EXT - The Ruins in the Wilds; Callisto. Night
Dorian had gone checking the perimeter for the dozenth time, peering with sharp silver eyes, and quieter in his shoulder plate than he often was in tweed. He was deliberate, diligent, when on guard, as when on the dance floor. Though he had mentioned, he thought helpfully to his lupine sister, "If you see something that moves strangely, like out of time's natural sequence, believe your eyes." Then a wink to punctuate it, as if that was something that was alright to hear.
Dinah: New moon. The family ritual; harvesting Time. Dinah glittered with emeralds and gold, jewels against her skin that caught the light of the brazier that was already lit. The bundles of herbs that were to be tossed into it were beside it, her other supplies...sacrifice included, were assembled around the ritual space.
How many times had she done this now? how many years had they stolen? She fussed over the final touches, the last leather band threaded through with 49 silvery needles. She waited, hopefully ready, glancing to each face of her present family. Her brothers. Delilah. Her father, lingering near to the ruins where he could oversee without getting near the messy part. The sacrifice beside her in the middle that she hadn't even bothered to learn the name of...
Soon.
"Delilah.." she picked up the leather strap and she smiled, offering it towards her. "...the needles will prick you when the time comes. Don't be afraid" she said quietly. "When the time comes.. you will have the powder on your eyes that will make the unseen seen. that can be...jarring. We are all old hands at this, but there is no shame in backing out if you do not want to see it."
Delilah Harper-Windgrace: Lilah moved around the space, a deliberate hunter to the last. She could smell blood in the air, and knew it was only in part due to her recent kill that she'd used to paint her face for what was to come. She scarcely looked at her contribution to this endeavour. In spite of hunting him for two full days, shadowing his every move, making sure he wouldn't be missed, she knew, deep down, she wouldn't even remember his face. As she passed Dorian, she acknowledged his advice with a terse nod and a soft, "Aye," but otherwise, continued to circle, albeit mainly at the side farthest from Charles Windgrace. As Dinah called her over, she accepted her strap and needles from her sister - when did that word become so easy to think in relation to Dinah? - with a small smile. "Ah'm no' goin' anywhere...nae beastie's gonna get in the way of yer show, Dinah." As she said it, she met the eyes of her brothers briefly before turning, extending her sense out around her for anything that may try to interrupt, mystical or mundane.
Drystan Windgrace had stowed his bag off to the side and changed out of his clothes and into , ...well not much. He had been silent the whole afternoon, sequestered away from his Father and mentally preparing for this, as best he could. Before he stepped into the circle of light given off by the brazier, he sighed and tightened the rope at his side. He grabbed the bell by the clacker and stopped near the body on the ground. He sniffed lightly and just stared at the space in front of him, hazy..not quite focused on anything, running his tongue over his teeth behind pursed lips.
Dorian took a long look at his siblings, in this new space to be the home for this, feeling his father's presence like a millstone that added gravity to the free air. He'd pulled off his glove to get his bracelet fastened, and drew a long quiet breath again. His bout of good cheer had been replaced of late by a solemnity that was borne of an overabundance of self-doubt. It helped having someone speak their doubts about you aloud, or to not need to with a lingering glance. Even with his hair cut and neat he'd have to focus to stand with his shoulders straight, an old burden he'd almost forgotten in these months on Callisto.
He'd met Delilah's gaze with an encouraging shadow of a smile, and was doing his level best to keep between Charles and her in particular as if he could break the beam of disapproval with his own person. Afterall, he was accustomed to it. The plate-mail and gambeson he donned were replicas and remnants of attire he'd worn long ago, when he was as young as he looked. After looking at them all, ears perked his gaze rested once more upon his twin and he'd let loose a breath he hadn't even realized he'd been holding.
Dinah nodded, bowing her head. A glance to her father, who looked disgusted that the 'pet' werewolf was even here. "strap it to yourself, and tightly. it mustn't come off." she spoke quietly. "I will explain what is going on as we go along, if you like." Di lifted her sleeve to show her own, a blackened cuff of similar needles "The bands are called 'the barrier of naac tithe', and all of yours are tied to mine". She picked up her knife and drew a slice across her palm, gathering the blood and flicking it out to the edges of her ritual circle.
"when i've blooded the circle, I will take the psychoactives. Then drystan is going to toss those herbs into the fire, and light the candles on it and tie the rope around me" she walked to the little dish of datura seeds. "...I cannot leave this circle. Not until we're finished. If at any point, I become....*not* myself. cut the rope and shoot me from a distance" Dinah tipped a palmful of the drugs into her hand and into her mouth with a bitter grimace.
"When the rope is tied. I dab your eyelids with the powder of ibn ghazi and you will see things as they truly are, Lilah. That might be a little shocking. And...Drystan will ready himself too." she glanced at her brother. She always hated that particular part of the ritual, but at least she had plenty of eyes for him to see through once his own were carved out. "If the beasts come through, Do not attack *them* unless they attack us first. They might not."
Delilah Harper-Windgrace: Strapping on the leather band as instructed, Lilah nodded along as Di explained what would be happening. She would not look at Charles. She would not disembowel Charles, either, trusting Dinah's cryptic mention of plans to be true. In spite of her reassurances, the red haired Scot was silently forced to admit to herself...she had no idea what to expect. Not that she'd back down when the time came, not ever, but it was enough that she felt shimmer of worry. It had been some time for her to feel such things, and it was notable. She found herself giving the tartan tied around her waist a quick squeeze, willing her lost clan and the goddess Medb to help her protect her current family. Momentarily remembering when she'd done the same when her father wore this same kilt. But now wasn't the time for reminiscing...there was work to be done.
