ADanceOfAngels/FirstQuotes
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The Quotables of the VERY FIRST MOVEMENT!
"Danger need only go so far as perception to be enjoyable, Alex," he smiles at the prince "Mmm... there are women you'll meet whose voice and nature make it seem as though they would eat you alive and make you savor every moment of it..." There is a glance towards Selina as he speaks, deliberate and gauging, yet he makes no other implications towards her. "These, you'll find too, often enjoy being prey as much as predator and if you ever need violence for your thrills, seek it from them."
"Then there are those like miss Lilth," a nod of his head and a teasing smile. "Who are frightening because you can never be certain if their smile means they are mildly irritated or if they are envisioning ripping out your spine and bludgeoning you to death with it."
- Domiel Winterwing, on Vorpal taking a sword to dinner and killing a wall with it
"Why the bludgeon part?" Vorpal asks, and although she seems outwardly nonplussed at Gasper's words, in the inside she is maintaining a careful control over her face, to keep her lips from curling upwards. "I usually just leave them to wither - it lasts longer that way."
- Vorpy’s Reply
"Simple truth in that, Alex darling: Abyssal women are bitchy. We love picking at other people, and each other. It's like our moonblood is on all month." She chuckles, looking at the rest of them for a moment, then stops. "And people like the Vestal? Well, they're freaks."
- Selina, and truer words were never spoken
The Hierophant gestures, and at his gesture the two sacks of Essence around him cross over to the world of flesh, gathering bodies of Essence to appear as Blood-Soaked, carnivorous Apes. "In my care to be diplomatic, I have been to gentle on my actions. I have turned the other cheek TOO OFTEN today. Murder and horror are HOLY things, and I have not been devout enough. We must have FAITH in horror, my creatures. It elevates us. Even as we posses a spark of dreaded life in us, when we destroy for our master, we are cleansed. The Shining One loves us best when we kill everything we see. Kill kill kill kill KILL! KILLING is our PRAYER."
His weapon, Nether Serpent, points to the beautiful albino as it breaks as a proper Serpent-Sting Staff,
"Pale Angel...?"
"Let us pray."
- The Hierophant Clad in the Skin of Deceivers. Fanaticism has never been so pure.
And suddenly... it ends.
The Nemessaries all fallen, the monks all fallen, their leader, the Blade, fallen.
For a moment, all is silence, for a moment, time stops. Adrenaline cools down.
And then... inside the Deathknights...
Inside your minds... inside your souls... inside your very virtues and desires... they laugh! A knot on your stomach, on your throat, on your eyes and on your soul. Oblivion pours forth from your hearts and purrs obcenities on your ear. They laugh at you, at your wants and desires. They show how it is nothing to them. Nothing compared to their own desires, those that guide your fates, that caress your true names and and souls.
Inside Vorpal’s heart, the lovers wither and die, convulsing sickly for an eternity, because she dared to look upon them. To admire them. To dream of them. Her attention and her love was their undoing, and all she can do is watch as these sweet figures burn under the oblivion that washes from her...
Inside Selina’s heart, she sees her child, hugs him tightly... and sees as her love burns his skin, as her feathers burn his soul, sees as he crumbles to ash and dust on her hands... just like the images of her family, the blood on her hands, the blood of them all on her hands...
And so, the laugh is gone, echoing hollowy on your souls, leaving only the barreness of your wombs and souls and the pointlessness of your desires now... as you are servants of Oblivion. Tools for the ultimate death, shaped as the women you once were, and no more.
- Resonance is happy family fun!
Moving off from the group, Selina makes her way down the cobblestone streets of the capital's noble district, thinking to herself of times long past.
Too long past.
When she lived here, when she learned here, when Windia was still to be her city. No more. Not since her abominable acts.
Who rules it now, the Durants?
We shall see.
She passes her old manse, stopped for a few minutes to look on it before continuing, remembering the days before any of it came to pass, before she was Accursed. Before she became the Kinslayer. Before she sold her name to the dead gods.
None of that...really mattered now, she supposed. It was over and done with. Nothing she could do.
The Windian turned once she got to the graveyard of Windia's great, no longer caring if someone marked her, saw through her disguise. Let them come.
Let them all come. She thought, walking past the gates after a nod to the gatekeeper. Not many were here today, in the wake of that little invasion, no one wanted to be around more death. I am not the helpless little girl I was once.
