miscreant | Mental Link;

Mental Link;

DEVOUR beg for mercy and i will deny you	ASSIMILATE the scourge will wash over this world
LEAD we do what the living cannot	WANDER your kind has no place in this realm

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

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[His question is ignored, her eyes betraying the calculating thoughts of a high functioning predator. He was avoiding her -- why? They had an agreement, and she had reached the end of their chase. He hardly seemed the type to go back on his word, even if he was a creature of shadows and void.

Or perhaps she was simply blinded by hunger. It was so rare to find someone altruistic outside of stories and fantasy, after all.

Her impatience is clear, the bleed-over from the various pain and minds of the hive, the raw wound that is Peter, and even though she knows what will happen if she ceases to reign herself in, she is sorely tempted to show him the creature he dares to taunt. The beast raised for chaos, the monster made as a nightmare incarnate. She already knows his fears -- she could reach for them.

She snaps out her wrist, the bug in her head writhes in pain as she calls for her magic again, a tendril of shadow to grab hold of him and pull him back to her with whiplash force. And then she squeezes him, the very blood of his body beginning to boil to levels too high to be healthy.]

[ Undoubtedly, he is goading her. As she passes over his question in favor of physical violence, he knows that he's pushed her just far enough - to the point where she will not stop and he will not stop, until they are stopped. Already, his symbiote is reaching out - a flicker of siren-bright alarm as it engages, burning through him like a warning. A cease-and-desist command. This foolery was enough, it was pushing beyond sensible limits. His mind-but-not flexes, and something tense and ready begins to spread within him --

or perhaps, it was just Seviilia's magic, boiling his blood

She has him again, back in her grasp. Only this time, he's infatuated with the idea of a fight. He can taste blood in the back of his throat, and every inch of his body aches and burns, until it feels as though his very flesh will begin to slough from his bones ( he wonders, briefly, how Seviilia might become - if she were adorned in parts of him, the way so many others had wished to be ). And as he brushes against clarity, fighting through the utter pain found in every single nerve-ending misfiring and ricocheting signals around his form, he pulls.

And

reality

screams. A beast, insect-canine-mineral-unrealunnatural creeps forth. Curling around his spine, born from some unholy union between his power and nothingness. It snaps and thrashes, attempting to sever the magical-physical connection between the two of them. A chittering, erratically-moving thing. He wants to be FREE of her grasp, and in the same breath, he wants to cleave her in two. To pull the matter of the room into the palm of his hand and Cut her, and he needs to be free to maneuver. ]

[She is an unmoving wall, stubborn, proud and fearless even as the void threatens to consume her. Her spine is stiff, a tomb of ice and fury -- what causes her to falter is not the beast alone, but the combined power of it and the draw on her reserves from maintaining the rolling boil of his blood. She holds him until her very arm threatens to crumble away -- a warning vibrates and relinquishes her grip when there is nothing left of her.

A pillar of ice, higher functions reduced to calculations, no consideration for collateral damage, only her hunger -- the free meal in front of her, that dares to shy away from her cold and her brutality. The meal that still fights.

Seviilia recoils only a short distance to catch breath she doesn't draw, her fingers flex for swords she doesn't have on her, and her focus rests on the creature that shouldn't be, calculating ways to pick it apart, ways to make it bend to her whims, ways to summon the Darkling at her feet, begging for her to end his miserable existence.

She sees the passing thought, of being cloaked in him, a hulking lich of a woman that had no business being, in present company or in mere imagination. And suddenly, she years for his marrow between her teeth, not for its power, but because she hungers and he is there filling her with thoughts of ripping and tearing.

Seviilia lunges again, clawing like a geist, aiming for his eyes, his throat, his groin -- the softest, most vulnerable parts that will cripple and leave him at her mercy.]

[ This act between them allows him to chase physical pain, replacing the dull ache that he feels - now that one of the few things he has chosen in this world of assignment and unnatural bond is gone. His body is a singular nerve that Seviilia has run her magic through, setting him alight from within - his hands shake uncontrollably, his chest seizes as he forces his way through the agony. He marvels at her, even now, but does not allow his admiration to prevent him from defending himself - she is so infuriated by him, that he doesn't believe the act of supplication will be enough to calm her.

Nor does he feel very much like supplicating before her, at this time. He throws up walls - the howl of physical pains from his youth and the very, very current pain within him. He'll stuff that down her goddamn throat, if given the chance. And until then, as she lunges, he drags his un-creature before him with unspoken command. The sound it makes as she rips into it is unnatural. The shattering of glass and the buzz of a hive, as the Darkling steps back another pace and braces.

Power, he calls on, as quickly as he can. Pooling it dark and insidious in the palms of his hand, curling fingers around the matter of the world - an invisible blade to cut her with, to cut the Station beyond her with. He doesn't care, he just wants her at his feet ( as badly, perhaps, as she desires him upon his knees as well ).