Drystan Windgrace listened as Dinah explained to Lilah what was taking place. He nodded along and looked down at his wristband. He swallowed and looked up at the dark moonless sky, taking in a shuddered breath and letting it out slowly through his mouth. He looked at each of them, taking them in for a long while, as if he may not see them again. For whatever reason, as he didnt even quite know himself, he glanced over his shoulder towards where Charles stood with arms crossed, just in shadow. He was guarded, particularly to try and block out any outside feelings from the others, he had his own issues to deal with, but when he looked at his father, any fear he had was twisting and boiling in his gut and turning to something red and angry. He looked back at the fire then knelt, taking the herbs up and tossing them into the flame, and they crackled and spat. He reached and took up a candle, lighting it on the flame, then placing it back in its spot, one by one, stepping around the body and back again. Once the candles were all lit, he walked over to Dinah, and kept his eyes on hers, taking the other end of the rope around his waist and slipping it around her hip. In a low voice he spoke, "I am ready to see with your sight. Give me power to be sharp and to see around forbidden angles to protect you." Practiced words, but lots of meaning behind it. He tied himself to his sister, and and held his hands there on the rope around her middle, as he slowly knelt down before her.
Dorian tugged the gauntlet back in place over his 49 needle-band, and moved nearer the circle for his eye-anointing. Though he understood the basics of how it worked in theory, magic was all yet mystical and impossible to him. And important, because it was Dinah's world. He could do what he was honed to, and be a good soldier, and had faith in that ability at least. His faith in his siblings was contrarily unshakable. Doing that was the same in principle on either side of the veil of the realm of material and mundane things.
The cool of the night air and the eddies of warmth and smoke from the brazier painted the evening, the experience in contrasting tactile colours. It was a grounding experience, like feeling his twin's existence without needing to see her, but also being able to cast eyes upon her. Or hands. Her ritual garb was, as ever, distracting, and would be sure to live on vividly in his mind; he envied the emeralds so near to her, and would rather think on that than the chance of her not being herself. He had nodded that he would not attack anything unless they were attacked, showing his understanding and remembering of that aspect of things. It was a good thing too, since he was full of tension and almost spoiling for a fight. Or something like a fight, neither of which seemed to be possible under Charles' eyes. Eyes. His heart skipped a beat for what his brother had to do, but as he'd been told, and fully believed, he'd never be clever enough to comprehend this realm where Drystan and Dinah trod.
Dinah took a deep breath and she nodded.. Stepping on and then over the still drugged and incapacitated sacrifice. Their suffering wasnt the *point*, after all, she faced Drystan with a nervous, excitable smile as he lit the candles, then knelt before her, lifting her arms enough to let him tie the rope. She looked around the others, taking a deep breath of her own. ".. I love you all" she said quietly, giving a giddy laugh, before she lifted the cuffed hand to the sky .
"The Flaming Circle locks everything in!
The Flaming Circle locks everything out!
Draba, draba, kalta, alta!
Accar, Zour and Maroud! Lock the circle and let no evil pass through~" she lifted her sleeve enough to daub her cuff with blood from her palm. The needles in the sympathetic bracelets would prickle and dig sharply against their skins, worming through the upper layers of her dermis until they were spread out at equal points of their bodies. The bands were active. Lowering herself to kiss Drystans' brow, she reached for her ritual kit. The pouch she removed was tiny, a single string of fleshy red string connecting to the dried eyeball that she carefully opened. One of dear old Gunners' eyes, she dabbed her fingertips into the myrhh scented powder and reached out to smear it across Drystan's eyelids.
"See as I do. See what is hidden" she whispered, beckoning for Delilah and Dorian to approach too for her to repeat the act to them, the greyish ash patted with almost reverent care onto their lids too as they were anointed. Charles did not approach. As they'd open their eyes once more, the 'unseen' would be clear, their monstrous natures revealed from beneath the guises, and the mundane world beginning to shift and pitch uncertainly.
Delilah Harper-Windgrace: Taking in everything with the careful, watchful eye of a new initiate, Lilah watched the precise way that Stan crouched we he added the herbs to the brazier. The tender way he tied the rope around Dinah's waist. As Dinah looked at each of them, she offered a friendly half smile, even if she felt a tad silly doing so. These three had done this who knows how many times, who was she to offer reassurances? As the ritual began in earnest and Di began to place the powder on the brothers eyelids, she softly whispered, "Medb, cùm sùil oirnn. Is e sealg duilich a tha seo." She did so well away fom the ritual circle, so as not to complicate anything between her own deity and that of the Windgrace's. And then it was her turn and she stepped forward. Closing her eyes, she somehow expected the dust to...feel like something? Mystical, perhaps. Taking a couple steps back, she was about to comment on how she thought her dust was defective when a shiver ran down her spine, her skin broke out in gooseflesh, and she felt her body twist. When her eyes open...she saw...oh, how she saw...the natal Windgraces, and her own altered form.
