as written by Lobos and Tiko
Nearly running on instinct, the deep circles under Riaze' eyes were cast all the darker under the glow of the street lights, the rather ragged countenance of the lycan in his human state lending him the air of just another homeless. As bare feet slapped the sidewalk, his weaving pace sent more than a few moving out of their way to clear the bedraggled stranger. With one crimson eye staring almost sightless ahead, there seemed to not be a path to his wandering.
He was beginning to wonder if there even was a path to follow.
____
She was there with him.
Even in his waking hours he was rarely rid of her these days, but it kept her voice to a whisper instead of a roar. Still, the more exhausted he grew the closer his consciousness teetered that edge between wakefulness and sleep which left him all the more vulnerable to her suggestions.
'Why do you reject me?' she whispered.
The words were a soft caress of satin but they carried a decay with them that left Riaze with the sensation of worms crawling beneath his skin.
Every night her voice was there, and no amount of walking could rid him of her. The worst of it was that every time he fell into slumber, she threaded her tendrils all the deeper into his subconsciousness until he was left with a need to seek her out, and to be close to her. It was likely he himself didn't know if he was searching for her, or running from her with his aimless wandering.
____
Pausing in his stride, the lycan growled to himself, yet for once, simply didn't respond to the harassment of Sanina. Truth be told, he no longer devised answers, for he didn't know.
Why? Probably due to always being a stubborn bastard.
He resumed his trudging along.
____
He could almost imagine her arms around him as she embraced him from behind, and he could almost feel her cheek against his shoulder as she whispered softly to him.
'You need to sleep...' she purred. 'You can't keep on like this. It's not good for you... you're exhausted.'
He could have sworn he felt the press of her cold, dead lips against his shoulder, but there was no one there but himself.
'Don't you want to see me?' she asked.
Meanwhile Varia made her way towards Riaze from the opposite direction. Her eyes passed over him initially as she disregarded him as another homeless, but something in the way he moved drew her gaze back. Even in his weary state the lycan exuded an aura of danger about him, and the low growl caught her ear.
Her eyes found his as they passed one another and she froze
Recognition.
Her amber eyes reflected the wolfish gleam in his own, but the stench of vampire clung to her like some putrid odor. She was caught in a moment of indecision between drawing one of her blades, and fleeing into the crowd. The fire of the burning manor flashed before her eyes, and the memory of biting claws tore at her face as she came face to face with the abomination from her nightmares. She had hunted for him, and his lycan bitch, but months of searching had turned her up empty handed. And now here he stood, and she alone without the element of numbers on her side.
She wasn't a coward, but toe-to-toe she was out-classed by the lycan. The spike of fear in her may have been hidden from the casual eye, but the scent of it would fill Riaze's nostrils.
____
Irritation flickered through Riaze, and his wandering eye searched through the haze in his vision, wondering if he was already asleep, hallucinating through fevered nightmares again. They slid over Varia in disinterest, more intent on finding that vampire bitch and going for her throat once again. But then his next breath drew deep a twinned pair of odors that instinct demanded attention to.
The rank scent of fear.
And the crypt scent of a vampire.
Adrenaline course through his overwrought system like a rampant train, his bloodshot eye blazing as he whirled, his overstressed body sembling with welcome pain into the massive, midnight hued wolf that he truly was. A deep, reverberating growl slipped past exposed fangs as lips peeled back, both lupine eyes settling on the passed vampire with feral, murderous desire. One could virtually hear the inner, unspoken promise of Riaze in his hate filled eyes.
"You're dead."
Claws raking into the sidewalk, the lycan propelled into a lunge, ducking his head and turning his heavy shoulder forward.
____
'Riaze, no!'
Sanina's visage was there before his eyes, but it dissipated as his lupine form barreled through it. For the moment, the haunting image was gone from his mind and his perception. There was just him, and Varia.
