Cloud Collapse [Act 1/ scene ii] (Blood)

[Rahab Aapofi]

It had been a quiet day for Rahab. With her Master, the Lord Blood who instructed her on the arts and ways of the Sith, away and no business of her own to attend, she had spent the day in the company of herself. There had been productive and Sith-like matters she could have saw to in his absents but instead she tidied the downstairs of the manor that she lodged in. Which was a wholly unnecessary task, for cleaning services made regular stops at the living quarters of the students who trained on Sojourn, but it was something she needed to do.

The day had been lovely out. All the days on the moon were lovely. Somedays, it reminded her too much of a place she had left behind. All the days there had been lovely too. Rahab had kept the curtains closed as she cleaned. There wasn’t actually much to even clean as she rarely ventured from her room and rarer still did she invite others in. She had scrubbed the already spotless floors clean. And after all that, she had stamina remaining to pick up some of the mess that accumulated on the floor of her sleeping quarters She made an unobstructed path from her bathroom to her bed, and one from her bed to her door. It was a start, she thought. And like that, the day was over.

As the setting sun painted the moon’s sky in vivid shades of red and orange, Rahab got ready for bed. By the time she finished brushing her hair out, the songs of the nocturnal animals replaced the sounds of the day. She moved books and bits of clutter that had collected there through out the day to the floor, making just enough room for her to slip under the covers. She read for a while, until the sun dipped past the moon’s horizon. The night’s air came through the window in a gentle breeze. It still smelled faintly of ozone of the previous days' storms.

Rahab started to doze as the night grew longer. Her eyes were more and more tired as more and more stars became visible in the dark sky. She found herself reading the same sentence again and again and again and again when she finally accepted defeat.

As she reached out to turn the lamp off without looking, she knocked a few things that she had stacked up on the nightstand to the floor. She decided that would be a problem for her to deal with in the morning and turned off the light. She wondered if Lord Blood would return in the coming morrow. She wondered if Dioxippi ever thought of her. She remembered something troubling from her childhood. Then Rahab fell asleep.

[Slade Xandir]

Blood wobbled through the halls of Sojourn's resort, the Omwati taking her nightly rest and the light dimmed to near nothing as he stalked through the silent sandstone reception. It took nothing for him to unlock the patio door's sliding, as a swift wave of Force energy from his determination unlocked the mechanism with both a green glow and allowance to the courtyard where the paths to the villas lay. All of his Apprentices and Acolytes, every single one, was to be put to death. They would never trust him, he couldn't even trust himself to be according to this moon the way he was meant to be. No one did business with a monster. He was a living Nightmare, and those glowing gold and scarlet eyes locked onto the first miniature mansion he stepped onto the path of. He knew who's this was...
His latest acquisition.
Rahab.

Fire burned in both his heart and throat as the insatiable hunger forced his scaled bare feet forward. Claws clicked menacingly on the walkways. His shadow reflected by the moon's glow from the hidden stars showed exactly what a terror he was; height astounding not normal, massive, in fact. Broad and build shoulders, upridged scales giving him even more inhuman attributes in the shadows, appearing to make him seem as though his entire back of shoulders were spiked. Arms like tree trunks were held as he was slightly hunched, seeming ready to grab and strangle anything he could manage to get his beasty grasp on. Shirtless, this Sith Lord was undeniably no longer the tan and handsome man he once was. Even his long locks fell from his head, leaving only a short heft of not even shoulder length hair atop his dome.

Up to her front door, he walked past the empty suits. Again, the door opened from his basic desire for it to obey, electrical circuits rewiring until the green blinked and released the latched. Making no time waste, he walked in, shutting the heavy wooden slider, and made his way through the common room, not even bothering to be silent. Up the stairs, broad strides took him directly through the hallways until he remained just outside of her door.

The Sith Lord could feel her...her gentle slumber just behind that wood and walls. He felt the relaxed thread between them, the same strang he had wound his own essence with so they would forever be connected. He had done the ssme with all of his underlings...but her's was the most recent. And it lay just in front of him.
She couldn't be trusted. None of them could. They would betray him, run, telling the universe of what he had become, where he resided. They all had to perish in the curl of his fangs, to despair as he tore them to nothing but ribbons.