Drystan Windgrace closed his eyes for the last time this evening, feeling the warm press of soft fingertips brush along his eyelids. His soft lashes fluttered a bit as the psychoactive seeped into his bloodstream immediately. The darkness behind his eyes full tilt shifted, he could feel it. Swirls and patterns began to form and reform into a strange swirl that began to seep through his skin. Pulling in a deep breath through his nose he held it for a few seconds then exhaled loudly, pulling his hands up to cover his face with them. At the end of each finger was a bejeweled claw, sharp as razors. heartbeats around him were louder in his ears, and his own grew quite loud as he very slowly and methodically pulled his fingertips to his eye lids and paused if only for a moment, and steeled himself as he pushed the tips of the claws into his eyes, slicing through skin and working their way around the orbit he twisted and pulled with some force, a squelching rip as he blinded himself from this world and was plunged into a different darkness. His skin rolled in shadow and undulated in the light of the flickering brazier. Soft shadowed patterns were blooming all over his body. His desecrated eyes were flicked to the ground, blood pouring down his face. Not a sound escaped him, and the pain pushed and turned into power, Slowly, he rose. He stood blind to this world, but ready to see all from everywhere else.
Dorian could not help letting Dinah feel his love in turn when she declared hers. He could not consider, could never let himself think too hard on the sacrifice, and what life they were exchanging. No, he blinded himself to that and remembered that he'd snap the man's neck himself if it meant living on. When the needles began to prickle their way in he drew a long steady breath, staring at Dinah, exhaling it just as slowly as the strange, but not unknown twinges reminded him of the last time. The time before that. The first time. The time after that. Fluttering stuttering memories also grounded him, informed his long memory of what came next. He'd open his eyes and the gleaming yellow lamps of them shone in the evening. Glancing to his father, who'd never seen him thus, perhaps did not now, did not know of the wings he lay claim to, he'd smirk.
The patriarch was no beauty, bore none of the bloom of youth any longer, though he was monster enough.
The elder twin’s skin was palest yellow, gold to his sister's silver, and though mostly covered by attire, there were pale whorls of arcane sigils showing upon his face. The wings with all their eyes were just a suggestion that displaced darkness behind him, as he hadn't need of them. He'd push a reassuring gladness toward Drystan for being the strong one to do as he did with his mind, and then stepped back and away from the circle to get a broader view. He allowed himself a moment to look at the sky and stars with these anointed eyes, and his smirk fastened itself more fully to his lips. He'd roll his shoulders as he paced toward the ruin's periphery, and glanced to Delilah, letting that smirk turn grin as he beheld her. Then it was off to the races! The turning all his attentions to any stray movement or sound.
Dinah had once hated her true face. Mottled with corruption, mutated with the multiple eyes that glinted from her hands, her chest and her brow. The fact that her eyes were inky dark and starless had made her loathe the sight of her appearance in the mirror, once upon a time. These days she exulted in the paths the Old Ones mapped against her skin in constellations from other planes, gave her more eyes that she could *see* what others missed. Gills to breathe beneath the waves... Now with the powder of Ibn Ghazi on them, They would be able to see the fine mesh of energy connecting each of the needles beneath their skins.
She picked up the paper mache encased crystal from within her kit and carefully picked the cocoon of ritual scroll and spiders' blood from around the point of the stone, turning her hand towards Drystan so he would be able to 'see' through her, always, and her smile became somewhat sorrowful at the sight of his ruined face. When the anchor stone was picked clean from its' protective seal, she nodded just the once as she turned to look towards Delilah. "...this is an anchor stone. the man at my feet is going to become an anchor for us" she explained "Drystan sees everything I can see...but nothing of that world, which is why he needs you and Dorian to see for him there" Dinah settled down onto the ground, prodding around at the sacrifices' torso until she found a soft, squishy part of his abdomen, lined the stone up and drove it into him with the heel of her palm. Drugged as he was, the man still spasmed and twitched, becoming old, then young, then some strange hybrid mixture of all ages at once.
"your bell, drystan" she whispered, pointing her palm towards where it rested at his feet. She took a deep breath. Things were starting to act strangely in the circle. The grass was growing, dying. withering to dust and sprouting all in endless, repetitive cycle. Dinah stood up to her full, though not considerable height and once more stood on top of the sacrificed man, arms over her head and pushed the might of her faith into the world, crackling across her skin.
"Hear me!
King of Infinite Space!
Planetmover!
The Foundation of Fastness!
Ruler of Earthquakes!
The Vanquisher of Terror!
The Creator of Panic!
Destroyer!
The Shining Victor!
Son of Chaos and the Void!
The Guardian of the Abyss!
God of the Outermost Darkness!
Lord of Dimensions!
Riddle-knower!
Guardian of The Secrets!
Lord of the Labyrinth!
Master of the Angles!
Point of the Omega!
Lord of the Gate!
Opener of the Way!
The Oldest!
All-in-One!
The One by Life Prolonged!
Umr At-Tawil!
Iak-Sathath!
YOG-SOTHOTH NAFL'FTHAGN!!!
Your servant calls upon you!"
Delilah Harper-Windgrace: No matter what she thought she was meant to expect, Stan ripping out his own fackin' eyes was not up there. Delilah let out the barest hint of a gasp at the display, and cursed herself silently for even that small display. And so, she looked herself over, finding herself at some point between her mundane and beastial forms. Smaller, perhaps, than her wolf, but as bounced on the balls of her more lupine-line legs, she felt agile, and dangerous, and the sensation brought a smile to her lips. Her eyes moved to her golden brother as she mirrored his stepping away from the ritual's centre, she let her eyes move over him, and then on to the others, the tortured king that Drystan appeared to be...the eldritch seer from beyond that was Dinah, the poor fool at her feet. Canting her head to the side, Lllah took in the display, and as Dinah instructed them to be Stan's eyes, she couldn't help a mischievous grin tugging at her lips, "Just like auld times," she found herself saying, even if this, decidedly, was not like any of the pair's previous adventures.
