Vincent totally already saw her fall apart.
The Strix Pomest'ye (CVnU Location)
@arquitenens: LOL, it's fine.
If the outer shell of the Pomestye was an uninviting piece of Gothic themed intimidation, then the inner enclave was an immense cultivation of beauty and mercurial overtones. Ali had confidently stepped inside and to the untrained eye, seemed completely disarmed in the presence of the Horned God. But as the space between the two had temporarily dissipated, Ezra having socially maneuvered behind the former Owl; bringing the oversized med-century doors to a close, and employing a subtle touch of psychological leverage, the Bashir Bishop unexpectedly shifted. A passive gesture that would not go unnoticed, though unmentioned.
"Ezra." Ali greeted. Passively attempting to establish some form of familiarity in hopes the previous faux pas had not unhinged his own inherent stoicism. But how does a man bluff the devil? As the Bashir Bishop knew him, Ezra Strix was of European high society, before he eventually immigrated to Gothic, at which point the Strix family legacy was born. However as he would eventually come to know, of Ezra own enigmatic inclinations, had been a fabrication. Or at best a half-truth. The true story was something beyond the influence of natural balance, a horrific obsession that would haunt an entire bloodline from the depths of myth and folklore. Ancient, anthropological evil. Every soul to a man or women would balk in the presence of such silent savagery.
"De deed is done. De bruddah has been neutralized. He was....unimpressive. Wounded, yes, but still....I expected..I dont know, sometin moah." Arching brows emoted the Vibranium Maharajah's disappointment. Freeing his navy periwing Mandarin collar shirt from any perceived wrinkles with a sharp tug, Ali's opal colored gloves momentarily displayed the mirroring sigils of the Goetic Circle of Pacts. "I believe dat fulfills my obligation, no? I will take what I was promised, what I am owed, as per our pact, Ezra."
The Pomest'ye's large oak doors shut behind them, and the Count turned round, hands clasped at his front. His features, sharp and of high cheekbones, wore his unsettling composure and magnetism far too well. And his smile, faint and knowing, cast the impression of rationality and sanity and yet... there was something not quite right. Though he looked and acted as any ordinary man did, there was something.. missing. His mask of sanity was convincing, charming even... but very slightly unnerving. "Please. Come with me", Ezra insisted, striding past the Bashir Bishop and pushing open the double doors to the right that led into a living room adorned with several shades of green.
Resembling a dungeon, it's greenish lamps and chairs cast a green tinge in the light all about. Above the fireplace Ezra had hung a portrait of his first basilisk, a deadly serpent of European legend. And as he retired to a green button-tufted sofa and gestured for Ali to have a seat of his own, the Horned God's tongue almost seemed bladed. "You expected more? Oh... then perhaps he was more capable in a way. To... persuade someone into imagining more than there actually is..", he paused, glancing first at the skulls in the mahogany cupboards and then at the decorative tapestries featuring the supposed adventures of the Strix family's ancestors before returning his empty and hollowed gaze to the Bashir Bishop, "A talent".
Folding one leg over the other, the Count cast his eyes upon the sigils of the Goetic Circle of Pacts adorning Ali's gloves. The corners of his lips twitched, wearing a smirk, not of derangement.. but of something. Ali's demands had been made and they were clear. They were after all, according to the terms of their agreement. "Let us reunite you with your family then", he declared, clasping his hands together with superficial enthusiasm. "There is so much catching up to do between the two of you". Standing to his full height, the Horned God, asking that Ali follow closely behind, abandoned the living room for one of the Pomest'ye dungeons. And once there, the ritual would begin. The stone walls were dry and dreary, stripped of their paint and left grey.
From them, torches hung with emerald flames casting a cold and unnatural atmosphere. As they walked, their footsteps echoing loud and clear, the dungeon's hall seemed to stretch forever. At times there were statues around them, of basilisks, and in-between those statues were large and barred cell gates. In the distance there was an altar, and upon it, a coffin still dirtied and dripping with soil and worms. Soon they'd reached it, and by the coffin's right, Ezra stood with his arms folded behind his back. In the dungeon, his features seemed darker. "I am not a rude man. I have honored our pact and did as you asked, Ali", Ezra paused, opening the coffin to reveal the partially decomposed but reanimated body of a Bashir.
