[June 26th or 27th.]
Flood
Flood
Flood does not sigh or make other sounds of frustration. A glare would drown in the pitch along with any other expression this might conjure on his face. Instead he fishes a flat slab of brushed aluminum and glass out of his pocket and taps away at the screen until it begins calling the aforementioned Toreador. After raising the receiver to his ear he waits for an answer.
Lux
Lux looks to her phone and answers the call.
"Why, Daniel," and her voice is pitched low, but not quite so low as to indicate she's in company. Why, Daniel, she says, like his name is something fine she is running her fingers over. "How's kicks?"
No ambient noise. Clear connection.
Flood
Lux
A beat.
This Anarch is patient (willful [iron]), in spite of everything about her speaking of fineness and delicacy and nobody expects the stars to do anything but last forever and be untouchable and yield to all other light even if they do capture the imagination. But Flood can hear a thread of -- not quite relief, but almost -- at this being that call. Finally.
"Cutting it close, but I can't imagine what two better fellas to thumb my noise at daybreak with. I'll make it work."
Lux stays on the line until Flood hangs up, but if he doesn't hang up immediately he can hear movement.
Flood
What Lux finds upon her arrival is a rail yard, both the termination and beginning of lines, where industry's beast of burden can be loaded and unloaded by numerous transportation companies for trucking locally or disbursement nationally.
The freight trains sit in their interconnected intermodal caravans and one is just pulling off. The engine carrying it away is more than a mile up the line and the click-clank, click-clunk, click-clack of locking grips tensioning breaks the otherwise quiet night. This leaves the easternmost tracks empty, but the rest are occupied.
No railroad police are visible from the approach Flood had indicated (if that is the one she takes), but there may be other sights worth noticing as Lux makes her way to their intended meeting place.
Lux
"Why, Daniel," and her voice is pitched low, but not quite so low as to indicate she's in company. Why, Daniel, she says, like his name is something fine she is running her fingers over. "How's kicks?"
No ambient noise. Clear connection.
Flood
"Swell," is the end of the conversation Istvan is privy to, but how long it takes for him to piece together it isn't directed at him may rely on him noticing the shift in tone.
"I know it's not long before the owls go to bed and us along with them, but that friend you wanted to see? He is sitting here with lips zipped and you know what happens when you force zippers: broken teeth and a mess. I though you might lend that gentler hand you had offered," he says into the phone.
"Commerce City," he continues. "Third rail line from Quince Street off East 88th. You do not have a plus one. Does half an hour work for you?""I know it's not long before the owls go to bed and us along with them, but that friend you wanted to see? He is sitting here with lips zipped and you know what happens when you force zippers: broken teeth and a mess. I though you might lend that gentler hand you had offered," he says into the phone.
Lux
A beat.
This Anarch is patient (willful [iron]), in spite of everything about her speaking of fineness and delicacy and nobody expects the stars to do anything but last forever and be untouchable and yield to all other light even if they do capture the imagination. But Flood can hear a thread of -- not quite relief, but almost -- at this being that call. Finally.
"Cutting it close, but I can't imagine what two better fellas to thumb my noise at daybreak with. I'll make it work."
Lux stays on the line until Flood hangs up, but if he doesn't hang up immediately he can hear movement.
Flood
Flood hangs up with no intention of eavesdropping on her activities.
What Lux finds upon her arrival is a rail yard, both the termination and beginning of lines, where industry's beast of burden can be loaded and unloaded by numerous transportation companies for trucking locally or disbursement nationally.
The freight trains sit in their interconnected intermodal caravans and one is just pulling off. The engine carrying it away is more than a mile up the line and the click-clank, click-clunk, click-clack of locking grips tensioning breaks the otherwise quiet night. This leaves the easternmost tracks empty, but the rest are occupied.
No railroad police are visible from the approach Flood had indicated (if that is the one she takes), but there may be other sights worth noticing as Lux makes her way to their intended meeting place.
Lux
Lux is not concerned about railroad police. Lux is concerned about railroad police who are ghouls (fly-gobblers, scab-junkies, Vitae-jockeys). Ghouls who are Sabbat Ghouls. The Sabbat. The getting in and getting out of Denver has been a difficult problem because doesn't the Sabbat have a fist closed? Didn't desperate creatures come here - perhaps to this very yard - hoping to smuggle themselves out, only to be caught? Didn't they say what's his name's ghouls were found strung up by their intestines, just here - ? Weren't their reports of cars which, when the doors slid open and a breeze went through, ash danced up like a snowglobe, whisked off and forgotten just as soon after? Lux is not concerned about railroad police and - let's tell the truth now - Lux does expect to be beset by a pack right now. But Lux knows this city is at war. Does it seem fallow from certain perspectives? Narrow ones.
So this latent caution of transportation hubs has her so quiet. Quiet as a fall of light or the ink of a love letter [or the ink of a warning]. That quiet in spite of the gravel and her ridiculous(ly lovely)heels as she follows the third line anonymous railcar after anonymous railcar and nothing to tell one from the other except perhaps grafitti back down the tracks.
But the creature does take Flood's suggested approach; it will be quicker, won't it? And Lux is quick. If she weren't so blood-helped graceful, her steps would ring out staccato; four minutes, five, six? and maybe she sees or hears some sign of the pair, sequestered (?) as they are by then. Her brow is troubled, lovely; her gaze is a thoughtful thing, hiding a razor's brightness.
Quiet doesn't mean she's hiding, or lurking, or slinking, or slipping; she's not slying around, not skulking, that's not her style, couldn't be her style. She's walking. Where? There? What's that? Who? Which? If she walks much longer, she'll call Daniel back. You know that call: I'm here. Can't find the party. Circling. Where?
--
Rolllllllllllllls.
The first one was really just a decision roll of 'how compellingly beautiful IS Lux / shall I post Lux when she's feeling pretty concerned and not putting effort into her appearance?' and the answer is: loads. But it's just flavor. Ignore away.
Noir
[Appearance (Compelling) + Empathy. Are you gonna be a pretty picture?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 6, 6, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 5 )
Noir
[6 suxx. It will do.]
Noir
[Notice things. Percept + Alert. We are in fact super paranoid, see post narrative, so WP. Heightened senses are on, but only for vision, not for hearing. Because trains = loud sudden noises.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 8) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Noir
[Eh. Why not a Percept + Investigation, too, just to round things out. Maybe there are clues lying around being clue-y.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
ix
Witnessed!!!
Noir
[Oh! And Stealth! Stealthy stealth. Wouldn't it be nice not to be caught out?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 6, 9, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
ix
Also witnessed!!!
Noir
[Thank you <3]
Flood
Viol isn't skulking, she is whispering along like any startlingly beautiful predator might. Istvan isn't sulking or pouting, he is still simmering on the edge of boiling. Since he had chosen to remain quiet Flood has not share any more words of his own with the Hungarian vampire. He would not force them upon him like he had the stake.
Somewhere between the road her trek down the line Viol will notice a flicker of movement. A shoulder shifts because the man it belongs to may be a crack shot, but his body betrays him. The advantages granted by her blood certainly help the matter. That is a skulking presence and whether it has spotted her or not is not readily apparent, but the long gun barrel that shoulder is sitting on the stock end of still looks out on the road where her journey had started. A panning glint of light on the scope shows it is scanning back and forth. Watching and waiting.
Eventually Viol will walk past a shipping container, long before she will come upon the freight car where that form is perched, and that container will have its doors flung open. Its insides are obscured by a curtain of black velvet that is not spun fabric, but cut from primordial darkness and gobbles up like a void the light of the stars, the moon, and that sad little streetlamp over there that manages to be brighter than all those celestial bodies combined.
It is the only sign of Flood's presence and as her own presence is so well hidden it remains undisturbed.
- - - - -
Hush @ 8:42PM
[ Meurtrière ]
Roll: 3 d10 TN6 (6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Hush @ 8:44PM
[ Ojos y Oídos (con Especialidad) ]
Roll: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
The Peanut Gallery @ 8:47PM
[They've been seen, yo.]
- - - - -
[ Meurtrière ]
Roll: 3 d10 TN6 (6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Hush @ 8:44PM
[ Ojos y Oídos (con Especialidad) ]
Roll: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
The Peanut Gallery @ 8:47PM
[They've been seen, yo.]
Lux
The wayward rose stills, just without and to the side of the shipping container with its open doors and its cargo of darker than dark and blacker than blackest, to eavesdrop on a whole lot of nothing. A sliver of her awareness is on Flood's darkness instead of the rail yard and the Not-A-Conversation she is trying to hear. Lux wonders what would happen if she touched a finger to it. Is darkness to Keepers as spidersilk is to spiders? Would it ripple? Would it cling?
Maybe the dark is drinking whatever it is they're saying to one another. Maybe the dark is lapping their voices up as it would swallow the stars, an appetizer before it laps them up too. Maybe they're just not speaking, these two Licks who are usually so ready to wag their tongues.
A brief moment.
[One.]
And then she says, "Hey there." Look at her [Oh, you can't (cruelty)], come swinging around one of those flung-open doors. Makes the entrance a frame by virtue of being framed by it and too lovely a thing in the dark. "You know, I can't recall whether we've got a secret knock or not? Hey," as if she needs to say it again: it's a conspiratorial 'hey.'
Her voice is not silk because it is not tangible. Because it is a human voice (and it will wake no one). But her smile is that oldest song: siren's. The thing squandered with no eyes to see it (the thing about Lux is she doesn't smile so that people can see her smiling) but isn't the shadow of it, the suggestion of it, in her voice oldest song too.
"I could use a hand or a light. I'm choosy and I wouldn't mind both but I'll take what I can get."
Which is how Lux means to step into, to be helped into, to climb into the promised room. Not what she was expecting, but she is a Toreador; she appreciates the theater. The man atop the freight box: security, sans white tie and white coat.
--
-1 BP. Because Lux! is totally spending a single measley point of blood to buoy up her stamina because you never know about Lasombra darkness, even if Flood's a dear and a darling when he wants to be.
Flood
To the fore of the shipping container the curtain rises, but it's less a curtain and more the snarling and curling of lips, the opening of a maw because past it the darkness continues drawing up to its ceiling. It consolidates there until it hangs in wisps thin as cobwebs and others thick stalactites, the Abyss's very own fangs. It makes it clear it could swallow them up yet again if provoked.
The serpentine manifestations have already drawn away, disappeared into those pools of shadow where they are left to lay in wait. To stand and slither as guardians.
The serpentine manifestations have already drawn away, disappeared into those pools of shadow where they are left to lay in wait. To stand and slither as guardians.
This reveals the contents of the container to Lux. For the first time Istvan can do more than guess based on a voice and the feeling of chains and a steel chair. He can see his captor, a tall gentleman in his best evening attire, and look down at what binds him. The steel box is very empty except for the suited Lasombra and his now-awakened Tremere prisoner of war.
Flood stands close to the edge of the man made cave's mouth and even as the shroud shifts holds his hand out to Lux ready to help her inside.
Flood stands close to the edge of the man made cave's mouth and even as the shroud shifts holds his hand out to Lux ready to help her inside.
István
The last conversation the Toreador and the Tremere had before the events of the night that brought them here concerned meddling and betrayal and whether István did or did not believe either of these things to be in her agenda. And he had told her he did not think her harmless even if his elders would not think her a threat and he had told her lots of things that may or may not be true and he had told her these things wearing dark pants and a crimson-red dress shirt near enough to matching the happiness of his aura. And he was happy that night. Happy and calm.