She came at last to the graves of her parents. Weathered slightly, in the intervening years. Over a decade of weathering. No children though.
They say that the de Windia family died that day. That the parents were slain and the children, lost to the world. Hard turquoise eyes looked at the ornate headstones, trying to bore through them, through the earth and see what she had not for so long. Hard turquoise eyes softened, as she remembered. Regretted. Too late, perhaps, but regret is not a creature of reality.
All...but one.
She was the last.
- Selina Miriana De Windia, an exposition
Drip. Drip. Blood drips to the ground, so dark and crimson... so distoant with the pale beauty of the albino it runs from. Blood coats a spear as pale as her flesh, White Oblivion shimmering wickedly with Essence, hungry to take another victim. Another strike at its possessor, another light prod. Alabaster still stands, his eyes mocking. And Obsidian... Obsidian lifts his mace for yet another strike, bringing the Goremaul down heavily towards Vorpal's torso...
As the Goremaul hits Vorpal, she hits the wall behind her, falling to the ground, limp. Obsidian laughs, triumphant, over the Abyssal’s body... while Alabaster takes his spear to finish the job. Then, cutting the dark mists of the illusion, comes a screeching bird of light, lighting-quick, to fast for anything to evade... striking Alabsater's face and exploding in pure, clean sunlight...
Alabaster backs down, screaming, as the light sears his face, burning his taint away... the smoke that comes out of him like clean burial incense, all taint cleaned by the light of the sun. His head turns, growling some insult in Old Realm as a small figure, robed in white and covered in shimmering light of the sunset steps into the illusion, his eyes narrowing in hate. "Excuse me," the boy says, "Could you kindly let go of my jailor?"
"You should have been taken care of already...." Alabaster hisses, hands.
Obsidian laughs, once again... "To underestimate the boy, out of all of them... heh. Wonderful. Run, boy. That is what you should have done. Instead, you came to the mouth of the Dragon. Look around you, whelp. And despair."
"I have seen my home razed." He replies, eyes half-closed. "I have held my father as he died, have seen my mother bleeding on the floor of her own entrance hall. I have burned their bodies. I am not going to despair before your god. I am going to kill it." As he says so, his right hand comes out of the white cloak, brandishing the golden sword on his hand, the gleam of the sunset around him crackling and roaring....
- Alabaster, Obsidian, Alexander, and the Fall of an Angel. One of the few times Alex did something well!
"You should never have overstepped your appointed place, trash-dragon!" Selina yells as she charges toward him, aura suddenly blazing into being with the fury of its iconic display, blade crackling with dark power and lightning both as she lunges at Obsidian. "Learn. Your. Place!"
Selina rushes to Obsidian... and past him, dreamshard twisting his armor into something unrecognizable as it goes through it, hitting the heart of his corpus and undoing his borrowed body, making it fall, heavily, on the ground....
- Selina, right after, and the fall of Obsidian
Looking at Alex dryly, Selina coughs and steps away from them all until her anima dies down. "If you can heal, child, you'd better heal her before it's too late."
Not wasting a breath, He rushes towards Vorpal, taking her body on the ground...
My jailor. Holding the key to my freedom...
The one to take me to a mistress of darkness, the one to take me to damnation. A prize, a... a thing.
The one that saved me.
Hands on her brow, Alex shines with solar energy once again... mending Vorpal's wounds, recovering her body... and receiving each of them in turn. Blood comes out of his mouth, and he holds it between his hands as he feels his essence cut and wounded, each and every blow Vorpal took imprinting itself on his body.... until her eyes open. "She will be ok now...."
- Alex and a very very painful healing.
The dinner ends peacefully after that, the almost smile of the Pale Angel crowning it. The conversation goes on, and soon they are done, and the night continues.... the performer takes them around, out of the restaurant and on to the theather, to watch the heart-felt rendition of 'The Chime of the Crystal Rose,' a moving romantic opera that tells the tell of star-crossed lovers over coming adversity to find happiness.
"It was either this or "The Bloody Path of the Anathema-Queen"," Domeil estates, "which I hear is much better, but hardly seems appropriate under the circumstances."
- Domiel, to lighten the mood!