The Nightmare felt within himself the needs that surfaced from his revelation, and just as far as his Senses showed him, just next to the edge of her bed, he felt out the flooring. There were things in the way, but only so much that didn't hinder his plans. Just on the right of her bed, there was a fringe of shadows made, and with a slight whisk of Force, he found it easier to call upon the Void. A growth of darkness spread from the underneath of her bed, pulling past enough room to allow his form to come from. And after he maintained a steady pull of it, he closed his eyes, and calmed his breathing. Underneath him, the darkened floor concentrated even more thickly in shade, and like a singking ship, she began to fall through the portal of Void. As he sank, after he was fully immersed in the Void, he made his way to the bright stream of entryway he had made beside her bed. Taking those steps forward, he kept his mind on maintaining the entrance as he reached up, and began crawling through the floor beside her unconcious body. Piece by piece, he rose from the swirl of Emptiness the Void was, and as a hellish being was, he was there. Rematerializing as he came back into the realm of reality, he straightened himself up, then proceeded to peer down at her.

She seemed so helpless, so unaware...

As all prey should.

A grappling hook of clawed hand shot forward, his aim directly for her neck's diameter, so he could hoise her against the wall and strangle her as freely as he wanted to.

[Rahab Aapofi]

Dreams of interest seldom came to Rahab. Often, when she slept her mind would sort through the days events and events of prior days like liquid time through her sleeping consciousness. A single moment when the sun hit the wildflowers just right to have shown through the petals like they were thin hide, a part of a conversation she half heard in passing, a scene from her past that had no real importance to her when she had lived it; this and similar was what she dreamt about on most nights. She rarely could recall them when she awoke but the dreams left her feeling reinvigorated from the rest she had taken.

Tonight, as Lord Blood crept through the courtyard and into the home he had given her, Rahab dreamt of nothing. In this dream, she floated in a space with no end—up, down, left or right, it was all the same. Empty. No light but no darkness either. Just nothingness. She was waiting for something to happen. Usually, she would wake up after what would feel like hours of waiting and the dream would have been just that. It would leave her feeling exhausted.

But this time, a form breeched into the nothingness and it brought darkness with it. It was fathomless like the nothing had been before it. It had no end and it had no start. The colossal creature split itself apart in front of Rahab. A mouth formed, long and narrow, with an incalculable amount of mountainous teeth. Then more mouths split along its form in every direction. It pulled the darkness into its newly formed jaws and as it snapped its massive maws entire universes were brought into existence; planets and stars and every sort of living thing leapt up from between its teeth. The thing ate as fast as everything was pouring out into the nothingness.

It was so loud. But, it had been her Lord’s nearness that caused Rahab to rouse from her slumber. She was a heavy sleep and had he not woven his soul betwixt her’s, she likely would have kept sleeping until he had disturbed her body further.

“Master…?” She stirred, her eyes still shut. She reached out to him with her metaphysical sense, feeling confused and sleepy. Her eyes fluttered open just before his hand made contact with her neck. His hand felt hot against her throat. On reflex, she brought her hands from under her covers and attempted to pry the weight off. She kicked out in the same reflex as he lifted her from bed. By the time her back had hit the wall; however, she had gotten control of herself.

“What is it that you are doing in my room?” Rahab asked, as best she could with his hand pressed against her throat. She had stopped trying to remove his hand from her, but she did keep her hands there. Both of them resting easily atop his own. She deduced that he must have just returned from where ever it was that he had gone off to as he was still wearing his gauntlets and that he was in a mood. Still half-asleep, Rahab was confident she could calm him down and get back to bed.

[Slade Xandir]

What she perceived as his gauntlets was in face the actual flesh if him. Scaly and rough, those hands held fast to the struggling girl as her kicks landed across the sides of his torso. Despite his hands seeming unfeeling, his nerves had alerted him to the extremely tender flesh beneath his hold. Flesh that was more than certainly capable of rending to claws and teeth, meat so plush he would simply imagine it melting against his feverish tongue, the chewiness of an uncontesting mass, coppery sweetness and euphoria that would flood him. It would do nothing less than bring him on the bring of absolute climax if he could just...
take...
a bite...

"Master? What is it that you are doing in my room?"

Soft voice, like that of a curious maiden, she addressed him. Fear was far from here, and even the surprise she had initially met him with, it too was devoid of terror. She had those griping hands relaxed, and silver eyes looked upon him like he was a visitor, coming to ask her for an oust across the courtyard. Like he had come to ask her whether she was willing to join him in some pleasant splendor on a whim.

That fire within his soul cremated much of his energy, and he found himself not as willing to batter her up as much as he initially planned.
Instead, he became blunt with her, his hiss between daggerous rows of fangs whispering to her.

