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Dreams of Love and Betrayal

Gusts of crimson wind.
Wails shattering crimson ice.
It is so immense, all that is outside.
So much... grief.

But they are not outside. They are inside. Selina and Vorpal, the Dark and Pale Angels. They are inside some great structure, they can feel it, one that echoes untold grief... and yet, they truly re in a small, almost claustrophobic room. Inside a pond of blood, they open their eyes.

The pond is shaped like a flame, and all around it, candles of ghost-flame lit the room in a hundred intricate chandeliers made of bones. As the Angel's eyes open, they see themselves immersed in the blood... elaborate collars on their necks. White and Black, each with intricate runes containing their stories.

Linked to one another's necks by the same chain, both laying down, both naked.

Eyes open, they see in the darkness of the small room... and where their mistress sits, in a throne of crimson crystals, watching them as one would a work of art...

Vorpal: Vorpal first realizes something is wrong at the sensation of the sickening warmth covering her entire being - it feels like water of comfortable temperature at first, but there is some terrible, terrible thickness about the stuff. It wraps itself around their nubile bodies like mud, penetrating every pore and filling it with filth. Frowning, she turns her gaze to see the Dark Angel lounging in the same crimson pool alongside with her. At any other time, at any other place, she might find the sight of her naked beauty impossible to resist, but not here, not now. The macaberity of their surroundings draws away everything that is beautiful about them.

Her first reflex is to pull herself up, of course, and this she attempts right away. The collar suddenly scrapes at her neck, however, and the chain snaps taut. She yelps, snarls, attempts to fight the pull, yet the chain does not yield. Somewhere in that chain, there is a single link that refuses to rise above the surface of the pool. That one link acts as a pulley, and when the Pale Angel attemps to stand up from the blood, she only succeeds at yanking the Dark Angel down into the crimson depths...

Selina de Windia: Selina's eyes gradually focus, after unfocusing in the dream she was in before...odd. Everything's red. Then she realizes, she's laying in blood. Next to the Pale Angel, which a nervous flicker of her eyes indicates. Normally, she would spend more than a brief second appraising that fact, but she is immersed in blood. Confined.

And Windians don't generally enjoy being confined.

As Vorpal tries to get out, she somehow gets pushed deeper into the red mess, and fight or flight surfaces in her mind. Selina growls, undertones of fear easily marked as she pushes herself off of something, anything, the frame or the bottom of the pond, to break the surface of that confinement. All the while glaring murder at the Lover.

Vorpal: And as the Dark Angel pushes herself free from the blood, she also draws up the manacle that joins them together. The pulley link strains against the surface of blood, the Pale Angel's portion of the chain rattling as it streaks back down into the pool to accommodate Selina's movement. Vorpal lets out a muffled gasp as the collar drags her down.

This is no ordinary, life-giving blood Vorpal sometimes indulges herself in. She realizes it the moment she plummets under the surface, the crimson fluid closing up over her head. She clamps her mouth shut immediately, careful to not let a single drop of the stuff to ooze through her lips. This blood is made of poison.

She clamps her bare foot against the pool's bottom again and - fighting down the urge to panic - attempts to rise again, slowly this time. They are imprisoned here, just under the surface. The chain is too short for both of them stand. By attempting to flee to forcibly, one will only end up making the other drown.

She swallows, her mouth dry, her gaze betraying the serpent of terror coiling around her insides. The blood embracing them is sticky, sickly, revolting... and yet, they have to endure it, for the sake of each other.

Selina de Windia: Selina's glare continues unabated, terror and fury warring in her eyes as she looks at the Lover. Somehow, she forces the former down, understanding through some odd comprehension why the Pale Angel has stopped struggling.

Instead, now, she attempts to reach her power. The power of wind and void, the blast away this stuff around them. In a dream, nothing is sure, but she tries anyway.

And to hurl it at that overly self-assured harlot watching them drown in it.

