Tytonidays and Nights - Group 3 (closed)

[Aksel]

A thin plume of smoke slowly trailed from the suppressor’s tip, his weapon quickly lowering to bring the mouth to bare against his lips. A gentle whisper of breath dissipated the white stream, his thumb flipped the safety back into place with a sharp click. His hand flipped the weapon, a quick spin of the trigger guard about his finger until the pistol snapped into the holster at his thigh in a single, swift, well-practiced motion. It was an attempt at humor, imitating one of those old fashioned American Western heroes. He rolled his tongue across the dry, cracked skin of his lower lip before flipping the leather strap of the holster into place over the weapon’s butt, securing it soundly against his thigh.

He let his onyx gaze move slowly, then, from the place that the fadebeast’s head had once occupied, to the woman that had played her role in the short, but tense moment marvelously. He didn’t speak, his dark brows drawn together in a serious expression as he gave her yet another nod. He hadn’t ever been able to take one of the creatures down on his own, but she had performed marvelously under her conditions. He lifted a hand, giving her a quick, casual, two-finger salute just above his right brow, before he glanced to the kid, still at Remington’s side.

The man was a genius. He reacted to the situation quickly and intelligently, putting the earbuds into the child’s ears to muffle the sound of the weapon. It didn’t look like the child had even taken note of the beast’s elimination. He was still standing with Remington, holding the iPod. A breath of relief left him, then, his shoulders slumping in an extreme moment of liberation, the tense worry of the situation having been removed, they could return to worrying about the problem at hand, getting through that wall of rock. Remington was being hindered by the child, having to keep his strength in check while he watched.

They were through the worst of it for the night. He moved to Nishaa’s side, a hand resting on her shoulder as he shifted closer to her. “Get some rest and some food, we’ll keep working on that wall until morning.” he pat her shoulder and stood, moving to where his pack rest against the far wall. He had kept his distance from the kid, the… ‘affects’ of being both a Necromancer and a Fadewalker made contact with humans very difficult for him. He would be certain to set the child off, and even the smallest flash of stray light would have frightened the boy for sure. It was the curse of his path, the way that light revealed his true nature. He grimaced at the image that came to mind and with a shudder of self-loathing, hoisted his pickaxe from the side of his pack.

He began to wedge mid-sized stones from the pile, opposite the side that Remington and the child had worked, to keep balance to the scattered mess of stones. One side or the other falling would have been entirely against the goal of keeping the child alive. It was very likely to kill him. He set to work, his mind prepared for a night of yet more back-breaking, menial labor. It would seem that Ty would get the sweat and blood out of him yet, even if sweat was a thing of his past. At least, he thought, there may still be some of the glimmering gems in this pile of rubble. Something of this fiasco could be salvaged. He turned to the man opposite him, then, and called out. “Keep an eye out for some of those gems. We may as well make the best of a bad situation.”

[Remington Rothfelder]

It seemed the fadebeast had been dealt with, but that was a single issue amongst a myriad of growing problems. The biggest one was keeping the boy entertained and out of their hair while they tried to break their way through the stone wall in front of them. It was true that they had both food and water for him, but the former was certainly a finite resource, and there was no telling how clean the water was. For all they knew, he could have been ingesting bacteria for hours. They did not need a dead kid on their hands. And Remington honestly wasn’t sure how long they would be able to sustain themselves and their need for blood. It was true that Aksel and Nishaa could heal him, but they also needed blood as well. Even if they traded off, how long did they really have? A week?

And that raised another haunting question. Would they begin to deteriorate and desiccate? The kid was the Mayor’s son, o chances were that there were people looking for him. What if those people found the vampires first? In their weakened state no less. He didn’t like to think too much about the consequences that might have on the Masquerade. It would surely be during the daylight hours, when humans handled their business. When the vampires would be at their absolute lowest. Assuming they could even remain awake – an ability which Remington did not possess. At least not with any proficiency. No. The sooner they were able to break free, the better. And it had to be on their terms. They couldn’t wait for someone to come and save them.

So when the shadow creature was dead, Remi pulled his phone out of his pocket. Naturally, there wasn’t any signal, but that’s not what he was worried about. He flipped through some apps and came to a game that had come with the cell. “Here you go, bratticus. Why don’t you go sit on Nish over there while she gets some sleep and play with this?”

Blank stare from the kid.

Remi grunted and tugged an earbud out. “Hey, brat. Go play games – get somethin’ to eat too.” Then he shoved the thing right back in so that the boy could move to stand and toddle off like the two men didn’t matter at all. Not that Remi was bothered by that. The further away the boy was, the better. So he waited until the kid was just out of sight and then he turned so that he could eye the ruin in front of him. With a smile, he hefted the sledge hammer and brought it down with explosive force. Bits and pieces flew away at top speed, dust filled the air, and a hunk of the rock fell from higher up to crash on the ground.

“Hurry your *** up, Aksel.” His tone was good natured. Like a guy telling his friend to hurry up and put the damned game on, because they were missing the first down.