If she were to read his aura now it would look the same color as his shirt. He was not wearing a red shirt the night Flood attacked him. He was wearing a dark blue shirt. Most of his shirts are blue because he is lazy and thinks blue goes with everything. Blue and red make an interesting color before the blood dries and vitae is unlike living blood in that it does not differentiate between blood fresh-pumped from the heart and blood returning to.
In the dark Lux can see the warlock's shirt stained black-once-red beneath the chains. His skin is become Death and his eyes are searing where they stare through the darkness and she can tell just by looking at him that he can afford no more missteps in his casting than his interrogator can afford to infuriate him. Thin as he is if he gave himself over to a frenzy he could snap the chains in half. His ghoul hinted at what else he could do beyond that but his ghoul doesn't know everything.
He ought to be happy to see Lux and maybe he is happy to see she lives still but he is the one blood-starved and chained to a chair. No notion what year it is or where he is or how the shadow-monger who lashed him knows the rebel rose.
Flint-sparked gaze locks on her rather than his captor and he bristles within his metal confines but István does not speak.
Lux
Lux's fingers want to keep Flood's longer than necessary once he has helped her into the steel box (cage) and once she is inside she reaches for him with her still-free hand too. The movement is an impulse and small and if he does not move from it the pressure of her hand through the dark fabric of his elegant sleeve is brief. She does not like having her back to the night and this has lent a wary alertness to the set of her shoulders, sublimated into a pretty slouch.
And her gaze touches the Lasombra's, then sluices down to the Tremere. István in chains like the Hanged Man reversed.
Her eyes are not by nature dark. They'd be a luminous green if caught full by a fall of light. They're rarely caught full by a fall of light and when they are bright it is usually a surprise and a revelation [as of a switch-blade, opened; catching a bead of light and tossing it ahead of the blood-letting cut -- beauty is ephemeral and eternal], which is to say they're quite dark now. So much time spent in the dark has tarnished them, or else what's bright in them is delineated by the darkness (yes), and anyway, even with the Lasombra drawing back the Abyss as if it were a monstrous curtain it is hardly a well-lit shipping container-slash-prison box.
So dark-eyed, steady-eyed, she looks István over. Stillness; something sharp in it. Something else devoted. As she looks him over, her brows begin to wing upward and then they lower, draw unhappily together. Her mouth is still but the shape of it is Medea's or Helen's -- isn't the curve of it just a seal on passion? [Divine Trouble. (Troubled Divine. Nothing here is human.)]. Things sealed away are sealed for a reason; don't let 'em out.
Lux does not look just so in order to glimpse the colors of the captive's aura. She has imagination enough.
"Hello, mon petit renard. Quite a few weeks, huh?"
That's where her imagination takes her: a nickname she has never written; see, little fox, a proof of identity - as if blood doesn't tell, wouldn't tell, wasn't already telling.
"I suppose I missed the introductions; or shall I make them again?" The question (offer [let me tell you things]) is mostly directed at the Tremere, but there's a little cut of a glance toward Flood at that last too (what've you said?).
It isn't a nickname she has ever written. That's where imagination takes her: see, little fox, proof of identity.
Flood
Flood lifts Lux on already light feet and takes her other hand when it reaches out. Where she alights can only leave the rose, stem shaped and bowed by its weathering, standing in front of one who could only be called tyrant for this scene he crafted and crafts through force around himself. It leaves them close, too, and her taking of his other hand leaves him making their greeting more traditional: offering his cheek to hers, alabaster to yule marble, though his is stained darker and wet with the lightest olive by his once-Mediterranean blood.
Flood remains silent. It is her place to lighten the mood. Her voice may soothe the seething warlock, but until then it seems (perhaps rightly so) there is little he can say that cannot be taken as gloating or prodding. Either way she is left to it, her greeting and making Istvan aware of his captivity's duration.
Flood remains silent. It is her place to lighten the mood. Her voice may soothe the seething warlock, but until then it seems (perhaps rightly so) there is little he can say that cannot be taken as gloating or prodding. Either way she is left to it, her greeting and making Istvan aware of his captivity's duration.
Flood turns with her attention and is also looking to Istvan. Finger pinch each shirt cuff and straighten their peeking past the sleeves of his jacket before he calmly folds his hands before his waist. And then there is a question that is not meant solely for the thaumaturge.
Outside the distorting effects of the shroud his voice is less menacing and haunting. Indeed it is allowed to be more charming- significantly so.
"We have not been properly introduced. That is my fault," he answers, consenting to Lux initiating proper introductions.
Broken and bound vampire to the one who broke and bound him. This should go just wonderfully. Well, the more muck you dig through, the more solid the foundation. That or the makings of a good final resting place.
István
It would be a fantasy to think since they've known each other forty years that Lux can claim to know whether István is willing to bargain if it means he'll live or if he'd rather die than betray his clan. In his freedom he had not yet chosen to abandon the Tower and even as he'd likened being in clan Tremere to being in a cage it was not so literal a cage. Bound by blood and fear rather than metal. A choice made in chains is still a choice.
She calls him her little fox and it doesn't touch him now. Maybe he's already committed himself to a fatal silence. Maybe some of that seething hatred is directed at her. No notion of how he came to be in this place but for he has at this moment more evidence to accuse her than he has to suspect anyone else. The only other people who have been inside the warehouse are two research assistants and a painter. He can't discount them either. He should have been more careful.
Of all the places he could meet his end as dust István can think of worse. Mexico. Russia. New Jersey. At least he's not going to die in New Jersey.
His lover's hand in his captor's and both of them come out of the shadows and the night conspiring together. His face betrays physical pain because this is really quite uncomfortable this sitting bound in a chair with holes in his chest but his face reveals none of this pain's neighbors.
He waits.
Lux
The Toreador Anarch is not in her best evening attire. A dark fitted jacket, military in style, epaulettes of silver, and beneath that a pair of silk shorts, pale but with a kiss of colour, that move across her thighs and hips like water, but water stained with a blush -- the suggestion of a down-stream murder. Beneath the jacket a teeshirt with an open back. As she drifts nearer the Tremere she can feel the jacket's stiffer fabric against her skin. The teeshirt has a logo but what logo it is will be a secret for now. Her hair was fixed in a messy knot at the nape of her neck but it is falling, is fallen, out of that intricacy, a spill of gloom to frame the pallor of her haunting/ed features.
As much as she would like to stay at the mouth of the shipping container, where it is an easy thing to zip out, duck around and beneath, run, Lux does not stay at the mouth of the shipping container. Lux drifts. To the side and then downward, nearer.
Flood is a genteel tyrant. István is a silent prisoner with a poker face. Lux is (perhaps it is the curse of her blood [you can never escape]) here to turn this social occasion with all of its attendant difficulties into Something She Wants It To Be. Craft it into an event. She means to do it, too; her chin has set at its most rebellious. What Flood and István want be damned.
She drifts near. Her expression does not lighten and her shoulder does not quite touch the container's walls and she skims those walls with her fingertips to mark herself. The silence spins out. A web. Quiet. Darkness. Viol. All similarly trustworthy. Viol is what the Licks who've known her longer than a second still call her. What this brace of Ancilla call her when they're alone with her. Viol. An instrument.
Viol from Viollette from Violet which in the language of flowers (and starry as she is [Angels are bright still, though the brightest--] isn't she a flower? Frozen, mid-bloom) means I Will Always Be True (Watchfulness [Chastity]).
"'István -- that's Daniel Flood. I haven't got an adjective for him. 'Tenebrous' is a cheat. I guess 'inexorable.' Maybe 'flexible,' but you know hope's my favourite dance partner."
Lux is studying István's face as she speaks though when she is directly addressing Flood she turns her head slightly to the side; but her gaze is fixed (troubled [too dark to tell]) on the Tremere.
"Daniel -- that's István. I've got heaps of adjectives for him. Refined is the one I've used before. D'you know, I've known you both for about the same amount of time? I don't think I would have introduced you."
"Open your mouth." She could be imploring him to speak. But what is she doing: shrugging one arm from her jacket and bringing her wrist to her mouth.
As much as she would like to stay at the mouth of the shipping container, where it is an easy thing to zip out, duck around and beneath, run, Lux does not stay at the mouth of the shipping container. Lux drifts. To the side and then downward, nearer.
Flood is a genteel tyrant. István is a silent prisoner with a poker face. Lux is (perhaps it is the curse of her blood [you can never escape]) here to turn this social occasion with all of its attendant difficulties into Something She Wants It To Be. Craft it into an event. She means to do it, too; her chin has set at its most rebellious. What Flood and István want be damned.
She drifts near. Her expression does not lighten and her shoulder does not quite touch the container's walls and she skims those walls with her fingertips to mark herself. The silence spins out. A web. Quiet. Darkness. Viol. All similarly trustworthy. Viol is what the Licks who've known her longer than a second still call her. What this brace of Ancilla call her when they're alone with her. Viol. An instrument.
Viol from Viollette from Violet which in the language of flowers (and starry as she is [Angels are bright still, though the brightest--] isn't she a flower? Frozen, mid-bloom) means I Will Always Be True (Watchfulness [Chastity]).
"'István -- that's Daniel Flood. I haven't got an adjective for him. 'Tenebrous' is a cheat. I guess 'inexorable.' Maybe 'flexible,' but you know hope's my favourite dance partner."
Lux is studying István's face as she speaks though when she is directly addressing Flood she turns her head slightly to the side; but her gaze is fixed (troubled [too dark to tell]) on the Tremere.
"Daniel -- that's István. I've got heaps of adjectives for him. Refined is the one I've used before. D'you know, I've known you both for about the same amount of time? I don't think I would have introduced you."
"Open your mouth." She could be imploring him to speak. But what is she doing: shrugging one arm from her jacket and bringing her wrist to her mouth.
Flood
"No," Flood interject, directs, dictates. Dictator. No better than a tyrant.
"I'm not that flexible," having stopped her at the baring of her wrist for Istvan's biting and suckling.
"Inexorable and flexible. Hard to be the two at one time," explaining.
"If I wanted him whole he would be," he says to finish illustrating his point.
"Unconvinced," he says once his attention is again turned fully toward Istvan. "That would be apropos. Here we are: Introduced," and it is time for Flood's eyebrows to rise from where they'd been narrowing his eyes, hawkish, on Istvan. It says, asks, demands: And now what?
István
Aesthetics mean nothing to him now but even if Viol were to show up having cut holes into a potato sack and cinched it at the waist with a length of rope she would cut a stunning figure. The boxcar is dark and István would squint to see through the dark if he cared to sharpen the shapes within it. Dead flesh does not react to pain in the manner living flesh does. His pain is a silent thing and yet the death-pallor and the dried blood shout the source of it to the woman to whom he is enthralled.
Compelling as his captor's voice is the Tremere does not so much as spare him a glance so long as the Toreador walks toward him. Not just the potential blood transfixing him but her. Mention of her name before had clouded his gaze but it is obvious now that she is the center of his universe.
She hasn't got an adjective for him. The Tremere suppresses a scowl. He can come up with heaps of his own. But even as he near to scowls with hatred for the creature who staked him and drained him and kidnapped his ghoul he does not take his eyes off of her. Maybe she would not describe him as stoic. He has never taken many pains to control his impulses around her. If he has wanted to touch her he has touched her unless he has wanted to make a game out of not touching her in which case he has held out until she has touched him first.