Lover Clad in the Raiment of Tears: The blast goes in her direction.... and then explodes, a few inches from her, into a group of black kittens. They fall over the Lover, who pets them absent-mindedly. It is like she had just forgotten Selina and Vorpal were there in front of her.

Vorpal: Her nose just above the surface of the blood now, white wisps of her hair floating all round her, she glares at the situation darkly, crimson eyes shining above crimson fluid.

Calm down... calm down... calm down...

She has difficulties deciding whether she is telling it to herself or to Selina beside her. Vorpal has been humiliated before in front of the Lover, but this is the first time it is done alongside with the Dark Angel. The knowledge simmers within her like a hot coal of shame.

Selina de Windia: Selina stops, frustrated by that, the hot tang of fury surging through her impotently. Of course she wouldn't be bothered.

How dare she do this to my dreams.

She could attempt to wrest control of it away from the dead woman...but that would be as futile as what she just tried, if not more so.

So Selina waits.

Lover Clad in the Raiment of Tears: The Blood touches their skins, now that they stop.... like a massage. Relaxing... almost like petting them. Exactly like, when one realises it has the same rhytm as the Lover's petting of her newfound kittens. As that happens, the temperature of the blood becomes so comfortable... still dirty, clinging to them, but... like Red Ice, it is a dirt that feels so good.

The reward for understanding they should stop struggling.
Their chain become smaller, tightening the angels together...

And finally, the Lover looks at them again, together with each and every one of the kittens, a myriad of shining eyes taking on their sight. "How have you been, my sweets?"

Selina de Windia: "Very good, Mistress." Selina says in a perfectly voiced tone of a schoolgirl to the head teacher, feeling that now good filth flowing in her secret places.

Vorpal: "Indeed", Vorpal adds with a low voice, raising her face up from the blood just far enough to speak. She says nothing else - her will is too focused in keeping her body still and relaxed. Something about that blood, something about the way it now laps comfortingly against her bare shoulders makes her want to climb up from the pool all the more desperately.

Lover Clad in the Raiment of Tears: "Good, good." She nods, "Do you have anything to tell me?"

The candles fire in a different way, now... more relaxing...
And yet, there is a threat there. Wrapped in velvet...

"Any progress in your orders?"

Selina de Windia: "Which ones?" Selina ventures tamely, wanting to establish a way to dicker around the question of Alex for as long as possible.

Lover Clad in the Raiment of Tears: "Which would you rather address first, hmmmm?"

Vorpal: "Your standing orders", Vorpal says, her voice barely more than a growl. "'Kill them all. The Bishop is down another Abyssal Exalted."

Selina de Windia: "Your missing deathknight will be found soon enough." Selina adds in that same tone she used before. "But right now repulsing the Bishop is occupying most of our efforts."

Lover Clad in the Raiment of Tears: "And you have done well at that. I heard you two have beaten the opponent's Pale Angel. And I still have mine. That is certainly a victory for us." She nods, and all the kittens nod with her. "And what else do we have? You had to corrupt a certain boy... to bring him to Red Ice. You have not, Dark Angel... and the Pale Angel has fallen from an untouched General to a girlfriend... and after I tell her not to fall in love, tell her stories to prevent it, she has fallen even deeper..." She shakes her head... giggling, almost.

Selina de Windia: Selina's gaze sharpens. "I tried, recently. And alas, it failed." She nods, blood pooling around her face moving as she does, ripples expanding away from her. "Do you want to know why it did?" Her tone now is quite curious.

Vorpal: Corrupt... Alex?

Slowly, oh so slowly does her gaze begin to slide away from the Lover, dragged as if by an unseen cord closer and closer towards the Dark Angel's profile.

Corrupt him? You tried to corrupt him?

Her eyes widen, the gaze in them hot and predatory... and angry.

You slut.

You fucking little slut.

Lover Clad in the Raiment of Tears: The Lover simply smiles. "Do tell. Our Pale Angel would certainly like to hear..."