Drystan Windgrace nodded and lowered himself down and pawed a the ground once before taking a deep breath and reached out with his mind instead, and stood back up. He had been holding the levee back on using any abilities while his father was here that he'd almost - almost - forgot he had them. He rolled his shoulders and moved his head around releasing any tension held there, and simply held his hand out in the air, as the bell lifted and snapped up into his grasp. He could not see this world, but he could feel it. He held up the bell and rang it seven times while she called out the names. He could feel a hum in the air around this space, and it cracked open memories of all the past times this had been done, in its various forms. as he brought the bell to rest, he waited, waited for the world to open its jaw wide open and swallow itself backwards, rolling and folding space for them, for each one of these three siblings.
Dorian felt a thrill of delight at hearing his sister's chants to the clangour of the bell. His siblings were gods, and as much as he walked in their shadows daily, each time they did this, he knew it even better. His mind and body all tingled with the rush of protective magics. And perhaps, just a little bit, as they approached the moments that ate and regenerated more of them, rushing nearby, he felt that he was just a little divine too. Not like being English nobility, divine, but part of something lasting, implacable, powerful. That might risk turning the great eyes of the universe upon them. The yearning to loose that power came on the heels of that sensation but he'd have to bide his time.
And share his awareness without muddying it with poor perception. The burning lights that were his eyes scanned, flickered, narrowed as he spent a moment remembering the feel of his blade in his palm.
Dinah could feel the fabric of space and time shifting. Bending. Just enough that she could step through the nature of the weave itself. The firelight glittered on those shark-black eyes as she turned from her post on top of the dying man to look over each of her siblings in turn... and her father. her chants had changed somewhat since the last time he had observed but she was exulting in her faith. Her words were a whisper, a chorus of her voice as a child, her voice as an elder she would hopefully never become. Her face wrinkling, smoothing, becoming uncorrupt and pure once more, withered and vile, all shifting and insubstantial with each echoing ring of Drystans' bell.
"yog-Sothoth knows the Gate.
Yog-Sothoth is the Gate.
Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the Gate.
Past, Present and Future, all is one in Yog-Sothoth.
By that which is not to be named,
By Azathoth,
By Nyarlathotep,
By Shub-Niggurath,
By the two snakes,Mlandoth and Mril Thorion
By that which created the Voids,
By the inprisoned,
By the free,
By the King in Yellow,
Guardian, let the Gate be opened!"
The gate didn't seem to be as much of a portal as a sphere that expanded from around where dinah stood, stopped only by the circle keeping her and the anchor imprisoned. Memories, visions of the future, things that had been and would be seen through the bubble of insubstantial *wrongness* that permeated the sky around the youngest Windgrace. The realms were open.
.
Delilah Harper-Windgrace: Delilah watched the display with a cautiously neutral expression. Her senses, keen at the best of times, felt hyper-focused. She heard insects scurrying in the grass. Was sure she could smell the gyoza of that one stall in the Seiiki district, even this far from town. Idly, she paced back and forth, golden eyes glowing in the light of the brazier as they moved around the ruins. Her attention was keen, but she didn't know what to expect, she just knew she felt it, a sensation from the shadows, that made the fur along her back stand on end...something was out there. Moving closer to Dorian, she nodded towards a particular patch of shadows...one that seemed separate from the darkness around it. "Head's up..." she said softly, once against bouncing on the balls of her feet.
Drystan Windgrace suddenly saw a dawning light, but not one bright as the days sun, or even the pale light of the moon, it was a sickly green that seemed to unfurl around him. He blinked, with new eyes that were made possible from Dinah, and he began to peer around. at first it was a fog, but it was soupy rather than light on a meadow, no.. this was a thick cloud that seemed endless. memories of the past, ideas of possible futures all made real in his minds eyes.
Dorian: || Before he saw it, or felt it, or smelled it, Delilah clocked it, and then he heard it. An echo of baying, and snuffling hanging in the air a moment, made weirder by running backward or being elongated in it's inhabiting a time outside of time, by a creature that had caught cosmological wind of what they were doing. A beast with an almost beaklike protrusion from whence issued many mouths, in the vague shape of a canine, appeared. Only instead of any quadrapedal creature that could be reckoned, it bore a hard to count total of arms? legs? clawed appendages beneath it. Perhaps that or the barbed tails it possessed were how it propelled itself outside of the fourth dimension. And along walls. One moment its beady eyes reflected the light from the center of the circle, as it clambered atop the ruin, peering, the next, without being seen to move, it was down the side of the stone wall some distance, bearing toward the outermost edge of the circle inhabited by Delilah, by Charles, by Dorian. Delilah had seen it first and when Dorian looked up he fixed his eyes on it and nodded. He gripped his saber and eased it from the scabbard with a minimal *shing* of sound. He hoped Delilah saw him pointing his free hand, his left at himself, because he bent, picked up a piece of ruin stone and tossed it at the creature to get it's attention, to draw fire for Delilah to flank it. Rarely had he been so lucky, so early on in the proceedings, but they'd never done this on these leylines either.
The beast would land with another of it's simultaneously forward and backward sounding snarls and all of those eyes turned on Dorian.
