(Gabriel)

It was a pale luminescence that came through the cracks of the door, diminished by distance and obstacles. Still, it caught and illuminated the walls of the small cell.

Walls, which were covered with writing. Here and there, but mostly everywhere, writings of runes and symbols and vague pictures which were not even close to a complete scene, and always were drawn in the most crude manner. The words and images were flaking, but only because the blood was drying.

Scrawled in painstaking, block-like letters on one section were the words;
'The shade has torn his heart
Everything and nothing is the part
Will the Father return to my halls?
Where is the passion?
It's on these prison walls.'

A little apart from that were the words...
'Catfish
or was it mutton? Fie
Why can't I remember?
Lenore, or Emilia or or'

The symbols drawn were convoluted. Something vaguely similar to a snake, or perhaps an eight on its side. A triangle, a circle. Then, numbers. Eight, nine, ten, eleven.

'Spirits, spirits, in my head
When will I be free and dead?'

The light shimmered in the room as outside a man passes by the torch. A chuckle touches the walls, echoes, and disperses into silence, but this chuckle has initiated a response, a response from something laying on the floor. A pile of ragged clothes, dirty, knotted hair, and pale skin.

'What do I love?
Love? Love? I love blood.'

A groan, and the head raises, while eyes look to the door - though it's a wonder just how much they actually are seeing. So glazed over are those eyes, as if all the cerebral thought of Melchior Himself were encased in such a mortal, youthful form. The head falls to the ground, and the body twitches.

'From the east when the light is past the west
What was, I forgot all the rest
Emilia
Sarahmil
What was it'

'They give me just enough of it to write
But not enough to live, love, or fight.'

A dissonant melody bounces on the walls of the cell. Cracked. There is no beat to it, no tempo, no rhythm. It is not a song, but the lament to the death of one's mind.

'Where it is
It's blood's job to find'

Once upon a time... there was a shade.

(Gabriel/Aldren)

A shade of himself was all he had to hold on to. The rest had been killed and drowned. He was locked behind bars, and inside he wept. There was a Father who didn't speak to him, there was a Mother who was dead - whose body he would not see. There was a love he couldn't love. There was a city where he would never be.

"Just give me the blood..." the words echoed throughout the cell. They crawled and slithered.

"That's one... two... four names... be back..."

He hadn't returned, and now the shade was frantic. There was a woman he tried to think about, but he couldn't remember her name, or if she had ever given it. There was something he kept trying to hum, a tune lost in the back of his mind... but his lips would not form it. Always and constantly there was a pulsing in his head and a pulling in his stomach. His skin crawled, his eyes burned, and his throat cried. For the first time in over sixty years the shade was actually breathing out of necessity, for if he didn't he felt he might implode.

The torch light flickered through from outside. Shadows danced on the walls, and where usually their edges would be followed by the shade, he was naught but unmoving. Unfeeling. Silent, and uncaring. Yet, his thoughts were a sea. A crimson sea.

'He knows... he knows... he knows the names were false.'
'How could he? How?'
'He's a Dryth! Could you not feel it? And you stupid, stupid - oh He would be disappointed.'
'I can't keep anything straight! I can't resist... I can't stop... my thoughts are like a mortals. They race, and, oh Lord help me! Lord help me!'
'What will--'
'No, no...'
'Tell him! Take revenge! The ones who put you in here, the ones who will take this city in their hands and crush it, waste it.'
'No! I must get out. I can use them, use them all! If I can get out, they'll find the ones who can be converted, and I'll teach them...'
'You won't get out - just tell him. Take your revenge on those souls who would kill with only the purpose to kill.'

'I remember something... a vision long ago... there was a sad man, and I felt him through every bone of my body. He echoed inside of me, and me inside of Him. To me He showed a vision of a garden in night, with beauty on the air, upon my nose, and in my eyes. Speckled in starlight every flower opened and closed, with each softly taken breath of the night...'

Now the flowers bleed red, and the shade might reach for them... but they crumble.

'Here am I sitting in a tin can...'

(Gabriel)

The blood isn't everything.
The blood isn't everything.
There's more to it, there has to be. More to Him... more to Us...
Just a curse. Something we need, something to be dealt with like a fly.
It isn't everything.

I have never lied to myself about this. I've always known I've been trying to convince myself. It's always been a battle against myself, to tell myself that there is more. There is love, there are shadows, there is freedom, and truth. Yet never before have I been losing the battle so badly.

Who am I kidding? I've lost the war.

I've never wanted it more. I used to prolong it, prolong it so that when I took it it would be all the more sweet. Now it has been prolonged too long. On the edge of my vision I can see it, a crimson veil, and the tightening in my chest returns to me like lightning. Every vein which is on the man, shackled across from me, is apparent. Every pulsing -glorious- vein.

Stark beauty, and beauty it is, if I could but slice it open. I want it. I need it, so badly. It calls to me and calls, and there's no echo anymore to stop it. I am forsaken, forsaken and at the mercy of the curse.

I'm afraid I won't be able to stop anymore... I was a fool to forsake it so. I was thirsty when they put me in here, and now, now my very essence is slipping away behind it. Blood runs down my wrists from where the shackles cut into me. If I could break loose... I must break loose. I can't handle this. It's not the pain, no it isn't. It's knowing that the blood is all I want. It's never far from my thoughts. I don't want to find Lilian, I don't want to stay with her, I don't want revenge, I don't want to have the mortal love come with me into the night...