Vorpal: No, I don't.

Deep down, of course, she knows this is a lie. She wants to hear it, she wants to see what exactly has been happening between the Dark Angel and the White Prince, she wants to witness the truth even if her worst fear might prove to be reality, even if it might mean that her world has to come tumbling down.

Unnoticed, her hand begins to move in the blood, gliding slowly and carefully towards the chain.

Selina de Windia: "Because I told him, before I lay with him, what an empty road to Oblivion our path is." Selina says with a razored grin, tone modulating with an undertone of another voice, a voice more serene. "I told him about the pain and futility and suffering that we, you, and our poor dead master endures." Her pupils slit to lines. "And then I fucked him so well that it will be hard to surpass my performance, by most any corrupter I know of."

"I told him he would feel no comforting darkness, asked him if he would turn for answers while I mounted him. And then I told him there are none. That the call of Oblivion is the call of the dead." Her voice is triumphant, sneering.

Vorpal: Vorpal's hand curls around the chain.
Every word that passes Selina's lips is like another blood-red coal on the freezing flame of hatred that chills her soul. The Dark Angel's derisive tone of voice grates in her ears like hot sand. The fact that Selina's scorn is aimed at the Lover matters little. Vorpal only hears the gloating in her tone, the words of boasting so typical for the bratty little bitch, the selfish slut, the heartless whore.

Vorpal's heard turns to cold stone then. "Then die."

She yanks the chain up.

Hard.

With all of her inhuman might. Hard enough to make the links scream in agony. Hard enough snap a mortal's neck like a brittle stick. She yanks the chain up and pulls the Dark Angel down. She plunges under the surface and holds her there. Her arm straining to hold the chain tight, she watches the other deathknight suffer with burning eyes, unmoving, unspeaking, like a frozen statue of ice.

Selina de Windia: traitor

traitor

traitor

traitor

traitor

traitor

traitor

traitor

traitor traitor traitor traitor traitor traitor traitor traitor traitor

Comes malevolent whispers from every shadow in their side of the room. Whether they are saying that at Vorpal or the Lover, who can say? Perhaps it is both.

spurned me

spurned me

spurned me

spurned me

spurned me

turn all to ash

Selina's hands, from the bottom of the tank, reach up, and she pulls on her end of the chain, strength almost as great as the Pale Angel's, bracing herself better, muscles tightening like steel cords as she tries to bring herself back. Or is it pull Vorpal down instead?

not kill me yet

spit on your schemes

Vorpal: "I loved him", Vorpal snarls over the splash of blood and the jingle of chain. She grabs her own end of the manacle with her other hand, her arms tensing, hard, unyielding, cold like those of a marble goddess. "I loved him, and I loved you, too."

Yank.

"I wanted to hold you both."

Jingle.

"I wanted to love you both."

Splash.

"I thought you loved me, too. I thought you'd love me enough to let him stay pure for me. You could have everything else about me, but not that. Not that one little thing."

Suffering.

"But you couldn't let me have even that, did you? You just had to have your own way. Bitch. You killed him. You killed yourself."

You bloody little slut.

"So just die already. Traitor."

Selina de Windia: Selina lets a little of her breath out into that blood. Just a whisper. And it turns less red, a bit of blackness entering it. Selina's contempt, tainting even that. And the shadows whisper, as the pull on Selina's side of the chain increases steadily. Vorpal begins to sink into the muck just as Selina did.

fool

fool

fool

fool

you are a wretched, weak thing

never could do what needed to be done

drown with me, traitor

I can die a thousand times, Sati, and each time I shall rise, as strong as before

Vorpal: And every time, I shall be the one to strike you down, Moranine.

Without warning, she lets go of the chain. Fearlessly she plunges head-first down into the blackening blood. Her hands smack around the Dark Angel's throat, her fingers clenching together, muscles in her arms tensing beyond the hardness of steel.

Because every single time, you will betray me.