Flood has no way of knowing this. Not when Viol begins to roll up her sleeve in preparation to open up her wrist and feed her friend her teacher her thrall.
He has not opened his mouth nor bared his fangs by the time the Lasombra interjects. At that the Tremere hisses at him but he has not lost control himself. He does not need to unsheathe his fangs in order to hiss. They are not any of them human. The sound he makes is dry and reflexive and hollow. It means nothing. It means he's angry and without the means to act on it.
But the Tremere does not frenzy.
They are introduced.
English is his fourth language. His second is Latin. All of them speak Latin. This is what he defaults to now.
"I wonder," he says, his Latin as tinged with his homeland as is his English yet Latin is more forgiving than is English, "why you did not introduce us before."
---
jamie @ 3:32PM
[Frenzy of Death diff as low as you can go]
Roll: 5 d10 TN3 (1, 4, 4, 5, 8) ( success x 4 )
jamie @ 3:32PM
[JESUS CHRIST ISTVAN]
Roll: 5 d10 TN3 (2, 4, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )
Tithe @ 3:33PM
Witnessed!
Lux
No, Flood says, director, dictator, and Lux, star, rebel, is not good at 'no.' Her left incisor (fang) is breaking the thin skin on the inside of her own wrist when it registers on and pauses her. No? Vitae begins to bead on the half-made wound, a drop that is beginning a movement downward. Her jacket hangs from one shoulder. Her wrist is turned from István so he cannot see it. She is Looking over her shoulder at Flood. I'm not that flexible. Inexorable and flexible. Hard to be the two at one time.
"But Daniel," she begins to say, tempered on the surface but the metal's still molten at the heart. At the same time István is hissing, death-rattle dry; causes Lux's eyes to snick back in the Tremere's direction.
Unconvinced, Flood says. (The good cop offers cookies. [The bad cop takes them. Eats them. Or crumbles them out of reach.]) István's Beast rattles against its cage clicks against his ribs. That would be apropos. The bead of blood that had begun a movement downward suddenly picks up speed and races for the edge of her forearm. Lux stops it with a finger and licks the pin-prick of a cut-just-begun closed then licks her lips too so there is no trace of it.
"But Daniel," now that István (she brightens) has said something that isn't a hiss, even if the words are still dry as a bone. "He's too." Too broken, she means. Too unable to focus. She does sound sad. "What will a drop hurt?"
"You are both - " and Lux's gaze, which had slipped from István to Flood during the course of her question (What will a drop hurt?), slips back to István. Her tone and body language indicate that she is responding to him now. Thoughtlessly poised. Social shark, even now or especially now. And these waters may be dark, but there is blood here. Keep moving.
"Well! There isn't room for regret." There's something threshold about the pause between 'regret' and what she says after -- as if she'd like to expound; restrains herself. But she is telling him. She isn't speaking of herself. It's after this she lets herself speak Latin (Academic's Latin, precise and carefully modulated, perfectly polished -- a cold dead language for irreverence and foundations).
"Dear philosophe, do you know why I'm here? Why we're all here? Hasn't Daniel said? If not," wistful, "can you guess?"
Flood
It says what Flood means and he very obviously means it.
"I have said and you need not guess," now directly to Istvan, "unless you think I am lying, but I will say it again: Our mutual good," and he pauses. "I refuse to be a dog pitted against another dog for the gain of others. I saw an ugliness within myself when I nearly tasted your soul, when I nearly drowned in your own blood and my own Beast, and that is why you are still here and why she is here with us," he finished.
- - - - -
Flood @ 1:01PM
[ Charisma + Leadership. Specialty: Charming, because if Istvan isn't a snake to be charmed who is? Spending a WP. ]
Roll: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 8, 8) ( success x 5 ) [WP]
Luck of the Irish @ 1:02PM
[I witness this.]
Flood @ 1:02PM
[ I will take that tenless and tenable roll and run. ]
"But Daniel," she begins to say, tempered on the surface but the metal's still molten at the heart. At the same time István is hissing, death-rattle dry; causes Lux's eyes to snick back in the Tremere's direction.
Unconvinced, Flood says. (The good cop offers cookies. [The bad cop takes them. Eats them. Or crumbles them out of reach.]) István's Beast rattles against its cage clicks against his ribs. That would be apropos. The bead of blood that had begun a movement downward suddenly picks up speed and races for the edge of her forearm. Lux stops it with a finger and licks the pin-prick of a cut-just-begun closed then licks her lips too so there is no trace of it.
"But Daniel," now that István (she brightens) has said something that isn't a hiss, even if the words are still dry as a bone. "He's too." Too broken, she means. Too unable to focus. She does sound sad. "What will a drop hurt?"
"You are both - " and Lux's gaze, which had slipped from István to Flood during the course of her question (What will a drop hurt?), slips back to István. Her tone and body language indicate that she is responding to him now. Thoughtlessly poised. Social shark, even now or especially now. And these waters may be dark, but there is blood here. Keep moving.
"Well! There isn't room for regret." There's something threshold about the pause between 'regret' and what she says after -- as if she'd like to expound; restrains herself. But she is telling him. She isn't speaking of herself. It's after this she lets herself speak Latin (Academic's Latin, precise and carefully modulated, perfectly polished -- a cold dead language for irreverence and foundations).
"Dear philosophe, do you know why I'm here? Why we're all here? Hasn't Daniel said? If not," wistful, "can you guess?"
Flood
In turn Flood begins in their common language of church, science, and all the empires it has created. He does not wield it bereft of the vulgarity his Italian (Roman) tongue imparts, but it is devoid of dialect, and so it is no more or less proper than their usage.
At the same time he is lucky to not need to breathe. It allows what comes to come out smoothly, beginning to end, without interruption.
"It could hurt now," explanatory and now looking between Istvan and Viol as he does so, "and it could even hurt later if I cannot see for myself that he can focus now, when he is hungry, and then if he becomes free and if he is not hungry then how can I expect him to focus himself on our pursuits, and to not later and again be hungry and eternally for my blood, and then how can I expect him to not want to slake his thirst for revenge on me even if he is so refined, my dear Viol?"
And are not these the kinds of statements that Latin is meant for? Long and flowing and all tied together, one to another, in a chain that becomes more solid with each passing words. Flood (and probably one or both of them as well), having read epics, histories, epistolaries, and academic documents in the language, has found entire pages consisting of a single unending thought. Grand ideas given structure into grand monuments to logic. Now there is a foundation, a statement paragraph or opening unnecessary, for which the language was intended and refined for.
At the same time he is lucky to not need to breathe. It allows what comes to come out smoothly, beginning to end, without interruption.
"It could hurt now," explanatory and now looking between Istvan and Viol as he does so, "and it could even hurt later if I cannot see for myself that he can focus now, when he is hungry, and then if he becomes free and if he is not hungry then how can I expect him to focus himself on our pursuits, and to not later and again be hungry and eternally for my blood, and then how can I expect him to not want to slake his thirst for revenge on me even if he is so refined, my dear Viol?"
And are not these the kinds of statements that Latin is meant for? Long and flowing and all tied together, one to another, in a chain that becomes more solid with each passing words. Flood (and probably one or both of them as well), having read epics, histories, epistolaries, and academic documents in the language, has found entire pages consisting of a single unending thought. Grand ideas given structure into grand monuments to logic. Now there is a foundation, a statement paragraph or opening unnecessary, for which the language was intended and refined for.
It says what Flood means and he very obviously means it.
"I have said and you need not guess," now directly to Istvan, "unless you think I am lying, but I will say it again: Our mutual good," and he pauses. "I refuse to be a dog pitted against another dog for the gain of others. I saw an ugliness within myself when I nearly tasted your soul, when I nearly drowned in your own blood and my own Beast, and that is why you are still here and why she is here with us," he finished.
- - - - -
[ Charisma + Leadership. Specialty: Charming, because if Istvan isn't a snake to be charmed who is? Spending a WP. ]
Roll: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 8, 8) ( success x 5 ) [WP]
Luck of the Irish @ 1:02PM
[I witness this.]
Flood @ 1:02PM
[ I will take that tenless and tenable roll and run. ]
István
The Tremere cannot move his wrists or his elbows. Cannot move his trunk or his feet. Can move his head enough to drop it so the two conspirers have no view of his face. Speech requires air in the lungs and one of his lungs did not fare so well the night of the attack. Several ribs are broken. His heart is damaged.
When he inhales to fill his lungs that his voice might not fall to a whisper the Toreador is near enough to see his knuckles strain tendon-white against his skin. Can hear the inspiratory hiss of agony as his bones and nerves react. Pain and deprivation and fury have turned his body into a holding cell for the blood-greedy monster coiled beneath his breastbone but he does not dissolve into it.
That isn't a gift his elders bestowed upon those of their blood and if it is it isn't one István has learned. He cannot throw himself into a red haze at will.
Lux asks him a question and he makes a thin miserable noise in response. Head still bowed fingers still grasping at the fabric of his trousers it could hurt now and does hurt now and the hurt does not abate with the roiling of his anger beneath it.
Only when the Lasombra confesses to drinking of him and nearly draining his soul from his body with his vitae does István look up and his eyes spark a flint as they lift teeth grit against an outburst and at the end of all that he barks a laugh.
Sure Flood is plenty charming but if István is not impervious to another's wiles he's at least had enough practice pretending that he isn't when he isn't in the midst of staving off a violent frenzy because he's chained to a chair having been dragged out of his haven.
"Please, forgive me," he says. "I would clap and declare you the herald of a truce between Camarilla and Sabbat, but it appears someone has--" Mother of God his chest hurts. He ducks his head to refill his lungs. When he looks back up: "--has bound my hands."
---
jamie @ 3:58PM
SOMEONE IS TOTALLY GOING TO WITNESS THIS RIGHT
[manip + subt -5 dice bc reasons]
Roll: 2 d10 TN6 (4, 10) ( success x 1 )
jamie @ 3:58PM
Holy shit with the reroll that's a whole two successes good job Tremere Boy
vesta @ 3:58PM
Yep, witnessed!
Lux
Lux doesn't shrug her jacket back on. Leaves it hanging from one shoulder; the teeshirt opens up in the back and someone earlier this night wrote on her skin -- they used a blue pen with a blue so dark as to be almost black. Lux enjoys being written or painted on.
Her hearing is tonight what it was before she learned the discipline of auguries, of seers, of visionaries, but her vision is (too) clear. István bows his head to hide his face but Lux's eyes stay on him.
Until something Flood says causes her glance to stray; to hold fast on the Lasombra instead.
He'd mentioned this ugly thing he saw in himself over the phone: pitted against this and pitted against that. But he hadn't spoken of it in such detail. She tries to hide her immediate reaction and she gazes at Flood even through István's bark of laughter (no) and his response.
She doesn't yet say anything; perhaps she is too startled. Perhaps she thinks Daniel Flood or István Virág have more to say now without her input; she'll jump in.
---
Tithe
[Jamie, please witness this! Manip + Subt. I do not have a strong reaction to learning Vampire Friend A almost diablerized Vampire Friend B.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 5, 5, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )
Tithe
[And this one! Auspex 2. Flood, what color is your soul? Perc + Emp. ]
Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (1, 1, 7, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
jamie
YOU GO GLEN COCO
Flood
Istvan spits out a 'ha' of amusement and Flood sets his jaw. That and what comes next is all he has to go on, all he is able to read into whatever internal processes are digesting his and Viol's words, and isn't it a pity because what comes next leaves his head shaking in disappointment.
