of a mind to keep a protective defense around your space. She breathes like the sigh of some too-old furnace.

-- Lin has slain a dark shade. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lin, the Chaos Eater exclaim, "Go away!"

Lin just thought:
"You... don't... TOUCH her...!"

You have emoted: There's a quiet exhale of breath that comes from Sibatti's direction, as she comes up behind Lin and wraps a forearm loosely around her shoulders from behind. "Come onnnn....." she coaxes, attempting to pull Lin into her.

Lin doesn't even try to fight you. With a massy bump of her shoulder into your chest, she virtually crumples into your arms. Her body feels like some earth-spat bezoar from a magma-bearing layer, hotter than the desert itself, straight to the core of her.

You say, in Azudim, "Mheribus."
You raise your lantern as a ghostly fog creeps in, its light illuminating the thick cloud. With a slow, careful sway of the beacon, the fog melds with your surroundings and disperses shortly afterward to reveal a different environ.
Ruined temple within a lush rainforest.
You find the weather around you imperceptible. A small cacao tree flourishes here, bearing many ripened cacao pods.
You see exits leading north, northeast, east, southeast, south, southwest, west, northwest, up, down, in, and out.

You have emoted: Even as the fog envelops and surrounds you both, Sibatti does not rush to move away; when it dissipates to reveal familiar surroundings, her arm is still around in a broad drape about Lin's clavicles. "Shh... drop them," she continues to coax in her all-too-familiar, toneless voice.

Out of the public eye, with a sky above her that few others get to see, Lin reveals how tired she really is, slumping bonelessly against you, the effort of staying on her feet making her legs shake. The axes hit the earth with an unseemly wet squelch, and slither, retracting like awful sea creatures exposed to too much sunlight. "I did... good to... day," she pants.

Lin ceases to wield a pulsating handaxe of blade-edged sinews in her left hand.
Lin ceases to wield an arterial handaxe of blood-drenched bone in her right hand.
Lin drops a pulsating handaxe of blade-edged sinews.
Lin drops an arterial handaxe of blood-drenched bone.

<<Moving>>

Lin follows you to the west.
Underneath the blood tree.
This natural tunnel terminates abruptly to the west. The soil bears a red tinge similar to the trees that grow above it, and several roots of the same hue push through from the ground above. The area is moist and damp, as the jungle above saturates the ground with near constant precipitation. A red root, larger than the others, pushes its way through the ceiling of earth.
You see a single exit leading east.

You have emoted: Sibatti keeps moving you along bodily, never quite carrying so much as urging. She keeps you held by the arm in some fashion, leading her through the earthen inner workings of the Temple of Thorns until you both arrive at a quiet but red-tinged area with blood-red roots pushing through the ceiling above. Only once you're both here does she finally release you.

Lin has the good sense to lean herself against a broad, red-tinged root. She's reached that threshold where her strength has given out, now that she isn't made to ration it. Your wife was never the most talkative person in the world, but she is downright mute in this place, unsure of its significance beyond the fact that it is intrinsically significant, questioning you with a speculative glance.

You have emoted: Your approach to lean against the root is a great coincidence - Sibatti joins you at your side, approaching with gentle intent. Compared to your battle-wearied state, she is full of vitality and energy, though it's greatly subdued as an effect of mood or else discipline. Her touch is just as gentle, promising all of the soft and sweet things it's capable of doing, fingers trailing over your skin and kimono both.

"I don't care if... if Muadi claims them, or if they are... sent to some black abyss where they belong," Lin says, marshaling the remains of her strength just to speak. The tells of her physical affection are all there, but in miniature, her touch expressed in simplistic pressure and the shifting of her weight, nothing overt. Yet she lets her head fall heavily on your shoulder. "I can't... bear them just... haunting the place."

You have emoted: "Shh." Sibatti's whisper is hasty and a tad sharp, authoritative. She meets your eyes for a brief moment, just enough to communicate her intent, and a rising elbow pushes your head back away from her shoulder. She won't seem to brook any further touching, and any attempt will meet a similar resistance.

Lin just thought:
[A suspicion of something. She can feel her heart starting to race - inasmuch as it can race, right now].

Lin plants her heavy palms upon the root, lifting her head of her own volition, meeting your gaze with weighty eyes and thick lashes. Without even seeming to know why she should, she presents you with the sum of her attention, acting like a well-trained dog who knows her mistress's cues. The cavern is filled with the soft sound of her panting.

You have emoted: You're not certain when, but at some point Sibatti has a familiar, curved bronze dagger in her possession, held lengthwise along her arm with the hilt pinned to her palm via her middle and ring fingers. "I'll relieve you of it all," she whispers, furtively, like a secret. Her face is close to yours, as if she had gone in for a kiss and changed her mind.