Ali had left room for a loophole, one to be abused in future negotiations by the Mad Strix. In return for Ali neutralizing Nikademus, he would bring back a family member of his. But to bring back in what capacity... had never been specified. Clasping his hands at his front, Ezra began, his voice and expression bearing no conscience, no limiting concern for Ali, his relative or anything of the sort. "You have done your part, Ali. You have neutralized the brother. And in return.. I have brought a relative of yours back. Back... to you". And he had, technically. With the hand of necromancy he'd reanimate the woman's corpse. But she was not alive. She was not plucked from death and made alive. She was a mindless thrall so gaunt that her bones seemed to be pushing out against her decomposed flesh.
"In what capacity however.. you never said", his eyes smirked, wrinkling at the corners. "To see her specifically returned from death and made alive.. I can do. Ah.. but to do this for you", he paused, glancing as Ali's relative squirmed and trembled in her coffin, "I will need you to do something for me. Because this is a new agreement after all. I have brought you relative back. And I will bring her back in a living capacity, alive. As a favor. One you will return.. by bringing me the sister. Bring me Abigail Aensland". His demand made clear, Ezra closed the coffin shut, the entire situation reminding of a warning he'd once told a man long ago.
'If the devil asks to deal with you, you'd best say never'
'Because a deal with the devil might last you forever'
The articulated authenticity of the Bashir Bishop's stoic sense of composure had immediately been replaced with a visual veil of unspeakable horror. Even armed with the fully realized indoctrination of the Faceless Owls, he could not protect his emotional fortitude from the Count's psychological torment. A nightmarish act conducted through the desecration of his eternal love, Nia Bahati. Her necrotic skin now disturbingly dripping from the bone as she violently flailed before being mercifully re-entombed by the Shakespearean Sociopath. But once upon a time she had been an enchanting beauty, loving wife, and devoted friend to the Honored God's own daughter, Nikoleta Strix.
Unable to breathe Ali faltered to a knee, stunned; able only to offer a solitary gasp as a desperate reaction in a moment that would forever haunt the furthest resources of his once heavily fortified cognizance.
"MONSTAH!" Igniting forward in an inaugural acrobatic exhibition, exploding from knee to aerial switch kick, Ali rebelled. His savage sea of rage now hid behind the transitioning fluidity in which the disobedient owl moved. Barely touching toe to floor before rapidly recoiling the spring like momentum of his previous action, surgical deviations switching the physical focal points in which he sought to strike. High low, medium and helicopter sweeps. Unorthodox rotations, remarkable spins and balance, all serving the Bashir Bishop's Savate based martial machinations. Somewhere deep down he surely realized the futility of such direct and obsolete aggression, yet the valor of his people, the nobility of his position, and the defiled purity of his ill-fated wife had formed the perfect cocktail of sub-conscious compulsion.
Derived from the very martial tutelage the Horned God had bestwoed upon all his Faceless Owls, Ali's foot-based attack was a radicalized version, a bastardization of his institutional Dim Mak. The bottoms of his coffee colored lunagard lace-up boots were intricately decorated with ancient tribal markings straight out of the Compendium Maleficarum. A clever and deceptive route of esoteric concealment, but ultimately a wasted one. Ezra was the Immortal Owl, the Cannibalistic Talon of the Colosseum, and beyond the harm of the Bashir Bishop.
For now.........
@arquitenens: City is fine.
The Bashir Bishop roared, and the air grew thick with his rage. It was a response that the Mad Strix had expected. And in his dungeon, where the green tinge of torches met the blackness of shadows that seemed permanent there, Ali's assault echoed, the thuds from his kicks reverberating for Ezra's basilisks to hear from their chamber. On his back, his palm braced against the ground's cobblestone, Ezra bled. His thigh had been bruised and blackened by a low kick. Pain swarmed hot at the left of his midsection, bruised and battered by a body kick. And his face? His face wore a gaping laceration, above his left eyebrow as it bled and the Horned God winced.. and his body wore his exhaustion. Exhaustion from Ali's destruction of many a mitochondria in his cells. Dim Mak.
And yet, as Ezra and Ali once more shared a gaze, the Horned God's eyes were empty, his features emotionless and cold as though the blood dripping from his brow was ice water. He felt no remorse and believed Ali to be burdening himself with the same conscience and moral responsibility that man was afflicted with. And as they shared a gaze for a moment longer, the Mad Strix's eyes wearing a subhuman quality of otherness, he asked a question that both he and Ali knew the answer to. ".. Do I eat you now? Or do my basilisks?", he paused, his accented words lingering in the air. "Or do you kill me and send me to the afterlife to do as I please with the spirit of your beloved?", he asked, raising his hand and digging his fingers into the sockets of his eyes, casting a macabre atmosphere as he violently seemed to peel the flesh from his face till it was his face no longer.