"You are the only one still talking about the Camarilla and the Sabbat. We are talking about the three of us," a whip's snap of his tongue lashing out again and again. Not it is firm and steady like a taskmaster driving the words out to do their work.
"You are the only one still talking about the Camarilla and the Sabbat. We are talking about the three of us," a whip's snap of his tongue lashing out again and again. Not it is firm and steady like a taskmaster driving the words out to do their work.
Lux had left Flood to talk and in that time she decides to open her eyes and took within him. What she sees is metallic, yet not that gold of the sun gods or worshiped by ancient cultures, and no crude iron, but steel. Something alloyed, worked over, working over and contemplative. That is all before it shifts and it is not a subtle sublimation.
He notices her looking, having looked to see her own reaction to the words Istvan had spoken. It turns lavender, and though comparisons to the banners of his own sect may be inescapable, it is a lighter shade than that purple. It is reminiscent of disappointment, disgust, a bad taste. That same unsettled anger is on his face as he feel her invoking gifts of the blood. It is hard to miss.
"Quips and wax in his ears and you think him a philosophe? And there you are reaching for some card up your sleeve," shaking his head again. With the words he had transitioned back to English, perhaps the biggest signifier he is seriously considering walking from the table.
- - - - -
[ Flood, are we in a noticing things kind of mood tonight? For Istvan. Specialty is Hidden Motives and I'll leave it at that if it do or don't apply. ]
Roll: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5) ( fail )
Flood @ 10:56PM
[ At lease we aren't botching yet. And this one is for Lux. Again with the Hidden Motives if they are there. ]
Roll: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 3, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
Flood @ 10:58PM
[ And is someone doing something that takes discipline? Perception + Awareness. ]
Roll: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
nikooooo @ 11:00PM
[witnessed!]
OOC Note: Steel is the color of 'contemplative' or 'philosophical.'
Lux (What Flood Sees)
Distant. Distanced. This she isn't hiding if somebody's eyes are looking. She is wrought wistful and frustrated by István's quip. The Anarch respects the art of a quip. Respects the rattle of chains when it's the only thing to do. Chains she does not respect. She is wrought wistful and frustrated by István's quip. She wants him to be the him that she knows, not this pain-strung Tower boy. Her reaction; a moment before she rallies, please, to push. A hush; let the field be silent. Distant. Distanced.
What she wanted to hide and tried to hide and put forth effort to hide and did not hide from Daniel Flood was the startled shock that lo he'd come so close to sucking down a (that) soul. And now she wants to know. That's in the way she looks at Daniel Flood now. Reaching for a card: sure. A one-eyed Jeck. A card for a Tarot deck. Have you ever? Have you never? And that's why she stilled and left it to them to speak.
What she wanted to hide and tried to hide and put forth effort to hide and did not hide from Daniel Flood was the startled shock that lo he'd come so close to sucking down a (that) soul. And now she wants to know. That's in the way she looks at Daniel Flood now. Reaching for a card: sure. A one-eyed Jeck. A card for a Tarot deck. Have you ever? Have you never? And that's why she stilled and left it to them to speak.
István
"There is no 'three of us.'"
A snap. No portent of lost control but he is furious. Has been this entire time. Furious and forced into patience.
He does not stoop to English. It isn't his tongue and he has no use for it now. He doesn't so much as glance at Lux now either.
"If you must break your promise, so be it."
Lux
Tall man with devil black hair and absinthe green eyes and his halo steel and forged and strong, before the slant of light comes along and sweeps it into lavender. What a frame for Flood. Lux gazes at how he glows, pale as stars. Mortals can go ahead and be candles. Candles get snuffed out. Stars are eternal. Starlight is what candlelight would like to be. When stars die, they vanish and nobody knows, unless it burned bright enough to be turned into a constellation, and when has that happened? Never. Until they die, they're the glory of the Heavens.
And you reaching for a card. Blink. A stone in water. A tremor: a fine shiver of reaction. There is no three -
István opens his mouth and begins to speak. He is mid-way through declaring his sentence when Lux (who is near) claps her right hand over his mouth to stop him and presses in hard. The line of her shoulders is a speaking thing, curved inward: tension in the line of her.
"Yes. Clarity," she says, of cards reached for.
Lux. She throws her will into being (Morningstar [Fall]) charming and implaccable and irrevocable and she is a willful thing. All personality. Do not revoke me, darling. Her voice is pitched low, but clear, come on, guys. Clarity. Watches Flood still; she'd like to see he's moved; he's calmed.
"Insight. I am keeping my promise and will continue to keep it. What kind of thing would I be if I didn't? What kind of thing would any of us be if we didn't?"
"Wait, Daniel," please. Unless István frenzies under her hand or tries to bite: she's going to talk. A push; fine. "It's rough going when a splinter gets put into your heart and it's rougher going when it gets dug out again and nothing to stop up the hole. I know it."
Here is where she stops speaking to the Lasombra and begins to address István more directly. Her voice softens: passion needn't be loud. From English back to Latin. "Do you understand, I know it? I do not expect my understanding to ease you. You're selfish. You're as selfish as he is: it's part of the attractive package. But I do know that you are more than your wrath and suffering. More than… this."
Here is where she stops speaking to the Lasombra and begins to address István more directly. Her voice softens: passion needn't be loud. From English back to Latin. "Do you understand, I know it? I do not expect my understanding to ease you. You're selfish. You're as selfish as he is: it's part of the attractive package. But I do know that you are more than your wrath and suffering. More than… this."
"C'mon." C'mon is English. Slangy, insouciant English. Back to Latin.
"István, you do have a choice. You may rattle your chains and look pointedly at Daniel and say, What choice? Silence and contempt. As if he has all the power. As if your spirit is shackled, too. Those are choices; you have others. Power isn't all his any more than it is all yours. You can choose to never discover what hasn't yet been discovered. Did you know, while you were gone the magnetic interactions of electrons were isolated? Do you know what that means? You can choose to never know. You can choose to never, ever know what secrets are contained in a diamond. You can choose to have this be our last conversation -- I can't force another. To have somebody else take away the possibility of your joy. To never play another game. You can choose to never have once walked under the night sky, free.
"And don't you want that? Didn't you come here for something other than this? Don't you have any hope of the future?
"We, yes, we, aren't speaking of the Sword and the Tower at all. Mutual good. Ours. Alliance. Freedom, get it? Beyond sect lines and what is. You, unchained. This isn't how I'd have set the stage, I hate seeing you like this, but the stage is set. I choose to try to take from it what I want. I want you. I want Daniel. He is a wonderful ally. He cares no more for the Sword than you care for the Tower. Don't you get it? He's said it. I'm saying it. You can choose to try, love, or not. But please think about it. Know that you're making that choice. Know that I'll miss you."
Isn't it a good thing Lux doesn't need to breathe? When she takes her hand away (unless, of course, it was never there, these words were never said) from István's mouth,
"And Daniel, things that are inexorable and flexible: the ocean, the air, time and Progress -- greatness."
--
ooc: So, ahem, quite a lot of verbage from our Anarch. Long post. But it was fun to write? Seriously though: if somebody's going to bite her or frenzy at some point in all that or something, it's all good (bad! But you know, good ooc). Here are some rolls. Char + Emp for "Ack, no, I will by sheer charm and winsomeness have this not go South quite yet" + a Percept + Emp to see how Flood's reacting.
Lux
Charm? Charm, charm, charm? Charm? Charisma + Empathy. + Willpower.
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) [WP]
Lux
Notice? Notice, notice, notice. Percept + Empathy.
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
vesta
Yep, they look pretty successful to me :)
vesta
Witnessed.
Flood (Rolling Things)
[ One last complication because this is complicated.
Flood will try to surmise Istvan's reaction to what Lux is proposing and if it is swaying him.
Jamie, is Istvan going to be rolling Manipulation + Subterfuge on that? In which case I'll be resisting with Perception + Subterfuge. Or is he not hiding his feeling? In which case I'll be rolling Perception + Empathy as an unresisted action.
If it's the former let me know with the roll and if it's a latter just let me know. Then I'll post. ]
Flood will try to surmise Istvan's reaction to what Lux is proposing and if it is swaying him.
Jamie, is Istvan going to be rolling Manipulation + Subterfuge on that? In which case I'll be resisting with Perception + Subterfuge. Or is he not hiding his feeling? In which case I'll be rolling Perception + Empathy as an unresisted action.
If it's the former let me know with the roll and if it's a latter just let me know. Then I'll post. ]
The 'Abyss' being a Jess...
Flood @ 3:06PM
[ Those eyes are the windows, but your mouth is covered by ladyfingers. Let's say this is at +1 difficulty because of that. Perception + Empathy. Blowing a WP. ]
Roll: 4 d10 TN7 (4, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
Abyss @ 3:07PM
[The darkness sees and the darkness knows. The darkness curls around your joy and sorrow and licks the life from the chambers of your heart.
You have been seen.]
Flood @ 3:06PM
[ Those eyes are the windows, but your mouth is covered by ladyfingers. Let's say this is at +1 difficulty because of that. Perception + Empathy. Blowing a WP. ]
Roll: 4 d10 TN7 (4, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
Abyss @ 3:07PM
[The darkness sees and the darkness knows. The darkness curls around your joy and sorrow and licks the life from the chambers of your heart.
You have been seen.]
István (What Flood Sees)
[Istvan is willing to listen to whatever Flood has to say if Flood wants to heed Lux's request but he's starved and angry and still suspicious of both of them. If he is swayed it is no more than as a stiff breeze would sway an oak. He's still in very real danger of frenzying but doesn't think he's bereft of a choice. He's choosing not to cooperate with people who are talking nonsense. If they want to stop talking nonsense...]
Flood
Flood is pulled back as tides to the moon. That Lux can see without her High Priestess' card. What do the waves do to all that isn't the moon? All that lies under it? Crash, but for now he is temperate. Present again at the table.
Flood can read the lines of Istvan's forehead, the muscles beneath his flesh, and the eyes because he does little to hide what they say. Hunger. Suspicion. Rage. All bridled, and how much by the chains he put on him? He beats it back enough it hasn't become bucking frenzy, but still these faces of the Beast are pulling him a certain way. These are the faces Flood sees past the mask of a horrifically wounded man that isn't much of a mask at all.
"No," a nod that may seem counter-intuitive at first.Flood can read the lines of Istvan's forehead, the muscles beneath his flesh, and the eyes because he does little to hide what they say. Hunger. Suspicion. Rage. All bridled, and how much by the chains he put on him? He beats it back enough it hasn't become bucking frenzy, but still these faces of the Beast are pulling him a certain way. These are the faces Flood sees past the mask of a horrifically wounded man that isn't much of a mask at all.
"There is not," because he had heard what Istvan had begun saying before Lux had silenced him. There is the context written all over him and what he has said thus far and Flood can extrapolate from those few words he had been allowed by his advocate. "There is not, but there never is before something is. Before it is created."
Flood does not sigh, but if he were more like the man he had once been and if his chest still moved he looks like he might.
"Give him clarity. Feed him enough, no more," to Viol to make her veins sing and fill Istvan. "Make yourself whole, no more," to Istvan, even if it is more for Viol: she can see this very plainly when she looks to his motives. Does there need to be a threat behind it? Isn't this enough of a threat already? Shadows above and all around and there master in their midst?