Varia's moment of indecision cost her valuable seconds, and like a deer in headlights her eyes locked on Riaze's. There was murder in those eyes of his. The scrape of claws jarred her into action and she narrowed her eyes back at him. It happened so swiftly that the bystanders that surrounded them scarcely saw what happened.
Riaze's claws raked against the cement as Varia reached behind her to withdraw the small side arm from the small of her back. Riaze lunged as she dove to the side, hitting the pavement in a roll. She twisted and came to her feet at a run while firing towards Riaze's black form with silvered bullets.
A pedestrian fell as a stray bullet struck him in the chest, and another moved to aid the man whose body twitched in the street from the pulse of blood spilling onto the pavement.
Varia held no remorse for the man whom she had shot, nor did she wait to see if any of her shots had struck Riaze.
The crowd in front of the theater started to scatter as Varia cut through through in the hopes that the innocent bystanders might deter Riaze, where they had failed to deter herself. It wasn't the interior of the building she sought shelter in though. She hit the wall at a run, propelling herself upwards as she snagged the drainpipe in hand. Without breaking her momentum, she reholstered her gun so she could pull herself higher. Many werewolves couldn't climb in a lupine form, and her instincts screamed to get off the ground and to take to the rooftops.
____
A bellowed roar as rounds slipped into his side, scrabbling paws halting his charge and swinging him around, hammering the aiding bystander with his flank as he regained stable footing, snarling as muscles bunched around the embedded slugs and forcibly contracted, propelling the excruciating invading metal out of the deep tissues, smoke roiling from the holes as he surged forward, tossing the bullets from blood streaming wounds as he plunged into the crowd undeterred.
Far more agile than any beast his size had the right to be, several pedestrians were slammed aside, trampled, or run down as he homed in by scent and sound like a living missile. Quickly gaining speed, and laying low members of the shredding crowd, the lycan watched as Varia climbed like a madwoman.
So he leaped, tucking into a shoulder charge once again. Falling drastically short of Varia, even with his enhanced power. The theater's front, on the other hand, fared terribly as the virtual living missile tore through the facade and the structure beneath it with all the ease of a wrecking ball, including at least one support for the lit facade. Finding himself within, shaking the dust from his eyes, ears perked for a moment as an ominous groan sounded, the floor under his paws quivering dangerously.
Slowly, slowly look back the way he'd come, Riaze snarled as with a sharp report, the facade support snapped and buckled, his front end suddenly dropping as the floor caved, twisting momentum catching sight of the upper level coming to meet him. Curling in as tight a ball as possible, Riaze slipped, caught in the landslide of the collapsing face of the theater.
____
When Varia came to, there was an immense weight crushing down upon her, pinning her in the darkness of the wreckage. She tried to push it free, but one arm was pinned beneath a large slab of concrete, the bones crushed. The pain was distant but she could taste the blood in her mouth. It wasn't the warm rich blood of a fresh kill, it was dead blood tainted with necromancy. It was her blood. She spat as she tried to sit up, but it just drew a pained groan to her bloodied lips.
She strained with her good arm against the support beam, and with a low creak it raised up enough for her to roll to one side before it crashed back down. Free of the crushing weight her body was beginning to mend itself and the crushed bones of her sternum were swiftly reknitting while gashes on her face and arms healed closed.
She could hear sirens overhead but she didn't care to wait to be dug out. Somewhere in this wreckage was Riaze, and she didn't much fancy the odds that the building falling on his head would slow him down for long.
She bit down with a low growl as she pushed against the slab of concrete that pinned her arm. She was strong, much stronger than a human, but she scarcely accomplished more than dislodging some dirt. She clawed at the slabs of wood and smaller bits of debris from around and beneath her arm as she sought to free it that way instead. It was several minutes though before she managed to tear her arm free so that the broken bones could begin to set.
Had she been human she would have been dead, and from the sound of distant groans of pain there were plenty enough of them caught in the collapse as well.
