#ysastory

[conscience-sanguine]

The Abyss

Nymaré’s heart was unlike any he’d ever known, yet its beat was familiar, like the notes to a song he couldn’t name.  Was that how he described it?

Her heart was familiar.

Time, for Ysabell, froze in that moment... doors opening in every direction - into the future, the past, in this timeline and countless others - all lines converging in the spot where it all began for her: the cave.  Visions of it in one iteration or another, every timeline threatened to be inextricably tied to it.  Not visions, realities.  Unable to tell reality from memory, she found herself uncharacteristically and irrevocably swallowed up by fear -- someone else’s fear.

Her wan form crumpled slowly toward the floor, dim eyes wide but blind to the present, the room before her melting away to some place dark, damp, and saturated with pain and blood, her own blood.

Daggers.

The heat of his face buried against her skin, unable to control himself, unable to help himself, drinking in the scent of fresh wounds with shameless, intoxicated abandon.  Never free of him.

The blood had drained from her limbs, leaving her cold and paralyzed, her chest crushed mercilessly from the inside until sensation erupted red hot against her cheek, breaking the fallen elf from the clutches of the past.

Elerwyn crouched before Ysabell, the stubby remnants of her ripped off wings flittering in fear of what retaliation would follow for striking her mistress in an attempt to rouse her.

The retaliation was swift and brutal.

Ysabell’s misplaced anger emerged in a defiant shriek and a sudden eruption of flame that launched the cowering succubus across the room, her body crashing against the wall with an unforgiving crack, leaving the floor to catch her motionless form.

She wanted to scream into the emptiness before her and never stop screaming.  For the past, the present, the future.  For this timeline and all others.  Until this moment or all others ceased to be.  And she wondered, briefly, if there would ever be anything large enough - any amount of time or space great enough - to hold this rage.

Somewhere across Azeroth, Nymaré felt something inside of herself clench up with a sudden swelling of emotion she didn’t understand.  Against its onslaught, her throat tightened, her eyes burning as they held back an urgent need to cry, to purge herself of this feeling, making it difficult to concentrate on the moment.  Had he felt that shift within her?  She didn’t understand his powers well enough to know.  Had his words had this effect on her?  In stunned silence, she played those words over in her head, trying to make sense of them as she coolly maintained her composure.

“What...?”

[conscience-sanguine]

Ysabell

His fingers stroked down the sides of her throat, the flames at their tips licking against it, leaving raised red marks on the flesh behind them; their form of a loving caress, one she leaned into.  Their eyes were locked on each other's in the mirror before where she sat, hair wrapped in a towel.

He leaned in next to her ear, his grin one of eagerness, of anticipation.  It was sharp and almost cruel.  The words, the breath they were spoken on dancing across her skin, sent a warm shiver through her body.

"Are you ready?"

In truth, no... no, she absolutely was not.  She did not look, nor had she ever looked, as one might expect her to look.  Even his hair reflected the fire he so cherished, a vibrant copper.  Manipulator, murderer, commander of demons, consort to flames and darkness and whatever else others felt the need to call her, for her it was the sun that was reflected on her skin and in her hair; iconic of her people.  No hint of what lay just beneath the surface.  But that was about to drastically change.

Despite not answering, she could feel him pull gently at the towel, as if unveiling a piece of art.  Inky black waves bounced free and spilled down her shoulders and back.

Vythica.  That is who she saw in her reflection, if not for the sun-kissed complexion.

Something in her chest tightened, a sensation she'd all but forgotten, not having felt an ache like that in so long for her lost sister.  For one passing moment of pure and utter nonsense, she felt compelled to reach out to her, speak to her.  And then it all passed.  Perhaps more quickly than it should have.

"Well, that's something," her companion mused with a characteristic smirk.

"You're next," she reminded, her fingers combing through the dark, glossy locks.  It all served a purpose.  Infiltrating the black dragonflight wouldn't be easy, but it did just get a little easier.  He had even picked out a name, one paying tribute to Neltharion himself.  She, however, was lacking one sufficiently cliché with all their obsession with darkness, dubiousness, and different shades of black - ebon, onyx, sable.

Sable.  Like her hair.

"Ysabell," she muttered, absorbed in observing the way the candlelight danced off of and disappeared into the blackness she had coiled around her fingers.  Her companion chuckled darkly in appreciation of the wordplay.

"Ee-sah-bel?" He repeated the name as she had spoken it, as if questioning the pronunciation.  "Not Isabel?"