"And when your tongue is wet," still to Istvan, "speak with it," all this again in Latin. "Give us your thoughts on this, if what we say is so ludicrous."
István
István never had the occasion in life to learn patience with a spouse or a child because he never took a wife or fathered a child. He has sired no neonates and so far as either present can tell he only brought one ghoul to this place with him. Still has no notion of that ghoul's fate but it's good he hasn't asked because it's best he doesn't know if they think him uncooperative now.
If he were a younger warlock or if he had fallen further or if he were not so tempered the creature he is this would be the point in the exercise where the haze came over him and he exited his cognizance. Better to be oblivious anyway. Oblivion removes the mind from whence the body cannot escape.
As she speaks Lux can feel István grinding his teeth not with rage but with pain. With the effort of focusing on her lecture when the center of him is a broken stabbing thing. His body is too wounded for his pride to feel the blows.
Flood does not sigh. He gives Lux permission to feed him but with a last pain-tense suppression of a shudder István does not seize upon her hand or her wrist. So Flood wanted a demonstration. Wanted to chain him up punctured as he is to see how he negotiates when others would scream if they did not plead for mercy.
"You speak in metaphor thicker than the shadows you hide behind," he says, "you drag me from my haven and drain me down to my soul and bring me back in a black box, you lack the spine necessary to introduce yourself or your cause before you make demands and lay down threats you have no intention of fulfilling, <i>and I'm the one who lacks clarity?</i>"
The void where unvoiced insults don't fall rings in his tone even as he has to drop his head a moment later to grit his teeth around another voice-projecting breath. Lux was right. He's stubborn.
"Tell me how you came to know my location and what exactly you imagined the outcome of all of this would be when you went there. I want to know how we came to be here and where you think we're going before I give my thoughts to you."
Lux
The beautiful creature -- and really, what else is she and has she ever been? Helen never stopped a war -- combs her fingers through her hair. The dark gloss looses itself further from its messy knot. Are the waves wanton just because they're free? Flood's drawn back. István's ebbing, echoes in the hollow places -- maybe. Look at her regard them both, so carefully; her care is a perfectionist's. Her brow smooths -- just. Her lashes go low. Can Lux be demure? With a stiletto's precision. Can Lux be contained? And so she is, passion still in the shape of her mouth pressing together into a firm line.
So István speaks instead of lunging, hungry. He can speak his piece; she won't interrupt it this time. Lux brings her wrist to her own mouth anyway and opens it with her fangs. A prick of white heat (like rage, like radiance) blooming, double-sided desire -- and then vitae.
"Go on, take it."
She doesn't want to force him. Maybe she wants to tip his chin up so she can let the vitae reach him that way; she doesn't want him to bite her; she's far too afraid that this - this would be the time when she was taken completely by how good it feels to die (and how good it feels to kill).
Selfish. Not stubborn. That's what she'd called the Tremere and the Lasombra both. She was selfish too. They're vampires. Wrongheaded angels: sure. But selfish.
"Though - " flash of a reserved look Flood's way. One corner of her mouth snicking up. A headshake; was it going to be a joke? No. Something about vintages. "I hear the freight car pigeon here abouts is delightful."
Angels are still bright though the brightest fell, right? That's the theme. Return to it. Toreador are still lovely, who twine about the Tower, though she is not among them. Don't fall, little roses. Stay fast to your vines. Else you go into the dark and burn there without glory. Or wind up in a rail car with a Sabbat Lasombra and a Camarilla Tremere and your blood spilling.
---
Lux
Manipulation and Subterfuge Together Means Nobody Can See Through Me, Right?
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 6, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Ix
Witnessed!!!
Flood (Being Irritatingly Insightful Re: Lux's Hidden Thoughts AS ALWAYS Grumble)
Nobody isn't here, but somebody is.
Flood @ 7:27PM
[ Perception + Subterfuge. I've been informed that Specialty: Hidden Motives is not in effect. ]
Roll: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 6, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 6 )
Tithe @ 7:29PM
[Witnessified!]
Flood @ 7:27PM
[ Perception + Subterfuge. I've been informed that Specialty: Hidden Motives is not in effect. ]
Roll: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 6, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 6 )
Tithe @ 7:29PM
[Witnessified!]
Lux (What Flood Sees)
Lux is present and intent on the present. Lux is still hopeful and determined: of course. Revolutionary: fuck despair.
But. Lux feels sad and she wants to keep that private, tucked away. Her fingers combing through her hair -- they have no tremor to them. But look at the fineness of the gesture: there is introspection and introspection dredges up a keen edge, sharp enough to cut, a slender whisper of fear or maybe worry threading all through the bright-rebel lattice-work of her determination and hope, and though she is reminded of it now it has nothing to do with Flood or István.
Lux doesn't want any of that Other Stuff Not Relevant To Now visible -- and so the precise sweep of lash against fair cheekbone and so the demure shadow cast by the compelling cant of her head. The focus on the line her own blood makes and the taste of it in the back of her throat; see the way her throat works? There. That's where he reads it. Insinuation.
Flood
Istvan, stubborn Istvan, insults Flood in no few ways. Goes through all that Flood has shown him when not hiding behind his shadows and even when working from behind their curtain and calls these machinations that of an invertebrate.
A leech.
A leech.
Flood weathers it with a certainty that resonates in his words.
Isn't it always the little things that get you?
"My ghoul painted your warehouse," he begins as he circles toward the Toreador who again breaks her skin ready to share with him. Flood places a hand on her arm. Stops her again. It comes with no force, except for the force of a look, a look that asks for a moment. Says, You'd asked for all these moments. Give me a few.
"Amber reasoned who you were. Informed me you had gone about asserting your will over others. You became known to me. Before?" As if something inside him had truly changed when he had almost painted his soul by feeding of his. "That would have been enough. Knowing you could work your will over others and had come in contact with one of my shadows finally demanded action," he continues.
Building his case? No. If something in Istvan's tone had fostered a need in Flood to defend his actions or who he is, it doesn't show. He is simply answering his questions in logical order.
And goes on doing so.
"I went to your man and found out more about you. I came to cut you down. My Beast wanted more than just that. My pack still wants more. I found you to be important to Viol. I thought I saw the possibility, in your correspondence, of something more than sectarian conflict and acting as the pawns of pawns of pawns," and he looks at where his hand is on Lux's arm, staying it.
"If you think my struggle with that debased Beast, your continued existence thanks to her, all I've said and what I offer- what I offer," repeating himself, but Flood does not buckle. He does tremble. Halts himself and shakes with passion that is not rage or frenzy, but yearning for something more. "Dammit, what I offer is a peace, however small, and a willingness to fight for freedom here in Denver with ancients rising and curses coming undone. If that makes me less than so be it."
And his grip on her arm grows perceptibly more firm. Not enough to cause pain. Enough to make it feel real. Enough to say with action what he will say with words when he looks up at her.
"I really do think this is possible," a pause. "But if this cannot be? It is important that when he answers you to decide for yourself: Was this just a waste of time or a more unfortunate mistake?" And with that he releases her arm. Leaves her to feed him. Takes a step back and waits.
István
Not that anyone has asked István for his opinion but if István were to give his opinion he would have to say that this interaction would have gone much more smoothly if the first thing out of his mouth when he regained his freedom of movement was what he just said to Flood to provoke this explanation.
Though Flood stops Lux a second time from bringing her wrist to his mouth this second time does not stoke him towards a frenzy. Perhaps he expected an interruption. He had locked himself in for an extended period of deprivation. Did not want to give the Lasombra a chance to catch them both distracted. Seated as he is the Tremere is lower than both of them and his eyes lift up but he does not look meek or passive in this.
So it was the painter. Lux didn't have anything to do with this. That's good to hear.
It isn't so good to hear that this is the creature who visited his ghoul the evening of the phone call. Some weeks have passed. István grits his teeth like they're all he's got to hold onto that thread until it's his turn to speak again. All of the things he said before the Toreador arrived begin to make sense now: dogs and the pitting of them against each other and the expectations of that.
Flood addresses Lux as if they are alone and István in his chains stares up at them. The expression on his face is not entirely inscrutable but Flood really might have considered stopping talking at the offer of peace. He almost had him convinced there but then he kept talking.
So Flood steps back and he waits and Lux may be preparing her wrist a third time but before she presents it to him István has one more thing he wants to know.
"Where is the doctor, anyway?"
Speaking of unfortunate mistakes. He sounds calm as he asks after René but it's an eerie sort of calm.
Flood
"He is alive and physically well, but other than that his situation does not differ much from your own. He is plying his trade in the service of a packmate of mine, a Toreador antitribu," and it doesn't sound like the tenderest of ministrations. Maybe that is why he had started out on the note about the doctor's health.
"From what he said about your own moral compass," a pause to let that sink in, "I can't imagine it's much worse from what you have or might eventually have him do, but what it does to him would also depend on his resilience."
"From what he said about your own moral compass," a pause to let that sink in, "I can't imagine it's much worse from what you have or might eventually have him do, but what it does to him would also depend on his resilience."
Lux
When Flood puts a gentle hand on Lux's arm to stay her, the Toreador opens her mouth to say a sharp thing. But her eyes met Flood's and the force of that look (request) and so she said nothing, says nothing, and though he felt a tension in her arm she does not try to take it from him. Instead she nods and is stayed. Instead she is listening, and watching István listen -- at least hear. Instead she has become as still as a portrait under the scrutiny of candlelight: you know, how the scud of pale light across paint suggests an added dimension to the unmoving and promises a movement (a progression: a musical mood) in the near past or the just now or the near future.
She may be still, poised with an air of reckless elegance with her wrist open and Flood's hand on her arm and her jacket half-off and a teeshirt beneath in this steel box, but her (ardent [dark])gaze shifts from István to Flood. Back again. Flood shakes with a yearning (and it seems true and it seems honest) and this time the flick of her eyes is quicker. Back to István to see what she can see. Until Flood's grip tightens perceptibly on her arm.
She looks at him. Not his hand. He really does think this is possible. It is, Lux shapes the words without giving them a voice because Flood has more to say.
Before she responds, István's eerily calm question pauses her as effectively as Flood's look had. Except: Lux flattens her hand across István's clavicle. The touch seems impulsive. Is he chained across his torso? Perhaps instead she flattens her hand across those links. He gives off no radiant warmth on blood-rich nights and there's no radiant warmth now: the chains are cold or his shirt is cold or his skin is cold. The hand she flattens is not her right. She's keeping her left wrist and her vitae up by her shoulder until she is more confident István isn't going to drain her and until she isn't force-feeding him. Here comes the choo choo, open up -- nurturing has never been one of Lux's strongest points.
"Hey - " English. Look at me look at me. Now a strongly accented but not terrible attempt at the Tremere's native language. " - aranyom, édesem, drá..." no. Lux can't remember how to pronounce that word. Doesn't. Back to Latin. "...dear thing. That's better than expected. That's hopeful. Be angry, fine, but please be more than that.
"And I'm not a fucking vitae fountain. Drink already. Heal yourself. I trust you," she says, and maybe she doesn't mean it at all. Trust is such a dirty word. But even so: actions speak louder. This is the third time she's offering the Tremere.
Deliberate. Wistful. "I trust you both."
And she looks as if she'd add something to that; something directed back toward Flood. But it depends on István.
István
That wretched still creature with the bit of wood protruded from his chest found in the attic last month. Lux knows who he is and how he came to be there. Why. It wasn't boredom or depravity or psychosis that prompted the warlock to immobilize and imprison the Malkavian.