There is -- a sharper ache now, behind his right eye. A bead of blood trickling from his nose as he strains to raise his arm, to lash out at her - and it is akin to moving through tar. His movement is sluggish as he strikes out at her, the power is... flickering. And all at once, there is nothing. No Cut, no power. The symbiote has had enough, and drops him directly into the quiet, black of unconsciousness. Bad, very bad. ]

[Within the cocoon of the pods, the Nest feels both like blanket and ocean. A thick layer of comfort and warmth to be wrapped in, to muffle all else out; a vast body of connection, unfathomably deep, the threat of sinking present with every heartbeat spent floating at the surface. In it Murphy's symbiote calms and the pain of Elnath's deterioration is soothed. He drifts, not quite asleep, not truly awake, and even the sense of Seviilia's hunger doesn't stir him. A mild discomfort to be tolerated until it passes.

But it grows, instead. Goaded, incited, fury and frustration gathered to it until it pulses black and raging at the edges of Murphy's mind. Ignoring it becomes not only impossible but also stupid, like ignoring a fire spreading through the trees nearby. Waiting for it to burn itself out is an option, but it isn't one he can take. Not this time. Not while the rest of their brood sleep in empty silence.

The blaze of it crests and Murphy reaches, his mind to Seviilia's coming still wrapped in the softness of the nesting pod, slow and thick like syrup. Articulate thought doesn't form, either out of reach or unnecessary. It comes pure and unfiltered: irritation, fear, request and warning, pressing and dragging at her, heavy, insistent and urgent.]

[There. She's done it, brought down her prey, and it was at her mercy, damn her blurring vision. She fights the symbiote's warnings through pure stubbornness alone, shrugs it off viciously like a horse tossing its rider--

But something else smothers her and keeps her from reaching for the Darkling to finish what she'd started, something that causes her to notice how she's cut her own lip with how hard she's clenched her teeth around it. The mindless state of existence bleeds away into the tar, replaced with the press of Murphy's irritation and fear.

And she comes out of it exhausted, dead limbs heavy like she was devoid of any strength at all, small as a newborn and weak as a bird. She's forced to catch her own weight as she comes back into herself, just short of blacking out herself with vision still swimming. And the hunger hurts deep in her stomach, bounces back across their connection until its eaten away by the Nesting Deck.

She wipes away blood with the back of her hand and clutches her side, slowly and sluggishly going through the memory of what had just occurred -- not quite a full descent, but close -- she had let the Darkling lure her, and he hadn't any interest in stopping her. Testing limits -- as he had before.

Irritation would come later. For the moment, her self presses back against the warning Murphy's offered -- a weak acknowledgement that almost doesn't seem to belong to her for how far away she feels, a mechanical pre-programmed response as she moves for the unconscious man across from her. She sees how he bleeds, remembered what she'd done to him.

There is a momentary struggle where she must stand and lift him to her shoulders. She should leave him there, a punishment for daring to break their pact, for risking Murphy -- but she is better than that now. Her part of the bargain will be upheld. She cleans the blood from his cheek and licks it away from her thumb before retracing her steps with a half-muddled memory, intent on returning him to a pod to heal the damage she'd done.]

( Fool. )

[ The vicious turmoil within him is silenced as well, the symbiote cutting his consciousness the way fate might cut the strings of a damned soul. At the very edges of whatever is left aware, he can feel Murphy's reach through Seviilia's proximity and his errant, weak thought is to swat them aside. Let them go, push them away. He's torn into Seviilia, though not as badly as she had gotten to him - and when he awakens, he will turn his face from regrets and attempt to mend this broken thing.

He's just

his brother is gone now

and the rush of unfathomable distress ( a feedback loop, from himself to Ilde and back -- ) had been unstoppable. Whatever barriers he had built over time are challenged by the connection to this hivemind, and weakened over time. Even he would bow under the weight of pain. And -- he's smaller than Seviilia, both in height and in mass and her jostling causes him to shiver and claw his way back towards some semblance of awareness. Gone, he breathes, more emotion than conscious thought. And he doesn't care if Murphy picks up on it, this deep well of grief -- similar to the state Seviilia had originally found him in, when he had bid his mother goodbye. ]

[It hurts to move. She knows now that she went too far, in allowing herself to be goaded. She remembers cornering the Darkling in that room, open -- it should have been easy, if he kept up his end up the bargain. But he hadn't. He wanted her fury, pulling it from her and weaved it to his own devices. It bothers some part of her -- something distant, a feeling she can't summon again past the ache of her limbs as she carries his weight back.

Eventually, she makes it to the Nesting Deck, pausing only briefly when she feels the tug from Murphy's pod again, before she allows herself to be lead to the nearest unoccupied set. Shaking off her own headache is impossible, and the hunger in her stomach dares to summon tears to her eyes that she stubbornly blinks back even as it burns her vision.

Once she lays him to rest, hooking him up with fingers locked up in resistance, she sits back against the wall to try and regain herself. Were she living, she'd be wrought with fever, no doubt unable to catch her breath and on the verge of vomiting. Nothing felt worse than the hunger at its peak, so nearly impossible to resist. It had been years since she had been brought so close -- she'd always fed long before it had been allowed to be so unbearable.

Like a starving animal, she crawls to another pod to hook herself up before she loses her self control again. Even once she manages to hook herself in, even as the calm forces its way into her skull and her blood, her hands continue to shake for a time.

And there she will sit, until Darkling rises and she is able to scold him properly.]

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