Recluse | Jenmae

[Seren]

C U L A R I N​

Location: Home - Interior
Tag: [member="Jenmae Ophiro"]

How long...until the Seal breaks?

The Wolf had an unconventional relationship with the ebb and flow of time. In an effort to save that which he thought mattered, a much younger Seren Van-Derveld abandoned his present in favor of the past. He chased behind a woman who once claimed to truly love him. Yet, when he found his sibling, she had carved out for herself a new life. She had found a lover in Gerwald, a purpose in Nightmother, and had no reason to return home. Though wrathful, Seren ultimately left this wound in the past.

Some time later, after encountering the woman who would be His, he thought that he wanted to be King. He thought that ruling over all Lupine would bring to him some degree of satisfaction. Yet, this was an old pain attempting to see itself satisfied. This was a young boy baring his teeth at an obsessive sire. This was Seren howling against his Father and his Will. But, even this, Seren managed to leave in the past. For many months, he focused wholly on making the most of each present day.

Time, though unconventional, was not his ally. And thus, he had to make every day count. He had to make Jenmae's ambitions into a reality.

Yet along the way, those haphazard stitches upon his soul finally gave way. The straw had been the gathering of the Mandragora. To stand among them...to hear the spirits for the first time in decades...to feel that which he had thrown away after being abandoned by his sibling? Confusion. Anger. Years and years of torment finally broke through his being. It all came through when he was totally alone on Cularin. The Witch had departed, playing out her role in their ambitions to the letter.

The lapse of her presence made the agonies all the more easy to breach his mind. What was real and what was not converged before his very eyes. He could see them, though they were worlds away. Smell them. Taste them. Maim them. Lost in the madness, Seren howled. It was impossible to tell how long he had been stricken by the outrage. Impossible to know how long he rampaged about their subterranean home. Yet, when the pallid witch returned, she would find an animal where he lover once stood.

With claws buried in the flesh of a sacrifice. Eyes crazed, and a howl upon his lips.

 

[Jenmae Ophiro]

Much as the gathering of the Mandragora had been formative for the Wolf - the Witch had seen in them a pathetic reflection of what could be. Many months before he had suggested that to claim what was theirs by right, she would need to join them, bend them to her will and use them as a tool... But these women, these sisters, were weak.

Time was... Incorporeal. It was like a haze that the pair traveled through. The flesh she wore was young, untouched by the ravages of the life her own Spirit had lived. Where her companion had been forced through a tear in what they perceived to be time, she had been forced to leave behind the trappings of flesh and instead returned to him as something wholly different... She would need strength, and it would not come in the form of these Confederate witches - not yet, in any case. There could be another use for them yet, but it would not be as the tools to her return to the power she enjoyed in the life they'd already lead together.

As such, the wraith had seen fit to travel in search of what would become a new hope for their return. Sleepless nights spent in solitude in her Orrery had taken her to her home - to their ancestral home. But finding that Sith controlled Dathomir was much as the witches had been, a pale and poor representation of the power it had been in her youth, she'd returned home once more.

The cold depths of Cularin were more her home now than they had ever been, especially upon her return from Dathomir. Some primitive part of her mind had supposed that it would have been different... That stepping foot upon the soil of her birth may have held some sort of significance - but what resonated with her, what she could feel thrumming through her bones as she slowly wound her way through the subterranean caverns of the fortress she'd found for them - this felt like home.

Luminous dark eyes appeared almost black in the looming shadows as the creature made her way deeper, finely trimmed nails raking along the ancient stone walls, the sound of her heeled boots as she descended a tell-tale announcement of her approach. She could feel him, and not just him. The Spirits were uproarious, a deafening wail in the air of the place, all sucking down towards the Temple of Shahku that lay near the very pit of Shahku iw Kraujas itself.

She could not keep her heart from speeding and her breath from hitching as she rounded the final corridor, the smell of gore thick in the air, and the feeling of his madness like a warmth that pushed at the barriers in her mind. Her face when she spotted [member="Seren"], crouched in what remained of a sacrifice, covered in blood... There was something vacant there, her eyes staring but her mind obviously focusing on something very distant. Keeping herself in the doorway for the time being she simply stared at him, her chest rising and falling quickly, visible even at that distance.

 

[Seren]

Were the Wolf any semblance of whole...

Long ago, the Witch and her partner had a conversation amidst the chambers of this very temple. T'was in that moment - that intimate shared moment - that the Wolf expressed the reason why he would move heaven and earth for their goals. It was not that he had some burning desire to see all kneel before them. But rather, it fulfilled him to see his Witch fulfilled. Where she desired dominance and godhood, he desired to see her happy. She had been his savior, many times over. From the day they met til even the present.