"... which was about the time they asked me to leave town," Domiel finishes as the carriage rolls to a stop, bringing an end to the story of his own experience with star-crossed lovers, human and Rhaksha just as the play had featured, in a little village to the south. "Really rather rude of them, I thought, since I wasn't even the one who slept with the girl and everything ended happily enough. Or at least I'd like to assume they did, after the pair ran off. It's always hard to tell, with my cousins..."
- Same
Putting the results of her last attack together with what the Lunar just managed to do made the assassin come to her decision.
So, hitting him doesn't work?
Hopping a step backward from the advancing statue, Selina leaps into air with a tremendous push of her legs right as her feet return to the ground, up and away from the statue. As she streaks into the heavens with her aura burning about her form, she whips Dreamshard around to her front, pointing at the sky. The weapon's blade seems to flicker with an odd radiance, as if all the dreams of the world lay hidden within.
"Strike with all your power, and you cannot touch me." She calls down at her opponent, wings making a single beat as her weapon's glow becomes brighter, almost audiable. As if a hundred children are screaming at once. Shrieking crying laughing, dreams and nightmares bending under her will as she points the weapon down at her opponent. "I am invincible, I am immortal! You cannot harm me." Her voice echos down below.
And then the wyld energy inside the daiklave focuses...on somewhere. Inside the statue. Warping, twisting, changing. The dreams of a hundred fae shrieking into the statue's very being for a split moment, before guttering out.
- The 'invincible void princess' moment^_^
Vorpal: Every word flies from her lips like a dagger, hurtling through the air cold and sharp and dripping with lethal venom. Every word is aimed with a brutal and deadly accuracy, intended to scythe down souls, to rake the mind raw and to maim the will into crippled obedience.
"Dark Angel, for all your silly boasting and empty threats, you could not even handle three measly Ghost-Blooded on your own! Therefore, do quit bullying around freshly Exalted Solars as if that would make you someone of importance. You are nothing but a little chicken who has been dipped into a bucket of tar and now pretends to be a black falcon instead. In case you have not noticed so far, Selina Miriana de Windia, your act fools no-one."
"And as for you, little prince, it is very nice to sound all lost and tragic, but it hardly wins any sympathy from anyone here. If you truly wish to make people who ruined your life pay for what they did, if you wish to make any difference to what your fate is, quit whining and act instead. You wanted to take these two into safety in Windia - what are you still loitering around? Start walking!"
- Vorpal being... *mean*. She doesn't like dissent on her ranks!
Selina De Windia: "And I was forced to kill mine, even as my trapped mind screamed inside me to stop." Selina purrs, breaking away from him as he turns around, then feeling the impact of Vorpal's tirade. The feathers on her wings fluff out, then smooth down as she hunches a bit -- wings drooping down somewhat -- then looks at the other deathknight a tad furatively, letting her words wash over her. All of it, not just the fright implicit in the threat. A bit of blush colors her cheeks.
Shall we?
Fixing her gaze on Vorpal, hungry now, just a bit subserviant, Selina takes one step toward her, then another.
Yes
Her red lips purse, then move into a lavicious smile as she walks toward the other deathknight, still a bit drawn in on herself. "Ooohh, so small, yes. Shall I...serve you, ivory mistress of the north?"
Yes
Yes...
Yes.
Yes!
She giggles a bit, gliding toward the other Abyssal, eyes almost manically focused, blushing still, white teeth revealed in what would be a death head's grin were it not so lustful. "You can go on top...yes..." Her voice comes out in a low, throatily subservient purr as she works her fingers by her sides, as if flexing them for something. "Instruct me." The last sentence is tinged with mad, naughty giggles.
- Selina's... lewd... reply!
Vorpal:...now that was something Vorpal had not expected.
...don't tell me...
The Ghost-Blooded had honed her talents to frighten others into obedience to near-perfection over the years. When the Pale Angel truly put her mind to the task, she rarely failed to convince anyone to do as she asked - even more rarely after she had Exalted. She had seen many kinds of reactions to her performances, from timid shivering to downright paniced flight, and sometimes, on the days when she just could not find the correct edge, barely-contained hostility. Never, however, had she witnessed a reaction such as... this.
...don't tell me she's...
Although Vorpal still possesses the presence of mind to maintain her commanding facade, inwardly, she recoils at the sight of Selina approaching her in a such a manner. Her turqoise eyes burning brightly, round curves apparent even through her heavy coat, her every move filled with that uncanny sensuality...
