“Then let us begin,” he said, and proceeded through the doorway. He moved quickly through the dark corridor towards a red flickering light at the end of the long hallway. As he walked, empty sconces along the walls burst into a red dancing life and lit the way. A musky odor tickled the nose of the couple and grew heavier as the end of the hall drew closer.

Within a heartbeat after, much sooner than one would have thought possible, the end of the corridor was before them. It was a heavy iron gate held shut by an ornately designed lock. The gate was made of thick black metal that was twisted into grotesque patterns, wrapping itself lewdly around carvings of demons, imps, humans, and other lifeforms, all of them with expressions of pure terror or agony on their eyeless faces.

Kieran reached out and touched the lock and it fell away, allowing the gate to swing inward with a howling moan. He looked Shayla directly in the eyes and walked through.

The chamber inside was vast. Red flames pranced from hundreds of sconces, under which dozens of stone carvings of the heads of beasts protruded from the wall, spewing bright molten liquid from their mouths. This liquid fell into a trough cut into the floor and circling around the entire chamber. Above, flying in circles at the top of the chamber 50 meters above, were a dozen or more winged creatures, obviously female.

A small bridge led the couple across the hot bubbling trough and to the beginning of a long gold and red rug that led from their position to raised dais in the center of the immense room. There waited a pair of large stone thrones, each beset with cushions and fabrics. Standing before it was a large winged creature, vaguely humanoid, with incredibly long claws and fangs that protruded so far they had burst through its black lips and dripped thick green ooze down its chin.

Kieran smiled again and placed Shayla gently onto the rug. He stood on her right and took her hand in his.

From across the room the voice of the creature boomed and echoed.

“Creature of flesh, spirit of Darkness, you come before us to take command of the legions, to assume responsibility for the duties and purpose of this Realm, and to unify the Houses which divided shall bring an end to all. You do this, not lightly, and of your own resolve?”

Kieran straightened, the smile vanishing.

“I do,” he said flatly.

“She-creature of flesh,” the voice from the center of the room again resounded. “You come to us with the one who would rule us, giving yourself to the duties and command of the Realm and to him. You unify the flesh and the spirit, commanding yet being bound, bringing life where only death has ruled, and giving life to rule them. Your power shall be great, as will your cost. Do you do this, not lightly, and of your own resolve?”

...and for whatever was about to happen to her, for she was certain with the words that were being spoken that this would be the case. For perhaps the first time a hint of fear rose up in the depths of her greeny-blue eyes...

...but she was determined and fully committed to see this through.

A few quiet moments passed, but not necessarily moments of mere hesitation...

...but of something else entirely. Shayla closed her eyes, once more gathering her wits and strength about herself, and then opened them, meeting the demonic eyes of the humanoid creature.

"I do," she said simply, and waited.

--------------------

He then stepped forward and led Shayla down that long carpet. It was embroidered with grotesque imagery, stained here and there with dark splotches and trails of unpleasant smears from long ago. The dais, the thrones, and the demonic figure grew nearer with every step. The fires in the sconces grew brighter, and the liquid flowing from the walls grew darker and hotter. Wings beat overhead in a synchronized cacophony that now resounded from all directions. Clicks and grunts now joined them, muttered from unseen hosts of imps and other things, until the entire room was ablaze with the mad chorus of all the denizens of the Darker Realms.

The demon held up a hand and all became silent.

Kieran and Shayla had reached the center of the great room and stood within an arm’s reach of the horrific thing. It looked first to Kieran, then fixed its gaze upon Shayla. Dark, piercing eyes jabbed through her own greeny blues, and it exhaled a long icy breath.

“Then it is done,” it rasped.

Kieran turned to Shayla and grabbed her gently by the shoulders. He bent in and brought his face close to hers.

“I now make you my queen,” he whispered. “I grant you the authority and powers of your station, and will now bind you to the obligations and sacrifice it demands.”

...but then an odd admixture of aclarity and determination took over her senses. Deeply within, her soul was screaming, trying its best to get her attention and waving red flags of warning. But.

But.

At that moment she, Shayla the Stronger, Shayla the Determined took the upper hand, reached down into the depths of her quivering soul and, instead of reaching out and slapping the fearful one into submission did something else entirely and outstretched a calming hand.

As the taste of death and darkness pervaded every sense she owned, Shayla at length resisted no longer...

...but instead returned the kiss. Then, after a few brief moments she pulled away gently, her greeny blue eyes deep and unfathomable.