Whatever the method, whatever bizarre tools and special training he had used... the Mad Strix's face was no more, simply a layer of bloodied flesh tossed to the dungeon ground. Now.. now he wore a face of singular beauty. Of pale blue eyes and full lips, of long blonde hair so striking it seemed a waterfall of liquid gold. He wore Nia's face and stared back at Ali's, doing what he'd always done; exploiting the one weakness of the human gaze, that it's power was one of existential affirmation. Now.. now Ali stared into his/her face and saw who? Was it Ezra? Or was it his beloved? Who was it that he recognized when he/she spoke? What would become of the Bashir Bishop's mind and heart as he stared at Ezra/Nia and found no recognition of humanity.
Found no true face but found... something. Found a visage cruel enough to shake his identity and strip him of his sense of control. Who was he communicating with? And what was being communicated? What was being cast to prod and violate Ali's mind? Fear? No... the Mad Strix was no simpleton. No he created something but not fear. He created something that left the brain uncertain. Something to dupe parts of the brain to respond with fear while other parts don't... and the brain does not understand why. It was not fear that the Horned God instilled. He instilled feelings of uneasiness.. of terror.
Sought to abduct Ali's mind and drop it between the mountains of safety and danger where there is a valley of creepiness.. where the limits of trust and knowledge and security are not quite clear. "You won't...", Ezra/Nia said, before once more tearing the flesh from his face. And underneath he was Ezra Strix once more. "Because you will do as I have instructed", he paused, slowly standing to his full height, his apparent injuries clear. "You will bring me Abigail Aensland, alive. And I...", he paused, glancing at the coffin behind him, "Will fulfill my part of the agreement".
@ezra_strix: No need to dust the guest bedroom, just yet.
@ezra_strix said:
"You will bring me Abigail Aensland, alive. And I...", he paused, glancing at the coffin behind him, "Will fulfill my part of the agreement".
Haha good thing they don't have anymore siblings haha that's good really good haha you're gonna catch 'em all with just those two haha
Again the regal and proud Bashir had been reduced to a knee. Obscuring his vision with his arm in hopes of deflecting the direct line of sight, but in the presence of the Many Faced Owl, the visual and the mental were little more the abstract allocations of his will. The Sociopathic Sin Eater's psychopathic poison was inescapable, consuming the sub-conscious with cannibalistic depravity and the classical refinement of a gourmet connoisseur. Cerebral suffocation was instantaneous, Ali uncontrollably submitted.
Bound by a pact that he could never truly fulfill, shackled to the Mad Strix until such time as he himself would be devoured. Another victim of the enigmatic demon. For now however the Count was consumed with the capture of the retired hero, Abigial Aensland.
And Ali knew exactly where to start in his pursuit to run the hibernating hero to ground. "I, will find her."
Narcissistic and calm, Ezra straightened his tie, his dark eyes casting an unsettling quality, a conscience-less presence that felt like a finger of ice tracing down one's spine. Smoothing the wrinkles from his Ermenegildo Zegna suit, the Horned God smiled, the corners of his lips curling upwards ever so slightly as the blackness and emerald flames about him played with his features. "Good. I am pleased with your decision, Ali", he paused, subtly turning right and stroking the top of Nia's coffin with an inauthentic, even mocking gentleness, "As is your dearest Nia.. I am sure". Slowly, Ezra turned to meet Ali's gaze once more, his hand never abandoning the coffin as his voice and accented words bore no emotion.
His blood was cold and guilt-less, and it showed. "She has told me herself", the Horned God continued, as if deriving some twisted, subhuman pleasure from tugging and plucking the strings of Ali's mind and heart. "Not with her words, of course. But with every tremble and cowering shiver. Her spirit... is unsettled", he told, deliberately misinterpreting the undead and perverted state of Nia's corpse only to continue Ali's psychological torture. "Because where it is.. where all of them go.. there is nothing. Only a black gate that is forever shut. She wants to live again, Ali. And only you can open that black gate. By bringing me Abigail", he made clear. "Failure, if it ever was, is not an option".
Bringing their encounter to a close, the Mad Strix'd escort the Bashir Bishop to the door and bid him a polite farewell, "Have a good evening, Ali", and closing the large oak doors shut.
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