...ugh.
Abruptly Vorpal turns around, her broad cloak sweeping the ground at the motion. She strides back to the horse and takes hold of the bridles, every one of her moves making it very clear that on the moment, the Dark Angel is not worthy of her attention. After a moment of thought, however, one of her gloved hands rise to grab her cloak's hood and pull it up and over her head...
...to conceal the fact that a faint red tinge has risen to her usually so white cheeks.
- ... and Vorpal's embarassed reaction! How to get the big general speechless...^^
Anina Tierney: "Hmmm... who knows, maybe the passions of the windians surpass that of the Fae... or maybe some of us are just that passion-driven." She giggles almost like a girl for a moment, before her eyes return to someplace far away...
"I guess that my husband is one of the Faerie, then. For like them, he is a creature of passions. Like them, his passions can drive him to do anything... but nothing can last." She says, getting up from the bed, her hips swaying slightly as she walks towards the window, true to Windia, an actal door to the sky... letting the winds caress her naked form, move her golden hair, flutter her white wings... "Once upon a time, he was the most romantic young man I had ever seen among a sea of pretenders... I barely noticed him at first, but he did everything for my heart... until it was his'. There was nothing I could do, as he was so romantic, so loving..."
As she says so her voice takes a somber tone, not unlike the Changeling's when remembering the Queen of Emerald Rose's words. "And yet, now all that I have are burning jealously and the knowledge of his whores. The most romantic boy I have ever met stole my heart, and a small, paranoid man made me cry. Oh, he still can do it... I see it, and I love him for it. And I know it's not me anymore, will never be me for him to burn for... I saw him as he helped to dirty that girl's hands with blood, as he took his place of power... only to see him sink in paranoia to all around him, telling me how they seek to take his place... I have talked and dallied with his subordinates, Dove... and they are simple, nice boys, with the ambition of an Immaculate Peasant. He should thank the Durants for that much, if he could ever see it... Yet, for him, he sees cunning usurpers, and makes his work an innefectie hell..."
She sighs, avoiding Domiel's eyes.
"That is why I have to apologize. If he knows... he will hunt you to the depths of the world, for jealously of the heart that will always be his' and the body he has no right to demand anything of anymore. I knew this when I sought you." She says... turning to the Ashen Dove with a playful, and ultimately sad smile, "But I was hungry for a little of passion, and couldn't help myself. I'm sorry..."
- Anina Tierney, an exposition
Domiel Winterwing: What could he say? What was there to say? Domiel felt the urge to look away, but resisted. The bedroom fantasies of girls seeking a sparkling future or women looking back to a youth they had lost. These, he was use to. But this was something different.
The Changeling had grown accustom to being used, and to using in turn. A simple exchange, a fantasy from him, their flesh and warmth in return. But now here stood a woman who brought the silent exchange into the open with regret, and named him, a stranger in that, as her confessor. Honesty with ones self as much as with others took courage beyond what most possessed.
I could love this woman, he thought to himself again and knew he meant. Not that he would. Love not what you cannot have. Another man's wife and nobility well beyond his station. And she still loved her husband besides.
Yet there were many kinds of love. They had shared one last night. She shared another with him now. Could he do any less for her?
Domiel rose wordlessly and lifted the sheet from the bed. He moved towards the Baroness and draped it about her shoulders, covering her naked beauty from his eye. Shrouding her in warmth. Gently, soothingly, he slid his arms around her and pulled her against his chest. No lust. No accusation. No regret, either. He held her like that for as long as she would let him, the silence and stillness in the room broken only by the wind rushing by the window and the sounds of the awakening city far below.
"If it matters at all," he said at great length, cautiously playful. "He will be far from the first husband to want me dead."
- ... and Domiel's perfect closing!
Vorpal: Scratch, scratch, scratch goes the brush across Ice's coat. The mighty horse neighs contentedly under the attention as its mistress works busily with its side, wide sweeps of her arm rubbing out dust and dirt from the black hide, polishing it into an onyx sheen. Bred from a prime stock of the Lover's stables, Ice is a huge beast, Abyssal fierceness and nobility from the tip of its muzzle to the furthest reaches of its rump. Dangerous, intimidating, courageous in battle...
...and a bottomless well for love and caregiving,
- Description of a great brave warhorse!
