ruins of a beast

When she begins her corrections, though, the man with the television head seems to look a bit less nervous, in an odd sort of way. So she wasn't human! That's a relief! But she's still waving that rock around...

"--My mistake, my mistake! Just Alecto it is!"

"If you're a monster, then we really don't have any reason to hurt each other! My family and friends are all monsters, except one human kid that was adopted by them. It's like you said, Alecto the Monster, we're... probably closer to constructs than monsters. I guess the closest thing you could compare me to is a robot? Do you know what those are?"

"Mm, a construct. Most of them don't have Souls, so they just work according to how they're made. It's...like if you...put bone together. You can make something that can walk around." She has brief flashes of constructs that can talk, of aggravation, memories not her own but that body's.

Maybe she should throw the rock and see, but she doesn't right now.

🎔 This was an unusual situation to find herself in to say the least. Céline had more or less figured out the gist of it, though. For some reason, Alecto and herself had been pulled into some kind of commercial. One for an island resort. The scenes would change all of a sudden here and there, but probably because they didn't look the part, it had thrown them into a store with a number of swimsuits on display.

Was it not going to progress until they got changed?

Likely why Céline wanted to get her a swimsuit, she was used to other people dressing her. Humming, she poked through the swimsuits, not really liking any in particular.

She pouts, turning to Céline.

It would be a pretty bold thing to do, but they were completely alone.

"I planned to keep both eyes on you." She confirms, far more comfortably in her nudity than in her towel. Tugging on Céline's arm, she draws her deeper into the water.

"--Would'ya put DOWN the rock already!?"

He knows humans are stronger than monsters. There's all sorts of horror movies with humans in them. Everyone knows a determined human is a Very dangerous thing; fighting (especially in this weakened state the city imposed on him) probably wasn't an option. She'd kick his ass--and there would go his precious second chance.

Time to back up faster, and hope he doesn't trip.

"A-Alecto, right? Well, Alecto! I'd LOVE to tell you more! Darkners are kind of, complicated! And I'm really just a TV given form! A TV that HAPPENS TO HAVE A FAMILY WHO'D REALLY LIKE HIM TO GO BACK HOME IN ONE PIECE. I might add!"

He stumbles, but regains his balance.

"Again with the whole

"Thing! Darkners don't have souls! It's ELECTRICITY--that's what I run on!"

And, magic? Or something? Magic and darkness? Hell if he knows, that's for nerds.

"Look, Alecto, lady! I'm SURE we could reeeeeally get along great! But a tall-looking human trying to chase you down with a weapon, that makes a guy nervous! You understand?? Why don't you just, toss that on the ground and we can have a niiiice, Peaceful Conversation about all this!"

She tries to remember her lessons, "So Darkners are like constructs? Someone who was bad at making constructs made you." She does know what electricity is, at least. She ponders this for a moment. Running on electricity but no soul, maybe it's a robot?

But what she really seemed to focus on, still not letting the rock go, "Don't call me lady! It's not right. I'm Alecto." She understood that's what this form made her look like, but,

"I'm so much more grand than this hideous form!"

She's upset, but not at tantrum levels yet, at least. Which is good for Antenna (and anyone else in the vicinity). "I don't want to see your electricity, but you need to get it right." Still, she doesn't put down the rock, instead waving it about.

Andrew had slipped out of their room in the middle of the night, whispering to a sleeping Thomas that he'd be back before sunrise -- that the other boy wouldn't even miss him, before softly kissing the top of his head.

Of course, waiting until the last moment on the final day for the Candle Lighting for the Lost did have its downsides. On the one hand, there were fewer people here, like Andrew had expected, but on the other, it left him and an extremely tall, intimidating woman both staring at the same candle: the only candle left.

Reading the sign next to the candle, Andrew realizes that he must have read the rules wrong before, briefly skimming them over while hiding his phone from Thomas (he knew Thomas's love for him was soft and didn't want the other boy to worry over him). This wasn't a memorial for those who were dead at all, but rather those who had come to this place and were now gone. The rules did permit lighting a candle for loved ones still in the city, but Andrew wonders why he would do that when he would rather tell Thomas to his face how much he adores him -- when Andrew wishes for Thomas's happiness every day.

Disappointed and eager to avoid a confrontation, Andrew pushes the candle towards the woman.

"You can have it. It won't work for me anyway. Not like it's supposed to."

She declares, looking down at the beautiful boy. The flower sprouting from his eye, she leans forward, looking at it closely. For someone so beautiful, he was really being very foolish, she thought. So, she said so, "For someone with beautiful roses on his face, and for someone who smells so nice, you're being foolish."

