असुर, ﹙ ✷ ﹚

it does seem that her mind is sluggish,    addled by the studies that weigh her thoughts in such recent endeavors.    discoveries too,    perhaps,    of a mother and her infant son,    SO DIFFERENT FROM ANY OTHER CHILD AND YET CLEARLY STILL AS HUMANLY INFANT AS ANY OTHER,    save for the precise length in canine teeth and his penchant to draw blood from whatever might contain it.    yet he registers what she says so quickly it is as if his mind is trying to work against him,    with how immediate his brows raise upon his forehead.    in the same moment,    he tames them back down,    taking to blinking and looking at the pan once more.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤa meaning she has not intended before,    and something he does not believe she intends now.    though   …   his certainty for such an assumption wavers,    when he considers their proximity in past and in present.    they have had no qualms against such a natural state of calm when around each other   ( a far cry different from the rage and volatile actions of their very first encounter of each other ).    what there is here,    he is not certain :    A LACK THEREOF OF THE EXPERIENCE.    he does not mind it in himself,    nor has he ever felt self conscious about it.    he does now.

‘ i… i am… i am sorry,    ’ she adjusts herself,    shaking some invisible weight off her shoulders and biting her lip in contemplation until she holds onto his arm,    twisting him every so slightly.    ‘ i do not mean that.    i do not wish to leave.    i thought… have we not …    ?    what is it that you want,    alucard,    ’ oh how she hates to call him that,    the harsher companion to the tenderness of adrian,    ‘ do you wish to not be friends    ?    we are friends.    you cannot deny it.    ’ half parts determined,    half parts sorrowful,    ‘ i admit,    ’ wrong time for admissions,    alas,    she’s as comfortable as ever with him and thus,    decides on irrefutable honesty.    he is,    after all,    who tends to her indefinitely,    through the miasma that is her life.    and in turn,    she tends to his.    ‘ i have depended on you much,    that i have left my room unattended and it might be strange.    but i do not wish to be apart.    i thought ours would be a silent agreement,    but perhaps i was wrong.    i have never been good,    by nature,    of giving others privacy.    ’ 

"not my magic—" he may be slightly panicked, and it shows more than he means it to. regulus is ever the master of his own reactions but it's always more difficult with people who know him — and he wonders if there's anything he can really hide from raven.

what do his emotions sound like when channeled through the power of an empath? can she feel them where she stands, like an echoing cry in a dark cavern?

his hands are still outstretched but he draws them back, staring at his palms like the answer is written in the lines. this should have worked. "i've only done this a few times before — but it's not — it's not a difficult spell."

he shakes his wrists as if to jostle away the 'bad magic,' and passes a hand in front of him; out of a black mist he conjures the ancient tome from which he borrowed the spell and, after turning the book side-ways, upside-down, and back right-side, he spins it for raven to see.

it hovers freely in the air, supported by nothing.

‘ yes,    it would be correct,    ’ here she may devote herself to debate,    to their endless combat of magical philosophies.    it’s not his fault,    she thinks,    to be taught with such structures and limits.    she sees the vim of it through different eyes.    after all,    shes more magic than its mistress,    and she is much less talented in its domain than any other studied human.    ‘ but there is too much logic in your spells.    it would work if the world were logical,    and often times it can be.    not now,    so it denies you the pleasure.    ’

𖦹 [ @azarathian ] how clever. alice thought bitterly, looking at raven like a turist did to works of arts in a museum they didn't pay to enter. she wanted out, but she also wanted to know more. maybe this was an opportunity to sharpen her knowledge but really ─── she'd been to hell. had seen its king and bargained like few others had one and for what ? to get stuck in another loop, coming and going, challeging the mighty ones of magic ? her teeth came out, in a smile that was glassy as her eyes then. ‟ then stop feeling what i feel. just ... get out of me. ” let go of me, she seemed to be saying instead. was it really at raven or at what she represented ? the content of magic itself. ugh, it sounded heavenly.