She yanks the little bitch down, to drive her face and the poisonous tongue into the bottom of the pool.

Every. Single. Time.

Lover Clad in the Raiment of Tears: "My sweet, sweet girls." The Lover finally speaks, getting up from her throne, and walking into the water, effortlessly moving Vorpal and Selina up, with gentle touches. She seems like a coreographer more than anything, applying no force... but moving them all the same. "You have to admit this has gone a little too far."

"I believed you would work out your differences... but you are turning to past lives, now."

She shakes her head, "And you seem to be losing from sight what is most important."

Vorpal: "Mind your own business, you tit-fondling slut! " Vorpal shrieks up to the Lover, blood sputtering from her mouth with every word. "He was mine! I told you he was mine! "

Selina de Windia: Selina's expression is blank as she rises out of the water, Vorpal's hands frozen on her throat, one of her own frozen in forcing them off, the other hand palm out, right in the Pale Angel's face. For an obvious reason.

"What is most important." She says furiously. "Is that I spared this ungrateful bitch the trouble of dirtying herself, I took that upon myself so she would not have to. And then I told him not to submit to you."

She swings her gaze to Vorpal, lowers her hand. "YOU ARE TOO SELFISH AND BLIND TO ALL BUT YOURSELF TO SEE THIS. I SHOULD HAVE KILLED YOU THE MOMENT WE MET TO REMOVE YOUR RANK STUPIDITY AND DENIAL FROM THIS WORLD. " She screams in the Pale Angel's face.

Lover Clad in the Raiment of Tears: "... and he is." The Lover's hand touches the Pale Angel's face tenderly. "Has he gone away?"

"Do you really believe the Dark Angel would have kept to herself? Believing she is in the second place on your heart as she is?" The Lover's hands touch the Dark Angel's face, her finger over the Dark Angel's lips to silence her "No. She would not. But now you know."

"You did just right. You all did." She smiles. "You should be proud."

Selina de Windia: Pupils slit to the thinnest lines, rage blazing from their depths, her eyes ask what her lips currently cannot.

What?

Vorpal: The Lover's words barely penetrate the dizzying red haze in her mind, but that last sentence is like a burning brand into her thoughts. She looks up to the Deathlord, her eyes redder than ever, filled with hatred, anger and... startled fear.

What?

Lover Clad in the Raiment of Tears: They look at her with anger and doubt.

She smiles.

With delicate movements, she sits on the edge of the pool, and once again watches her little angels. Now that they are... calmer. “There is a saying, my angels, that the best way to know how brave a man is, is to place a blade on his hand, and send him to war. But that is not entirely true. That is the best way for the man to know how brave he is himself, you see.” She leans her face to the side, supporting it by her fingers, all the blood dripping away from her, leaving her clean.

“And now you two know.”

Her smile is that of a spider. Did she knew what Selina would do?
Did she know what Vorpal would do?
Did she knew all along?

Were all of her orders...

Just...

Selina de Windia: Selina pauses, frozen in horrified surprise for a moment...then her eyes narrow at the Lover, pupils still slit. "....so I did that for nothing?"

Her voice is very irritated. Not quite angry like it was before, though. "Shit like this is why I ran away."

Vorpal: They make a very terrible kind of sense, the Lover's words. Vorpal realizes this even through the mindless anger throbbing somewhere in her temples. Even though the effort almost makes her heart burst, she swallows and attempts to push down her betrayed hurting, to focus on what the Deathlord is saying.

"No", she states after staring into emptiness, speaking with a colorless voice. "It was to make me hate you."

Lover Clad in the Raiment of Tears: "But my dear... what did you do? You did nothing for me. You mounted him, as you spoke so pridefully, to tell him to not be corrupted. If I truly wanted him so, I would have you decomissioned from the North, and pehaps, killed. But no. You did what you would do at any rate, my dear Dark Angel. I just made sure you understood all it meant. As I did with the Pale Angel." Her eyes close to slits as she giggles softly, the candles on the room wavering... "You will understand when you are older, pehaps. Like my dear Pale General."

