continued from here!:

He sat. Rather he was forced into sitting without the capacity to even remotely resist. Not that he could have, even if he wanted to. He sort of teetered down onto the surface of the cot by the call of gravity. Shockingly enough, the crowd of people he'd been directing his inquiry toward suddenly spun into the shape of one, solitary lady.

"Whoa. Neat trick~" He was too dizzy to think through details logically, concluding the sheer impossibility of the room HOLDING the amount of people he'd seen dancing through it a second ago. All of which held the appearance of the stranger at his side. THAT should have been revealing enough of his condition.

"Hah HAH, jokes on you, I was told I don't even have a brain. So there's no possibility of injury." He stated matter of factly. Point BEING he could be released to his own devices at any point.

"Was I training?" Brow furrowed, the memories disjointed. "Oh yeah! I was. Angeal, that DICK." He pulled shit like that, increasing the difficulties of the simulations without telling him if only to distract him away from what he really wanted to do. Which was take the real world fiends by STORM. Clear out rabble that needed to be done. Training was all well and good, but he was trained OUT.

Even without his quinques and a healing ankle, a ghoul of the lower ranks was no match for Arima. He made quick work of the other ghoul, dancing around on the heel of his health leg and swayed his bag to hit them on the head. This of course had no impact on such tough skin and withstanding bones. Only used as a distraction to get behind the ghoul.

Intimidated as they appeared to be, the masked figure did all they could to shake the office-worker off their body and make a run for it. Arima paused, pondering whether or not he should give chase with the result being to at least try and follow. To make his point clear. It is not like he had any easy way to exterminate the creature.

Dashing forward Arima was quickly forced to slide to a stop. It urged a plea from his injured ankle, still mending from being cracked a couple days earlier by the Red-Twig ghoul. The healing gas in his side threatened to cry out next, the stitches tugging slightly at flesh that was crudely torn and clawed. This was much labor, and the White Reaper, unlike the Black one, was known to not run down ghouls once they attempted escape.

This should be his sign to make an escape of his own, he thought. Push came to shove, only granting him a mere moment to dash back and ignore what he knew were prickles on his delicate-looking hands. He had similar wounds scabbing shut across his inner wrists. Arima frequently gave an attempt to hiding the bandages with his wristwatch facing inward, yet knew a ghoul to be perceptive. Especially if they were to catch a whiff of the blood. Especially if they, no; she was the White Rose.

@umbralrosa​

TWO WEEKS IN DETENTION - and then the Black Reaper was released back into the wild. Or at least, that’s what the Eyepatch ghoul called it. Having stayed in Cochlea, eating those RC-Suppressant laced stews neutralized their kagune hand, as well as slowing down the healing of their terribly-damaged eyes. Now that he was back outside breathing in fresh air, the two noticed just how difficult their missions are about to be.

‘ HOW ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO HUNT AN S-RANK LIKE THAT. ‘

THE BLACK REAPER DID NOT REPLY. Hardly did he ever feel like humoring the G H O U L in conversation, the mere existence of this T H I N G serving in annoying him. It was still difficult to see, even with the glasses propped atop his nose, and it was paired with the fact he was still missing an arm. His left hand was clad in the same red leather-like gloves while the right sleeve of his trench coat was folded neatly into the stump that was his elbow, held together with a pin. He would M A K E it work. He H A D to.

EXCEPT... It all went W R O N G . Black Reaper passed by clear signs of a trap - an ambush - having been incapable of noticing a thing in his current state. If not for the sharp senses of the kid in the wooden chair screaming in his ear he’d be D E A D . The half-ghoul was feral, his senses sharper than the rest of them.

‘ ANOTHER ONE - ABOVE! ‘ He called, throwing himself both figuratively and L I T E R A L L Y at the older one. Two branch-like kagune of purple that were used to defend the investigator were joined by four tentacles of pulsating red, shielding him from an attack he couldn’t perceive in time otherwise. This was... too much strain on the body after so little time, after that little food to spare.

   To bite was to breath. To move was to kill.  Tiir looked human at first, maybe a bit paler, his limbs just a little too long perhaps? Did his eyes seem a little to red? But that was just due to the light... wasn’t it? He was just tall... for his age and... and im sure he just didnt get enough sun....right?

