i am the priestess, color me black

[Delphi Renaud]

She was heaving, nails embedded in her victim's arms: lips, dripping with his blood and incisors recently implanted against his neck still vibrating from the intensity of how quickly she ripped out his soul. He had mere seconds before he was drained, and the mess she had made of her autumn coat had the artery bloodstain to prove her indelicacy. She dropped him, standing back, still breathing heavily as her arms fell to hang limply at her sides. Her sclera were black, but her eyes were dulled from her uncomplicated blue to a grey that met clouds before a storm. There was nothing inside of the stare she was giving.

She used to cry when she fed. It made her choke up, vomiting on the floor for hours after until she passed out with Atropo Wisteria still cooing its praise. She learned to tune out the voices, outside and inside, and count the cracks along the bottom of any wall closest to her. Sometimes she'd see a rat and it'd remind her of herself. Sometimes she'd see the blood and she'd start hacking up all over again. That didn't happen anymore. She didn't just tune out the voices -- she tuned out everything she felt. Out of body, out of mind. Clinically disassociating has qualifying upsides when you were forced into the role of a serial murderer lest you be sent to a void of nothingness outside of the cycle of reincarnation for the rest of eternity while your inner demons have one-last hurrah and take down everything you've ever cared about with you.

That's not to say it didn't still hurt. She just threw up beforehand now. It's called efficiency.

She stood in the office complex, shaking, slowly bringing her arms up to hold herself while the haze of lilacs still hung in the air around her. Her doll trailed loud circles through the maze of cubicles, giant claw-hands tearing up the corporate carpet with every step and throaty laughter intertwining with the sound of destruction. She'd wash later. Wiping the blood off on her arms would only make it worse. That was firsthand experience.

At least six or seven dead bodies lay strewn in the path the duo had taken, some far more mangled than the few that were draped carefully against their chairs or walls; those were Atropo Wiseria's primary victims, mutilated flesh as testament to Delphi not getting to them fast enough. It never played with food that was already dead. Another breath, trembling. The darkness had begun to leave her sclera but the muted expression remained. "You feel better now deerling, yes? Now that you've eaten, yes? Now that your flower has fed you, yes? Yes yes, deerling, they were all for you. It's been too long! It was too long! Too long!! You played too much, deerling! This is what happens! This is what had to be done!! Silly, negligent deerling!" It was hard to tell the difference between the admonishment and the excitement in its screams.

And it drew more to look over than the pang of Delphi's heavy heart.

[Rem]

Rem did not always get to harvest a crop. Sometimes it was due to poor planning on its part, a mortal life can sense danger and are often wise enough to avoid it if it isn't too much trouble. That is why it preferred homes. Few people lacked the means to simply pack up and go, and even further once the seeds effect limited their ability to work. But, plant one in a place whose inhabitants were not forced to remain and they would often flee. The seeds fed on life, but required their own fuel to survive and would eventually die.

Other times, a failure of harvest occurred because it was because it picked a location that was well watched. It attracted the attention of others. When it was particularly unlucky, the interlopers would be Shinigami. But in this modern age, it was increasingly others would be watchdogs. Mortals brought their own kind of trouble with them. Often they would destroy the seed. Sometimes, they thought to linger, they didn't touch the seed but waited for Rem's return. It never worked out the way they hoped.

Too much attention, or too little, either way the seed would flounder and die without proper care. So, when Rem picked a location with high density it was always careful. It studied for a long period of time, to make certain it would not draw the unlucky attention of those who might destroy it, to make certain it was important enough to the mortals that dwelt there that they would not be able to simply leave once things took a turn. When satisfied, when exhaustively satisfied it made its move. Several seeds throughout the city.

Its hunger was growing, this it had been aware of for some time now. It needed...more. Even well-tended seeds, which it had grown more and more capable of tending, were not enough. It planted more, but it hungered greater. It had threatened to preoccupy it. It drew it to taking risks, impatience tested it but it retained enough sense for this kind of thoughtfulness.