____
Slowly recovering from the daze of being hammered and crushed by falling debris, Riaze attempted movement, the groaning of wooden beams, the grating shift of concrete, and the slap of stone against metal rebar announcing his life. Yet the weight compacted on him was, for the time being, too great for him, broken bones mending quickly, the slow drip of blood halting progressively as wounds closed on his sides, his head, his limbs. Swinging his head around, jaws clamped on a slab of concrete, shifting for a better grip, then snapped shut.
The crunch was fairly audible, a split running through the slab as its halves slid free. Testing movement once again, the lycan had to find and snap several more entombing articles before he found the freedom to belly crawl free of the wreckage. Shaking free of the dust for the moment as he gave his wounds more time to heal, Riaze waited for a few minutes, taking the time to scent through the mix of scents. The ozone of torn wiring discharging, the scents of human blood by those caught in the collapse. The pervasive dry odor of concrete dust.
The scent he hunted for, however, remained, if muffled by the cacophony of other smells in the air. The vampire female, somewhere within. Listening through the wreckage, however, he let out a rumbling growl, the ability to pinpoint the other masked by too much interference.
Looking about, Riaze hunted for a decent avenue, snarling at each facing left him with no room to maneuver, nothing to build momentum. Turning about, however, he realized he was in a hall of some sort, and the way he'd come was less impeded than the rest. A wulven smile as he trotted backwards until his hindquarters touched the wall. Pawing the ground for a moment, he cleared proper footing.
Then with an explosive start, he lunged forward. Three paces, his speed increased. Run to sprint. Four paces, a beam's broken end gashed his shoulder, his head ducking down and tucking in. Sprint to charge. His head impacted the barricade, hammering stone to dust, tearing through rebar and wooden planks with the unstoppable force of a juggernaut, hammering through the obstacle that ripped fresh tears along his sides and back, slamming through the building with the monstrous strength of his kind. Tearing a new path until with an explosive crack, he scrabbled on asphalt, his sundered path to the street complete.
Turning lambent eyes behind him, he winced at the chorus of groans of already unstable wreckage given a new blow to the sensitive system...
____
As Varia pushed, clawed and dragged herself free of the debris she gripped her still mending arm as she stood. Her clothes and hair were torn and in disarray, and dirt and blood was smeared haphazardly across her skin. The cuts and abrasions were healed close, but the bones were still knitting themselves as she found herself face to face with Riaze.
Her left leg wouldn't yet hold her full weight, and her face twisted into a feral snarl.
Her sidearm was missing, lost in the building collapse and she instead drew a large silvered knife as she faced off against the lupine abomination.
"Let's go, you fucking mongrel," she spat vehemently.
Varia had all the look of a cornered animal to her, and she seemed set on doing as much damage as possible with whatever she had on hand.
The officers by the street had their guns drawn as they stood beside their vehicles, but they seemed more intent on containing the situation until backup arrived. Wading into a couple of supernaturals having it out was a good way to land ones self on a one way trip to the morgue. SWAT would be here in momentarily, and the distant sounds of sirens warned of their impending arrival as the officers maintained their rudimentary barricade out front of the half-collapsed building.
____
With a demon's snarl on his lupine face, Riaze noted well the stance and subconsciously chose to match. Veering, in almost the heartbeat he retook human form, the speed of his transformation a subtle threat as to his state of health. An instinctual gesture of his right hand, shadows dripping down his arm as the rattle of chains almost sounded, Abyss's menacing appearing grasped in hand.
Stalking forward, Riaze held one nearly burning eye on the vampire, the swirling hatred blending with designs of murder in that virtually luminous regard. His free hand clawing at the air, Riaze closed the distance with swift strides, lunging forward at the last instant to dip the point of the black blade down, then straightened his arm, pulling up in a feint for a low strike, altering the course from her belly from her right hip to left side to angle sharply upwards, point driving to sword kiss Varia's face.
The police might as well not have existed currently, in the fevered, agitated mind of Riaze Nightroad.