In fact, there were many days where her presence brought the man peace and calm. Where her touch could dispel the mightiest of frustrations. Where her scent could chase away the scars which had been buried so deep. This day was therefore different. Prior to now, Seren would have perceived the arrival of his lover from a way's off. He would have felt her. Smelt her. Her presence would have brought delight into the pit of his soul. Now? Now he was lost. Now, the spirits themselves were in an uproar all about him.

He needed them gone. He needed them silent.

And when all traces of humanity vacate the mind, only instinct remains. From her corner, Jenmae would see that which Seren never attempted. He always alluded to this being a gift of the Lupine - to this being something stolen during his travels after Katrine. Yet, devoid of all sense and reasoning, the Wolf uplifted a mighty howl. A spasm ripped across his muscles. The sickening cacophony of bones snapping soon filled the air as his form hunched over. Fur multiplied as blood pooled and fell from every crevice of his person.

Were it not for the mere tastes of divinity they had enjoyed thus far, Seren would have been very much deceased. But now, the intersection between man and beast had been reached. Standing on his haunches, the wolf unleashed a true howl. His mighty claws sank into the remains of the sacrifice before hurling them across the room with monumental power. He turned. Sniffing. Salivating. Slow, laborious steps drew him nearer to where the Witch stood. And though all sense evaded him...though nothing but pain - physical and beyond - coursed through his veins.

The beast lowered his head and ran his snout upon her shoulder. A light whine eased from his fangs - as if to say help me.

[member="Jenmae Ophiro"]

 

[Jenmae Ophiro]

Location: Home, Cularin
Tag: [member="Seren"]

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Silently she observed.

The transformation was magnificent, and for only the briefest of moments the witch wondered at how many opportunities had been lost because they had not had access to this power. Though, feeling plainly through their bond the exquisite amount of burning pain that he experienced, she supposed it would also cost him a great deal to have this become a regular occurrence... Though, it could have it's uses.

As her Wolf fell forward onto all fours, the symphony of snapping bone and ripping flesh finally beginning to quiet, she started to move down the path from the doorway and into the temple proper. The sound the corpse he had tread upon made as it slid across the stone floor and slammed into one of the rock walls was sickening... Or may have been to someone else. Recognition of the carnage and gore that lined the floors was not something that ever touched her face. Instead those luminous dark eyes were from him and him alone - watching in that same serene silence as he approached her as well.

Thin, pale fingers rose as his maw dipped to slide along her shoulder, feeling the fresh, and frankly soft, fur glide along her skin and his snout nuzzle into the silken fall of her own hair. The soft whine told her of what she could already feel - the pain and the screaming that the Spirits caused him was nearly deafening... But she knew what to do.

Those fingers of hers glided through the fur to gently lay around the back of each of his finely furred ears, the pads of each gently massaging the skin there as she spoke for the first time, her voice soft as she gently shushed him. Using her own power she reached across the bond their shared and spread herself like a fine film across his mind. Instantly he'd find himself bathed in silence, surrounded by peace - there was only her, and there would only ever be her. She spoke to him there, inside of that sudden and serene silence.

"What an impressive creature you are, my Wolf... And what a magnificent gift the Spirits have given us." Slowly she leaned back, her fingers moving as instead of pressing against the top of his head they moved to gently cradle that jaw, set with heavy, sharp teeth. The smile that she wore was effortless and beautiful, providing a flash of those white teeth that were so rarely seen. His whole world was in that smile, and in that moment it was his alone.

 

[Seren]

Jenmae Ophiro​

Always.

The pallid woman before him had always been his savior. From the moment they had met a lifetime ago on Jamoura. She had found him, broken with fangs bared against the world. And in that moment, she could have smited him. She could have rid all existence of his weakness - but instead, she pried him from the depths of hopelessness. She gave so that he could live. And for that reason, Jenmae would always be the brightest star in Seren's sky. She would be the sun, the moon, and the entire cosmos - for at his lowest moment, she was there.

As he whined against the calamity of the spirits, the Witch graced him with her touch. Her fingertips found the fur upon and behind his ears, giving a gentle massage to ease his burden. But beyond that, she delved into the depths of her power to give once more. Her efforts reverberated betwixt their bond - and in that instant precious silence ruled his psyche. The chorus of angry spirits lashing out had been replaced with...utter nothing. All that was and would be was Jenmae. Awareness finally began to return to the wolf. His gaze became less primal and more his own.

He listened. He could understood.

And oh how he basked in that smile. It was so rare that she earnestly graced him with that expression that it made his heart thunder behind all the fur. The words...was this a gift of the spirits? You saved me, yet again... His voice was but a whisper in her mind; conjoined with the huff which expelled from his jowels. And this...can we even call this a gift? They torment me so - for what... A low whine escaped him once more. Forgive my weakness Jenmae. Please.

Help me make it stop.