It felt a twinge, fortune and misfortune both during one such investigation. It did not encounter many of its own kind in Earth. Rem was a quiet sort, an observer. It sought its own hunting grounds, separate from others. It sought no quarrels with other Hollows, but as late the thought had crossed its mind. They were kin, but what did kin matter to a being like a Hollow?

All of this to say that as Rem pulled back the veil and stepped through to the killing floor that had once comprised the tender loam of one of its seedlings it was in no mood for whatever artless Hollow creature had murdered its way through what should have been a glowing and delightful harvest not far from the eve of its reaping.

In place, amidst the carnage, it did not see some simple Hollow beast. It saw a doll and a Hollow which pulled its strings.

"...This was not your feast to have," came its voice, a deep baritone filling the air. So flat and plain usually, now Rem's voice carried a harder edge. A mistake had been made, and a meal was owed.

[Delphi Renaud]

She didn't need to look up. She didn't want to look up. She heard the rumbling baritone, a presence so very familiar and sickening until the bile of black blood in her throat threatened to come up again. She choked it down, bent over an office table and gripped at its edges until they cracked under her pressure, her frustration, her anger, her horror. Her head was swimming. She couldn't handle decorum this soon after feeding. She hadn't had time to take a shower, do her hair, smile at herself in the mirror until her teeth might shatter. Atropo Wisteria was answering the declaration given with a maddening giggle, the sound ringing round & round in Delphi's head until she wanted to vomit just to get it out. "Deerling, look, deerling, a game, yes yes. It wants to play a game with us, deerling. You like those, yes? You like playing games. Do you want to play with him, sweet girl? My sweet, sweet girl. Do you want to play a game?"

The doll was chittering like a loon, half its face taken up by the madness of its grin. Blind eyes searched and scoured as if they could see again, landing on the contestant who had entered its ring. "Oooooh, I'll play. I play for my love. I can read you! Leave a message! I can taste you! Leave a bite!" It was sniffing at the air, whipping around behind tendrils of white hair, the tinge of purple on its stretched grey skin only burning in intensity until it was a violent plum. It hunched, tattered gown displaced, sprigs of inky blackness bursting out of its back to feel at the air in place of its other senses. The Vixen of Lyon did not watch: she heard and then she felt the tug at her heart, the seed of corruption integrated deeply within her circuitry. Just a marionette, holding the strings as if it could lead its puppetmaster. It flared darkly with desire and passion, a rage of Reiatsu boiling over in asynchronistic bursts from Atropo Wisteria's twitching shape.

"Sweet flower," Delphi croaked, her face hidden in a shadow dirtied by the blood that coated her features. She set her jaw, popping it with a grind of her teeth. She wished she had a piece of gum. All she could taste was copper and despondency. She managed to crane her head enough to look over at the two, her doll making jerky movements that left a wave of office supplies in its wake as it teetered around the edges of actually approaching the Hollow. The tension on her heart began again. A hand, caressing it, fingers that drummed and stroked along the edges of the slowly-beating organ. She didn't need that much inspiration to do what needed to be done. So she spoke. Her wrist flicked off the desk, arm thrown out. "Ne m'oublie pas, doux destin."

That was all Atropo Wisteria needed. Spindly, skittering legs alike to an insect's formed from feelers out of its back to snap onto the torn carpet and fling the doll at the other fighter. "I'll divine your fate! I will! I'll tell you it! Here! Now! I'll bring your fate to bare, itsy bitsy spiderling!"

[Rem]

Irritating nuisances. Disgusting twisted creature. Despicable being. Rem knew deep down that all labours were destined to come to nothingness but to see the agent of the very truth stand before it. Rem could not help but feel a despicable emotion rising up through it. Rem was prone to suffer such sensations in silence, but as late it that hunger drew it on and on. Now, as it was driven to toil harder and harder for the hated task of existing to know that something had by its own decision make it harder?

Rem seethed in a way it had not in many years. It could have brokered, it would have made a deal, but Rem knew that it wasn't going to happen. Not with this...thing at the helm of the situation.

Its eyes gazed between the two and felt a twinge of pity cut between the frustration and anger. Curious...

A mortal who should have died a long time ago.