Nearly running on instinct, the deep circles under Riaze' eyes were cast all the darker under the glow of the street lights, the rather ragged countenance of the lycan in his human state lending him the air of just another homeless. As bare feet slapped the sidewalk, his weaving pace sent more than a few moving out of their way to clear the bedraggled stranger. With one crimson eye staring almost sightless ahead, there seemed to not be a path to his wandering.
He was beginning to wonder if there even was a path to follow.
____
She was there with him.
Even in his waking hours he was rarely rid of her these days, but it kept her voice to a whisper instead of a roar. Still, the more exhausted he grew the closer his consciousness teetered that edge between wakefulness and sleep which left him all the more vulnerable to her suggestions.
'Why do you reject me?' she whispered.
The words were a soft caress of satin but they carried a decay with them that left Riaze with the sensation of worms crawling beneath his skin.
Every night her voice was there, and no amount of walking could rid him of her. The worst of it was that every time he fell into slumber, she threaded her tendrils all the deeper into his subconsciousness until he was left with a need to seek her out, and to be close to her. It was likely he himself didn't know if he was searching for her, or running from her with his aimless wandering.
____
Pausing in his stride, the lycan growled to himself, yet for once, simply didn't respond to the harassment of Sanina. Truth be told, he no longer devised answers, for he didn't know.
Why? Probably due to always being a stubborn bastard.
He resumed his trudging along.
____
He could almost imagine her arms around him as she embraced him from behind, and he could almost feel her cheek against his shoulder as she whispered softly to him.
'You need to sleep...' she purred. 'You can't keep on like this. It's not good for you... you're exhausted.'
He could have sworn he felt the press of her cold, dead lips against his shoulder, but there was no one there but himself.
'Don't you want to see me?' she asked.
Meanwhile Varia made her way towards Riaze from the opposite direction. Her eyes passed over him initially as she disregarded him as another homeless, but something in the way he moved drew her gaze back. Even in his weary state the lycan exuded an aura of danger about him, and the low growl caught her ear.
Her eyes found his as they passed one another and she froze
Recognition.
Her amber eyes reflected the wolfish gleam in his own, but the stench of vampire clung to her like some putrid odor. She was caught in a moment of indecision between drawing one of her blades, and fleeing into the crowd. The fire of the burning manor flashed before her eyes, and the memory of biting claws tore at her face as she came face to face with the abomination from her nightmares. She had hunted for him, and his lycan bitch, but months of searching had turned her up empty handed. And now here he stood, and she alone without the element of numbers on her side.
She wasn't a coward, but toe-to-toe she was out-classed by the lycan. The spike of fear in her may have been hidden from the casual eye, but the scent of it would fill Riaze's nostrils.
____
Irritation flickered through Riaze, and his wandering eye searched through the haze in his vision, wondering if he was already asleep, hallucinating through fevered nightmares again. They slid over Varia in disinterest, more intent on finding that vampire bitch and going for her throat once again. But then his next breath drew deep a twinned pair of odors that instinct demanded attention to.
The rank scent of fear.
And the crypt scent of a vampire.
Adrenaline course through his overwrought system like a rampant train, his bloodshot eye blazing as he whirled, his overstressed body sembling with welcome pain into the massive, midnight hued wolf that he truly was. A deep, reverberating growl slipped past exposed fangs as lips peeled back, both lupine eyes settling on the passed vampire with feral, murderous desire. One could virtually hear the inner, unspoken promise of Riaze in his hate filled eyes.
"You're dead."
Claws raking into the sidewalk, the lycan propelled into a lunge, ducking his head and turning his heavy shoulder forward.
____
'Riaze, no!'
Sanina's visage was there before his eyes, but it dissipated as his lupine form barreled through it. For the moment, the haunting image was gone from his mind and his perception. There was just him, and Varia.