His calm is a portend and perhaps it's pretend too but István does not fly into an immediate rage with the answer that the asking secures. The Toreador knows and she can sense and he does not bristle beneath the chains but he is cold. The chains are cold and he is cold and before he can answer Flood her voice comes abreast of the touch and his cold eyes flick away to find her face.
Terms of endearment hem the fire lashing beneath his skin. A command in the wording. Be more than that.
He snarls. Physical pain and frustration and it's hard to think of anything else but killing the person who put him here without that fire banked. She's not a fucking vitae fountain but she is a liar. A poor liar but a liar nonetheless.
Unless stopped:
Fire lashing. Commands. Be more than that drink already a wrist and the wound not yet licked closed.
The warlock turns his head to find the wound and does not sink his teeth into the flesh around it. A joke once about hoping to bargain a fourth drink out of the third. He's bound to her. He cannot deny her anything she wants. This time he drinks and he drinks quick but he does not drink deep. Licks the wound shut after one pint down and bows his head again to lick the vitae from his lips. He has to rest to heal. No shuddering against frenzy or railing at the one who captured him.
They have time to speak while the vitae she gave him knits itself into his flesh. A small noise from the body within the chains as the pain subsides. Still badly injured. It's a demonstration: look at how he only takes enough to dull the gleam of it.
When he looks back up his eyes still flash but he is still chained after all.
"Vult pacem?" István asks. Latin is a concise language. By comparison English is rambling and bloated. István does not abandon Latin though the others veer out of it. "I want him these chains gone. I want the doctor freed." Speaking to Lux though he stares at Flood. "I want to hear what you want, love, before the goddamned sun rises."
---
Here are more dice! I preemptively rolled an extension but uh. He still didn't get 5 altogether. Tick tock.
Nate
[going to pass the fuck out of this frenzy roll yo]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (1, 4, 4, 4, 8) ( success x 1 )
Nate
[ehhhhhhhhhh]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
Flood
To those last words from Istvan Flood does not shake his head nor does he smirk because for their kind that kind of thing could be war drums. This is not the time for either of those things.
Istvan had been asked for his opinion in no uncertain terms, whatever opinion he wanted to give and the floor to give it, and he had instead asked for answers. With which to formulate and opine? Flood did not have the foresight to know, but what finally comes is a list of wants. Answers then actions. These chains gone. That doctor returned. What Lux has already said repeated? Or at least expanded upon. Before the sun rises.
"I am sure the sun will rise and I am still no more convinced than I was," Flood says. It does manage to sound both inexorable and flexible at the same time.Istvan had been asked for his opinion in no uncertain terms, whatever opinion he wanted to give and the floor to give it, and he had instead asked for answers. With which to formulate and opine? Flood did not have the foresight to know, but what finally comes is a list of wants. Answers then actions. These chains gone. That doctor returned. What Lux has already said repeated? Or at least expanded upon. Before the sun rises.
"This was as much about my knowing you could leave what passed in the past as your education on what happened. I want peace. Peace comes with trust or certainty and I have neither. Not even an inkling. No assurances. I am not one for leaps and yet I am here," Flood's knees bending, back straight, elbows resting upon them and hands clasping together so that he can look straight on at Istvan who is looking at him, but not talking to him.
Flood chooses to talk to him.
"What happened between us was the act of two territorial predators, parts of different wholes, and parts of those wholes that are one the antithesis of the other. Now, knowing one another- Daniel Flood and Istvan Jakob- and what common ground we have," a glance to Lux before he returns to regard him fully and completely.
"I am not one for leaps, but I have taken cautious steps in the direction of peace, and want to know if without those chains you can do the same," he finishes.
Lux
A slender but perceptible shiver moves under her skin when István turns his head and drinks from the wound at her wrist. He'd snarled just before. His Beast is so close to the surface that it is more obvious than the articulation of his bones. He'll be ashes. He'll be nothing. He is four or five times blood-knotted but even so she shivers (so she flinches). Because what if he slips his teeth into her? What if he can't stop? What if he can?
He takes almost nothing. Lux is surprised by how little he takes and she looks at him as if she is. Her left hand stays a steadying pressure on his clavicle but when after a sliver of delay she draws her wrist away she combs the fingers of her right through the Tremere's hair. Whether it is or is not love, doesn't it feel like it?
Perhaps it feels like nothing. They are monsters and they shuck their humanity as they grow older. They learn that they are not to feel unless it given by the curse in their blood for them to feel.
At least that's what the elders say. Lux feels, or believes she does. Isn't she a creature spun out've ardency? Isn't she beautiful? No wonder she caught some ancient thing's eye.
Flood speaks. Lux works her fingers over István's scalp over to the back of his neck and as Flood finishes they sweep under his jaw to find István's jaw and she seeks to turn the Tremere's eyes back to hers and find István there and as she seeks she responds.
"What I want is your attention, beautiful boy, I want you to see not just what has been taken but what has already been offered. I want both of you to see that," her head turns toward Flood, but her eyes stay on István's. He could try to Command her now if he chose to. Stop. Silence. Scream. Laugh. Go.
"It is no secret you can take my vitae and plait it into sorcery and since when have chains stopped sorcery? But Daniel stands there and you are given my vitae. And Daniel, he took almost nothing, though he is a warlock and blood is his weapon, left it on the table and out of reach. Is that nothing? Isn't that a glimmer of assurance? István, I want this to work and I want you to work with us."
"Dawn comes? Fine! Let it. I am willing to talk past sunrise and after next sunset if that's what it takes. To be unchained, you must offer some gesture some word of cooperation, and if what you need before you do that is to be unchained, to see your ghoul, say so, say why, speak."
István
István
The forty years of correspondence and three nights gone into carving out a shape like trust and love in him mean nothing when a pit has opened up in him. Darkness swallowed up his patience and what eloquence he could claim before.
Letters saved containing Viol's name and they were enough for the Lasombra to form an image of him. Something more than menace maybe but he has lived as long as he has lived not because he cooperates with his brethren but because he stays apart from them. He tarried with his clan in Vienna and with Chicago and then he came to Denver.
He has never been staked. If he has ever been injured this badly it was so long ago he was young and scared and easily set down. If he has ever known fingers traced through his hair with love or something like love set into the blood shared between them he has not told Lux this. He told Lux every bond he's ever known has gone to loathing in the end.
His eyes close when she touches him. Even if it isn't love it gives him comfort here at the end of his life.
Even if he makes it out of this the life he knew before is over. She has his attention. Eyes tugged away from Flood and up to her face as she speaks to him. And she can see because she looks right at him because he makes no attempt to conceal it from either of them that what has been taken has been slow to come to him. The enormity of what his abduction means.
He could try to command her or him or both of them. He could have stolen their vitae and given his chains movement and been stricken down before he could find his way to a piece of broken mirror in which to store his body while his image wandered free. But he hasn't. He's still sat here even if he rages and refuses to cooperate. That was his choice.
Latin, still. He doesn't shout.
"'Some gesture,'" he says. "Such as lying still while you dangle a knife over my eye in the dark?" If that gesture meant anything to Lux then István does not think it does. Let it remain a nonsense to Flood. He goes on: "I have nothing now but my intellect. Do neither of you see this? If I were to walk out of here, somehow, I would have nowhere to go, no one I trust. I have nothing now. And you want what's left, from me, while I'm chained to a chair. No. A choice between chains and death is still a choice, you're correct, but I choose not to remain chained to the chair."
Flood
What Flood does and does not consider nonsense, out of Viol or Istvan, is of course fair game for speculation. Flood listens closely to what Istvan has to say. His eyes are not shadowy by nature; they are green as clovers in their coloring and amidst the many sharp angles of his face they sit like facets of a jewel. Even when they narrow it is only along his brow, a grinding wheel descending to give their edges bite, but along the broad flat of the blade they remain bright where they sit in the shadows.
So they sit upon Istvan when he is talking. If they are incising, that dagger he speaks of as much as the shadows that hang, the Beast that dangles it is stronger than a single horse hair. It is restrained, and whether more or less than Istvan's, it has much less reason for frenzy.
They remain there whether he is speaking directly to the Toreador touching him tenderly or not. The attention need not be mutual. Maybe it could be construed as some trouble following the old tongue an old lick uses. Who is having trouble following who, if following is either of their intent, continues to be up for debate.
Their host and captor has not moved much. There is a stillness to him; a conservation of movement. Like a shadow it is the light and emanations of others than moves him. Changes him. He had taken as step away for the short feeding. He had crouched down to speak to Istvan and there he is to this point.
It is Flood's turn to interpret. This is speculation with very high risk. He had said he needed convincing. Viol asks for a gesture. She asks well enough that even Flood wants it, more than he had before, more than bringing her here and what he had said thus far had attempted to demonstrate.
They must all be aware, though with varying degrees of detail as to the alternative, that there are reasons other than a gesture that Istvan remains still. He tries nothing, as he had been instructed, since freed from and of the wood that held him. That is his gesture. Flood must have missed it; it was too clouded. Obscured by the stream of piss on all Flood has said.
The warlock continues to Viol. It is one of things Flood can notice, along with his words. He does not want the chains. He reasons for their removal and draws attention to gestures Viol asks for already made.
The Abyss, never gone from this place, sends minions from its walls. They whip at his side, lashing down from the ceiling, poised to try and deflect anything Lux might to to try and stop him. There is still a gaping bull's eye of gore where the shaft of a stake had been buried. Flood reproduces the length of polished wood from his suit jacket and aims to put it back there.
Lux
Lux releases István's jaw at his rhetorical. Her expression is or is not a fiction. Her expression is: some dark, just-kissed thing by all appearances -- lips parted, the elegant arch of her eyebrows still drawn together, trouble a line between them, and as fixed as her eyes can be they are searching so there must be some movement to them, a flicker of lashes downward once and twice both times arrested (look).
Here movement is thoughtlessly fluid, but then so are most of the creature's movements, sharpened and polished by her blood into a dream (an exquisite terror). István is answering, answering, answering, and Lux slips her arm back through the dangling sleeve of her jacket and errant Medusa-waves fallen out of that not-quite-firmly pinned knot catch beneath it. One curl whisks out to snake across her throat and it is like a shadow.
Not, of course, as like a shadow as are other things in the rail car.
As her jacket settles again she is lifting that hand to cut the air, some emphasis in service of what sticks in Lux's throat, what she's going to (heated [sharp]) say, but Flood's words change that. Or no, not Flood's words. The Toreador has had good fun in the past dueling toward dawn weapon of choice other men's words, en garde! Games to hone one's wit. It's the living darkness sending forth its tenebrous arms, tar-thick and inexplicable, and it is Flood reaching into his suit jacket to reproduce --
It is those things. They make her say: "Wait!" as she stands idly by.
No: a joke. Wait! she says, sharp as a slice as the Abyss moves, and Lux needn't even take a full step to stand between the Keeper in Darkness and the Warlock in Chains. Which is, of course, of course what she does: rebellious. Vitae wicks through her, a reflexive push, not to call on some Disciplined Trick or card up her sleeve (yet?), but to make her frame yet sturdier. Of course she'll meet Flood's eyes until and unless the darkness falls across them all; of course she will, because she is both cold and ardent.
"Not yet! I've been to Brujah forums where disputes are less hastily ended!"
