GoldenCat/AmberHunt05
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Pale Memories
With that many after them, they could not run forever.
The Dark Angel was taken out of the sky, and the Pale Angel left to fall on the exterior walls of Amber Post, between it and the great market-city slum around it. Falling through harsh winds and into the muddy earth... and as she falls to the ground, she sees the figure in the smoke...
A hunched over man covered in a green cloth, a bizarre orange mask covering his face, a skull in hand... there, at the tail end of the wall Vorpal stands outside of.... and he watches her. The skull begins to shine. "The Pale Angel. You know, everyone heard you were dead."
Vorpal: "I've been there and done it before", Vorpal replies, leveling her sword at the masked figure. "I just hate to stay dead."
And, without another word, bright motes of ghostly light form around her, shining with searing spite and purity. They flicker and pulse, then flash forth with a hiss that is like water cast on hatefully hot rocks.
????: The figure clad in the bizarre green regalia moved sinuously, hunched back, strange eyes blinking. They were right outside Amber Post proper, the walls of the great slave-trading fortress to Vorpal's left, the streets in the small citatel around to her right. And to the end of the little alley, far in front of her, the bizarre figure, grinning. "Well then... you must have many, many acquaintances on the other side."
"Good... gooooodddd.....!"
The blasts go throug him, and he staggers back, gritting his teeth...
"I... had no idea you could do that..."
"But... I am still doing... my trick."
He holds the skull to her, and it moves out of his hand, opening its mouth, covered in ghostly flame, screaming... "This is the skull of Severino, the gatekeeper of souls! Look within it, might angel, and see what your own holds!"
The screams get to Vorpal....the flames so bright...
And she can see something there... Images...
The ground opens beneath Vorpal. She sees herself spiral down...
Everything burning about her.
And the screams. Not the screams of the skull anymore... no.
The screams of those she loved... the screams of the Brigade.
As she falls, she listens to their screams...
She hears Vaynard's words as the steel goes through her body...
And as she comes to herself, she is on the woods. The dark woods outside her castle, where it seemed that it was always an azure moonlight in those black, jagged, bare trees...
Vorpal: Pale Angel Pale Angel Pale Angel...
It is a storm of souls.
We hate you we love you we hate you...
They whirl around her, buoy her, chill her, burn her...
We hate your eyes we love your lips we hate your skin we love your hair we hate your voice we love your soul...
They eat at her, gnaw at her, a million memories torn apart, a thousand lives destroyed by her hand.
Feel the guilt, feel the blame, feel the guilt.
"I defended you to the last!" she snarls, staggering back, terrified yet defiant. "I tried to save you! I tried to lead you to safety! You know I tried!"
You left us you left us you left us.
"I did not! I will avenge you! I will avenge you all!"
You left us you left us you left us.
And amidst the clash of steel and cries of pain, through the blood and fire and death, the man in white armor steps forth. In one hand he hefts a jade axe and in the other a broad blade. Striding up to the Ghost-Blooded , he thrusts the sword through her black armor and into her soft flesh, raping her with the cold touch of iron. "A disgusting thing."
We are waiting we are waiting we are waiting.
Waiting.
Waiting.
For you.
She staggers and stumbles, holding her abdomen, weighed down by the wound through which her blood spills. She tries to staunch her bleeding, she tries to get away, yet the vision holds her firmly in its grasp, daunting, suffocating, tormenting...
And then, just when she wants to double up and fall to the ground, to curl up like a child and die away, it... goes away.
Gone is the wound, gone is the pain, gone are the voices in her head. In their place is the crisp night-time air of Iranorian winter, the sting of cold and the familiar hoots of the forest owls.
She whirls around, scanning the landscape with her eyes. Her breath rises as frosty puffs through her lips. She turns, watches, listens and turns again, this time to face the black, looming bulk of the castle.
Scferhund Hall.
The home of the deFay line.
Narrator: She watches the castle...
And hears something. Something powerful. Something thunderous.
Something familiar.
Of course, there was wailing. There was the hissing and growls of the hungry ghosts... but they were not as ghastly. Or rather, it was a ghastly Vorpal was used to, as she turned... and saw the Hungry Ghosts. The two in front had been of great, powerful beings. King and Queen of a fallen splinter of Iranor. Some say they had been dragons. Now, moliated beyond recognition, they certainly looked the part, as their long, large claws acted as if they dug the snow as they moved.... the ice whip urging them foward.
They pushed the sled foward, over the snow, into the road at Vorpal's side.... and then stops.
And the figure above them, stops, to look at Vorpal.
A somber figure, a joyless man of a strong build, holding his thick-bearded chin as he watches her. Curious.
Vorpal: Vorpal stares up at him unmoving for a second, meeting the flint-hard eyes with the gaze of her own.
She does not know why she does it. Is this all just a vision, or could it really be him, out here in person? She does not know, yet she does it nonetheless. She clenches her right hand into a fist and, unthinkingly, presses it against her breast.
