Aleris • View topic

This S/L is running concurrently with the Duplicity S/L in Heruin.

She'd awoken with the revelation that she was the First...not Ameerah. That was significant information, at least to her, but there were other things that needed to be seen to. Namely, her land request. Finding herself alone she dressed quickly and traveled quickly across the strait that separated their Island from Mainland Heruin and was traveling through the city of Drybrush (by litter, no less) in no time. Her destination had been The Zenana where she had made arrangements to receive any correspondence regarding her request for a plot of land in Arthuran. Shed' only asked for one...one was all she needed given the size of the plots available for purchase.

A missive had been waiting containing the deed to the property when she arrived at the Zenana and while her first instinct had been to take off for Arthuran to inspect her property Valorius had arrived just in time to catch her with the deed red handed. The paper had been stuffed into a pocket and drinks had been plied in an effort to distract him from wondering what the paper was. She wasn't stupid and she knew damn well he wasn't either. He would have noticed the paper and would eventually find out what it was all about, but for the moment he had been content to let her maintain her secrets and it had not been brought up.

She'd told him about the dream, though...the one where she'd seen herself in the bassinet..not Ameerah. He did not seem to view this revelation with the same gravity she had, after all, Nax had come first too. It wasn't about that, though. For years she had believed Ameerah was the original mind, the dominant one, the one who had the majority stock holder vote in what they did, but now she knew differently and she was determined to find out the how and why of it all. She also intended to find a way to make her the dominant one again.

And that was where her new plot of land came in. For what she had planned she needed somewhere she could call her own, somewhere that Ameerah knew nothing about and had no sway over, a Sanctuary...or evil lair. Whichever.

The following day reports from Heruin were good, the rebuilding was progressing with the aid of Ameerah's crew as well as Valorius' Elite. There were no reports of any additional unusual behavior and nothing that required her immediate attention. Perfect, she had her own agenda to see to. A slice of her palm to release a trickle of crimson blood and a rift was torn in the fabric of space, one that would allow her to travel to Arthuran far more quickly than if she'd traveled over land, her blood acting as the key that allowed her such luxuries.

Stepping through she felt the tug at her center that signaled the transfer from one space to another and she went from a scorching desert with a burning sun overhead to a freezing snow-swept landscape. Her land was on the most remote island off the north of Arthuran and was otherwise uninhabited for the moment. Someone had lived here, though, once upon a time and had left behind evidence of their occupation..a small chateau that, while in need of some repairs, suited her needs just fine. It was that, just as much as the islands remote location, that had made her decision for her.

Immune to the cold as she was she had still dressed for the occasion (she wasn't about to pass up the chance to dress for a climate other than the infernal desert) and hands encased in white leather gloves gathered the edges of the white fur coat she wore around her body as she moved inland from the coast towards where the chateau sat. Uncertain of it's exactly location she wandered through the snow for several minutes before the outline of a structure came into view.

Her excitement grew the closer she got to the chateau, pleased to see the necessary repairs were mostly cosmetic, the structure having held up rather well all things considered. Already a mental list was forming of the things that would need to be done to get it up to her standards as she neared the front door, the key that had arrived with the parchment sliding into the lock to admit her to her sanctuary. The door swung shut behind her, shrouding her in the dim light that barely lit the interior and closed her off from the frigid wind. Though small by her standards the chateau would be considered a good size by the standards of most others and could house a large family comfortably.

Moving through the large living room that held a chandelier that would positively glitter when cleaned of the dust and cobwebs, as well as a large hearth on the far right end the click of her heels echoed through the otherwise empty room. In time Valorius would learn of this place but the important thing was keeping it from Ameerah...that would be the trick considering they shared the same mind. But she had managed to lock things away from Ameerah before and she was determined to do the same with the knowledge of her land and the chateau.

Ascending the stairs she soon found herself in the master bedroom which was just as empty as every other room in the house. Something would need to be done about that. She needed someone she could trust, someone to carry out ~her~ tasks rather than Ameerah, someone who wouldn't tell her counterpart anything without her permission. Sadly such people were few and far between and for the time being she would need to see to these things herself. Dammit, she needed minions. Moving to the bedroom window she gazed out across the snow covered land that now belonged to her and, easing her right hand into the pocket of the coat she wore, she withdrew several blood red stones, stones that had been crafted with her own blood.

Before she could do anything she needed to walk the border of her property and erect the wards. All her plans would be begun from this place. It was here that she would delve into her memories, leaving herself vulnerable as she sought the truth of her past within her own mind. It must be protected against all threats, magical and physical, and the stones were the first step towards that end.