Selina de Windia: "Hmmmmm." Selina hums, thinking on that. It was true that he'd jumped at the Pale Angel without any real provocation. That spoke of a quick temper...or inexperience. Perhaps both. Who could say?
"He's a man through and through, that one." Selina chuckles at the description, putting her own beast in the back of her mind. The Dragon obeyed her. Because she let it eat human-flesh. "He came to us for a reason. And now, like Cael, he needs us for something. I think he'll play nice, besides that it's me he'll be with, and I did not anger him."
Pausing for a moment, she looks at Vorpal and shrugs, wincing from the pain at her back. Really, such a bother even for a shallow wound! Right near her sensitive wing roots! "Many men will be quite happy to work with you if you give them something. Not a compromise, not a deal. You just give them something, and they think better of you. Not all men work that way of course." The last sentence is more of an addition.
Vorpal: Aaaarrrgh...
Vorpal is gritting her teeth by the time she finally manages to get the bag properly in place. A familiar, muffled crunching immediately begins to fill the air as Ice assaults his meal. The Ghost-Blooded lowers herself into a more relaxed posture carefully, but she knows she had already gone too far. The wound is throbbing, its sting hot and sharp in contrast to its earlier, duller ache.
Damn...
"Do what you like", she replies to the Dark Angel, and even as she speaks she realizes that she is using the first convenient target she has to vent a tiny bit of the anger and frustration the wound is causing. "Just try to hold yourself back long enough to get your task done before you go to shake the bushes with him."
Selina de Windia: And maybe I want to give him that? Hmm...
Her gaze cools a bit as she notices the ghost-blooded moving herself into a position that seems to cause more pain, and hears her words. "There'll be plenty of time for both, I'm sure. Ten years a Chosen doesn't render one dumb."
- ... and yet, that is exactly what she did!
And the first meeting between the greatest bitches of the North...
Vorpal "Do not be silly", the Ghost-Blooded states as she approaches Selina, a goblet full of blood in one hand and her sword hanging lazily in the other. At some point she had apparently found a scrap of cloth to wipe away most of the blood with, and oddly enough, her travelling cloak seems to have become thoroughly spotless as well.
Selina De Windia: Raising her eyebrows as she turns to look at the other Abyssal, Selina shifts her weight to one of her high-booted legs over of the other. Her unfastened greatcoat shows flashes of the likewise black leotard underneath "Are you still here?" She asks in a forebearing tone more suited for addressing the peasantry. One of her wings cocks up slightly in pace with the question. "This is none of your concern, deathknight."
Vorpal "Yes, I am still here, and you'll find time to choke on your pride later, Dark Angel", the Ghost-Blooded responds, not even breaking her stride at Selina's glum response. Vorpal's voice more than matches Selina's own in its freezing coldness, and she pulls no punches in taking advantage of the fact that the Dark Angel seems to consider her Pale equivalent an inferior. "And yes, it is quite my concern, as the orders from your employer have changed a little bit since the last time her envoyer visited you."
Selina De Windia: "Oh?" Selina asks flatly, eyebrows raising a bit higher in mock surprise. "And I am supposed to believe you? For all I know, you're a servant of the Bishop."
Vorpal "If I did not know better, there would be little that could convince me from believing that you had a place of honor in his altar room", Vorpal counters, shifting her own weight to one foot and placing one hand to her hip, while lifting the goblet to her lips. After a quick sip, she adds sweetly: "As I recall, he is quite fond of whores... that is what you called his minions when you spoke with the Prince of Shadows, wasn't it?"
Selina De Windia: "No, I simply labeled them as whores." The Windian replies . "So far, I have not been proven incorrect." To punctuate her point, she looks the other deathknight up and down, then returns her gaze to her face. "At any rate, there are many ways to spy. So without any proof, you may as well tell me whatever rubbish she changed my contract to -- without informing me directly, I may add -- and be off with yourself."
Vorpal "In case you did not notice, she is informing you directly - through me, that is. You are thinking far too highly of yourself if you believe that the Lover would bother to come to see you all by herself." The Ghost-Blooded lifts her hands over her head even as she speaks, arching her back, leather straining against her body as she stretches with all the languid grace of a cat. "Mmm... But if you insist, I am in a far too good mood to deny you..."
Selina De Windia: So shameless.
- A CLASSIC!^^
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