"Earl Isaac deBlanc", she says, bending her head ever so slightly in greetings. "Mentor."
Isaac deBlanc: "Vorpal deFey." He almost grunts out. He was never the warmest of all people.
His hand leaves the ice whip to the side, and his body simply does not relax in the sled. It never relaxes.
His voice has little intonation. And slowly, he crosses fingers in front of his face, resting his face on it.
"All I taught you. And yet you failed."
Vorpal: "I was betrayed", the Pale Angel responds, grimly, determined to not show the icy pebble that is rising into her throat.
Isaac deBlanc: "You were not ready for betrayal."
"Politics. Fear. Death. All are of Iranor. Maybe that is why you could never touch Pandemonium."
"A simple blade, is all you were content on being. Harnessing your mother's strength... and never the most ephemeral aspects."
"Those are betrayal, poison, fear."
"You were content on being simple."
Chibi Selina (Hyrokkin): A muscle-minded tank-brain, that's you. :D
Vorpal: "I was required to be simple", she counters, gritting her teeth to keep her jaw from trembling. "They required a two-dimensional image, a fantasy brought to flesh, an imaginary character described entirely with a few words. They wanted a bitch general. They wanted strength and a bad attitude, a heel that would stomp them into the mud. They got it. I don't see any reason why they should have deserved more... ephemeral aspects."
The term tastes strangely on her tongue. What does he mean by it?
Isaac deBlanc: "And you were content on that. You sttubbornly rode on the horse they gave you, tamed it, but never noticed where it had always been headed. If you had wished to learn. You would have shaped your will, and learned how social constructs worked. Seen the cage the stubborn black lioness walked into to be massacred. But you you were content with your role."
A long speech. Outside of training, he rarely said such.
"Did you do it for your father?"
Did you expect love out of cold dead rock?
"Did you do that for your country?"
For whom you had always been a feared outsider?
"You certainly did not do it for them."
As he says this, he waves... and points to shadows on the woods. Amidst the mist.... shadows that felt so familiar...
Cibor: One took a step foward. Clad in crimson armor, with the image of a dragon in his plate.
Cibor the Red. A bastard of Arynhelm who sought work with the deFey. With Vorpal's father, due to the Arynhelm support, he achieved a lower knighthood... and joined the Pale Angel brigade. Seeking recognition. Seeking purpose. Seeking to be anything but failed, rejected blood...
Vorpal: The mask of defiance begins to crack from her face as she sees the familiar man. Her eyebrows come together, her lips part slightly, the sigh fleeing to night-time air in a puff of frost.
Cibor the Red.
A passionate fellow, always out to prove himself.
He liked sour apple cider, Vorpal recalls, with an unexpected stab of pain in her heart. He always grew melancholy when he was in his cups, and would begin to talk about his lineage to whoever would care to listen. It was the only time when he ever spoke of it.
I never listened to it with more than half an ear.
"For my father?" she asks, her gaze fixed to the armored shape of the dead man. "No."
I hated the man for making me into what I am.
"For my country? No."
I hated it for sowing the seed from which I was born.
"For them?" she adds, gesturing weakly in the direction of the forest. "Definitely not."
To let loose the built-up bitterness and self-loathing, to find someone to blame for the cage of my own making, to lash out at the world with all the fury of an adolescent child.
"I did it for myself. For me alone."
Cibor: "For yourself. Selfish, selfish, as always."
"Our Leader! " He calls angrily.
"Our Goddess! " He screams with a spiteful voice.
"Our Angel! " He cries, and the brigade around them howl.
"Our doom! " They cry out, full of anger and spite.
So, that is why.
"Hold the flank, you said." He picks out his Lance. A powerful lance that turned into flame at his thought... or maybe he doused it with alcohol before battle. He never revealed. "Hold the mother-fucking flank! I did it! I did it while they swarmed us! Expecting you to Circle, to take us out of that ambush, to get us the upper hand! I believed you! Immortal! Powerful! Pale Angel! I believed you could do the impossible!"
"I held my own against thousands, thousands of those that should have been following me! My family!"
"I did the impossible for you, and you failed me, you fucking selfish cunt! "
Iranorians certainly had a way of colorful language.
Vorpal: Selfish.
Selfish.
Selfish.
That single word echoes in her head. The storm of their betrayed anger washes over her like a freezing wind, yet that word resounds the loudest, hurts the most.
The speech I gave them that day was too good. I rallied them, made them believe in me, made them fight with all their hearts against impossible odds because they thought I could save them. But I couldn't. I wouldn't. I never even tried. The only reason why I led them into that battle was because I didn't want to admit defeat, because I wanted to take as many of those filthy bastards down with me as I could. Even if it would kill me. Even if it would kill my men.
Selfish bitch.