An hour later the stones had been placed at the four quarters of her property and the air hummed with protective magic for those who could sense such energies. Should anyone step onto her land she would know it whether they meant her harm or not. There were other protections she would put in place on the chateau itself, protections that would help prevent Ameerah from gaining control while she was there, but first things first.

Realizing it had grown later in the day than she at first realized thanks to the continuous gray skies she reluctantly left the chateau and her new land behind. Valorius would expect to meet her in Drybrush soon and if she wasn't there he would come looking for her and, like it or not, he would find her unless she completely closed him out and that would raise more red flags than anything else. With a backwards glance at her new sanctuary she pulled the door closed behind her and locked it.

She would be back, this was only the beginning.

Author: Sydrameera
Post Date: Wed Apr 10, 2013 5:25 pm
Post subject: Re: Sanctuary

The main room of her chateau was left eternally shrouded in darkness, thick white velvet curtains drawn over the windows to ensure there would ever be sufficient shadows present for her to arrive at her will. A cluster of shadow in the far corner grew thicker, denser, and seemed to coil slightly into itself as she stepped free of their hold and back into the corporeal world. Though she did not technically need light to see she still paused beneath the chandelier overhead. Her right hand rose, palm up, and cradled within it appeared a glowing orb of white hot energy. The energy ball was then sent in a throwing motion towards the chandelier above where it collided with the metal structure and traveled out in crackling lines towards the candles that sat in their holders, waiting for the spark that would bring them to life. Wicks flared as the heated energy reached them and the room was suddenly suffused in golden candlelight.

While she did not particularly love Arthuran she did quite like the little chateau she had purchased, small though it was. It was two stories, the main downstairs room the largest taking up nearly the entire bottom floor, a small cursory kitchen off to the side. The upstairs was built on a much smaller scale and was likely a converted attic. There was a large, luxurious, bathing chamber she wholeheartedly approved up, and a small bedroom that did not posses a single window. Naturally she strongly suspected the chateau had once belonged to one of the more sun-challenged members of Alerian's society, the type that didn't eat and slept in a box. No matter, it suited her needs just fine. It wasn't as if she intended to live there and, yet, she still made sure it was up to her standards.

The large downstairs room had been chosen as her base of sorts, the large fireplace on the far left set and ready to be ignited. The sizable chandelier overhead was enough to keep the room lit with a soft golden glow, the fireplace providing any additional light she may require. The walls were a soft off white, the plush carpeting beneath her feet also white. It was as if she had deliberately created the interior of the chateau to reflect the snowy exterior. Even the hearth was white marble. Truthfully it was like something her mother would design but there were touches of “her” here and there, such as in the blood red crystals interspersed with those of clear diamond that decorated the chandelier.

In front of the hearth was a large pile of several thick down mattresses piled further with dozens white fur blankets made from the pelts of mink, rabbit...even wolf. In the rooms center was a chaise lounge and several overstuffed wing tipped chairs should she ever have company though she highly doubted she would. It was sparse, simple, elegance but it suited her needs quite nicely. There was just one last thing she needed to do. The room needed to be warded, heavily. Not just against outside energies and influences, but those to be found within, as well. The warding she had in mind would keep Ameerah suppressed while within their confines, even if she had to do a little astral traveling to find the answers she needed. She wasn't taking any chances with letting her focus slip even a fraction and allowing that mutt to take over.

The necessary items had been gathered and left on a side table before she'd gotten called away to the pathetic excuse for a battle outside of Ironhold. Four diamonds, that was all she had needed, and standing over them her right hand withdrew one of the Talons again sheathed to her thigh. A decisive downward swipe of the blade cut open her palm, the blood flowing instantly though it was not free flowing. It moved as if sentient, as if it “knew” what it was supposed to do. It was darker as well, so dark a red as to appear almost black, though if one looked closely one would see what appeared to be teeeeensy currents of electricity running through the viscous fluid. Holding her palm out the four precious stones she paused over each, allowing a generous portion of her blood to flow down over the stones. It coated them, wrapping around them without flowing down onto the wood, still moving as if willed by her. Slowly the blood sank into the stones, altering them, changing them into what she wanted them to be, until each drop had been consumed within the crystal depths, the stones now glowing a deep blood red. They had been charged with her blood, “programmed” with her will and intentions.