Selina de Windia: "You'd kill me for some wet behind the ears pup?" Selina growls, wrenching the Pale Angel's hands off of her throat, feeling the marks there. Wonderful, if they are there when she wakes up, she's going to mark Vorpal up a bit for that. "Did I not say that no whelp can replace me?"

"Do not ever forget that I was not tempted on the eve of my death." She snarls, biting off the last word. "I understand plenty already."

Vorpal: Vorpal's eyes narrow, the anger surging to the surface once again. "I never intended to replace you with him", she hisses in return. "Your little ego just couldn't bear to think that there would be room for another, too."

"So!" the Pale Angel snaps then, glaring up at the Lover's alluring face. "If you're done feeding you sick sense of theatretics already, mistress, tell us your next orders! Your manner of leadership does not inspire loyalty."

Selina de Windia: Selina glares balefully at Vorpal. "Did you not hear my reasons? Or is your skull thick white bone? I can forgive you for that outburst, however, your stupidity requires a response:"

"What you intended is meaningless, you foolish little girl. What you did was spurn me and make me a second choice every time." Selina snaps. "I was there first, and yet when the choice came up, you were always at his side. Do you think that would not grate on me? You are the most idiotic little fool I have ever met in that. Do you have even the faintest idea of how people work? Too much time spent yelling at soldiers and brooding in isolation to learn how real people work? Do you think he is not jealous of me when you try to split yourself equally?"

Vorpal: "Then", her wounded heart speaks with her tongue, "I'll give nothing to either of you."

"That, too, was your plan, wasn't it?" Vorpal then spits up at the Lover. "To make me as cold on the inside as I am on the outside. Congratulations. It's working."

Lover Clad in the Raiment of Tears: "I tried to inspire loyalty on the Dark Angel long ago, my Pale Angel. Alas, it was not to be." She shakes her head, sadly, "As you can see, her response to my orders is to deride them, and do something else. I have always played it straight with you, my Pale Angel. I told you the absolute truth. The Dark Angel..."

"I had to act... differently... with her." She points at the Dark Angel, amused. "And my only plan with you, Pale Angel... was to make you see the truth."

Selina de Windia: "I carry out your orders when they are reasonable, Mistress." Selina says with a wounded tone. "And your truth is meaningless and empty. Just like the Void we serve."

Vorpal: Deep down inside, of course, she knows they are right. Both of them. The deathlord and the Dark Angel, their words hold a ring of truth to them that the Pale Angel cannot ignore. Even when her conscious mind, the selfish, imperfect part of her, battles hard against acknowledging it, that little part of her, that irritatingly honest, merciless part that came into being only a few years ago, is nodding its imaginary head.

Those stories. She has read too many of those romantic stories, their characters impossibly virtuous and unrealistic. Even if she has not consciously thought of it so, those stories had colored her view of her loved ones, of what she could expect of them and what not. Even when she had pretended to be the cynical mercenary in a harsh and cruel world, one whose eyes could watch slaughter and rape without blinking, one part of her mind had always remained innocent like that of a little girl.

"Enough of your excuses, both of you", she finally snarls, allowing her head to hang down, her crimson-soaked hair hanging limp and heavy over her face. "Your orders, mistress, so that we can get back to sleep."

Selina de Windia: If you will not stay, then die.

There is no withdrawal from my heart.

She remembers the other loves she had. And she remembers what she did to them, when, inevitably, they spurned her. Every last one of them.

You will live there in it, or I will devour you and keep you there forever.

So much blood, on her hands. Slippery with the blood of love. Love betrayed. Betrayal paid with betrayal. She remembers laughing and crying at the same time.

The old days never left...they just...changed.

