Herbalists' Cache lamb to the slaughter

@Vivian :)

 

The leviathan roams southeast, carrying with him the bittersweet burden of being required to return when he was done. An outlier at heart, Vaati had been the most content he had ever truly been when he simply travelled, moving on from place to place without ever having to face reprecautions. Of course, he had returned for a reason -- being without focus had become stale and he knew that. But yet, the man had been free to kill as he liked. He could not do so now without running the risk of war, for if he was to wreak havoc on the scale he had done before, there would be a price to pay. Irked him, drove him mad in silence as he lived without the adrenaline rush of inflicting pain and prolonging the suffering of others at his own claw, at his own discretion. Neither could he deny that there was a whispering voice within, beckoning him closer to tell him things his subconscious wanted to hear. It relayed to him that picking up old ways would be of no consequence to anyone, if he played his cards right. Vaati almost begins to listen. 

Trudging on into no-mans land, he does not expect to encounter anyone. His coat blends well enough into the landscape if one does not look too closely, otherwise, the clash of his scars indicate that something dangerous looms on the horizon.

This was the farthest she had strayed since her advent upon the boisterous borders of Swiftcurrent – luckily (or perhaps dismally) for her, not a soul would curiously wonder nor fret of her disappearance.  She held no attachment to those simpering swine-blooded counterparts of those rocky shoals; nor did they feel particularly inclined to harbor a fiber of amiability for her.  Upon the beatific apices of nightfall she meandered without care into the labyrinthine forestry of the fruitful coppice.  The eventide provided a sweetly chillier atmosphere which placated the heat beneath her untouched flesh – a fever which threatened at times to plunge her already brittle psyche into a miasmic dream of ghouls and frightfully agonizing memories.  The milky light beginning to bathe the landscape could not fathom shining its effervescence here, the density of the entwining branches a fortitudinous barricade above that denied any source of precious vision.  Everything transformed into an amalgamation of shapes – spindly specters writhing in the shadows, alighting her suspicion and demanding her caution.  Had she not heard his heavy footfalls – an ogre sleuthing through the trees – she would not have seen him.  Though when she did, she is not startled, but instead offers a disgusted, haughty sneer towards him as she endeavors to sidle around his unsightly, disheveled person.  It was due to her accustomed, cushy living that she knew no fear – but she would. 

Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?

phone post, it may be slightly sloppy <3 heeee

hands down my favourite post ive ever written

Before he is able to stop himself, halt in his steps and retreat in the opposite direction does the woman marked for damnation catch his eye. The scent and witness of another’s flesh floods his senses, and before he is able to stop himself, he feels his mind begin to slowly sink like quicksand. And he accepts it's warm embrace, falling into a deep slumber that gave rise to a much more barbaric subconscious. Awakened rose a creature capable of more damage than Vaati alone could muster, something born of utter sin in the complete absence of light. It is him to a degree, but comprised also of an unknown entity that is as inherently evil as it is primal. Perhaps it is simply him, giving himself an excuse to conduct behaviour he could not justify in the daytime, but it is malicious in intent nonetheless.

She looks to him with such disgust, it amuses him. So quickly she had judged, gazed upon him with overwhelming scorn that he cannot help but to release a hiss of levity -- her assessment of him does not even scratch the surface.

Pale eyes gleam radiant under the glare of the moon, pointed downward upon her with an unknown gaze of both tranquillity and venom. “Come closer.” He commands of her; remaining in his place though his thunderous voice radiates outwards to reach the internal catacombs of her thought, a hypnotizing croon summoning her soul into the void of eternal darkness. Truly, that’s what it was -- her future was solidified and locked away in the chains of fate from the moment she had made the error of calling his attention. With a devilish grin does his tongue run over the points of his canines that had claimed the lives of many before, beginning to gather the metallic recollection of blood on his palette.

I looked, and behold, an ashen horse; and he who sat on it had the name Death –
 
The serpent speaks from the dark; jowls whetted and gluttonous as it sharpens its teeth upon the perversion of its sadistic ruminations, fangs caressing the cusp of its lip for it pines of the suppleness of flesh.  His words are like a razor blade wicking against the lobe of her ear, it bites as much as it offers a honeyed, inebriating tenor of pleasure – a lotharios sweet, comforting kiss which lulls the senses just before the knife slices against the tenuous throat.  There was something palpably off about him; the way his marbled, mountainous form harbored glints of moonlight upon the cavernous, virile muscle strung across his bodice, to the viperish twinkle that pooled upon his viridian lenses like poison.  For once in her life – the entirety of her mostly comfortable, tended existence, which instilled such a perilous value of invincibility – her heart murmured a disquieted, unnerved song.  She has paused, somehow enraptured into stillness by the very venomous tongue which sought to summon her – she is still because she is experiencing a very raw, new emotion.  She is still because she is fearful.

“You do not rule me,” she hisses – though she is scared, it is not yet enough to stifle the fires of her pride – her vanity – that emboldens her.  The inferno of rage which greedily feasts upon her displeasure at being ordered by this flea-ravaged vagrant of a man.  Her gaze burns under her brows – sharp, deadly – the skin of her muzzle knitting into deep crevasses as her eyebrows pull downward with a caustic display of fury.  Despite such emblazoned, unflinching vibrato, however, the cruel irony was that she could not muster a thread of strength to will her limbs into movement.  She is nearly alike him, stone – though her form is not steeled in such the confident, predacious manner as his.  On the outside, she may have appeared to have been an unphased, stoic monument of rebuttal: but beneath, her soul trembled.  The silence of the beatific forest seemed deafening; even the unmoving, lush verdure, untouched by acrid winds, shuddered in her eardrums.  Her pulse raced, blood hastening through her veins with such urgency it began to form a cacophonous ensemble of hoofbeats.  Her breath, already labored, spilled into the chilled air like smoke.  There was no escape.  No prince would arrive in time to save this despairing damsel.

–  and Hades was following with him.