Each stone was placed within one of the four corners of the large room, the stones flaring with bright red light once the final stone was in place. That same red glow crept from the stones and up over the walls, scrawling in intricate blood red patterns over the white surface. Eyes followed the blood energy as it wrote her wards onto the walls. It looked for all the world like a wall paper design, only those that could sense such energies would be able to tell otherwise. In the end the entire room, ceiling and floor (beneath the carpeting, she had some design standards after all) included, was covered with the intricate blood markets. As long as she was within these walls she was protected from outside influence, prying eyes, or threat of Ameerah gaining control. Reflecting on earlier that afternoon she decided doing the bathroom of the chateau would be a smart idea. That could wait until later, though. There would be no bath taking tonight. She had other plans.

Since the day she awoke from the dream that had revealed she had been the First, not Ameerah, she had wanted to go back to her childhood, back to see what else they had all been wrong about. To do that she would need to allow the entirety of her consciousness to slip into the aether. That would leave her vulnerable so the wards had been necessary. As complicated spells were not really her thing, she was more of a throw some energy or blood at it kind of girl, it had taken some time to figure out exactly how to put permanent wards in place. Naturally she had chosen her blood as the magic fuel, the diamonds as their anchor. It would do for now. One thing she wasn't sure of, though, was whether or not it would block Valorius from sensing her whereabouts should he decide to come looking for her.

Given the possibility that her time was limited she retired to the large pile of furs in front of the hearth and, with another small ball of white hot energy forming in her hand, she lobbed it gently at the fireplace, the wood stacked within crackling to life as the heat from the energy ignited it without issue. Laying back atop the several feather mattresses topped with furs she closed her eyes and willed herself to relax, easier said than done to be sure, her right hand rising to touch to the deSade blood diamond that still hung about her neck. It was her anchor and would help keep her from becoming lost in the astral. Unlike her father she could not simply step into the astral realm in her physical entirety. She could come close, as when she traveled through the shadows, but the only way for her to fully enter the ether was mentally. She could release her consciousness to the astral plane as she did in her dreams only this time she did not have the net provided by the dreamscape to ensure she would find her way back.

With the reassuring weight of the blood diamond on her chest she willed her mind into the ether and after several moments she felt the mental “disconnect” happen, felt her mind separate itself from her body and drift into the astral realm, tethered to her body by a cord of blood red energy. It had been a good while since she had stepped so fully into the astral but she soon found herself surrounded by the familiar gray landscape, threads of ethereal energy as wispy as air coiling all around her. Though she was not there on the physical level it is not uncommon for the mind to perceive oneself as still appearing in their physical form (kinda like The Matrix) so it was that she again closed her eyes, however incorporeal they really were, and focused in the time of her life that she wished to see.

She wasn't traveling back in time, on the contrary, she was using her space of the astral to manifest her own memories. No matter what she had been told, or could consciously remember, the actual facts of what happened were there. Much of her time as a child was forgotten and with the life she'd led up til now there had been no cause or reason to wonder about the things she couldn't remember. She was immortal, she would likely forget a lot before her eventual destruction. She had never wondered about the missing pieces before but now..now she did.

She had seen it with her own eyes, she was the first, and now she wanted to know how and why Ameerah had come into being. As she sent her mind deep into her subconscious the area around her began to change until she stood within a replica of the memory itself, a part of but completely unseen within the projection of her memories. As if sensing a change in the energy around her her eyes parted, taking in the scene her subconscious had felt she should see, and she frowned. It was familiar but...not. It took several long moments of examining the stark, windowless, room before she finally recognized it as the sub-level room she had been kept in the first five years of her life. A room beneath the Manse de Sade within New Orleans, reinforced concrete to prevent her burgeoning strength from allowing her to break free, the walls covered in archaic arcane symbols she didn't recognize but that looked vaguely Egyptian in origin painted over the walls. Wards, likely similar to the ones she had just erected herself.

No wonder Duvessa hadn't been able to find her. She had been held only a few blocks away from Duvessa's French Quarter home in the Garden District but she might as well have been in another world given the efficacy of the wards blocking anyone from finding her magically. With her realization of her surroundings the memory progressed and in front of her manifested the 5 year old version of herself, crimson eyes, black hair (which she'd rather not be reminded of), sitting on the edge of her bed reading a book. She didn't remember any of this, though, not really. She had no memories beyond the age of 11 when she'd manifested within The Seraglio. It was for this reason that most had assumed Ameerah had been the first mind born within her body and Amunette had split off later to cope with their enslavement. Of course she knew now that that was bullshit, but why couldn't she remember?

As she watched the door to her cell was opened, the sounds of locks and chanting required to lower the door's wards heard prior to the appearance of several of her jailers. Guillaume, her cousin, the son of one of the Marquis' children with his legal wife. He had hated Duvessa, his aunt, had viewed her as beneath them for being a half blood, forgetting entirely she was also Djinn and thus, superior to him and his smelly dogs any day. Guillaume hadn't seen it that way and had chosen to take what he perceived as his vengeance for the defiance of the half-breed out on her daughter. The memories provided by Ameerah had shown her it was out of a desire to warp her to his cause, to twist her to be his loyal dog, the pack Omega as she, too, was not of pure loup garou blood. Only her will had not been so easy to twist.