[ 12-23-2010 11:26 PM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Shayla Stargazer Petrolu ]

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“There is but one thing remaining,” he breathed. “One final step to become one with your new realm.”

He caressed her cheek again, then pressed closer. His left hand moved behind her back, starting low and moving up her spine. His grin turned into a full smile. The hand on her back moved gently, lovingly, up to the back of her neck. There he caressed her, his hands moving slowly to her cheeks, then down to her shoulders.

His eyes glistened as he watched her, then he sighed. In an instant his eyes flashed, the smile on his face turned maniacal, and his hands shot to her throat. The air burst into a fury of screams, growls, and calls from the unseen host of other world denizens, deafening both Shayla and the Dark One. His smile grew even wider as he clamped down upon her throat, cutting off the air from her lungs. He then lifted her easily from her feet in this manner and held her high into the air, her legs flailing.

He gripped tighter with his right hand and let go with the left, holding her high still. Her hands were clenched upon his, trying to loosen his grip. He then grabbed the top of her collar and ripped down, hard, ripping the material from her. The calls of the spirits grew louder still at this, roaring into a triumphant wall of sound. He held her tightly still as her struggles grew frantic. Her eyes were fixed on his face, terrified and desperate. Then he turned to face the thrones and held her over the smaller.

He watched her struggle further until her hitting and clawing slowed. Her hands loosened from his and fell to her side. As a last gasp escaped her the sounds of the spirits was madder still. He placed her gently into the throne and waited.

The spirits went silent.

After a long, quiet moment a slight twitch stirred on Shayla’s finger. Kieran watched intently, a smile reforming. The twitch became movement, and few seconds later Shayla moaned.

Kieran threw his hands into the air in triumph. The room exploded in cheers and he turned to face each wall, hands held high. At last he turned back to Shayla, her exposed skin shining in the red firelight.

For the moment Shayla chose not to analyze this, nor did she truly care to. At length she finally stood from the throne upon which she had been placed in an eeriely gentle manner. Her eyes, as dark as the skies before a storm, grew impossibly darker. Then she began to move away from the throne, uncaring that the scant remainders of the torn pilot suit she wore fell away further to expose even more skin as she moved to the awaiting Kieran and came to a stop just in front of him.

Her greeny-blues locked on his, almost daring them to stray any further. While they were ever so dark in hue, they remained clear, alert, and intense. Deep within, her soul screamed as she uttered her next words.

”Now it is time,” she whispered, one of her hands reaching out to cup his face and pull him down to her so that her lips met his own, moving in even closer to him as she continued, something she was just beginning to rediscover within eagerly awaiting his response.

[ 12-28-2010 04:32 PM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Shayla Stargazer Petrolu ]

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Kieran growled low and powerfully and pushed away from his queen, and in a lightning swift motion ripped away the remainder of Shayla’s garb. His own followed in a heartbeat, and with the speed and ferocity of a tuk’ata he pounced upon his prey and brought her to the floor. There he took his queen, and soon they were both joining with the chorus of gyrating demons with screams of both pleasure and pain. His claws raked her back, tracing deep valleys of dark red. His teeth sought her neck and he relished in the taste of her blood.

“Flesh heals quickly for the queen," he panted. "Pain is fleeting, enjoy it like sweet memories of the hearts desire.” He then traced his hand across her chest and moved downward, digging his claw into her soft belly. Shayla returned a scream and sunk her own fingernails deeply into his arms. Kieran howled and kissed her savagely.

Deafening roars resounded throughout the great hallway, echoing from the imps and other creatures as they began to fall from the walls and rafters, now spent from their own couplings and exhausted beyond the capacity for saving themselves, and crashed into the floor. Their death screams accompanied the scene of grisly passion playing out before the thrones and as the love-battle between the king and his hapless queen came near to its ghastly conclusion, Kieran stopped and shouted a deep, incomprehensible word. The air before him began to freeze, becoming a circle of strange blue frost, then shattered, leaving behind a dark empty window into nothing. His portal to the Elseness was open.

...for Healer she yet remained...

...Shayla opened herself to the Force, and to something Far Greater than that. She would not fail. She could not.

Sensing out into the Elseness, she sought for qute some time, sensing outward...

...and finding not. Blood still oozing from her wounds...

...and more specifically, from her stomach...

...Shayla's greeny-blue eyes arrowed into his wildly eager and awaiting pair.

"Our child is gone," she croaked, her eyes darkening as she called forth more healing energies to sustain herself. In tandem she grasped his arms with her hands and allowed her fingernails to dig in and draw fresh blood even as her eyes darkened yet another shade. "Something or someone has taken him. Stretch out and sense, and you will know this to be true."