"You have one choice, Rahab. And I want to know, before I make mine. What choice do you chose that will prevent mine from coming to light? As the choice I have come to hold clossssse," he breathed out. "Was to destroy and devour you."

His hold tightened, only by a fraction, as he lifted her an inch higher across that wall. "Who's to say you will not betray me for what I have become?...Fear id what a king thrives on, as his subjects cower and obey. But you-" he sniffed around her, throwing his Force Sense all around and across her aura without filter. "I detect none from you. You do not cower."

Blood's eyes slimmed as he tried to gauge her. She was more mysterious than he had given her credit for. Passionate, but about what, in this case? Calm, for what? She held a stead gaze, unflinching, as she stared at this living horror, and he couldn't understand her resilience.

Why?

[Rahab Aapofi]

“Whatever it is, I am certain it will be there in the morning for me to do,” Rahab choked out, both in jest and in an attempt at being apologetic. She thought he was speaking metaphorically, upset at her for something she had failed to do. It wasn’t as if she had checked in with anyone to see if he had left her with any directive yesterday. Outside of that, she had no idea what he was talking about. She started to pat his hand with her own as he was now crushing her windpipe significantly and it was making it difficult for her to respond further.

Rahab couldn’t see in the dark. The moon, which had only started to wane, was obscured by the clouds that were still settling in the sky after the storms from earlier days. But even if it the moon were to break through the clouds, he would still just be a formless shape in the darkness to her.

Her groggy mind was still processing the contact she had made to his side and the strange feeling of his hand beneath hers. Without completely understanding what she was doing, Rahab moved one of her hands to his wrist. It was a curious touch. With more purpose this time, she felt out to him, for him, in the dark; like she had done so with his dragon mount behind the clouds just several moon passes ago. Her way with the Force was gentle and cautious and slight. Something was wrong with him but Rahab didn’t know what. Him having turned himself into an abomination wasn't even a possibility in her mind.

Her attempt to feel him out further was curtailed by his own, stronger and more trained, abilities. Rahab yielded to him. She was afraid of Blood, but in the way people should be afraid of fire. And in the way she was afraid of everyone. It was a kind of passive fear that sank into her and warped her views of everyone and everything. She believed truly that people hurt other people. No one was exempt from this universal truth, least of all he.

It was this fear that drove her decisions. Just as it was this fatalistic belief about the world around her. And this left her with a kind of resignation that terrible things would befall her no matter what. So, Rahab expected that Lord Blood would eventually do something rash and senseless towards her. It was only natural. She had joined the Sith. And treated it as a way out. Of having to deal with herself and let whatever was wrong with her consume her, or to be consumed by another in death. Never once in her wildest self-destructive fantasies did she imagine her final use, should she die tonight, would be so literal.

[Slade Xandir]

Her heartbeat increased; he felt the flow of blood push harder against and through her veins as her body tried desperately to bring oxygen through the constricted capillaries. But the rush was not what a monster like him should have gotten. He was waiting for her answer, her answer! Her thoughts! Her word! Something, anything he could go off of for him to feel as though this was deserved, for him to feel as though this evil feat he was preparing to perform was warranted in atleast some sick way.
But in this impossible year, none revealed to him.

Blood felt her hand against his, an indication universally known for comfort, but in the malevolent rising he knew, there was no comfort. Her hand patted his, and without second guessing the matter, he dropped her. He was not only disgusted with his own inability to fell her as swiftly as he did Fox, but Blood was ashamed that he simply couldn't lie to himself well enough to force himself to believe she would bring more ruin to him and his reputation than he already condemned himself to. He was a hideous thing, an abomination, and the majestic man had nothing regal to believe in, anymore. Most certainly not the creature he would be seeing as his reflection.

"It matters not whether you turn tail and run, whether you scream my name and who I am to the universe and beyond, Rahab. I've come to such conclusion."

He walked away from her, the Sithian sitting himself on the bed she once lay in. Her essence was still strongly intermingled in the folds, and he wish he could simple be inhaled by the simplistic feel of normalcy once more, and disappear on such shattered belief. In the glow of the nocturnal light, he sat open and defeated, revealed by the illumination. No longer a silhouette, he laid himself back on the bed, in all vain efforts to attempt to figure what way to best court the unknown.

"I can't exactly say there is much left for me, here."

What he meant by that devoid of reasoning, and he wasn't going to bother explaining it. Only so much sanity could be pried from the insane.