Lin had been building up an idea in her head, some prediction of the near future, and now if you were to take in the thrilled, nervous, lovesick look on her face, you'd know that she fancies herself correct. "Wait, wait--" she pleas, pushing her shoulders together tightly, just an instance of time away from pushing away outright. "Wait-- relieve me of it? Of what?"

You have emoted: "The stink of death." Sibatti's answer comes with a wrinkling of her nose and a barely-there hitch in her upper lip, looking through you with her response. Her gaze travels over you from head to foot, even at this close distance where the view isn't quite possible. "It's all over you, love."

"Don't take El'jazira from me," Lin begs, putting up a resistance so far from the actual act that it could not even be worthy of the name - as if your intentions were already a foregone conclusion. Her hands quiver at her sides, where they rest atop the great, fibrous root, her claws digging into her own palms. "Please..." her words are a quiet and anxious whisper. "Please treat me with care..."

You have emoted: Sibatti shakes her head back and forth very slowly, keeping her eyes locked onto yours. "Not that," she answers. "I wouldn't dare touch that... " She flips the dagger around in her hand, a safe distance away yet, and brings its tip to split down the center of some near-black, shriveled and spindly root. Her claw scrapes it out from its split innards, coming back with a dark paste which she brings up to your lip, close enough that you can smell the faint scent of dirt and pine.

Lin just thought:
"Brace yourself."

Lin can't seem to decide whether you're going to feed her the organic substance, or spread it upon her lips like strange survivalist makeup, staring endlessly at your coated hand. She's on a precipice in which her trust and fear are made to grapple with one another, but slowly, trust wins out, bidding her to open her mouth, letting her eyes fall shut.

You have emoted: Instantly, a smile claims Sibatti's lips, so strongly that you see it in her eyes, turned up along the outer corners and practically screaming praise at you. Her finger slips into your mouth, only going so far as to rub the black paste into your upper gumline, somewhere you'll be spared most of its taste.

Lin can't help make a noise: "Gghghrkhk," or something like that. Like an infant being made to eat something loathsome, she grimaces awfully around your hand, her shoulders pumped up around her ducking head, the texture and what little flavor she catches utterly repellant to her. Peeking through narrow-slitted eyes, she awaits your instruction with an incredibly perturbed face.

You conjure up the illusion to Lin's mind:
It doesn't hit right away, but over the next few minutes you'll sense it: a dullness that creeps through you, a deadening relaxation of the body. It only ever increases over the course of the next hour, not enough to keep you from standing but such that your skin and muscles feel numb.

You have emoted: "Shh...." Sibatti's guidance is more gentle, this time, and after her finger has swiped most of the substance off on your gums it will slip out, and she'll press her palm against your cheek lovingly. "I'm not going inside your head, love. This is all right here, just you and me. And ...." Her eyes flit upwards in quick movement.

You think:
He who feeds.

It's so simple: just a stroke of her cheek, and yet it's the key that unlocks Lin's capacity for acquiescence. Hinged on your every word, she begins to slump, remaining upright but bearing the majority of her weight upon the root where she half leans, half sits. Her limbs hang as if made to suspend venantium weights, even her head grown heavy as full-body relaxation forcibly smooths out the peaks and troughs in her nervous system. "What... would He ask of me...?"

You have emoted: "To purge," Sibatti responds very simply, her voice lilting artificially high. Her voice, her eyes, her body language all carry the heavy influence of her seductive mannerisms, something you might see utilized were you both at home in a certain mood. She'll hold your gaze in hers, palm stroking your cheek lovingly, and then you feel it: without fanfare, the push of her dagger's tip, held in her opposite hand, into your wrist - not far from a ligament from where you'd rip your axes from your very arms.

You conjure up the illusion to Lin's mind:
It should hurt - you know for a fact that it should - but it's so far away, right now. A pinch.

You think:
Let go, release, compost, be rich in decay.

It must be the strangest thing she's ever felt. Lin doesn't seem to realize what's happened at first. Absent of the pain, the other qualia involved with the puncture must paint the picture for her. The pinch, the cool of the blade in her flesh, the way its weight, coupled with the guidance of your fist, restrict the movement of her arm. She makes a breathy, astonished noise, something you typically only hear when you've entered her in a very different way, and gazes into your eyes with immeasurable nervousness, constantly seeking guidance and affirmation from you. "Ssshhhhhould I... rrrelax...?" she asks.