Falling silent, Shayla remained in her vunerable position beneath Kieran, allowing darkness to cloud her eyes even further...

...darkness which grew not from without, or by means of trickery, but utterly and purely from deep within the depths of Shayla's very soul.

[ 12-28-2010 10:25 PM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Shayla Stargazer Petrolu ]

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“Gone?!” his voice raised now, the annoyance gone and replaced by passionate anger. He gazed through the portal to the Elseness that had been created through the powers of the Tower and the energies between him and Shayla. He focused that anger back into finishing what he had begun with Shayla, his eyes flashing and teeth bore.

“GONE!” he shouted, his rage vivid upon his face. Each thrust was filled with vengeance and hatred, hurt and violence. The portal closed as his attention was now fully tuned to the task at hand, and as a howl of rage echoed through the enormous hall he finished with a final powerful surge, and without thinking he grabbed Shayla’s head and slammed it hard into the stone floor. Her skull cracked with a sickening thud.

He rolled to his side and watched his queen, now staring lifelessly to the faraway ceiling. His rage was subsiding, and his thoughts now turned to the next steps. But for now he waited and watched. He reached a hand out to move a stray hair from her face, just as her eyes again moved and she gasped in a quick breath. Already the skull was knitting itself together.

“Do not fret,” he said reassuringly. “We shall address the child soon enough. For now, relish in the deaths I have given you and know that many more will come. For now you must understand what it means to be the queen. There is no use here for skills and powers, you are part of the realm now.”

After a minute, when the queen’s body had fully recovered, Kieran lay on his back.

“What could have happened to the child?” he asked.

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[ 12-29-2010 11:37 PM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Graysith ]

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As Shayla passed from death and back into life, the throbbing pain in her head ebbing, she at last heard the words Keiran was speaking to her, as though he were speaking them to one he considered an equal. Deep within, Something chortled and cackled at the very thought...

...and in an instant she regained enough strength to sit up and regard him a bit darkly. "I told you. Something or someone removed him."

She paused then. "How to figure that out well..."

She trailed, the look in her eye darkening. "Perhaps there aree ways in other places...

...but not here."

Leaving the statement vague, she fell into silence.

--------------------

Kieran turned once more to face his queen.

“Other places?” he asked. “You mean outside this realm? If you know of a way to find him then speak.”

He paused then, frowning, and laid a hand on Shayla’s now healed belly.

“I shall not speak harshly, my queen. This is new to you and you will need time to adapt. But take the time now to feel your new surroundings and the power it gives you. Relish in the vastness of this land and all it offers to you – you are Queen here. Love it and it shall return to you your desires.”

He stared hard at her, drinking in her presence, smelling her skin, her breath.

“And I shall be all that you wish me to be,” he said. “But I sense within you something… a connection, perhaps more than one. You must let these go, my love, there is nothing that ties you to the worlds of the living.”

She paused then, leaning in to lower herself to the ground til her face was mere millimeters from his. "That does not mean, however, that I am incapable of returning the gifts you bestow upon me."

Even as she stated this, her hand reached out slyly to grasp one of the smaller fallen denizens of the Realms. Suddenly she sat up, coolly eyeing the dead thing and ascertaining that it would serve her purpose well...

...and in an action that was effortless she snapped a long, razor-sharp claw from an appendage, paying no heed to the black ichor which oozed from the posthumous wound as she tossed the lifeless creature aside. Even as she continued, Kieran watched her intently. She moved her body closer to him yet, and then simply perched herself atop him, stretching out with her talents simultaneously to bend atoms and create for herself a sleeveless, thin silken gown of a royal purple hue. She gazed down at him from her position, her eyes unfathomable for the darkness which clouded them.

”My abilities and talents can serve you in ways you do not apparently realize,” she then whispered softly. Then, before he could respond, she stretched out with her healing abilities and into his mind, seeking there to find the trigger in his nervous system that would render him paralyzed. Easily she found it, and then she moved in with the claw she had taken, carving an “S” into his chest slowly, taking her time so that he could enjoy the pain. Even as she did blood...

...or rather, whatever flowed through his veins that parroted blood...