[Rahab Aapofi]

Rahab came crashing down upon the pile of clutter that she had, just earlier, pushed up against the wall between her bed and her nightstand. She landed on something that broke with the impact of her body. The sharpened edges, of whatever it was that had shattered, cut into her right upper leg. A dull sound of pain that escaped her was punctuated by coughs, as she filled her lungs with the air that they had been momentarily deprived. Things shifted in the pile of this and that as she reorientated herself to her hands and knees. The cuts were tiny, but they stung, and she could feel her sleeping garment sticking against the small open wounds.

She heard the sound of his weight pressing down on her bed in the dark. Rahab looked up as the light of the moon to pour in through her parted window. Lord Blood was just a shape in the darkness but a shape, for the most part, that she recognized. If she hadn’t felt his skin, if she hadn’t touched him enough to know that there was something wrong, she could have convinced herself that he was wearing his armor but she had felt his skin and she had touched him. Something was wrong.

[“I can't exactly say there is much left for me, here.”]

“To what do you mean by that?” She asked, unable to hide the panic that sprung up in her voice. Now sufficiently awake, she scrambled up from the trash and broken glass and books to her feet.

“Where is it that you will you go?” Her arm caught the edge of the nightstand in her hurry to stand, “How can you leave, this is your h-“

Her clumsy, frantic movements had nearly knocked the lamp over and it was teetered when her fingers had found the switch in the dark. Light flooded Rahab’s bedroom. She saw him proper for the first time in his new state. Her eyes were already wet from when she was up against the wall and her crying didn’t show signs of ceasing. Rahab snapped the light off quickly.

She gave a short “Hm.” into the darkness before turning the light back on.

Rahab rarely looked at him directly, as she was now. His student was frozen in place, before she slowly started, seemingly, to edge her way to her bedroom door. As she rounded to the front of her bed, she stopped. She had one foot back, clearly ready to bolt but whatever she was struggling with internally had unwound itself in the Lord’s favor.

“What will happen to me if you leave?” Rahab’s voice shook as she leaned towards her bed. She got close enough to the front to put a knee on it, “A-nd who will lead your lot?”

“They kneel before you,” The fear of being abandon was greater than the fear of whatever Lord Blood was now. He was hard to look at all at once. It was the way the mortal mind rebeled when viewing something unnatural. Rahab drew closer to him on the bed, “Not because of who you are or what your appearance is, but what you represent. Where are your convictions if you just leave? You—you are the Sith.”

[Slade Xandir]

Wood and paper broke skin, and seconds later his nares attuned to that familiar coppery tang of fresh blood. Almost immediately, the dull thudding came back to his temples, pulsating not only in his head, but his stomach, as they both tried vainly to convince him that he was hungry yet again. The Dark Side spoke, whispering a caressing cry to him that made him cover his face with his hands...
but blood, though dried, laid on those, as well.
His mind was constricted by such a deadly disease.

Claws dug into the top width of his face, and the Sith restrained himself from attempting to just rip the entire fold of scale and skin free of his skull. He felt bubbling urges to laugh, cry, but all in all, he felt as though this unending dismay was like dying. To watch a king fall, to watch pride break, it was a sorry sight.

Blood listened to her words, feeling it almost as though her voice itself were bringing him back from a void that he hadn't expected to inhale him. The room brightened around his exposing fingers as his eyes opened, and peered through them. The golden shade looked even more reptilian with the background of scale and skin, but he almost looked surprised as the words fell from Rahab in a slurry of emotions. The panic, the need, so human, but so instinctual.
Blood had been abandoned by his Sire...
But that didn't mean the same fate lay his Blood's own packmates.

The light flicked back off and he sat up himself with extreme swiftness as he felt something stirring in his own chest, something that was so unspeakably powerful that words he hadn't even considered flew from his blood-caked maw. "Don't go-"

And she hadn't. She had stayed, and stared at him as that light flicked back to bring illumination to both beauty and the beast.

He watched as she began to slink to the door, crawling with as much speed as the breath escaping that he held. He held it up until she had stopped moving to that door. Only then did he feel as though his heart pumped again, as though his lungs were no longer constricted, as though his airways weren't blocked by whatever lump had wrenched it's way into his throat.

Her words called to something in him that drained the sea of self loathe he drowned in. Each sentence knocked a tower of pressure down from his head, relieving him of the stressful mental collection of whatever vile intentions he had planned for her. All of them, each plowing through all of the torment.
And no longer was the man tortured by self worth.