You have emoted: The dagger dips beneath the skin in a clean puncture, dark red blood spilling out readily and beginning to travel around the curve of your wrist. Methodically, as if she were gutting a beast for slaughter, Sibatti pulls the dagger in a straight line up along your forearm, navigating cleanly through a major artery passing through your elbow. Hitting it causes a greater, more violent spurt ejecting blood from your body in an alarming volume. She keeps her face close to yours, a breathy urging whispered against your lips. "Pray with me.."

You think:
Bleed your dark moon for Him. All things come from your life, all new things to grow.

There's a tremor beneath the surface of Lin's skin, an energy that is given no way to come to the forefront, stymied by drug-induced numbness, and the hypnotic qualities of your voice and behavior. Her claws have torn into the root upon which she rests, and her respiration comes out thick and syrupy, a slow bleating like a lamb being slaughtered. As her own blood slicks across her arm, softening its shape in a coat of visceral red, she whispers back, playing out something just shy of a kiss between you. "Help me... I... don't know what... to say..."

You have emoted: "Say all that I'm saying in the space of our minds," Sibatti murmurs, encouraging and sweet. "'Bleed my dark moon. Take from my life and grow anew. My decay is ripe, and lush. Take me as compost..." Her words are whispered prayers, spoken like loving promises against your lips. The dagger continues its journey up over your bicep, curving around and over the fatty tissue of your chest where it carves straight down and vertically slicing your belly. The spray from this methodic slicing through your flesh has a very un-methodic and random spray of blood that showers your partner entirely. Bright red splatter showers over the pale, ashen silk of her semi-sheer bodysuit and transforming its sense of sanctity and pureness into a visceral mark that she wears from neck to thigh.

You think:
Stop what you do. Drop. Bleed. Suspend.

"Bl- bleed my dark moon... take from m- my life... and gh-- ghhh--" You can take away Lin's pain, but you can't take away the discomfort she feels, being opened like a roast, the rapidly warming edge of the dagger tearing through her skin like flame chasing a trace of gunpowder. Her body reacts awfully to being cut like this, with strange tendrils and aberrant gashes that fly open as if their moorings had come undone, more and more the more you carve her. "G- g- grow a... new... My decay is ripe... and lllush... t- t- take me as... compost..." The entirety of her strength and will are devoted to staying put where she is, refusing to slump or recoil, as though she could survive being eviscerated if she could just maintain contact with your lips.

"Stop what... you do... drop. Bleed... sssss- s- susssspend..." Lin repeats, giving voice, feebly, to the words you beat into her mind like the tattoo of a war drum.

Lin just thought:
[She's losing control of her faculties, the thing she has that keeps her body together. She's losing blood. It occurs to her that Esry could kill her here, with just a little more pressure and a little more exuberance with that dagger. It's a cool and distant thing to think over, barely a scrap of fear.].

Lin just thought:
[Esry could kill her, if she wanted. She would accept that.].

You have emoted: Sibatti's hand slides from Lin's cheek, traveling down past chin and neck until it finds her chest where it will wrap around smoothly, supporting her at the center of her back. The vertical path of the bronze dagger twists, moving horizontal around the curve of your belly in a slow, gradual gutting of your trunk. It is a lot of blood, and the way she repositions herself seems to innately understand what this means. Her arm supports you, beginning to bend at the knees and sink into a crouch should you start to lose control. Still, she prays, as devoted as ever - though to you or some other entity is a mystery. "Stop what you are doing... drop deep. Disssssoollllllve into the earth. Ressssssst. Offer yourself to the void, to the vastness of all we do not know.."

You think:
You are moon and stars, you are the caves of the mother and the dreams of the father. Their vastness will make you wise.

You conjure up the illusion to Lin's mind:
Like some strange, late-onset poison, your body has gone completely numb. You feel nothing.

The blood has begun to well from Lin's lips, coming up with every breath she takes, clogging her vocal cords. "You are... mmmoon and... sttkk... ghhkk..." The next syllable she produces is a burst of red, a wet smacking noise as she begins to choke. Your instincts ring true here, for she has begun to sag, losing the strength and tone of her body, becoming an awkward, bloodstrewn weight in your arms. Even now her lips form the syllables, and what she can't express aloud, she repeats in her head. There is some kind of disturbance, her flesh distending where you cut her the worst, all-too-familiar nightmare shapes, spires of red flesh, always covered in teeth, disgorging from her open wounds. She is every bit as calm as a lamb, and never once blinks, never looks away from your eyes.

Lin just thought:
"-- and stars. You are the caves of the mother, and the dreams of the father. Their vastness... will make you wise..."

Lin just thought:
[She tries to clear her throat. She wants to speak. Wants to pray aloud and please her...].