[ooc summary note: -2 BPs to stamina (june's must-have accessory for getting in the middle of painful brawls). did a 'Hide Things' Manip + Subt roll for 2 suxx. Ix witnessed. Transcript lost forever. For inits rolled 6. Ix totes witnessed. Transcript lost forever.]
István Rolls Things
lawl @ 3:27PM
[perc + subt: wtf are you doing, lux. -1 diff bc auspex, -2 dice bc ow, spending WP bc you can't take that shit with you when you get staked.]
Roll: 5 d10 TN5 (1, 5, 6, 8, 8) ( success x 5 ) [WP]
Argh @ 3:29PM
[witnessified.]
Lux (What István Sees)
[Answer to be postified at later date since it was given over IMs. Blah blah. Hurt angry blah blah. Not the dagger thing, the I have nothing, no one to trust, etc.]
István
Nothing to be done for a creature thrice-bound who only recognizes one set of chains. Easy for him to ignore the binds of his clan when it is all he has known these two centuries past and he cannot ignore the binds that lash him to Lux but then the lashing hasn't made of him a mindless slave. Love is a warped and sightless thing even without blood. She asked for his thoughts.
Ask a creature whose desk is crammed with papers and writing utensils and scientific instruments to find notes he scribbled on a napkin four years ago. See what springs forth from the drawer he first opens in a harried search for such. They get junk first and besides that he still hurts. A few weeks have not passed for him. Darkness for those few weeks and with the darkness paralysis and oblivion and it's only been a few hours for him. A few hours for him to stew with a bit of wood stuck out of his chest.
Dark in here and dark out there. He speaks of what lies out there and he calls it nothing and he sees what these words do to the woman to whom he has lashed himself. Pain written into the lines on his face but he flinches to see her recoil from him then.
(That isn't what I meant, love. That isn't what I meant at all.)
May be that the last good glimpse she has of him is of him chained to a chair with dried vitae blossomed across his chest hair a mess body a mess dead-eyed and resigned to his fate. He's looking up at her as Flood rises and he's still looking up at her as she returns her arm to its sleeve.
She can read contrition in his gaze if she'd like. She can read regret and love and anger without having to reach. No confusion anymore. He isn't pleading with her. This creature decided it wanted to take him and if this creature decides it wants to stake him now and leave him for the sun -
He can fight. Chained he can still fight even if he cannot still kill but then Lux calls for pause and steps between them. But he does not speak.
Flood
[ Blowing a BP on Dexterity. Flood's Initiative: 1d10 + 8 ]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )
Flood
[ Perception + Subterfuge. Specialty is Hidden Motives if that applies. ]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (6, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 7 )
István
[Jesus Christ, Flood]
István
[+6, we don't have the BP to be doing anything fancy rn]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (5) ( fail )
Lux
The gloom-loved and finely-wrought creature may as well be glass for how well Flood can guess at and see through her sometimes; witness now. Her expression is a fiction, or at least a surface gloss over trouble; it's a lie that the undead don't feel. They just often channel their feelings into malevolence and decades-long strings of petty oneupsmanship.
There's the prelude. Here's what she seeks to hide.
István: just deeply deeply hurt the Toreador, and naturally she doesn't want that on display (and naturally, oh naturally, she doesn't want that on display because what purpose will it serve here? One's emotions must be put to purpose), so. Her very stillness, the ardency of her expression, the just-kissed just-parted lips, even the particular set of her shoulders and sharpening of her jaw --
All a sublimation of struck woundedness with an after-taste of insult followed hard by anger followed even harder by a different flavor of anger, something less tied to what she perceives as a slap and more tied to now. Frustrated? It's not quite the right word, but it's close. She wants to hide that too because she doesn't see it serving any sort of dialogue.
Flood
[ Let's do round of declares just for the record. Initiative order is: Lux, Flood, Istvan. ]
István
[Holding. Will eat the +1 diff penalty if he decides to do something besides sit there.]
Flood
[ Arms of the Abyss: Blocking Lux.
Flood: Staking Istvan. ]
Lux
Ugh, no, stop fighting stupid boys, stop it I say.
+ there was that -2 (more) BPs to Stamina.
Lux: totally gets between them. Plus all that dialogue-y stuff. WAIT, bro.
Lux
[Dex + Celerity + Athletics. I am faster than a Lasombra with a stick. I hope. I kind of hope. I guess. I don't hope that hard. Sticks hurt.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )
Flood
[ Flood makes a WP roll to change actions. ]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 5 )
Flood
[ Arms of the Abyss: Move Lux at +1 difficulty.
Flood: Still staking. ]
Flood
[ Arm #1: Kinda like a Tackle? Dexterity + Brawl (I am a shadow and have no Brawl). ]
Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (1, 3, 7) ( fail )
Flood
[ Botch. Lux is too fast and the tentacles get all tangled up. No actions for them this turn, and since Flood wants to be stabbing Istvan, a Lux is in the way and he can't do that. She says her piece. ]
Flood
[ That is if everyone is fine with that botch ruling. ]
István
[I'm fine with botch ruling but would like to turn that hold into an action since István isn't staked.]
Flood
[ Go for it. ]
István
[Might as well try to make everyone in the room shit themselves before he dies.
-1BP to activate:
Theft of Vitae, target is Flood. Base diff 7, +1 bc action was held.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (1, 4, 4, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Flood
[ Flood's Initiative: 1d10 + 8 ]
Flood
[ Rolling would be good. ]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (3) ( fail )
Lux
[+10.]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (3) ( fail )
István
[+6]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (9) ( success x 1 )
Flood
[ Self- Control ]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
Flood
[ Order: Istvan, Lux, Flood. ]
Flood
[ Arms of the Abyss: Constrict Istvan.
Flood: (1a) push Lux out of the way and (1b) stake Istvan. ]
Flood
[ Oh, yeah, blowing a BP for Potence auto-successes. ]
Lux
[Did blood just float from Flood past me into -- ? Holy shit.
1. Step aside. Gracefully, i.e., without getting shoved I suppose. :( I'm sorry! I don't want to be Mercutio in a Tybalt / Romeo fight!! Or maybe just SPRING BACK all "HOLY SHIT BLOOD FLOATED"]
Lux
[ahem, ROMEO in a Tybalt/Mercutio fight even.]
István
[Shit am I Tybalt or Mercutio I would normally ask René to interpret this literary reference but someone gave him to a Pervert.
Attempting a Feat of Strength to bust out of the stupid chains, going by rules on pp. 260-1 re: using WP instead of STR. I think he needs 3 successes to get to the "break open a metal fire door" level. If the threshold would be higher we can cross that bridge when we get to it.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN9 (2, 2, 2, 3, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 1 )
Flood
[ Stake. We blow a WP on these. ]
Dice: 8 d10 TN9 (1, 1, 4, 4, 6, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Flood
[ Damage + 3 auto-successes ]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )
István
[How much overkill happened with this staking?]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (2, 8) ( success x 1 )
Flood
[ Anyone volunteer to do a wrap post? Or should we each do one? I don't know. ]
István
[I'll post one last time and if someone wants to append it go on ahead.]
Lux
[<3]
István
Of course when the end comes he dies chained. He was chained before Flood pulled onto the quiet side street where his haven lurked. If it wasn't the binds of his clan it was the blood of the woman who came to broker peace between them. She cannot make István calm down any more than she can make Flood stay his stake and maybe it means nothing that she even tried at all.
István looked at her with apology and pain in his eyes but his eyes are hard to read in the dark and he was never very good at reading rooms or the people in the rooms. He excels at anything to which he puts forth his mind and the effort come with mastering new tasks but he never even tried to learn how to read people.
That is the last clear image Lux has of him and then she has her back to him and then vitae comes siphoning out of Daniel Flood's fingertips. His own shadows tangled in on each other and an iron-spined woman stood between them and all István Jákob Virág can see of his captor are his fingertips. A thin stream trickles through the air and it's over a moment later.
The stake does not have to fight its way through bone and muscle to find its way home again. The hole Daniel Flood put there a month ago hasn't healed. It accepts the paralyzing instrument and then all of the fight and the fury goes out of the body in the chair. The mind returns to torpor and the head falls forward and the hair falls loose to cover his eyes.
Outside the morning birds chirp and the sky threatens light.
Flood
Viol moving so gracefully to stand between Flood and Istvan does not seem to surprise him. Had not the host of darklings moved in anticipation of this? They are not effective in this task, and it gives the Toreador her moment to compare them to the rabble rousers, the thugs, the iconoclasts. It also gives Istvan a moment to work what little blood he has left into an enchantment that claim more from his captor. When the vitae leaves him Flood turns from resignation at what his hands would do to rage. They flex firmer around the stake it raises as if it would steal away his vitae from further violation.
Flood's rage is barely controlled. He focuses it into purposeful action. He wields all of it upon Istvan. While the Abyssal forms are held at the ready this time Flood cannot be accused of hiding behind them. Perhaps the chains? But they do little to impede Istvan's magic. The stake sinks deep and is left behind within its still sheath.
Flood turns on Lux. Now it is her turn to be the focus of his attention again, but the Beast is still lurking just below the suit, tie, cold skin, tempted to rise again at the one who had mere moments ago stood between Flood and its quarry.
“The pillar is his own,” he says, so slowly the words drip like tar from his lips, and they have a new meaning evident in his tone. She had moved away. She had withdrawn her protection. Istvan, whatever the fault, had been the debtor Flood had claimed from. What he is asking, by speaking her own words back to her, is simple: Will she leave the pillar to stand on its own?
The birds are singing. There is only so much time to settle the matter.
Lux
Yes. There was darkness, moving; no, it did not touch Lux, go on, let even the Abyss lie at her feet, be wary of whatever internal radiance she has -- let's say that's the story. Let's say how tension sung through Lux's shoulders, rising a fraction upward, how they kept tuning her like a string, both of these old dead immortal things, how there was tension as she braced herself at first for an impact she was certain would come and said her piece. Wasn't she passionate? Of course she was. Wasn't she moving? Of course she was. Threads of vitae drifting from Flood's fingertips weaving an addictive ribbon through the air, sorcery, bewitchery, and her eyes widened and yes.
Yes, she stood aside.
Yes, the stake found its home and István went to sleep again and likely forever unless and until obliteration. Yes, and yes, and yes Lux closed her eyes, and yes there are birds singing, early birds, hasty birds, no it is the nightengale, and also yes:
Lux puts her fingertips to her forehead and her temples and says something in an intense whisper, French of course, French because yes French. Lux is distressed. Her voice is a whisper because it is soaked-through, shot-through, saturated like a rich dessert drenched in some alochol dissolves on the tongue nothing tangible, that's her voice in the air, right now, because it's too full of -- something. Some Things.
Distress. The pillar is his own, Flood says, and she looks at him closely, even sharply, or those slow slow words draw the whole of her attention out of --
Do they? She drops one hand, presses her lips together, and regards István for a deliberate moment. Why? She can't help herself. Then she says, still oh so quiet, "I guess that he is. I guess that's what he wants."
"What do you think?"
Flood
Viol does not move forward. She agrees, if only in a roundabout way, or at least remains withdrawn from the fight that has passed again on to words.
"I wish I had been wrong," he begins his answer, "but wishing, guessing, thinking, these are for tamer nights and day is coming," said with a glance out the back of that freight container into the barely-lit darkness of the rail yard. His words still come slowly, but the Beast is tamed both by her own reaction and the coming sun. It wants sleep, knows it will soon have it, and it spurs Flood to leave this place.