...oozed from the wound. Upon completion of the letter, she then turned on it and on Kieran ferociously, using the claw to then stab into his chest viciously, repeatedly, until the letter was totally unrecognizable. When she was finished, Shayla stretched into his mind once more and released him from his paralysis, smiling a darkly as he roared loudly and his back arched in delayed reponse to the pain he had already felt. Only then did she turn to the bloodied claw in her hand, considering it a moment...and then licking the non-blood off before she threw it aside and lowered herself to likewise lick his now-healing wound clean as well. Deep within her being, the portion of her that was still self roiled and screamed in utter agony for what she thought this action would cause...

...but in this she was oh-so-miserably mistaken, for as in the past when Shayla had taken Jharmeen's spirit into herself and the Darkness of the Realms had crept into her being, she needed it not. The darkness which flowed through her blood vessels was most certainly and most definitely that of her own.

Shayla watched coolly as Keiran's wound healed, and as nerve endings regenerated, she blew across it, electrifying the tender synapses. “Now,” she then stated softly, her eyes growing yet another shade darker as that part of her which even still remained howled in realization of what she was about to do. “Let me introduce you to another torture, one which I am certain you have never ever had the pleasure of enjoying before."

Then slapping her old self into complete submission and utterly to the wayside, Shayla sat up long enough to pull the purple gown from her body, flinging it aside. Quieting then, Shayla pressed her body down upon Kieran, reaching for him in the most gentle and caressing of manners, as a true lover would her partner, somehow keenly aware that in doing this she was torturing him in a manner perhaps he wasn't even aware of.

[ 12-30-2010 01:45 PM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Shayla Stargazer Petrolu ]

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He was indeed confused.

“I…” he began. “I do not know how to feel what you are trying to make me feel. I am only allowed to--”

A gasp overtook him as Shayla touched a pleasure point on his body. He reached up and stroked her hair.

Falling into silence then, Shayla stretched out once more, but only to leave a gentle, almost loving kiss upon his lips before she pulled away, regarding him coolly, reaching to reclaim the gown she had tossed aside only a few moments before.

[ 01-01-2011 04:59 PM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Shayla Stargazer Petrolu ]

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"How can you know anything of love?" she then asked coolly, an edge to her words, for even as she asked the question she knew the answer, recalling something she and Jharmeen had discussed seemingly ages ago. Before Kieran could answer, however, she changed the subject.

"And regarding finding the child, as I said, we could travel to K'eel Doba and try to access the Great Library...

...or there is the other option I have suggested, which you have yet to acknowledge."

She paused, giving Kieran a piercing look. "Do you know of the Eternal Flame's existence in these Realms?"

[ 01-08-2011 09:37 AM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Shayla Stargazer Petrolu ]

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Then Shayla’s voice again drew him away.

She paused, letting the words fall into silence for a few moments before continuing. "And as an enbodiment of the Darker Realms, I would have thought you would have some knowledge concerning the Eternal Flame, for it is fueled by dead Dark Lords of the past, of that race which yu term insignificant...

...and it can tell you of what you are seeking, such as the location of the lost child."

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“Do not question my understanding of this realm and what lies within it,” he growled. “This is not a land of the dead, it is a realm of the non-living. This realm is not some mythical existence for the souls of the damned. It is a realm of energies, of flesh and blood, and of unimaginable power. We are connected to your former home, yes, but we are not dependent upon it.”

He softened a little then, and leaned back on his arms.

...at least mostly.

"The Flame is here, in these Raalms," she whispered, her eyes darkening as she recalled her few encounters at the Flame with Graysith, of its dark powers and what they sparked within her. "In its presence our combined powers will be enhanced and strenghtened, and once it knows of what we seek his location will be revealed to us."

She paused, her eyes growing deep, dark. "All we need do is find the Flame's location in these Realms, go there...

...and join our powers."

A small portion of Shayla still tried to cry out in protest. But the greater portion of her which was becoming Self yowled in anticipation as thoughts of such a union combined with the strength of the Flame thrilled through her very being.

[ 01-17-2011 10:39 AM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Shayla Stargazer Petrolu ]

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“I will find this flame,” he said calmly. His voice was gentler now, and he reached out without opening his eyes and grasped Shayla’s hand.

“I am truly the embodiment of this Realm,” he said. “But even as you are the embodiment of yourself, you are not keenly aware of everything that goes on within you. As a healer I could tell you that a bloodworm has attached itself to your skin. You are now aware of it, but without searching you will not find it. As I am now aware of this flame, I shall search for it.”

He let go of Shayla’s hand and focused. He stretched out with his mind, feeling, searching, and at last smiled again and opened his eyes.

“I have found it,” he smiled. But the smile was not wholly because of this knowledge, but rather for the understanding of what the flame was and what it could do.