08-16-2018, 08:59 AM
There was pain, and then there was pain.
As a child, when her mother's illness blazed particularly bad -- when Dehzda saw a demon for a daughter and the voices urged her to bad things, -- Ori escaped to the derelict buildings around her shitty neighbourhood and hid. Time crept slow sandwiched in the cold concrete, and Russian winters were not kind, even to little girls. She lit matches and watched the flames burn down until they nipped her numb fingers. It became a game. How close she could hover her hand to the searing heat before the pain made her gasp and flinch away. Until eventually it was just a game of burning herself, over and over until she could go home.
Heat tickling Oriena's skin, like the rasp of sandpaper, was the first indication of something awry. Jaxen's laughter hollowed out in her ears, her attention already pulled away, eyes narrowed. Then darkness plunged, deeper than was possible naturally, and against the blackness fell ethereal, wraith-like figures. She had seen inhuman things before, in the low places of Zamoskvoreche, but nothing like this.
The mist settled like someone filled her veins with novocaine, sinking her down, forcing numb acceptance as she divorced from her body into the promise of peaceful oblivion. Her vision blurred abruptly. It felt like falling back into nothing, and being welcomed by the very essence of her gift. The power glowed to capacity, swelling her up until it seemed it would burst from her skin in burning euphoria, siphoning to the will of another.
But Oriena could feel the theft, and it sparked fury.
She was sluggish from the poison that stole her limbs and her bloody lips to speak another's words, but Ori had always been careless with her body. When it pulled at her power though, she reared from stupor to wrench back hard; because she would die before she allowed it; the only thing here she truly cared about. It would not be taken.
And that was when it began to burn.
Not pain, but pain. Like molten cracks spidered the surface of her bones, split, and consumed her until coherent thoughts were a luxury she could not afford. She had no mouth to scream or fists to clench, and only the dimmest awareness of what went on outside her prison.
She fought, but it would only kill her faster.
As a child, when her mother's illness blazed particularly bad -- when Dehzda saw a demon for a daughter and the voices urged her to bad things, -- Ori escaped to the derelict buildings around her shitty neighbourhood and hid. Time crept slow sandwiched in the cold concrete, and Russian winters were not kind, even to little girls. She lit matches and watched the flames burn down until they nipped her numb fingers. It became a game. How close she could hover her hand to the searing heat before the pain made her gasp and flinch away. Until eventually it was just a game of burning herself, over and over until she could go home.
Heat tickling Oriena's skin, like the rasp of sandpaper, was the first indication of something awry. Jaxen's laughter hollowed out in her ears, her attention already pulled away, eyes narrowed. Then darkness plunged, deeper than was possible naturally, and against the blackness fell ethereal, wraith-like figures. She had seen inhuman things before, in the low places of Zamoskvoreche, but nothing like this.
The mist settled like someone filled her veins with novocaine, sinking her down, forcing numb acceptance as she divorced from her body into the promise of peaceful oblivion. Her vision blurred abruptly. It felt like falling back into nothing, and being welcomed by the very essence of her gift. The power glowed to capacity, swelling her up until it seemed it would burst from her skin in burning euphoria, siphoning to the will of another.
But Oriena could feel the theft, and it sparked fury.
She was sluggish from the poison that stole her limbs and her bloody lips to speak another's words, but Ori had always been careless with her body. When it pulled at her power though, she reared from stupor to wrench back hard; because she would die before she allowed it; the only thing here she truly cared about. It would not be taken.
And that was when it began to burn.
Not pain, but pain. Like molten cracks spidered the surface of her bones, split, and consumed her until coherent thoughts were a luxury she could not afford. She had no mouth to scream or fists to clench, and only the dimmest awareness of what went on outside her prison.
She fought, but it would only kill her faster.