"This is done. Maybe we are too," Flood says next. Begins toward those swung open thick metal doors. "You can decide that for the both of us," and holds out his hand again, if she will use it to be helped out of the iron cave Istvan is to be left in.
Lux
He wishes he'd been wrong. "You," heated, molten, and her voice is so pale right now, so clotted, but there a certain radiance gleams in it -- leashed again. Lux rubs her knuckles across her left eye, a side-long glance back at István who isn't even István right now.
But she does drift toward the front of the rail car; she does reach out to take Flood's hand for help down from that height. Her fingers are cold. It's not a reaction; it's what she is.
Lux can decide for the both of them, eh? Lux says, fingers tightening, "If they are for tamer nights, come to me tomorrow, just after rising. Too soon for arranging retribution, if you're worried about such things. Come to me so we can talk."
"I value conversation; and why would I abandon two friends?"
And that radiant gleam in the instinctual just-begun denial is bitter ashes in that. Lux does value conversation; believes in it, too.
But just look what happened. And now --
Distress.
Lux
[Memorial Artz? Does Lux grafitti that rail car quick-quick with her sharpie or does she grafitti something else? Let us see.]
Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 6, 6, 6, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 7 )
[ Blowing a BP on Dexterity. Flood's Initiative: 1d10 + 8 ]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )
Flood
[ Perception + Subterfuge. Specialty is Hidden Motives if that applies. ]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (6, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 7 )
István
[Jesus Christ, Flood]
István
[+6, we don't have the BP to be doing anything fancy rn]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (5) ( fail )
Lux
The gloom-loved and finely-wrought creature may as well be glass for how well Flood can guess at and see through her sometimes; witness now. Her expression is a fiction, or at least a surface gloss over trouble; it's a lie that the undead don't feel. They just often channel their feelings into malevolence and decades-long strings of petty oneupsmanship.
There's the prelude. Here's what she seeks to hide.
István: just deeply deeply hurt the Toreador, and naturally she doesn't want that on display (and naturally, oh naturally, she doesn't want that on display because what purpose will it serve here? One's emotions must be put to purpose), so. Her very stillness, the ardency of her expression, the just-kissed just-parted lips, even the particular set of her shoulders and sharpening of her jaw --
All a sublimation of struck woundedness with an after-taste of insult followed hard by anger followed even harder by a different flavor of anger, something less tied to what she perceives as a slap and more tied to now. Frustrated? It's not quite the right word, but it's close. She wants to hide that too because she doesn't see it serving any sort of dialogue.
Flood
[ Let's do round of declares just for the record. Initiative order is: Lux, Flood, Istvan. ]
István
[Holding. Will eat the +1 diff penalty if he decides to do something besides sit there.]
Flood
[ Arms of the Abyss: Blocking Lux.
Flood: Staking Istvan. ]
Lux
Ugh, no, stop fighting stupid boys, stop it I say.
+ there was that -2 (more) BPs to Stamina.
Lux: totally gets between them. Plus all that dialogue-y stuff. WAIT, bro.
Lux
[Dex + Celerity + Athletics. I am faster than a Lasombra with a stick. I hope. I kind of hope. I guess. I don't hope that hard. Sticks hurt.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )
Flood
[ Flood makes a WP roll to change actions. ]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 5 )
Flood
[ Arms of the Abyss: Move Lux at +1 difficulty.
Flood: Still staking. ]
Flood
[ Arm #1: Kinda like a Tackle? Dexterity + Brawl (I am a shadow and have no Brawl). ]
Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (1, 3, 7) ( fail )
Flood
[ Botch. Lux is too fast and the tentacles get all tangled up. No actions for them this turn, and since Flood wants to be stabbing Istvan, a Lux is in the way and he can't do that. She says her piece. ]
Flood
[ That is if everyone is fine with that botch ruling. ]
István
[I'm fine with botch ruling but would like to turn that hold into an action since István isn't staked.]
Flood
[ Go for it. ]
István
[Might as well try to make everyone in the room shit themselves before he dies.
-1BP to activate:
Theft of Vitae, target is Flood. Base diff 7, +1 bc action was held.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (1, 4, 4, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Flood
[ Flood's Initiative: 1d10 + 8 ]
Flood
[ Rolling would be good. ]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (3) ( fail )
Lux
[+10.]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (3) ( fail )
István
[+6]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (9) ( success x 1 )
Flood
[ Self- Control ]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
Flood
[ Order: Istvan, Lux, Flood. ]
Flood
[ Arms of the Abyss: Constrict Istvan.
Flood: (1a) push Lux out of the way and (1b) stake Istvan. ]
Flood
[ Oh, yeah, blowing a BP for Potence auto-successes. ]
Lux
[Did blood just float from Flood past me into -- ? Holy shit.
1. Step aside. Gracefully, i.e., without getting shoved I suppose. :( I'm sorry! I don't want to be Mercutio in a Tybalt / Romeo fight!! Or maybe just SPRING BACK all "HOLY SHIT BLOOD FLOATED"]
Lux
[ahem, ROMEO in a Tybalt/Mercutio fight even.]
István
[Shit am I Tybalt or Mercutio I would normally ask René to interpret this literary reference but someone gave him to a Pervert.
Attempting a Feat of Strength to bust out of the stupid chains, going by rules on pp. 260-1 re: using WP instead of STR. I think he needs 3 successes to get to the "break open a metal fire door" level. If the threshold would be higher we can cross that bridge when we get to it.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN9 (2, 2, 2, 3, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 1 )
Flood
[ Stake. We blow a WP on these. ]
Dice: 8 d10 TN9 (1, 1, 4, 4, 6, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Flood
[ Damage + 3 auto-successes ]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )
István
[How much overkill happened with this staking?]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (2, 8) ( success x 1 )
Flood
[ Anyone volunteer to do a wrap post? Or should we each do one? I don't know. ]
István
[I'll post one last time and if someone wants to append it go on ahead.]
Lux
[<3]
István
Of course when the end comes he dies chained. He was chained before Flood pulled onto the quiet side street where his haven lurked. If it wasn't the binds of his clan it was the blood of the woman who came to broker peace between them. She cannot make István calm down any more than she can make Flood stay his stake and maybe it means nothing that she even tried at all.
István looked at her with apology and pain in his eyes but his eyes are hard to read in the dark and he was never very good at reading rooms or the people in the rooms. He excels at anything to which he puts forth his mind and the effort come with mastering new tasks but he never even tried to learn how to read people.
That is the last clear image Lux has of him and then she has her back to him and then vitae comes siphoning out of Daniel Flood's fingertips. His own shadows tangled in on each other and an iron-spined woman stood between them and all István Jákob Virág can see of his captor are his fingertips. A thin stream trickles through the air and it's over a moment later.
The stake does not have to fight its way through bone and muscle to find its way home again. The hole Daniel Flood put there a month ago hasn't healed. It accepts the paralyzing instrument and then all of the fight and the fury goes out of the body in the chair. The mind returns to torpor and the head falls forward and the hair falls loose to cover his eyes.
Outside the morning birds chirp and the sky threatens light.
Flood
Viol moving so gracefully to stand between Flood and Istvan does not seem to surprise him. Had not the host of darklings moved in anticipation of this? They are not effective in this task, and it gives the Toreador her moment to compare them to the rabble rousers, the thugs, the iconoclasts. It also gives Istvan a moment to work what little blood he has left into an enchantment that claim more from his captor. When the vitae leaves him Flood turns from resignation at what his hands would do to rage. They flex firmer around the stake it raises as if it would steal away his vitae from further violation.
Flood's rage is barely controlled. He focuses it into purposeful action. He wields all of it upon Istvan. While the Abyssal forms are held at the ready this time Flood cannot be accused of hiding behind them. Perhaps the chains? But they do little to impede Istvan's magic. The stake sinks deep and is left behind within its still sheath.
Flood turns on Lux. Now it is her turn to be the focus of his attention again, but the Beast is still lurking just below the suit, tie, cold skin, tempted to rise again at the one who had mere moments ago stood between Flood and its quarry.
“The pillar is his own,” he says, so slowly the words drip like tar from his lips, and they have a new meaning evident in his tone. She had moved away. She had withdrawn her protection. Istvan, whatever the fault, had been the debtor Flood had claimed from. What he is asking, by speaking her own words back to her, is simple: Will she leave the pillar to stand on its own?
The birds are singing. There is only so much time to settle the matter.
Lux
Yes. There was darkness, moving; no, it did not touch Lux, go on, let even the Abyss lie at her feet, be wary of whatever internal radiance she has -- let's say that's the story. Let's say how tension sung through Lux's shoulders, rising a fraction upward, how they kept tuning her like a string, both of these old dead immortal things, how there was tension as she braced herself at first for an impact she was certain would come and said her piece. Wasn't she passionate? Of course she was. Wasn't she moving? Of course she was. Threads of vitae drifting from Flood's fingertips weaving an addictive ribbon through the air, sorcery, bewitchery, and her eyes widened and yes.
Yes, she stood aside.
Yes, the stake found its home and István went to sleep again and likely forever unless and until obliteration. Yes, and yes, and yes Lux closed her eyes, and yes there are birds singing, early birds, hasty birds, no it is the nightengale, and also yes:
Lux puts her fingertips to her forehead and her temples and says something in an intense whisper, French of course, French because yes French. Lux is distressed. Her voice is a whisper because it is soaked-through, shot-through, saturated like a rich dessert drenched in some alochol dissolves on the tongue nothing tangible, that's her voice in the air, right now, because it's too full of -- something. Some Things.
Distress. The pillar is his own, Flood says, and she looks at him closely, even sharply, or those slow slow words draw the whole of her attention out of --
Do they? She drops one hand, presses her lips together, and regards István for a deliberate moment. Why? She can't help herself. Then she says, still oh so quiet, "I guess that he is. I guess that's what he wants."
"What do you think?"
Flood
Viol does not move forward. She agrees, if only in a roundabout way, or at least remains withdrawn from the fight that has passed again on to words.
"I wish I had been wrong," he begins his answer, "but wishing, guessing, thinking, these are for tamer nights and day is coming," said with a glance out the back of that freight container into the barely-lit darkness of the rail yard. His words still come slowly, but the Beast is tamed both by her own reaction and the coming sun. It wants sleep, knows it will soon have it, and it spurs Flood to leave this place.
"This is done. Maybe we are too," Flood says next. Begins toward those swung open thick metal doors. "You can decide that for the both of us," and holds out his hand again, if she will use it to be helped out of the iron cave Istvan is to be left in.
Lux
He wishes he'd been wrong. "You," heated, molten, and her voice is so pale right now, so clotted, but there a certain radiance gleams in it -- leashed again. Lux rubs her knuckles across her left eye, a side-long glance back at István who isn't even István right now.
But she does drift toward the front of the rail car; she does reach out to take Flood's hand for help down from that height. Her fingers are cold. It's not a reaction; it's what she is.
Lux can decide for the both of them, eh? Lux says, fingers tightening, "If they are for tamer nights, come to me tomorrow, just after rising. Too soon for arranging retribution, if you're worried about such things. Come to me so we can talk."
"I value conversation; and why would I abandon two friends?"
And that radiant gleam in the instinctual just-begun denial is bitter ashes in that. Lux does value conversation; believes in it, too.
But just look what happened. And now --
Distress.
Lux
[Memorial Artz? Does Lux grafitti that rail car quick-quick with her sharpie or does she grafitti something else? Let us see.]
Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 6, 6, 6, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 7 )
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