She couldn't help but grimace in response, finding that iteration surprisingly revolting.  To her, Isabel was soft.  It was the name of some simple, helpless creature locked in some tower somewhere, waiting to be rescued.  She was not these things.  It certainly wasn't the name of an agent of the black dragonflight, either.

"Do I look like an Isabel?" she countered coyly as she faced herself in the mirror once more.  This time, she didn't see Vythica looking back at her, but herself fully: manipulator, murderer, commander of demons, consort to flames and darkness that she was.  There was nothing soft there.  Nothing simple.  Nothing helpless.

"Not now, not ever... Ysabell."

"By the sun!" Ysabell hissed loudly, a sudden sharp, burning pain down her wrist startling her from long distant memories.  She could feel the near scalding heat of her own blood coating and warming her night-cooled skin.

Nymaré had disappeared within Ravenholdt Manor some time ago.  Their security was such that even she couldn't eavesdrop as she'd grown accustomed to.  And so she'd settled in a safe ways away, waiting for her to emerge again... assuming Veldis would allow her to leave at all.

Without thinking, in the dark Ysabell reached for her necklace and yanked it free of her neck, quick to snap the emerald "gem" from its setting and pop it into her mouth.  Almost instantly, the wound sealed up again.

And then something in her chest tightened.  He knows.

[conscience-sanguine]

Icarus

As Nymaré disappeared around the corner and out of the Court of the Sun, Ysabell released her sight from that of the eye of kilrogg she had summoned to casually observe her without the tipsy Farstrider’s blood-sucking companion for the evening picking up on her heartbeat and giving away the game.

A San’layn?  Really now?  A San’layn, but not a San’layn, but absolutely a San’layn.  How can you be so stupid?  And how does a creature like that walk freely within this city - or anywhere, for that matter - without the villagers rising up as one and slaying it?

Perhaps he wasn’t strictly a San’layn, Ysabell admitted dismally to herself, but the eyes, the teeth, the confession of drinking blood, all because he made a bargain with a troll Loa, may as well be the same thing.  Next to her, Tarot fidgeted nervously, the imp’s eyes darting around with a glint of either frustration or impatience for being stuck in one place for so long while his mistress spied on... he never knew exactly how to refer to the other woman.

“Sh-she smells like sssssunlight!” the imp blurted out unexpectedly in an agitated pitch, practically salivating.  He remembered that scent - so intoxicatingly lush and warm to his demonic senses, screaming of forbidden delicacies and juicy meats to be torn to pieces.  However, the sudden exclamation had pulled Ysabell from her thoughts and jumble of feelings on the subject that she couldn’t quite put neatly into a well defined box, her dim fel gaze boring down at him.  He had managed to disturb the few other denizens in the quiet downstairs alcove as well, none of them looking on him with friendly intentions, and drawing unwanted attention to his mistress.  Fearing for its safety, both from Ysabell and the others in the den that he’d disturbed, the imp phased between realities with a desperate flailing of limbs.

“As always, helpful information,” Ysabell deadpanned, a sudden wave of exhaustion washing over her.  She leaned into the wall for support with a heavy sigh, waiting for it to pass, and collected herself once more.  Her curiosity had led to an over-exertion, and now it was time to retire; but she could still feel Tarot’s frantic presence just on the other side of the veil, tapping at her senses like a fly caught in a spider’s web.  “Is something troubling you?” she asked quietly.  The imp always came unglued when Nymaré was involved, ensuring there would be no rest if she didn’t address the situation.  Though, given their current location, a caveat seemed needed.  “You may answer me calmly or you will remain silent on the subject.” She allowed him the moment he needed to decide if he could calmly address his issues or not.  Eventually, the imp shimmered back into this reality, his nervous energy dumped into grasping and pawing at the hem of her robe. “Th-the cards, missstresss,” Tarot began shakily, the volume and pitch of his voice painstakingly lowered and evened out. “Sh-she does not exist in th-them.  Or y-you don’t.  Void.  Death.  They b-burn... THEY BURN INTO NOTHING.  CHAOS!” The imp was instantly silenced, if by Ysabell’s will alone, his pawing at her robe having given way to clinging desperately to it as he buried his face within the dark folds of fabric with a whimper.  There, the creature inhaled deeply, only traces of summertime to be picked up from his mistress. “The sun burns in her as it burned in you,” he cried softly, wrapping himself further into the bottom of her robe, drawing some comfort from it and the fact that it muffled his words. The imp added dreamily, soothed now that he’d gotten it all out, “Only embers now... only embers... burned to ash.”