Selfish, thoughtless, fucking self-absorbed little bitch
And it is then, on that darkest moment, that the brutally honest, merciless part in her decides to speak out.
Isn't that what you are doing with Alex and Selina, too?
Her heart collapses in itself at the thought. The fury of the Brigade, the guilt, the blame, the burning failure, it all suddenly seems to mean something small and distant when compared to the terrible pain tearing at her breast.
Oh, fuck it. I wanted to own them. To keep them both to myself, to switch freely between their beds without a care of their own feelings. And yet I had the gall to require absolute fidelity from them both.
All these years, all that enlightenment at the feet of a Deathlord, and she hasn't learned a single thing.
She closes her eyes and bends her neck back, allowing the first tears to flow down her cheeks.
I am a selfish bitch.
????: Ba-bump
The feeling. When had she felt this before?
Ba-bump
She remembers crying.
A memory buried deep within.
The feeling of cold. Of cold and shadows...
And then, there is the song. The song like a scream. A scream like a song. The trees are on spring. They are full. They are green. And the scream, it blows away the leaves, it blows away the life, it creates the azure emptiness. Vorpal's sight rushes through the ages, on when the scream created the back yard where she used to train amidst the dead dark trees...
And then the figure, above the sled... behind Isaac. She is regal. Translucent. Wearing jewels Vorpal had seen in paintings. Wearing jewels Vorpal had seen her father clutching. The Emerald Dragon's Tear. The Empyrean Collar, with diamonds that shone in many lights of heaven.
Her jewels.
So tall. Such hair, so lively...
Such eyes, like the emerald.
Those Vorpal could never have.
And the gait of death, her bones almost showing, and yet, she was regal...
Her screams sung. And the song... she heard something in it, the Pale Angel. It held her in cold and shadow. Like her first memory. It held her like a womb. It was cold and jagged, and yet, it told her to grow.
To thrive.
To survive.
To mature.
To live beyond shadows and sorrow... to grow from it...
To learn...
Vorpal: To any ordinary mortal, to hear that wail means an agonizing death and a helpless hurtling into the Void.
To her, it is a soothing lullaby, a sweet and terrible song, a memory of old. A song of happiness she never had, of the melancholy sorrow and a little girl's clumsy wish to make the grieving woman to smile again.
Beyond shadows and sorrow.
To survive, to thrive, to mature beyond the bonds of the hateful woman that is the Pale Angel, to become a person in her own right.
Isn't that what I have always wanted?
Vorpal takes a shuddering breath, unclenching her jaw, allowing her tears to flow freely.
Let them flow. Let the tears flow. Let it all out.
Her right hand grips the handle of the sword that wasn't there a moment ago. It is not Banshee, the sword she wielded as the Pale Angel of old. It is Betrayer, the enormous black blade of inherent evil and endless thirst.
"Enough", she announces, her voice wavering yet resolute. Clenching her eyes tightly shut, she draws a deeper breath, bolstering her shaken will. "Enough!"
Blind, yet determined, she dashes forward towards the slain men of the Pale Angel Brigade. And as she runs, she raises her sword into a vicious thrust, sent forth with all her remaining strength and wavering conviction.
Narrator: The world breaks under the scream, her sword cutting reality....
Breaking through....
????: He sees her coming to her...
At the end of the tunnel of souls and illusions, she sees him...
"W... what? No, you should be kneeling on the ground.. you shou... you shouldn't!" He snarls, as he picks his skull... the remains of the illusion coming for it. "You beat your inner demons, you think? If they did not kill you and demoralize you, there is more uses for them! More uses for the skull! Behold!" He calls, and all the souls gather around it... "Your brigade. Their sorrow. Their spite. Their vengeance!"
"Be crushed by them! " He roars, the skull opening its mouth, turning them into fire to....
... have an Axe go through it and break it into splinters.
Vorpal: Vorpal does not see or hear her close brush with death, nor does she witness her unexpected rescue. Dashing forward is the only thing filling her world, throwing one foot in front of the other, holding the sword upright and leveled at her foe.
She collides with him at full run, Betrayer piercing his breast and exploding forth from his back. The blade sinks into the masked man hilt-deep, drinking up his blood, his life, his very soul.
"Get out", the Pale Angel orders. Her eyes still clenched shut, tears flowing without restraint, she wrenches the sword downwards. The black blade slices all the way down to his crutch, gutting the man like a fish. "Get out of my head. Now. "
????: And it goes through him, and the world clears. It clears, and Vorpal is on Amber Post once again.
And his blood splatters on her face, the great Daiklave having ran the man through.
And a great figure moves on the periphery of her vision, a man taller than Vorpal herself, a mountain of a man bending to pick an axe from the remains of the skull. "Naw, nutjob, we'd never do dat."
He turns, Axe in hand, blonde hairs flowing on the wind.
"We loved the lady."
Aghar, the Son of Giants.
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