Dorian who heard his sister's voice as her youthful one. Who told his brother without saying a word that he and Delilah had a live one. He'd show Drystan the hound's visage as he saw it, but also the keen edge of his weapon and the vivid shine of their lupine sibling's eyes.
Dinah had done the hard part. Opening the gate, protecting everyone from anything that spilled out of it *magically*, that was the difficult part. The rest was just..gathering, at least for her own role in this. Scraping her fingers at passing fragments of visions and dreams to collect dust. Dried blood from memories of ancient murders. Graveyard dirt from ancient mounds that might be converted into the paint used to keep them eternal. She drifted onwards, ignorant of the hound that had slipped its' leash and was in their world.
"Tell me what you need, Drystan" she whispered, taking a step further into the strangeness. There was a reason she had the rope around her, to draw her back to them like a trail of breadcrumbs. "...tell me what you'll use"
Delilah Harper-Windgrace: Lilah felt tuned in to Dorian's movements and intentions like she hadn't since the death of her first clan, offering him acknowledgement to his intention without outward action of any sort. Silently, she began the backward arch of her pacing, only to start moving around, flanking the creature as intended. She moved without a sound, sometimes on two limbs, sometimes on four, eyes never leaving her prey. It felt good to hunt with a pack again, to stalk some difficult prey. Her eyes moved briefly to Dinah, remembering her note to not attack anything first, but it would be so easy. The thing's attention seemed to firmly be on Dorian, and it had no idea of her flanking it...she was indeed a clever girl.
Drystan Windgrace opened his mouth to speak, but stopped himself before he began. This, was no ordinary ritual, and he knew it. He could still hear his father's heartbeat, and then the elevated beats of both Delilah and Dorian as a beast of time stepped through into the physical world, he felt its presence rubbernecking as it skittered backwards and forwards, always forwards.. the rope pulled a bit more taut from Stans end to Di's, not yoinking her back, just making her aware something was afoot. refocusing he had to think of the task at hand. "A green field, rain..." he blinked slowly and looked around as the scene developed before them. A small field ringed by trees next to a lake, and a young Dinah screeching as she laughed, hopping over the tall grass towards the shore of the lake, only her nightdress on. His own yells from hundreds of years ago calledout in delight as he ran past himself, chasing after Dinah, trying to pull his britches off and make it to the lake before her. "There... see?" He gestured towards the verdant colors.
Dorian squared up against the creature as Lilah moved like a fluid made for hunting. He'd murmur quietly, and with a grin, "Here kitty kitty." He was pretty sure talking to it, even provocatively did not count as an attack.
For it's part, the hound that was only doing what it was made to, keeping time clean, was taken aback by being called to and it hesitated. Or perhaps that was just it's stutter-stop movements. A number of limbs stayed on the ground, but a few lifted from the ground as it reared up and regarded the Englishman. How best to dispatch the very wrong thing beyond his mortal years, who was all bravado.
In such moments, Charles' disapproval did not matter, he was doing some part of what he was made to do. The joy of purpose enlivened already madly rushing blood. He moved his blade off to one side as if inviting the beastie to come at him, even though it towered above him. And he reached out a hand as if to offer it some petting.
Dinah turned within the memories as Drystan gave the rope a tug and she turned to look backwards towards them, flashing more recent memories through their peripheral vision as she did so. Perhaps intentionally did she linger just a little longer on the visions of their father being the prime specimen of an awful human being as she could...but only for a moment.
"I see it~" she whispered, tuning back towards the memory with a smile and she wandered closer, movements thick as though she waded in water. She reached forward to gather a handful of lake water, insubstantial as mist in her fingers, but she knew the bottles and jars in her ritual kit would be filling from the colours. She made particular effort to catch the shining reflection from the waters' surface on her fingertips, the particular colours of Drystan’s hair in the sunlight, the flush of youthful life on her own cheeks. She scooped some of the grass too, powdering like lichen in her palm.
"...he knows where the old ones broke through of old, and where they shall break through again. He knows where they have trod the earth's fields, and where they still tread them, and why no one can behold them as they tread..." she whispered to herself. "...more, Drystan?"
Delilah Harper-Windgrace: Her eyes fixed on the creature, the odd stutter to this being, this beast from outside the flow of time, come to set right the perceived wrongness of the Windgrace's continued existence. Idly, she wondered if the creature could even able to see anything but it's targets. Could it see her, a being still living well within her species' personal lifespan? A pointless question, perhaps, one quickly dismissed until after the ritual. As Dorian spurred the creature towards him, adopting a casual, almost playful air, Lilah couldn't help but flash a toothsome grin. 'That's it, beastie...' she thought to herself, 'Yer nothin' special, just a creature functioning on instinct, aren't ye? Shame that instinct is ta try an hunt this family...' Slowly, she began closing the distance, ready if this turned violent.