You have emoted: Sibatti sinks with you, slowly, both of you descending to the floor of the temple together, her careful application of dagger removed for the time being and the instrument of destruction left to drop onto the blood-soaked floor alongside you. She cradles your slumping, bleeding form on both arms, the two of you similarly-colored for the first time in your lives: unified in the red lifeblood that's been let from your form. When you both gently arrive at the floor before the Blood Tree's roots, the Azudim mutters a prayer in the tongue of death, urging words into the surrounding environs which yield a tender growth of new life. Blades of grass stained red plump up beneath your body like a soft blanket, and the wild flora of her Shamanic magic blooms vivid oleander blossoms of white, red and pink. Each poisonous bloom follows the course of where your bloodletting soaked the ground, densing up in clusters that sputter out into sparser trails where the spill isn't quite so heavy.

You say, in Azudim, "From destruction, feed new life."

You think:
From destruction, feed new life.

Lin doesn't feel a thing, neither pain nor fear. Her eyes swim in yours, but she's barely there, the thread of her consciousness thinner than an eyelash. A profusion of fibrous viscera stretches and yawns from her open wounds, soaring over your arms and reaching into the earth, so that it becomes impossible to tell where the abnatural growth begins and her body ends. Just as it had begun to speed into a frantic pace, her breath has slowed to a crawl, her heart deprived of its fuel, tiring and beginning to fail. Again she chokes, gazing tenderly into your eyes, coughing up a fresh bloodspurt, and croaks, weakly: "Ffffrom d- de- destruction... feed n- nnnew life...!"

Lin just thought:
"Was I pleasing to You? Did I take and sanctify life in equal measure? Did I turn the wheel of the Rhythm, or did I steal from it? Will You take me now? Is this..."

Lin just thought:
"... is this it?"

You have emoted: It's surely a striking image - Sibatti cradling Lin's unraveling body as if the two were sharing a romantic moment, viscera and flowers side by side in a picturesque hybrid of gruesome and beautiful. "Beautiful...." she sighs in a noteless whisper, stroking her fingertips peacefully over Lin's face, tender strokes that could not possibly have come from the same hand that's just split you open down the middle. "The purity of your purge is .. breathtaking, my love."

Spreading your hands out with your palms open, you beseech the plant-life around you to surge at your behest. A tingling sensation erupts in your fingertips in response and verdant greenery overtakes your surroundings.

You will the latent natural energy of the area to manifest as you draw upon its regenerative powers. A verdant light suffuses itself across the overgrowth, effusing a regenerative glow.

The healing energy fades away once more as the verdant glow subsides.

Lin just thought:
[Everything she perceives, all that she hears, is coming to her from the end of a long corridor. Down at its terminus she is cradled in blackness, floating atop the marshy waters of death, the closest she's ever been without submerging.].

Lin simply cannot move. She lacks the strength to do so much as touch you, helpless to anything but to lie there, her body finding seemingly no end of blood to dump slowly into the earth beneath her. Her healing faculties should have kicked in long ago, would never have let her come here, but she has not permitted it, giving it up in her surrender to you. "I... ffffeel... q- quiet..." she subvocalizes, lacking the air to even whisper.

You have emoted: Sibatti's will manifests in the form of the overgrown plantlife, its verdant energies keeps you from succumbing the rest of the way. "Remember .. this peace.. " she murmurs, her voice as soothing as a lullaby. "Imagine all of that hate escaping through your veins, and feeding this earth... feeding He who loves you." She touches your hair, replacing it wherever it's fallen out of place. She dotes on you with exquisite tenderness and care, and the healing energies she ushers in from the natural life cradling your form and working, gradually, to repair it.

You say, in Fae, "I love you."

It's a slow and ecological process, as Lin's body begins to put itself back together, acting under your guidance, seeming to remind itself how it was formed. Those alien splits in her flesh, the fibrous constructs of veins and muscle and teeth, retract back into her skin, leaving only the bloodsoaked blooms, an ersatz garden of violence in which she gently rests. Her eyes have fallen shut. "I love you," she whispers, rapidly losing consciousness as her energy is rationed, spent on the task of mending and reknitting her body.

You have emoted: While you rest, Sibatti has shifted from worshipful pilgrim to healer, working alongside the repairing of Lin's flesh with the supplemental, healing energies of her nature magic. In the absence of spoken and unspoken prayer, of praise and chanting and ritualistic mutterings, she is now entirely and silently focused on safeguarding Lin's form as some tireless guard, making no move from her side nor taking any rest for herself. Should you stir or briefly wake for any reason, you will see her bloodsoaked silk, hair, and skin hovering over you and never more than an arm's length away. Throughout the day, the subsequent night, and however many more days it takes, she is your eternal and tireless watcher.