But the sentence that ran through his mind, echoing with terrific clarity...

“What will happen to me if you leave?”

"I...will.."

Like something else slimed up through his airways, the man swallowed it down as he tried to recollect his words. But what words could he give her? Would she follow a living nightmare? She was so soft, serene, she was something that had no business being with him, or his pack. But what was it that kept the pair so tightly intertwined? He felt that mental abrasion to his appearance, and he felt like he should shy away from it. But here she was, forsaking that normal instinct to flee from a predator, to instead seek answers, to comfort.

"I can't leave you."

He found these words even more difficult than the one he initially had planned to say. But his mind was a broken thing, and what student could follow a broken master? Was she too, broken? Or was she something else entirely?
Was she a beast he simply could not rule over like every other kneeled subject?

"Maybe there is another way..." he began as he turned his eyes to study the floor for a second, wondering how he could bypass the stresses that ached to plague him over his appearance when business needed to be dealt with. Returning his gaze to the silver and teary eyes of the lithe robed woman before him, Blood took this matter in his own hands.

----Disguise App----

Blood pulled in every single worry he had felt not only form himself, but from the link he shared with Rahab. Through the bond, he felt out every single struggle and pain she frayed herself over, and most importantly he felt out the vast level of anxiety she had worked herself over when he had threated to no longer be in her life. All of it, and the repercussions that followed, including the pain that the possible action would have caused the both of them. The worry she had over her and her packmates no longer having a leader there to show them the way into the legacy he had all promised them, and over something as basic as looks. But out of all of it, he focused on his imagination as it weaved that face of shock and fear as she had seen something such as the abomination he was, currently. From it, he could see the entirety of the situation nearly in a third person point of view. And he could exactly what form his body was in. The scales, the blood, the mess, the gross tatter of tight slacks that were meant for a man many times less his size. And he remembered the smooth skin he had, how it overlaid his body with such eased level of taunt. Not stretched, nor flabby. He remembered the Corvione tattoo, and how it hung widely over a scarred back where his pet Garral Volkair had slashed across it as Slade had bisected the loyal animals skull in half. He remembered how he was a lean and fit man, how his muscles were toned and well laid through his forever calm body. His mind whisked over the onyx mane of thick and straight hair he had, hair he had though he was never going to lose until he did. How his hands were soft yet calloused in all the right places. How his legs fit in those aforementioned pair of slacks. How his body moved, how he made it behave.
And from it,

he cast not only an illusion on himself, but the puppeteer pulled strings on the very threads of reality around him. Closing his eyes now, he summoned up the passions he held in life, the hatred for the multitude of wrongs he had too much pride to admit on the careful line he walked on business and pleasure, and how glorious it was to enjoy both crafting life, and bringing death. His enjoyment of making things happen, and the rush of dominance he felt when they ran successfully and according to his wishes. His urges to show others the paths in which he took, so in all he could make other see the blessings of the Sith and what a 'take all' life could provide. His skills in leadership, and the rewards that came with it such as loyal followers. And to tie it all together, his mind went down the list until it ran across Rahab's face, where it stopped dead in it's tracks. The emotions that toiled from it was something unspeakable, beautiful, chaotic, havoc, madness, simplicity, all of them bundled up in a swaddle which covered him from head to toe. How she was when she first met his acquaintance, and from such a simple day, he remembered his appearance. Fire consumed the man both within, and it began to spread against his flesh, touching the bed, but not burning it. The Dragon King stood from the resting place of he and Rahab, and within seconds, his fury at what he had done and how he had frightened her, that allowing and understanding heart of hers, it fueled those flames. They swirled around him a pyromaniacal tornado, and soon, it fell away to a standing vortex of black smoke, whipping around him in lazier cycles. And soon, even that was dying away. It began to reveal Blood as he was when his heart first met with the heart of Rahab, when that mind first touched hers. Taking a step forward, his imagination took life, and the smoke..it died away. In it's place stood a mortal man, a burgundy silken shirt and his well known pair of black slacks. Barefoot, with his hair back in it's majestic glory hanging behind broad shoulders, Blood wanted her to believe it was who she had first laid eyes on. He wanted it so badly, for her to recognize him as he once did every day that he had seen himself in the mirror, which gave power to the personally projected illusion. He wanted her to believe...

So he would make her believe.

---end Disguise app--- 774/600----