Drystan Windgrace muttered a low "Yes..more, .." Around him came the long yawn of road that lead up to and away from the Windgrace household in England. The Manse was sitting atop a bit of a hill and the road was yellow, crushed stone mixed with sand that somehow matched his brothers hair brilliantly. The two boys were running as fast as they could from the place, a voice bellowing in the distance of both time and space. Charles, screaming at the top of his lungs at Dorian over ...something. In the past, his little brother skidded and fell over, actually tubling and kicking up some of the dirt, bloodying his knees in the process. "Blimey!" Dorian yelled as he pushed himself up and his younger self crouched down to help gather the ten year old up. Through gritted teeth his own voice, both in his teenaged voice and his adult voice seethed, "I HATE him! I HATE how he treats you!" It boomed in his ears, the words. "One of these days Dorian, we won't have to worry about him ever again." Drystans brow furrowed and he pointed towards Dorian, the gold and the blood red. "There.." He directed Dinah for the rest of his palette to gather up from around them. But - at the same time, he could hear present Dorian "Here kittyy.." He felt outwards for Lilah, his senses finding her flanked and closer to Charles than the time dog. He concentrated and used da gentle a touch as possible as his forces crawled up her shoulders, and would turn her head in his direction. He gave it a moment for Lilah to realise she was being directed by him, not some weirdness she might be seeing. He lifted his hand and made a "Come here" motion with his right and pointed down at the ground, and then slowly towards his father, and then motioned as if he would have her physically bring Charles to him. He didnt have any psychic ability, and he dare not speak aloud.
Dorian: || Perhaps it was sensing Dorian's overconfidence as too abundant, because the creature flickeringly wheeled it's front end, stretching it'd body out to look where Lilah was. Did it see her? Did it not? Hard to say since the eyes looked *near* her. And only for a moment because it turned with that strobing stutter of motion back to the man with the blade.
A man who was not bored despite his centuries, because every time they did this, it was new. Every time he kissed his twin, it was new. He was. At least so far. No ravening interdimensional guardian was going to stop him. No pondering of the sacrifice's life. No guilt, just a joyous portraying of his part in this grand scheme. And what he really wanted was to sink steel into that torso which could not possibly sprout as many appendages as it did.
The uncertainty about what was to come next would be shattered in a vital shift of the creature's position, it went from reared back on it's haunches to springing and being seen to be caught in mid-air about to try to chomp off the arm with the blade. Dorian swore he could feel the countless rows of teeth in his arm above the elbow, only that was what but one possible future, a timeline being written and not fully come to fruition and definitely the moment the beast terminated this motion on. Half chomped, half chomping, certain it had struck the first of two blows it needed to dispatch the wrong creature in it's maw.
It was not the outcome the elder twin bet his lupine sister subscribed to. He did not even step aside nor away, he did not swing his blade in the captive arm, because the beast obscured his view of Delilah and he'd not risk striking her. He grunted at the force of it striking him and though he had set his feet, he slid backwards before his heels fully dug in again. He shoved his plate clad shoulder toward the creature, ready to try discerning where he could stick it if Delilah did not strike and soon. One did not spend centuries of life training with a sword to be incapacitated. Without the bending of time's angles he did know a few tricks about swordplay. Half a moment after making out the proper approach vector, he'd flick his wrist and feel the strange sensation of his blade striking a creature that was and was not there. Dorian skewered the creature, and left the blade there for the time being. As anyone might do in such circumstances, the beast made a rather horrible sound in multiple enraged and pained voices.
Dinah saw the memory she was directed towards and she drifted closer. it was difficult for her to not interfere, to not reach backwards through time to help the hurt boy that was her brother. She did as she was bid, cupping her hands to gather up a handful of gold and blood red. She turned towards drystan as his attention turned from the rite and she cocked her head to one side.
"You are to be king." was all she said. A simple phrase, and she gripped her hands into the rope around her waist, reeling herself back towards the Now.
<"How does a prince become a king, Drystan?"> she whispered into his mind as she reeled herself closer. Close enough to see dorian skewer the Tindalosi hound and she felt a pang of pity for it. But... she was quietly confident that for every beast they found and fought, at least *one* had been smart enough to get away. She turned towards where her father stood from inside her time bubble and her hand reached out towards him.
"Man rules now where they ruled once, they shall soon rule where man rules now. after summer is winter and after winter summer, they wait patient and potent for here shall they reign again.... things that have learned to walk that ought to crawl" she muttered to herself, though she smiled, serene and sweet.
"...you are a thing that hasn't even to learn to crawl, father. Standing on the shoulders of greater men and having naught of the faith to surpass them. you ought to be proud. We are the only true success you have ever wrought"
Delilah Harper-Windgrace: Totally fixated on the present prey, Delilah nearly missed Drystan's signal. Nearly, but she'd spent far too long travelling Europe and getting into scrapes with that boy to miss the very distinct feel of his particular psychic fingerprint completely completely. Perking up, she turned to face her friend and brother, conscious of keeping the thing from beyond time in her peripheral vision, to back up Dorian if need be. As she took in the subtle hand motions Stan made, her eyebrows briefly rose, until his meaning became clear, and a smile curled on her lips. A smile of centuries of delayed revenge, in her grasp. This gift to her, her new family giving her means to avenge her old. Making no outward indication of her plan, Lilah side-stepped to her left, allowing Charles Windgrace a better view of his youngest son. Maybe he would have a moment of being proud of the man Dorian had become, for once in his life, seeing him square off with the beast. Maybe it would be the same story as the rest of his life...
Delilah didn't much care. The only regret she felt was abandoning Dorian...but she needed the opportunity. As the great Tindalosi hound pounced on Dorian, drawing the father's attention, Delilah was but a half second behind, immediately jumping and dropping the old man to the ground with a growl. His pitiful attempts to fight her off only produced a laugh...this man, this weak, spineless old man, had been the cause of so much trouble. Clamping her hand across his mouth, she leaned in, eyes flaring, teeth bared, and she snarled, "This is fer ma family, ye cunt!" She thought about rendering him unconscious, but in the end, she wanted to see the fear in his eyes as his children stole his life. And so it was that Delilah dragged Charles Windgrace to the sacrificial centre, depositing him at the feet of Dinah and Drystan.