Lover Clad in the Raiment of Tears: "My orders are simple. Continue the good work. Form a Circle. Do what you have been doing. Destroy your enemies. No other orders or punishments will apply." She says, the fires of the candles going out... "When you are all done, you, and all your companions shall come to Red Ice. That is the only true order I will leave you with. This, is a truth. Not coming is not an option."

She lowers her face, then, her veil seeming to hide it. "That is all."

"Until we see one another in flesh again, I will no longer visit your dreams."

"Is tere anything you would wish to ask before we part?"

Chibi-Vorpy: ...fuck U!

Selina de Windia: After so long of not being visited in her dreams by the Lover, for years and years, it feels odd to be alone like that, again. Half-way. It would not feel odd if she was in Nexus, doing what she normally does.

"Why will you no longer visit our dreams?"

"And," She adds. "You know much of me, yes? You have watched me over the years, I take it."

"Then you know what I do to my loves who betray me. Who leave me. Who spurn me." She looks directly at the Lover.

"I must annihilate her like all the others. Till only ash is left, till the only memory of her is within me."

Vorpal: Vorpal has been staring at Selina for some time now. It is as if her red eyes can read the thoughts passing through the Dark Angel's mind, witness the bleak darkness within. She expects the words when Selina finally speaks them aloud. In fact, she can almost recite them at the exact same time as they pass through the Dark Angel's lips.

"There is difference between me and your other 'loves', Selina", she says, with the sort of calmness only the crushing of the heart and the destruction of all the emotions within can cause. "I've always been the one to strike your folly down."

Lover Clad in the Raiment of Tears: "Because, all the orders have been given." She gets up from where she sits, walking towards the Angels... touching the Dark Angel's face once again. "You will destroy your enemies, you will cultivate your allies... and when you return to Red Ice, you will be my favorites, and I will be in your dreams again. If not.... I do not want to see much more of you before I have another take your place."

"And that... is something it is for you and the Pale Angel to work out, my sweet. No for me."

"Will you kill this love of yours'?"

Selina de Windia: "She has renounced me." Selina says flatly. Not looking at Vorpal. "And I have not gone through hell to be renounced. To have my heart trifled with. Or to see them go on to new happiness while I lie in despair."

Vorpal: We won't.

She knows it a cold and crystal-clear surety, but does not say it aloud. How could they go on the way they had before, now that she knows he had willingly cheated on her, had stained himself with that... that woman?

We won't.

"Thinking only of yourself as always, little bitch", she chuckles, darkly, with a strange tremor that can only barely be described as sanity. "That's why your loves never last. Because you always destroy the whole thing yourself. No-one wants to be with you when they learn what kind of a little, miserable piece of filth you are. You stained him, too. Don't think I'll be touching him again."

"You yearn for love, but in your thirst, you drink so much that you always make the well run dry. And you never realize that you're the source of that mud in the bottom."

"You, you, you."

"Everything always has to be about you, you, you..."

"You are a pitiful little idiot, Moranine..."

"A pitiful little idiot."

Selina de Windia: "You know nothing of me." Selina says looking at the other Abyssal, finally. "And you never bothered to learn anything. Which is why I am looking at a dead woman now. You will not go on to Bastian, to Cael, to whatever you call him. Or any other. You end here, Pale Angel. I am mightier than you."

Vorpal: "You said that the last time, too", Vorpal shakes her head, slowly, resolutely. "It didn't help you."

Selina de Windia: "I did not." Selina states slowly, as if this is trying her patience. "You must be confusing me with someone else. Then, I asked you why. Even though I knew the answer. Why you could not trust me. And when I lay dying, I looked away, because I couldn't bear the shame of having failed like that."

"But you never could be bothered to understand me. It is easy to run, no? I was a pitiful idiot, yes. I was a pitiful idiot to expect understanding out of you, again."

• And the flames begin to go out...
  
  "I am sure you girls will settle this. After all..."
  "You are two sides of the same coin."
  The last candle goes out.
  And the last thing the angels see is her smile, her eyes.
  And their own fury.

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