Varia's moment of indecision cost her valuable seconds, and like a deer in headlights her eyes locked on Riaze's. There was murder in those eyes of his. The scrape of claws jarred her into action and she narrowed her eyes back at him. It happened so swiftly that the bystanders that surrounded them scarcely saw what happened.
Riaze's claws raked against the cement as Varia reached behind her to withdraw the small side arm from the small of her back. Riaze lunged as she dove to the side, hitting the pavement in a roll. She twisted and came to her feet at a run while firing towards Riaze's black form with silvered bullets.
A pedestrian fell as a stray bullet struck him in the chest, and another moved to aid the man whose body twitched in the street from the pulse of blood spilling onto the pavement.
Varia held no remorse for the man whom she had shot, nor did she wait to see if any of her shots had struck Riaze.
The crowd in front of the theater started to scatter as Varia cut through through in the hopes that the innocent bystanders might deter Riaze, where they had failed to deter herself. It wasn't the interior of the building she sought shelter in though. She hit the wall at a run, propelling herself upwards as she snagged the drainpipe in hand. Without breaking her momentum, she reholstered her gun so she could pull herself higher. Many werewolves couldn't climb in a lupine form, and her instincts screamed to get off the ground and to take to the rooftops.
____
A bellowed roar as rounds slipped into his side, scrabbling paws halting his charge and swinging him around, hammering the aiding bystander with his flank as he regained stable footing, snarling as muscles bunched around the embedded slugs and forcibly contracted, propelling the excruciating invading metal out of the deep tissues, smoke roiling from the holes as he surged forward, tossing the bullets from blood streaming wounds as he plunged into the crowd undeterred.
Far more agile than any beast his size had the right to be, several pedestrians were slammed aside, trampled, or run down as he homed in by scent and sound like a living missile. Quickly gaining speed, and laying low members of the shredding crowd, the lycan watched as Varia climbed like a madwoman.
So he leaped, tucking into a shoulder charge once again. Falling drastically short of Varia, even with his enhanced power. The theater's front, on the other hand, fared terribly as the virtual living missile tore through the facade and the structure beneath it with all the ease of a wrecking ball, including at least one support for the lit facade. Finding himself within, shaking the dust from his eyes, ears perked for a moment as an ominous groan sounded, the floor under his paws quivering dangerously.
Slowly, slowly look back the way he'd come, Riaze snarled as with a sharp report, the facade support snapped and buckled, his front end suddenly dropping as the floor caved, twisting momentum catching sight of the upper level coming to meet him. Curling in as tight a ball as possible, Riaze slipped, caught in the landslide of the collapsing face of the theater.
____
When Varia came to, there was an immense weight crushing down upon her, pinning her in the darkness of the wreckage. She tried to push it free, but one arm was pinned beneath a large slab of concrete, the bones crushed. The pain was distant but she could taste the blood in her mouth. It wasn't the warm rich blood of a fresh kill, it was dead blood tainted with necromancy. It was her blood. She spat as she tried to sit up, but it just drew a pained groan to her bloodied lips.
She strained with her good arm against the support beam, and with a low creak it raised up enough for her to roll to one side before it crashed back down. Free of the crushing weight her body was beginning to mend itself and the crushed bones of her sternum were swiftly reknitting while gashes on her face and arms healed closed.
She could hear sirens overhead but she didn't care to wait to be dug out. Somewhere in this wreckage was Riaze, and she didn't much fancy the odds that the building falling on his head would slow him down for long.
She bit down with a low growl as she pushed against the slab of concrete that pinned her arm. She was strong, much stronger than a human, but she scarcely accomplished more than dislodging some dirt. She clawed at the slabs of wood and smaller bits of debris from around and beneath her arm as she sought to free it that way instead. It was several minutes though before she managed to tear her arm free so that the broken bones could begin to set.
Had she been human she would have been dead, and from the sound of distant groans of pain there were plenty enough of them caught in the collapse as well.