I don't want to play a fucking lute.
I don't want my violin...
Oh Father...

I just want the blood.

(Samir)

A constant crying from the right, and a low laughter to the left.
Blood spurts once more over my face, and onto the grass beneath me.
I lay prostrate upon the fields. So many leagues away from me lays the few lights of the village.
Right beside me lays the hand of my brother.
Just a hand. A very bloody hand, without an arm.

"Samir..." the voice is softly whispered, and with such softness I awaken to the sound of a stirring household. Steps shuffle in the next room. The low voice of my father, speaking with a Melchorite priest, sound in the hall outside my room.

"Samir, Samir... here, lemme help you sweety," that same soft voice again, a voice so stretched and sad compared to the happy tone which used to be carried by my mother. I wonder, how has my own voice changed? I cannot tell. She helps me put my boots on, gathers my cloak about me, and kisses the cloth wrapping my head.

"It's time. They're gunna... burn..." she doesn't finish, and I can hear her move away to the far wall before she comes back and helps me up. I remain silent, and we move out the hall. Speech from my father, questions asked about my health. I shrug them off. The priest speaks out, telling me about my part in the ceremony, and how that if at any time I should feel uneasy that I have but just to speak out and people will help me. He tells me how brave I am for coming to the burning so soon after the trauma.

My mother leads me outside. I feel the chilly breeze on my face, and rain begins to fall on my face. It is Darkfall, and darkness has truly fallen for I can see nothing. I reach up a hand habitually and toy with the headwrap which conceals my face, the bandages which are caked with blood. The soft hiccuping of my mother at my side stirs my arm. She is crying.

It is the morning of my brother's funeral. As is custom, he is to be set on a funeral pyre... except the only part of his body that could be found were his severed hands.

The Faithful

Blood.

Ever since, I've needed something to lean on. A lover, a violin, a vain mortal, an understanding immortal, and now a captive convert, who I can watch and grow to love... but even that's gone now. I've nothing to support me. All the bridges have been burnt. I was a sheltered fool, and still am, but perhaps I can set one thing right. Without the shadows, without whispered words and great slights of hand, I will do this - extremely bluntly - to prove what I've been preaching, and hang the consequences.

After all, what's the worst that can happen?

Oh right... I'll be put in a lovely, nice vase of skystone.

To prove what I've been preaching. A more valiant pursuit, I've never had. They are so stupid, but I have to believe. I have to have faith in them, faith that one day they might see the truth as I see it. Not with my sanity in tact can I throw myself at them and kill them for their stupidity, and so I will try to get the message across to them. I will be the abomination who might be nearly (or completely) martyred, for them, and Us.

But for the Father's sake... I think I pity them more then the Dryth.

Hearts in Shadow

"Gabriel... will you not play the lute? It's sitting there, waiting for your touch."

Her raven black hair gently fell around her shoulders, and I reached out to grab it. As my fingers went through it, it was like there was a stuttering in the world. A rip. And my fingers went straight through her as if she was immaterial. A ghost.

"No," I moaned. The slow pulse in my throat was becoming too much, but I didn't want to move. There's something soft beneath me, and yet I can't see it. All I can see is darkness, and her. "I'll play the lute later."

The image shifts.
I'm still floating on softness.

"I want you to live, Gabriel."

Is that a bed I lay on? Yes, and there are the curtains of the house we had in Seahaven, so long ago. When I was still breathing. Yet, I'm not breathing now. I feel no heart in my chest, and again I try to reach for her, only to have that soft hair shimmer from me.

"Lilian... do you really want me to live? Is that what you would call this? I know the Truth, and the Truth torments me. What use is it to know the Truth if they won't have any of it?"

"My love... my love..." Echoes of the past. Echoes of passion, and it hurts. "Play the lute."

"You play the fucking thing, Lilian." The words were like venom dripping from my tongue, and she faded into the darkness only to reappear yet again to say; "Gabriel, I want you to Live."

"WE CAN'T LIVE!!"

"We live forever."

"No, we're dead!"

"Dead until the day we are blessed to life. Dead, and manipulating, and conning. Liars in shadows, monsters in darkness, until that day when we may assume the place once more. Go to your Twisted One. She'll know. Tell her that you don't want to be mortal anymore."

"But I'm not mortal."

"You are young... so young, and so wise yet. You've seen so much, and learned things beyond others of your age, yet your passion is your mortality. Save your passion for when we are truly free, Gabriel. For when there are no enemies left around you. Save your passion for hugs with your Twisted one. Save it for embraces with the Insane Child. Your mortality drives you further and further from the shadows...

In Shadows we are One
In Shadows we are All
Until the fall of the sun
Until we no longer have to run
Until we can live in peace.

Ask your Twisted one, she will know."

And then I realized that the soft thing I lay upon was a cushion, and it was extremely wet.
I also realized... the voice had been my own.

(( I'd like to announce to those of you that do check here (bless your little hearts) that this will probably be the last blog post I will be making for a while. A while, when considering I usually do a few a week. Thank you - Leech ))

Power

Passion and death, wrapped up in one. Love, and then the hatred. The blade into the skin, the blood, and the passion. Without the death.

And is it really an anchor for me, a shelter against insanity, or a sail so that I might drift out amongst the sea of madness?

Is this passion real, are these emotions real, or an echo of mortality. Is it all a manipulation of the world around me?

I might never know.
I don't think I want to know.