[Nishaa]

The pat was welcomed as Aksel came up to her side, nudging her slightly before his hand curled around her shoulder – through his body language she knew she did a good job, she obviously played the decoy role brilliantly. She should be a decoy more. She snickered silently to herself as she placed her own hand on top of his in a sort of thanks. Nishaa didn’t bat for the dick team, she liked the opposite, so the way she touched him wasn’t romantic it was just a comforting touch – to someone she had grown to admire through the short time they had been trapped down here. Her onyx orbs never left the spot which the fadebeast had slumped, dead within. She expected another to follow, or a small passage appear, just like in Lord of the Rings. Speak friend and enter. She expected this to me. Kill fadebeast, and escape.

She dragged her lazy onyx orbs, to look Aksel, and gave him a smile as she turned her gaze behind him to look at Remington and the child. If you thought about it really, Remington would make a great dad – if he was human, shame that. It would make any straight woman cry.

• ”Alright. Nap time it is then.”

She waved her arms at the boys, as they began to lead themselves off to work on the wall as she got herself nestled against a wall. It was cold, but it was comfortable enough for her to sleep against. She was a vampire for gods sake, she didn’t need the comfort of a bed to sleep. Her eyes fluttered closed. She could briefly hear the child coming towards her, then the feeling of his body weight against her own. He was sat on her – she grunted, but said nothing. She let him lean against her, with his little game he was playing. She could hear Remington teasing Aksel, and then…there was nothing. Nishaa had fallen asleep.

• • • • He giggled opening his arms to her for the girl to embrace him but she didn’t. She had seen what happened next in her dream; she had heard the voices urging her to kill. So she did, she acted on the voices in her head, the voices that told her to take his life, offer it to the devil – so the occult books had said, as so she did her knife slipped into the boys chest like a knife cutting butter, she looked into the whites of his eyes, she could see fear within them. She could smell it even. It was all over him as the boy collapsed to the ground, he shook on the floor, and his body spasmed on the ground as Nishaa turned herself from the boy looking at the blood coated dagger. She lifted it to her mouth and licked at the blood, ingested it – until she coughed.
        
        This was Nishaa’s first taste of death; nothing was the same after that. Everything was a blur, the blood tasted metallic in her mouth her chapped, lips were coated in the blood of her brother but Nishaa wasn’t sorry she killed Danny, instead she was glad, she had a craving. She wanted to kill more; perhaps her mother would do as a second choice. The child of a mere six years old smiled. Revenge would be hers.

The dreams came in and out, reminiscing about her first kill – her childhood. It was all she dreamt about when she did sleep eventually. Always plagued by her brothers face, and the scent of his lip – she even remembered what it tasted like. Warm, metallic. She stirred slightly. As she continued to sleep.

END OF NIGHT TWO.

[Velveteen]

Well done guys You have reached the the last round.

As there were no vote offs there will be no consequences and the dice roll went in your favour also. You are free to continue on and complete your mission.

Day event - The boy suffers a life threatening asthma attack.

Too bad. It's just not your lucky day is it

[Aksel]

There was so much ******* blood.

Aksel had seen a dead body before, that wasn't anything new for him. What he had never seen, what had really traumatized him that day, was the blood. All of that blood. His little sister, his little Svala, not a day over seventeen, and she was gone. Blood filled the floorboard, a puddle gathered around her ankles and spilled from the cracked door of the BMW. Her forehead pressed against the steering wheel, the horn continued to blare harshly, lost to the rolling crash of waves in the bay not a hundred yards from where he stood.

A wide gash, a crimson smile spanned from ear to ear, blood still pouring profusely from her slashed throat. Her skin was snowy white, not that simple pale that it would sometimes take in colder temperatures, but that literal, blank white. Like she wasn't even real anymore. Black eyes stared blankly at the floor, her ankles twisted on top of one another like she had tried to fight her way free of the car as her strength failed her. Blood had exploded over the cab of the car, not a single surface of the front seat wasn't covered in sanguine gore.

There hadn't been any sign that there was even anyone else there at the beach...


Suddenly, the world snapped into reality. In an instant, he was aware of the soft sound of rushing water, the stream that ran the length of the back of the cavern. Black eyes slowly rolled across the darkness of the space that they had occupied for days, now. Each day it felt like the space was growing smaller. The wall was coming down at a much more rapid pace than he had anticipated, and that only made him worry. They had made much progress, and still not a flash of light or a single sign that they had punched through. Broken rocks and debris littered the floor where he and Remington had worked, while the kid had played...

The kid.

In a slight panic, his eyes shot around the room again. He was supposed to have stayed awake, supposed to have watched the boy during the day. He must have dozed off, exhausted from the work on the wall. His mind threatened to open full throttle into a full-on anarchy of terror before he saw the boy slumped against the wall, clutching the bottle they had given him for the water. He breathed a long sigh of relief and slowly made his way to his feet. The boy was breathing, slow and steadily. The filter on the bottle still had several fills left before it would be compromised, and the bottle of iodine tablets had dozens of the little pills left. The water was a nonissue. The food, however, was beginning to become scarce. That had him worried. They needed out, soon, or the boy would starve in a matter of a couple of days.