alice shuddered sensing the presence now on her back, eyes peaking at the hand on her shoulders. listening to it, brain a crimson wave of hubris that surely was being exploited. it had been before, but she'd learned her lesson then. if she could do it then she'd press her teeth hard into the woman's palms just to see if she tasted like incense as much as she smelled of it. was she acting awkward on purpose ? ‟ clever. but only one person can manipulate me like that and it isn't you. ” peter's kind brown pools came into mind as she said it. what would peter murdoch do ? certainly not this. deny a proposal that was right. all those souls trapped alice, and we can do something about it. you can do something. urgh, she was incapable of escaping him even in another dimension.

raven makes the conscious effort to pull away but it’s only time until her shadows try to encompass alice once more,    as if darkness were plaster trying to make a mold out of the magician’s soul.    some are harder to define than others and as a demon,    she is guilty to all sin,    or only the purest sin,    at the moment she was still to dig so deep into introspection.    it was easier to know she was evil but not name the evil in her.    for now,    it nags on her that she’s certainly being greedy,    and even if it hurts,    she tries to keep her focus on the coldness in her own hands.    

the perfume of gunpowder and jasmine dissipating as she teleports again to the front of the desk.    it makes her uncomfortable to be accused of manipulation,    so she makes a physical object play barrier… which doesn’t work but she hopes it will eventually.    so much for the self restraint: alice’s comments drive her heart somewhere,    a place of longing and hatred alice must have felt or must feel or will feel,    it’s hard to determine present in that jumbled mind.    ‘ you… ’ she looks as if she’s about to say something but rescinds her comment for something else.    what is the point of protesting now when it’s safer if alice thinks of her as something foul    ?    is that not the truth    ?    her hands beckon with a gentle curl a book onto alice’s work,    careful not to disorganize her messes.    

“ to be soaked in the blood of others is an unfortunate fate indeed. ” and one they both share, it seems. “ though, the manner in which i have been coated in it is much different than you. care to elaborate? ”

“ ⊰   Your eyes can deceive you. Don't trust them.    ⊱ ”   @azarathian cautions.

Roy anchors himself in the calm of each syllable and tries, clinging to the comfort of her presence while the physical world around him seemed to crumble. the echo of her soft voice sounded leagues away, however. hazy, as if she were speaking to him from the other side of a dream, though the fraying edges of his rational thought knew this to be false ⸻ remembering they had stood about a foot apart when the ordeal began. any concept of time and place quickly began to dissipate, melting as the archer unravels, spiraling fully into madness when his ears begin to ring. a cacophonous ensemble, like all the clocks in the world chiming in tandem to announce a change of the hour against his cochlea. then, before he can even realize it's happening, he falls; knees bruising as they catch the weight of him against the unforgiving solidity of the floor.

arm bracers drag as he scrapes himself up, or tries to, a disoriented groan falling from his full lips as he depletes what little remained of his energy in the simple act of lifting his head. with a fool's hope and his own brand of brash precipitation, Roy believes the worst is over ⸻ what little mental capacity he had left working immediately to stitch together some arrogant quip reducing this ordeal to an afterthought, though the words never come. the visions return in their stead, seeming to taunt him as they dance and multiply in the space around him before sculpting themselves, piece by obsidian piece, into the perfect image of Lian, dead. a cascading grief pours from him, desolation liberating his ability for speech as a shattered whisper, hoarse and disbelieving but most of all guilty, tumbles out from him in a gasp. “     no ... please - ”

she collapses by him,    slowly,    hand reaching weakly towards his face.    the bond between them may not be unbroken,    she will soothe him,    even if it destroys her.    ‘ roy,    ’ black tears dance across her cheek as her fingers find his own,    seeking his eyes,    those eyes that are innundated lost in images that are not real,    but real all the same.    the empath takes a little,    only a little of his distortion,    wincing,    naked knees bruising against the concrete.    its as if gravity pulled them in,    deeper into the earth's core.    the feeling is similar to when she lost azarath.    whatever he is seeing,    it must be as devastating as the end of the world.