Drystan Windgrace could not see the battle happening nearby, but he knew it was happening, lots of movement, as he stared forward at the eclipse of his sister coming back closer to him from the bright fading light of the Windgrace Manor in England fading quickly behind her. He heard her voice in his head as she connected to hm and he replied in kind, without speaking a word, <The king must die.> Delilah moved and he head the clamoring of movement from Dorian, the shrieks and screams of the beats twisting and wailing to the point Drystan could feel the things life....pulse. It wasn't a heartbeat, but something askew. Then he felt it, and heard it. His father on the ground at his feet. "Father, your time has come to step aside.....to make way." The rope from between Dinah and himself was moving now where there had been slack was now animated and snaking its way around Charles, sliding and caressing up his shoulders, brushing up his chest as he wheezed and panted trying to catch his breath from being flung around like a rat by Delilah. He looked down, with hollow bloody eyes and the spectral eyes of time past and future, and it was obvious Drystan could see him VERY clearly. He leaned as he towered above his old man, the rope slipping up around his neck. He cocked his head to the side and a wry smile spread and he showed him his teeth. "What's the saying Father? Long live the King.." the rope cinched tight and held him there in stasis as the flow of power arced back and forth between them.
Dorian staved off an adjacent maw with mail, twisting to get his non-dominant left hand upon the hilt of the saber, and then pulled it up, and through in a quick clean motion. His blood began to seep hot and red through padded leather, staining a rent sleeve as it did the teeth that had just for a moment tasted a very well aged knight. For a moment. Only the next moment, the vast circle of the creature's life was broken into a line with a terminal point. The beast split apart, in the top or front of its form, jaws releasing the man's arm, and falling over with a dying grumble and schlurp, half fading from a plane where its strangely dark blood was never meant to flow.
Pain was an afterthought for Dorian while he looked at the creature, and even bent to tell it what he thought Di would want him to, and because he had a particular history with killing dogs, "Sorry chum." He'd put a hand over it's dead eyes, hoping that the acrid metallic scent of atemporal blood and the creature's pained and dying cry would keep anything else at bay.
He was doing this when he saw what had held up Delilah, namely that she was depositing Charles into the circle. Silently and with a breath that caught, and was held, he'd be wiping houndsblood from his cheek with the back of his left glove as he watched this play out. As both sisters' words came into focus again in a racing mind. His triumph was swallowed by confoundment, but he did not move from where he stood, holding his dripping saber in his off hand. He'd had worse injuries, and was more accustomed to healing and certainty that he would eventually be fine than imagining being dispatched. But he was also accustomed to the god-king his father set himself up as being a forever presence. Seeing the desperation begin to play out in Charles' stunned visage, even then, Dorian did not move. Feeling something like faint, he'd crouch again, wiping the blood from his blade back upon the no longer flickering forward through time but now fading into nonexistence dead hound. Now what Dinah had said in Drystan's room made sense. A terrifying sense that he both felt obligated to and motivated not to stop. With Charles looking at him, he'd sheathe his saber, standing again, and shake his head just the once. It was something Dorian mimicked from his father. Just a little motion of disapproval, disgust. Distancing himself from filial duty in favor of brotherly, he'd just watch. And wonder at the dark giddy gladness he could feel just starting to imagine his patriarch's demise past the shock of its possible and looming probability.
Dinah knew that their youth would only return once drystan had painted the picture. As it was, they were the closest to the other realms.. but Charles had none of the support of his children. As Delilah reached for her father, Dinah reached for dorian's mind, pride and admiration undisguised as he dispatched the hound. <"Trust me, Dorian"> she had said before, and she said it again. She remained trapped inside the circle but there was something that she could do to help from here. She leaned backwards, taking a step back. And then another. And another. She stood in the periphery of witnessing all the awful things he'd said and done, from being under his tutelage for much of her youth before she outstripped what he was capable of. That mistreatment he had inflicted on her brothers had never come for Dinah.
Because he needed her.
But....in all the years she had continued to strive and push herself for the family, it had bubbled through her mind as she had worked...did she need him? she had nothing left to learn from him. All the money they could ever want was theirs anyway. He was relentlessly and remorselessly cruel to those dearest to her. She lifted her hands, her attention taken away from her passive involvement in killing their father by slowly diminishing the ritual space. Not enough to destroy the bubble of time completely, but enough to wither and mummify the sacrificial body, crumbling it to dust at her feet. The statue too of the blessed mother and the squirming infant became naught more than aged rubble with a glanced flick of her wrist, and she turned, seeing Dorian put away his sword, and she smiled, not reaching for him *just* yet. There was still work to be done when the man was dead.
Delilah Harper-Windgrace: Delilah's mouth took on a smile of cruel satisfaction as she watched Stan wrap the cord around his despicable father's throat, doing...whatever it was he was doing. Delilah couldn't rightly say what it was, if she were being honest. It didn't seem like he was choking the man, though a part of her wanted that to be so. She wasn't to see the man's eyes bug out of his head as the life was choked out of him. But her part in this patricide, it seemed, was complete, and so she backed off, shaking off some of her more beastial instincts as she moved to check on Dorian. She could smell his blood on the air so she knew the beast had snagged him, though he'd obviously been more than capable of dispatching it. As she moved, she unwrapped the non-mystical leather strap wrapped around her forearm, moving to wrap it around Dorian's arms above his wound without prompting, to stem the flow of blood for the short amount of time until it healed. Her eyes moved to her brother's, but she said nothing, for the moment, unsure what his thoughts may be with this turn of events.