She had come here to honor Anastasia, if this sort of thing worked. She had been here to tell Anastasia she was going to fulfill her promises, but she was taking another vacation. She wanted to tell her all about Céline and how they live together and all of the friends Alecto has made here. Enough for a proper dog birthday party.

She would even invite the flower boy to the party.

"Come on, flower boy," she grabs him by the arm, and grabs the candle, walking through the sand over to the rafts. "You're lucky you look so sad, so I don't mind helping you. I have a close friend in the Ninth House - she knows all about the dead. There's no rule against sharing a candle in church."

"In my head? The usual--wires, coils, circuit boards. The cathode-ray tubes, the electron-thing that makes all the phosphorus dots light up. You get the idea, bunch of machinery I don't need to over-complicate."

It seemed like a harmless enough question.

Until she bent down for the rock.

"WHOA HEY SLOW DOWN THERE MA'AM--where'd that come from!? You could really hurt a guy with that thing!"

Maybe like a skeletal construct. But does it have a soul? She remembers things like that, tickling the back of her mind, but more importantly she did not remember a radio ever standing up, even though it could talk.

"I don't know what that means." She confirms, head tilted to the side. The hand holding the rock is raised slightly.

🎔 "Have you ever been to anything like a hot spring before, Alecto?" The two had yet to enter the water, but Céline double checked that her own towel was tight enough before checking Alecto's as well. They were seemingly alone since it was late at night, but better safe than sorry?

"Can't I take the towel off in the water? If it's under the water, then it's fine." She swam naked at home all the time, and there was so much more water there.

A not so subtle invitation to spend the night together with the assertion that they would escape.

Her attention turned to the opening door just as the light poured in, though the harshness of it all was quelled somewhat by the light her own body was giving off. She had expected to find whoever had locked them up, since she still didn't know who the culprit was. She was pleasantly surprised to see a friendly face instead. "Hiyori? Does that mean Constantine is here somewhere too?"

That was the most logical guess she could make. Hiyori helped Alecto out, and then they both turned their attention on her situation.

"I haven't found Constantine yet. He's on a lower floor, or so said one who is so far a trustworthy source," he explained as he observed what restraints she faced and found the best spot to start. Targeting the bindings on her hands behind her, his eyes flickered between her and Alecto, standing at the door like a sentinel.

"This should help the two of you fare a little better," he explained with a note of cheer before activating the Day Fragment on his earring. A faint light illuminated it and spread out between them. The first use of the day, it would heal minor wounds on his two present allies.

The bindings on Céline's hands loosened enough to drop to the floor. "You two should do what you need. I want it to be safe enough for all of us to escape this," he said with a smile, but a furrowed brow. There was a pressured haste to his words. "But if you could avoid killing a woman with dark red hair in a ponytail, I would appreciate it. She was a wonderful help to us."

"In here—!" cut in an unfamiliar voice far too close, and he frantically worked to release her legs.

Hiyori was confident Alecto could handle the start of this first conflict, but Céline called it well: he was afraid of what he might be about to witness just to survive.

So, when Hiyori healed Céline, Alecto couldn't help but think that Hiyori was strong. Stronger than Alecto expected. She was willing to admit it, but didn't understand fully where to find the words. Shaking her head, her hair going wild and free behind her.

Red hair, ponytail. She'd try her best.

But, really, the issue was what would happen once she got started, and if she would be able to stop once her tantrum began.

The first person who walked into the room was greeted by the palm of her hand, grabbing them by the face and cutting off a yelp as she smashed them backwards into the wall. Once, twice, thrice. When they dropped, their shocked companion pulled out something shining. All Alecto could see was the whites of their eyes as she lunged at them, not caring much where the knife went, as was her way.

The entryway was quickly being spattered with blood as Alecto continues to beat the knife-wielding person with her bare hands, her first combatant - if they could be called that - completely still from their place on the ground.

"You choose to be unredeemed, then?" Aurelius asks.

"Or has He already forsaken you and your blasphemous heart?"

The woman's interjections are akin to bombs, exploding one after the other with their rage. They leave a putrid stench in the air, rife with resentment and the raw, unfiltered violence of a mindless thing.

"For once, I am thankful to this city. It will contain the insanity of you and your presumptuous ravings. You are a fool, to blame that which heralded all creation. In seeking to end that which you can neither touch, nor see, nor hope to comprehend, you perpetuate the most grievous sin alongside the most ignorant vendetta."

Rend this, rip that. Had she ever experienced God, he wondered, or simply a demon clothed in a facsimile of His flesh? Even the creature herself seemed more monster than woman, eyes aflame with inhuman wrath.

"I kneel before Him because I know I am nothing beside Him. A good and just God needs not command His followers to bend at the knee. You..."