@umbralrosa​ //   ⑉ ⑉ ⑉ ⑉ ⑉ ⑉ ⑉ ⑉ ⑉ ⑉ ⑉ ⑉ ⑉ ⑉ ⑉ ⑉ ⑉ ⑉ ⑉ ⑉ ⑉ ⑉

玫:

She didn’t make it soon enough to her castle. This rarely happens in instances there are no caves or abandoned places to hide away in, where she must make a fast journey to her territory for her safety. Apparently, not even in the thick trees and brush of her forest, was she safe. A place where demons and humans alike could not ever enter lest they were fed to the garden. Her servants crowding in great numbers  around their master to ensure she wasn’t messed with or hurt herself at all, and they didn’t do anything even when she wanted the cold so very much in that moment.

The winter air was not enough to aid in the overheating of her body -- littered with scars in a very unique case only every solar eclipse. Her usually pristine and untouched body covered head to toe in marred spaces from long to wide in various size. Her eyes half-open from exhaustion, kimono somewhere in the long grass and moss as she lies on her side in a partial fetal position.

To the demon that met her prior, who knew her to stand tall and imposing even before something like him, she must be absolutely pitiful to look at. He was safe from the dense trees, but it didn’t matter for her. The solar eclipse was an overall arching nemesis to her body regardless if she was in line of its light or not.

When she feels a cold finger brush the longest scar on her body along the midsection up to her collarbone, an ugly serrated shape at its edges. She shivers in assumption it was another phantom pain. The time she was sawed in half, from groin up to her neck. The heat that combat against his cold was something else entirely, like a double-fold fever struck these places specifically. It seemed all the big scars were done with forming, leaving just the newly forming hot red-violet ones to show up from the few scrapes and scratches she earned in her last few adolescent years.

Her breathing was irregular, as if being strangled. Her heartrate non-existent from its undoubtfully shocked state -- if anything is to garner from the massive star-like formation where it would be. The times she was revoked of that organ specifically.

    “H-here to... Kill me... Wh-en I’m downed?” she says, her voice even worse than her breathing, incredibly hoarse and muffled. A deep scar ran around her entire neck, and a few more layers of deeper pink shade in the front of the windpipe from where she was both beheaded and her throat slit. She didn’t even look at him. Didn’t need to - to know he was behind her, or in front of her now? She can’t tell properly. The scar across both her eyes from an attempt to gouge her sight made her vision unbelievably bright and blurry. Thankfully, her sense of feeling wasn’t numb like the rest of her senses.

Muzan is more capable than he’s led her to believe. He can tell something’s wrong, judging by the fact that he hasn’t seen or heard from her in a while--usually their little.. conversations are what keeps him on his toes. The humans just don’t have that spark-- and the demons can’t even compete.

It was even worse to see her curled and in pain on the ground, scarred, her kimono discarded on the ground a little ways away. He finds himself moving, his feet taking him to her side. He doesn’t know why he’s so interested--perhaps it’s because she’s just as old as he is.

Perhaps that’s why he’s feeling such kinship with her-- and that’s magnified further when he sees the scars.

So she understands, he thinks, as his fingers trace one of the worse ones.

He wouldn’t call it ugly--it’s merely serrated. Painful.

To see her reduced to this--so pained, breathing hard, destroyed down to this is very unnerving. 

His fingers trace the scars, piece by piece by piece, and he only speaks after he’s finished. “Not quite. I missed our sparkling conversations so I decided to locate you. Fortunately, might I add.”

The trees protected him--but they didn’t have the same effect on her. 

He gently wraps the kimono around her, picks her up,  and then he was gone, back to the labyrinth of his infinity castle. “You will rest until this passes,” he says, “I’ll take you to a room, and should you need anything, you can call on me.”

“And when everything is done and you are better, you are free to leave as you desire.” 

“We’re safe here.” Geralt tells Ciri as they approach the castle that he has come to know so well. After leaving Kaer Morhen, this is the first place he’d thought to bring Ciri. Maybe Saku can train the girl, too, in ways that Geralt can not.

She displays promise with Chaos. Maybe Saku can teach her magic. Either way, they can take refuge here for a bit. Leading Ciri on roach, they approach the castle barn and Geralt helps Ciri down.

“Where are we Geralt?” She questions and Geralt glances at her out of the corner of golden cat-eyes.