Drystan Windgrace had nothing left to do but do the deed. "The King is *dead*! LONG LIVE THE KING!" His voice went from a low growling to a big booming voice as he threw his hands toward the sky, shockingly bright green lightning cracking out of a toxic moonless sky, making his voice echo in both the past and the future. Charles's body was flung upwards stiffly, along with grass and rubble from the ground around the circle. However the rope stayed in place, stretched between himself and Dinah. With precision only he could feel in his mind, he stopped his Father short of decapitating him. His neck broke and his body hung in the air as rings of smoke swirled around him and fell concentrically on the ritual circle below. He could feel his face, meaning it was healing, but ..faster than usual. Slowly, he lowered the body to the ground. With a deep exhale, it was done. With this came a swell of pride and something else sprouting as his eyes started to stitch themselves back together in his sockets. He watched Dinah's face and blossoming from his heart was a bright burst of Faith. He had known all along, but this made it complete. It was all falling into place.
Dorian had known to trust his sister, his brother, and his other sister above his father when the time came. Even a long whipped cur found encouragement, when hope of desperate realities could be assuaged with the promise of a better tomorrow. Looking up from his father to his brother and then his twin, he'd tell Dinah silently what he often did, silently, [I am with you.] When Delilah was coming near to him, he'd look to her, and seeing seeking in her eyes, he'd give her a solemn nod. One of solidarity. And after he held out his arm for the field-treatment, he'd slip to the other side of her and put an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close to his body. She was more his sister after tonight than she'd ever been and he was glad of it. Glad for her, for those dying eyes to see the four of them standing together, remembering what Charles had done to her too. It was a strange thing to feel gladness over that particular death, but he could question it later, perhaps. Just now, he was living in a whole new world.
After a moment of looking her over as if she was the one who'd been bitten, he'd turn his gleaming xanthic gaze back to his siblings by blood, needing to witness this to its end. He called without hesitation after his brother did, what one said in such occasions, "Long live the king!"
Dinah clasped her hands together as Delilah helped her beloved twin, and the sound of snapping from above made her look upwards to the dangling meat that had been the patriarch of the Windgrace family. She hummed a little in thought. She was already so tired, but there would need to be more work done...
"long live the king~" she whispered, though she reached for the body on the floor. There was a strange degree of tenderness on her face as she reached for Charles, cradling his jaw in her fingers as she hunched over him. Dinah gathered him to her chest in a tight embrace, bending her head to his ear to whisper.
Whatever she spoke, whatever language it was in, was not meant for mortals. Ichorish black slime dripped past her lips and crawled along her cheek, against Charles' earlobe and into the canal of his ear, sinking into his head as she petted his hair. As the circle fell inert around her, Time returning to as close to normality as it could for the collective Windgraces, she stood up, unsteady. And Charles stood with her.
"untie the rope, Drystan"
Delilah Harper-Windgrace: Lilah grinned up at her golden big brother as she secured the band around his arm, before turning to face the ritual in time to catch the death of Charles Windgrace, leaning into the arm Dorian had around her shoulders. She noted the satisfying crunch of the man's neck breaking with a grin. "Good fackin' riddence..." she said, smirking, before turning her attention to Drystan and announcing, "An' long live the King!" Even as she said it she watched Dinah start to bring the ritual to a close. She belt a pop in her ears, but she was still able to see her family's other forms. "Huh," she muttered softly before the outside world, which she'd been barely aware of for a while, all seemed to come crashing back in all at once. Between one blink and the next, Lilah shrunk back down to her standard form, saw stars, and felt the world shift on it's axis. "Huh," she said again, "Dinah, Ah think ye knocked the Earth a lil...sideways..." And with that, Lilah's eyes rolled back in her head and she pitched forward into the grass.
Dorian would not let his little sister fall, completely over. He'd bend and catch her, gathering her up in the sort of bridal carry he often employed upon Dinah. He was careful with her kilt, to keep her modesty intact and even planted a kiss upon her forehead. Bringing her easily toward the circle, and watching his dead father standing beside his twin he could understand why she felt the world was not a solid place. "I think I had better take her home the short way." All of them needed safe comporting home, and Dorian, for one, was not likely to get to sleep any time soon, and could lead horses, once he had consensus. He would murmur further to both Drystan and Dinah, "I am so glad to be with you, here on this strange island."
Dinah would nod, half stupefied herself to answer much more than that. Charles, on the other hand, would walk. his daughter's fingers moving in midair like the legs of a spider. The puppet that had been their patriarch moved in time with her motions.
"go back to the ship, father. They will cast off tonight, as they had planned. it's time for you to head back" she murmured, turning those dark, exhausted eyes onto her brother as the rope was untied. She stepped out of the circle, pressing a cold-lipped kiss to Dorian's, and she smiled, leaning her weight against him as her hand...and what had been their father...walked.
Dorian kissed his twin sister's cool lips, and with Lilah in his arms, as Dinah moved away from that smooch, he'd bend to nuzzle his face into his twin's pale hair. Silently he assured his twin: [I am with you, I always will be. Trust is not a question.] His tongue was stilled to silence by the perambulating dead man. There was still work to do, and the industrious children of Charles Windgrace would see it done. He'd never have appreciated it anyway.