____
Slowly recovering from the daze of being hammered and crushed by falling debris, Riaze attempted movement, the groaning of wooden beams, the grating shift of concrete, and the slap of stone against metal rebar announcing his life. Yet the weight compacted on him was, for the time being, too great for him, broken bones mending quickly, the slow drip of blood halting progressively as wounds closed on his sides, his head, his limbs. Swinging his head around, jaws clamped on a slab of concrete, shifting for a better grip, then snapped shut.
The crunch was fairly audible, a split running through the slab as its halves slid free. Testing movement once again, the lycan had to find and snap several more entombing articles before he found the freedom to belly crawl free of the wreckage. Shaking free of the dust for the moment as he gave his wounds more time to heal, Riaze waited for a few minutes, taking the time to scent through the mix of scents. The ozone of torn wiring discharging, the scents of human blood by those caught in the collapse. The pervasive dry odor of concrete dust.
The scent he hunted for, however, remained, if muffled by the cacophony of other smells in the air. The vampire female, somewhere within. Listening through the wreckage, however, he let out a rumbling growl, the ability to pinpoint the other masked by too much interference.
Looking about, Riaze hunted for a decent avenue, snarling at each facing left him with no room to maneuver, nothing to build momentum. Turning about, however, he realized he was in a hall of some sort, and the way he'd come was less impeded than the rest. A wulven smile as he trotted backwards until his hindquarters touched the wall. Pawing the ground for a moment, he cleared proper footing.
Then with an explosive start, he lunged forward. Three paces, his speed increased. Run to sprint. Four paces, a beam's broken end gashed his shoulder, his head ducking down and tucking in. Sprint to charge. His head impacted the barricade, hammering stone to dust, tearing through rebar and wooden planks with the unstoppable force of a juggernaut, hammering through the obstacle that ripped fresh tears along his sides and back, slamming through the building with the monstrous strength of his kind. Tearing a new path until with an explosive crack, he scrabbled on asphalt, his sundered path to the street complete.
Turning lambent eyes behind him, he winced at the chorus of groans of already unstable wreckage given a new blow to the sensitive system...
____
As Varia pushed, clawed and dragged herself free of the debris she gripped her still mending arm as she stood. Her clothes and hair were torn and in disarray, and dirt and blood was smeared haphazardly across her skin. The cuts and abrasions were healed close, but the bones were still knitting themselves as she found herself face to face with Riaze.
Her left leg wouldn't yet hold her full weight, and her face twisted into a feral snarl.
Her sidearm was missing, lost in the building collapse and she instead drew a large silvered knife as she faced off against the lupine abomination.
"Let's go, you fucking mongrel," she spat vehemently.
Varia had all the look of a cornered animal to her, and she seemed set on doing as much damage as possible with whatever she had on hand.
The officers by the street had their guns drawn as they stood beside their vehicles, but they seemed more intent on containing the situation until backup arrived. Wading into a couple of supernaturals having it out was a good way to land ones self on a one way trip to the morgue. SWAT would be here in momentarily, and the distant sounds of sirens warned of their impending arrival as the officers maintained their rudimentary barricade out front of the half-collapsed building.
____
With a demon's snarl on his lupine face, Riaze noted well the stance and subconsciously chose to match. Veering, in almost the heartbeat he retook human form, the speed of his transformation a subtle threat as to his state of health. An instinctual gesture of his right hand, shadows dripping down his arm as the rattle of chains almost sounded, Abyss's menacing appearing grasped in hand.
Stalking forward, Riaze held one nearly burning eye on the vampire, the swirling hatred blending with designs of murder in that virtually luminous regard. His free hand clawing at the air, Riaze closed the distance with swift strides, lunging forward at the last instant to dip the point of the black blade down, then straightened his arm, pulling up in a feint for a low strike, altering the course from her belly from her right hip to left side to angle sharply upwards, point driving to sword kiss Varia's face.
The police might as well not have existed currently, in the fevered, agitated mind of Riaze Nightroad.
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