He pulled his axe from the pile of rubble it had been left jammed into, and walked to where Remington and Nishaa lay, sleeping. He hefted the tool, before jamming each of them lightly in the side with the flat blade of its head. "Alright, enough rest. We need to get this wall down, today." His voice was gruff with that tired, having barely slept sound. Like gravel raking across his throat as he spoke. He nudged them each again before he hefted the axe over his shoulder and quietly shuffled back to the wall. He would literally kill to be able to drink coffee right now. It wouldn't lose him a wink of sleep. He placed the pick into the rubble and with a mighty tug, sent a large rock wedged into the center of the pile he had been pulling apart rolling from beneath it, sending the entire thing crashing down with a clatter. If nudging them awake hadn't roused them, then the thunderous crash of the falling rock would, surely.

[Remington Rothfelder]

He looked down into the baby boy’s eyes – they were those same intense green pools as his own and his fathers. There were was a room in the Rothfelder mansion, a room filled from floor to ceiling with portraits of men with those same eyes, all children of the same bloodline, branches of the same tree. It was a trait they were careful to ensure went unspoiled by the perilous diceroll of genetics. There were even rumours that the earlier family had inbred to keep its signature traits. Nobody would have been surprised. Not in the land of ‘halleluja’, and whiskey, and long hot, humid days.

The baby looked up to him and bubbles rose from his mouth as he peered through the clear veil of water. There was a woman’s shrill scream and a fourteen year old Remington’s cheek suddenly stung. A flash of motion had his little brother ripped from the water by the same woman who had raised Remi – Agnes Fischer.

Later that evening, when he stood in front of his father, watching smoke billow upwards from the man’s pipe, he felt chastened. A little. The child was an abomination – the Bible said so, didn’t it? He wasn’t rightly sure, but it certainly sounded right. The man seated across from Remi was as inscrutable as a brick wall, and his mother was off again, on some vacation she hadn’t bothered to tell either of them about. When he finally spoke, his voice was deep and raspy. “You ain’t right in the head, boy. Some time on the ranch’ll get you straight.”

In retrospect, it really hadn’t.

. . .

He roused from his slumber to the sound of an axe crashing into the wall. He was up in an instant, fully alert, his hand having reached for his hammer so that he could heft it. He would have been mid-swing a half second later, but the time in the cave was beginning to have its own effects on him. His responses to certain things had dropped in efficiency. While still more rapid than a human’s, they posed something of a danger if the group came in contact, for example, with another fadebeast. Or something equally as troublesome in the dark.

A grunt was all he offered to Aksel in response to his command. He was more than happy to follow that particular order. “Whose turn is it to babysit the kid off in the corner?” he asked. Already, the kid was beginning to wake up, the sounds in the cave echoing and bringing him to life. He just knew that he’d done it plenty, and wasn’t about to get stuck with it again. So he waited until one of the two went to take care of the boy before turning to look at their progress. It was a little difficult to gauge because it wasn’t like they had lumber or anything like that to build a support structure. For all they knew, they were just chipping away at something that would only continue to feed rock and gravel, and dirt onto them until they were out of resources.

[Nishaa]

Sleeping on rubble hadn’t been Nishaa’s kind of bed – but hey, it did the job. Nishaa was able to fall asleep pretty quickly. Even the scent of the little kid on her lip couldn’t stir the woman as she slept. Though, how long she slept she didn’t know but she felt the child jolt awake in her lap – which woke her up. Nishaa was lazy, when she did sleep – liked to stay in bed late, put her alarms on snooze when they went off. The sound of the wall coming down then, fully jolted her awake. Aksel had been hammering at the wall, she was sure of it. She blinked at the man with her sleepy orbs, before looking to see Remington was also stirring awake. She yawned, lifting her arms above her head in a stretch. The bones cracked, and creaked until she was able to feel herself.

Shelifted the child off her lap and got herself up – dusting herself down before looking to the boys she headed over to the them, still stretching in various places. Remi asked who was going to be looking after the boy. No one spoke up. She could see they wanted her to do it, no one made any noise – or movement that indicated this as being truth but being in the cave had made her paranoid, and wary. She grunted.

• ”You boys are sexist. The woman has to look after the child. I’m more man that both of you put together.”

The necromancer was tired, and drained. Hungry. As she began to walk back to the child, she considered turning around and giving them both the middle finger, but decided against it she came up by the boy then gripping him by the shoulder gently she began to lead him away from the boys and towards that very small pool of water, that was wasn’t blocked off – she’d get the boy to get some water, as the boys used their vampire strength to get them out of this stupid place. She wearily checked her corners though, being sure there were no more fadebeasts lurking. She was sure there very might well be.