That was obvious from the look of derision on her 5 year old face as Guillaume entered with two of his lackeys, one of them hooded so as to obscure his features. Now that was curious. She realized soon that they were speaking, their voices hushed as they discussed what to do with her. From what she gathered she had not yet shifted. It was highly uncommon for any young wolf to not have shifted by their 5th birthday, which meant the wolf within her was not strong enough to manifest physically. That simply wouldn't do for Guillaume's plans, it seemed, as he had hatched an idea that would force the wolf within her to emerge.

There were rituals in place amongst the wolf packs, shamanic techniques that would assist a wolf with their first transformation which, for many, could be difficult and dangerous. There was also a way for the Alpha of a pack to force a wolf to transform. They were skills she herself possessed though she rarely bothered with them, not overly caring about the wolf end of things. But Guillaume intended to use those techniques to force her to shift, and his hooded friend behind him was going to give him the magical oomph to do it. She was just wondering what the third person was for when the large male wolf moved forward and grabbed her 5 year old self, pinning her arms to her sides as if to restrain her.

It was a task easier said than done as the 5 year old Amunette lashed out at the man, kicking, biting, scratching, until the man was forced to throw her to the bed and practically sit on her, her right arm twisted painfully behind her back. Still she struggled, her crimson eyes blazing her hatred for her jailers. She had been much weaker in her youth, her abilities to manipulate life energy and travel the astral and within the shadows and such not coming until she met her father and those skills had been unlocked. It was difficult, seeing herself so helpless, and she was forced to remember that this was just a memory and most of these men were dead. All bu the hooded magi giving Guillaume the ability to soul rape her.

Guillaume approached and she watched the scene unfold, astral hands clenched, as he placed his hands on her head and began the incantations that would force the wolf within her to emerge. She screamed her fury, struggled against the man holding her, but in the end it was no use. Her screams soon turned from anger to pain and she could see the crimson light of her eyes beginning to die...fading as fought against what they were doing to her. With a final scream that ended on a mournful howl the eyes of her 5 year old self flashed a sudden amber yellow and grew wide with shock and confusion. Her body was no longer her own as the memory of her first transformation showed her shifting into the form of a small white wolf pup. She shifted back almost instantly, incapable of maintaining the shift as she was yet unskilled in such things, but it was obvious that when she was again a young girl she was no longer the girl they had kidnapped.

She did not know them, did not know where she was, or who she was for that matter. She cringed away from the men, now freed from her restraints, and though they were not the swiftest men in the world they soon discovered what Amunette already knew, that she had forgotten everything. Naturally they assumed a simple case of amnesia and blamed the trauma of her first shift for causing it. They were, at least, half right. It had been the trauma of her forced transformation that had caused Amunette's mind to fade, the force of the spell worked by Guillaume and the mysterious Magi pushing her back, locking her away. She could never have taken on the essence of the wolf, a pack animal, otherwise. In her place emerged Ameerah only Guillaume decided to call her Branwen, figuring he would use this to his advantage and begin molding her into the weak omega wolf he wished her to be.

She could say many unsavory things about Ameerah but she had never succumbed to Guillaume's brainwashing and had hated him as much as she did. She had even destroyed him later in their life. The images in front of her faded away save for the cell she had lived in having gained all she needed to know from that particular memory. Or so she thought. Gazing sightlessly at the ward covered walls of her youthful cell a particular sigil began to become apparent as repeating throughout the wall's designs. It was vaguely Egyptian in design and moving forward her hand rose to run over the image. She had seen it before...she just couldn't figure out where. No doubt it belonged to the hooded magi, the same entity she suspected was responsible for the attempted destruction of the de Sade pack as well as her future enslavement.

The rest of the image faded and she was again surrounded by the ephemeral tendrils of the ether, the red cord still connecting her consciousness with her physical body. She had only to hone in on that single thread of humming energy and with a sudden whooshing sensation she was back in her physical shell, eyes popping open to reveal she was back in her body, safely ensconced in her chateau. Slowing rising into a sitting position she curled towards the fire, her right hand moving idly over the surface of the de Sade blood diamond as she thought on all she had just seen.

The wolf should never have existed within her, it had never been meant to be. She knew what she had to do to get rid of Ameerah once and for all. She was tied to the wolf's creation was she? Well then, she would simply have to see to it's destruction.