His tone turns doubtful.

"He loves me. He loves me and he shackled and chained me. He blasphemed first, against me, against every one of my brothers and sisters He destroyed us, and in his attempts to absorb us He made His own undoing. He loves me, and I love Him, and I want Him to hurt as I've hurt." It takes everything in her power to still her shaking limbs, to not destroy everything around her. To remember what it felt like to be loved. Truly loved.

Does John only experience the kind of love a man like this has to offer? To kneel?

"I will never kneel because I love Him. And I was His sword that he discarded." A sword she no longer has. The shadows of her shackles scar her wrists. She's not calm, but her anger has turned to something else. Something just as dark, crawling in her chest. Something that makes its home on her heart, weighing on her lungs.

She looks down. She needs to correct this man. Was she so erased when she was entombed? Simply The Body?

"Met him? He unmade me, and I made Him. And I will be His undoing." She dares not speak His name. The Necrolord Prime. John Gaius. How does this man know him?

It's true, John never had to ask his Necromancers to kneel. Not even his Lyctors. Not even Anastasia, and everything she lost because of him. She can feel her face tighten, morph into something else. She wants to cry. She wants to be her again, and not this.

day 2: drawing the locked tomb fanart to manifest the fourth book

She could have laughed at Alecto's words. She probably didn't look conventionally beautiful at that moment, but Alecto's preferences were so different that she had no reason to doubt her words. "Alecto..." Fatigue hit her all at once the second she relaxed. Her girlfriend wasn't in any better shape than she was, that much was certain.

A better person would have told Alecto not to kill them if given the chance, but despite the airs Céline put up, she really had no problems with killing people she thought deserved it. She'd been doing it her whole life to stay alive. It was part of the reason she considered herself a monster.

"R... Right. We can buy you new clothes when we get out! Did you want to match? I know it's a little corny, but some couples do it..." What Alecto was attempting was transparent, but she played along. It still helped her focus on other things to calm her down, which was surely her intention. "And you like your room dark, don't you? But what about some mood lights? Of course, I can always illuminate it if you'd like. Like this..."

Midway through the exploration, he found one door with someone sitting outside it like a sentinel. Instantly it was more of interest than the rest. After looking behind him to check if anyone had followed, he again seized the opportunity to improvise and approached.

"What?" the person asked ahead of time, gruff but disinterested.

"It's time to switch guards for the girls," Hiyori told them, hoping their earlier staring blankly at the opposite wall had encouraged them to lose track of time.

"Oh, right..." They put their hand down on the chair and began to stand, but quickly snapped their attention to him properly. "Wait. Who—"

In a moment of panic, Hiyori seized them by the face and slammed their head back against the thick basement wall. They fell with an unpleasant amount of noise, but if no one was in earshot it was probably fine. Probably.

God he hoped he hadn't killed them.

Dropping down at their unmoving side, he briskly patted them down and took what seemed of use: a handgun and a sparse ring of keys. The gun felt foreign in his hand and he hadn't the slightest idea how to use it, but it felt better to have it than leave it. Into his waistband it went. Standing, he began trying keys on the door, feeling even more pressured by the chance of someone walking by and seeing one of their own collapsed on the floor. As if he had the strength to heft dead weight back up onto the chair!

Dexterity won out over frantic haste, and Hiyori swung the unlocked door open. Harsh light from the hallway joined Céline's natural luminescence, and he leaned against the doorframe, hand at his chest.

"There you are—ah, I'll help as soon as I can," he said, recognizing there was no time to waste feeling relieved. From a cursory glance it looked like Alecto was already partly out of her restraints at the point of his intrusion. "You're further along. I'll help you and then we'll both help her," he suggested, moving to assist Alecto first. "I'm so grateful you're both alive."

Not-so-distant shouting reached his ears, and he tried even harder to pick up the pace.

And she feels little embarrassment when it continues on, as someone unlocks the door. She's ready, one hand free is enough. "I only need you. Because if I'm not in my room, I'm in your room." Another truth, the door opens, and she lunges.

And...luckily she's still restrained because she would have killed Hiyori. Blinded by rage, she would have killed their friend and rescuer. She's happy she was restrained for once, and impatiently works with Hiyori to undo hers.

She wanted to protest, for him to help Céline first, but instead she tore at the bindings he undid.

"Hiyori." She acknowledges him verbally, looking back to Céline, and then to the doors. Shaking her head, she violently snaps the rest of her bindings.

"Help Céline, and be gentle." Popping her wrist back into its joint, she walks toward the door in her bloodied and dirty clothes from her previous thrashing.

"I'll kill anyone who walks into this door." (She stands straight, shoulders square and broad, and her chin high. Just like-)