The Ritual

Subject: Re: The Ritual Sun Sep 18, 2011 4:44 am

Xera pouted, her arms outstretched before her, her fingertips letting out a violent green light at the wizard. It was as if the strands were brushing at his hair, adjusting his clothes, making him look as perfect as she could.

"But Master, he is my puppet... look, I can make him dance for you!" She smiled, and began to hum as the strands ripped into his arms and shoulders like a marionette. They tugged upwards and he began to move, dancing awkwardly to the sounds of her music. Her head pulsed and her body tingled with sensation of the cacophony of sound that now began to emanate through the training ground. "See him dance! One-two-three! See him dance across the room on both his feet! One-two-three!"

She smiled and laughed as her powers took hold of the music. She no longer hummed, but instead chanted; the thrall waltz-dancing alone in the sand.

"Don't you like it, Master? Isn't he a good toy?"

Admin Posts : 72 Join date : 2011-08-23

"Raagh!" the Sorceror-Lord spit, savagely cutting the air with a hand, and the pitiable psyker fell to the ground, dead, a soft, glowing sphere floating almost serenely from his mouth. It flew towards Aten-ra, and he held it before her, in his hand.

"Playing games like that will get you KILLED, Xera!" He shouted, and crushed his fist around the small soul-orb - destroying it, snuffing out the spirit...forever. He stared at her with narrowed eyes, before beckoning for another Thrall-Wizard to come into the arena. It did so gladly, it's naked, tattooed form crawling on hands and knees, thanking Aten-ra for choosing it.

He ignored it. He stared at Xera for a moment longer.
"Again. Your puppets are amusing, Xera, but making them dance? No. You must learn to...sever the thread that connects their soul to their body as though with a dagger. Swiftly, surely, with finesse. Use their soul to empower you, sustain you, and keep you fighting.
"Besides, I could have sworn I taught you to not play with your food."

Though his scowl remained, he might have winked.

Subject: Re: The Ritual Sun Sep 18, 2011 5:05 am

She rolled her eyes and looked to the Wizard on the ground. Her hands shot out again, the green threads weaving their way around his form and lifting him slowly from the ground.

The strands squeezed around his flesh, dimpling his flesh like bands around a sausage. They kept pulling, and pulling, tighter and tighter. Blood began to trickle down from his arms and legs as the threads cut into him like wire through cheese.

And suddenly, he snapped apart. Discs of Thrall flew across the room like frisbees of steak, bloody and marbled. Organs splattered down on the floor below him and the sands were colored a very vibrant red.

A tiny blue orb hung there in the air, smoky and perfect. She beckoned it forth with a tickling finger of green light. It was reeled in close to her. She sniffed it delicately, her lips quivering as the smoke tingled around her face. Her tongue lapped out and tasted it; reveled in all that soul contained... and in a quick gulp it was in her mouth, swallowed down, and tingling within her.

Admin Posts : 72 Join date : 2011-08-23

The bits of meat that flew off in all directions never hit Aten-ra. It wasn't that a field stopped them, or he blocked them with a showy display of magic - he simply moved in just such a way that the pieces of meat and the spray of blood was never where he was.

"Better, Xera, better. Do you not feel invigorated? Renewed? She-Who-Thirsts has given you a bit of the soul's power in return for such an offering - the Gods always hunger, my child, and the soul of a Psyker is always the most succulent morsel on the dish."

The entire time he had been talking, he had been walking in slow circles around her - gliding would almost be a better word for it - but he had suddenly stopped, head cocked to one side, before an eyebrow arched and he immediately turned, his armor swirling into existence around him like blue and gold mist.

"Come, Xera. We've a guest." Though his tone was normal, there was an air of...something. His staff appeared in his hand like liquid metal before shimmering fully into existence, and the eye was lidded and wary, pointing straight ahead.

Danger, my pretty child. Do be careful, the words that were not words whispered in her head - the same voice she had heard all those years ago in her cell.

Subject: Re: The Ritual Tue Sep 20, 2011 8:06 am

She pouted, standing up straight as she possibly could, wiping bloody sand off her silken blue dress. She pulled her hair up into their familiar curls with similarly-hued ribbon. "A guest? At.. uh.. this time of.." She looked out a viewport to the emptiness of space. "Well, I don't know what time it is."

She chuckled and skipped after him, green butterflies flickering at her footsteps as her ballet slippers patted against the floor.

She had some trouble keeping up with him. She always did. Being as short as she was compared to the Adeptus Astartes made it seem as if she had to take seven steps for his every stride, but she didn't dare ask him to slow down for her sake. Maybe one day, though, she could ride on the back of his armor... certainly was enough space for it.

"Who's come to visit, Master?"

Admin Posts : 72 Join date : 2011-08-23

"...an old friend."

His reply is short and succinct, and his armored footfalls and the whir of servo-motors are soon the only sound in the wide bulkheads of the Astartes ship that nonetheless felt cramped with the massive Terminator armor filling the halls.

Finally, after a short time, they come into a wide hangar bay - apparently, Aten-ra was not the only one to receive the message, or had sent out telepathic commands shortly after receiving it, for the bay was FILLED with more Thousand Sons than Xera had ever seen in one place before. They stood shoulder to shoulder, their ornate boltguns clasped to their chests, and in front of them was a single, thin line of their Sorcerous leaders, all waiting for the arrival of their master.

They walked down the narrow thoroughfare the Astartes had left for them, and took their place in the center of the line. Xera could recognize a few of the more prominent Sorcerors by their armor, and the feel of their minds - to a Psyker, the air was filled with a heady sense of power.

"Master...," Aten-ra's second-in-command bowed his head deeply, one hand on the pommel of the wicked force-axe that hung from his belt. His armor crawled with a thousand leering faces, and his green eyes of his helmet went to Xera for a moment before returning to Aten-ra. "They should arrive any moment now. The welcoming party is...prepared."

"Thank you, Sanphalon. At least our...guests...will be properly welcomed aboard our fine vessel." Aten-ra's voice was sneering and disdainful, and it was clear the Astartes, though ostensibly gathered to welcome their assumed "honored" guests, were also there as a show of a force...and a thinly-veiled threat.

Subject: Re: The Ritual Tue Sep 20, 2011 9:29 am

Xera felt a bit cramped with all the towering armored figures about her. She kept adjusting her dress as if she was supposed to be seen as a stately person, too. She looked across the hangar with her eyes still glistening with the wonder she first had when she arrived upon the ship.

"An old friend, huh?" She bounced on one foot for a while before switching to the next, her pigtails springing with each motion she made. "Have I met them before?"

She blinked a few times in thought, recalling what the other sorcerer had mentioned. "Welcoming party?... Are we going to be celebrating something afterwards? Ooh I sure am excited!"

She giggled, the green butterflies sparking up around her face. "Maybe I'll make a new friend!"