A sudden pang of hunger tore through it replacing all other feelings. Hollow. Delightful. Strange. What a unique flavour it would be to devour something like this. To tear apart something so one of a kind, a partnership. To steal something beautiful from the world.

"Hah..."

Rem remained outwardly still. Passive. It's body tensed just so, the carpet beneath its feet, still soaked with mortal blood tore just so with the weight of its body pressed firmly against it. The puppet master launched forth towards Rem, leaving its puppet behind and Rem reacted in a sudden burst of movement. Like the uncoiling of a spring Rem lunged forward across the bloody office tearing up the floor underneath it as it lashed out with its massive fist.

"I know the fate of all things, creature."

If its meal was denied, then it would simply take the new one that had presented itself.

[Delphi Renaud]

There was a tension displaced from Delphi's shoulders as her doll's feet left the bloodied floor, meeting their opponent as a blur. With the Incarnation released those viscous, sludge-like tendrils of darkness that often enclosed around the haphazard beating of her heart were inattentive, focused elsewhere. She had released the shackles born from the dimly lit pile of ashes that comprised all that remained of her original soul, loosing a monster who thought only to eat another. It felt good. It felt freeing. And yet, she knew she would have to take it back in soon. She was no warden; she was just the jail. The evil she held inside of her comprised every other bit of power she could muster. This was all she could do: close a door to be opened when the inmate starts banging at it, hold it tight and cry as you feel the hinges slip. Open the cage again when the beast is full and house it in its pool of bile. Repeat for twenty years. Repeat for eternity more.

She watched them out of the corner of her eye. It was the most she could do, tracking the hazy edges of their shapes and tracing her fingers across cracking plaster. She split her attention back to the cubicle when vertigo started to overtake her. A pang of rust on her tongue. She didn't care who won, but Atropo Wisteria would never lose. If it did, Delphi couldn't help but muse, she wouldn't be there to see it. The doll would eat up everything that remained of her before the last vestiges of its own strength wore out. Ever the spiteful creature. There wasn't love here to lose, nothing lost for nothing that was gained. It only needed her for her body. It only needed her because she's all it has. It only needed her because nobody else could have her. Nothing else could touch her. She was it. It was her. The two paces she could step away were closed in an instant of a single claw around her throat, and her mental image croaked.

She held onto the wall. A shriek signaled the doll rebuffed from its target, slamming in a tremoring shape at the foot of chairs that were sent flying in other directions. They swiveled and turned and rolled, the addled Bount mesmerized by the movements. Every swirl was a refraction of light, swimming in her eyes, taking her away from where she was. She could follow it. Every trail, every spin. A windwheel with edges that glowed when spun, a kid on the fairground at night, everything else fading away.

"Nothing! You know nothing! I know all! I can see! I can taste! I can feel you, spiderling, I can hear you I can hear you I can hear you--" And it screamed again, shoving up from its disjointed sprawl on the ground to dash in confrontation once more. A pink haze was pouring from the off-violet of its skin, a dangerous, creeping mist of delusion. It'll just eat you too, monster. If it didn't, it'd take away everything that makes you, you, anyway. Why even struggle? You lost the moment you challenged fate. "I'll take you! I'll take you, I will, I'll take you, and take you, and take you, away, apart, into me. This I divined! I divined it! Watch! Look! See! You will be... disgusting!"

Delphi saw red hair behind her closed eyes and hunched over, a hand covering her face and moving into dirtied pink, tearlessly and soundlessly grieving.

[Rem]

Rem shook its hand free of detritus as it sent the twisted Hollowed thing spiralling into the office. It let out a low growl, fury buzzing away in its skull as it contemplated its list of possible actions. It took a few steps forward and turned its gaze between the pair and contemplated its feast. Inexorably linked, that's what it felt here and now. But one was empty, a vessel capable of much but utterly empty and unlikely to ever be filled. It was the creature beside it that would make the feast. Yet, it had thus far proven itself as capable.

Potent Rem's rebuke might have been, but it did little to push them towards their end, and with little else in the arsenal perhaps it would have to settle for the empty vessel which presented a much more delicate frame.

It made it a few steps before the maddening creening voice echoed once more in its skull. Rem grimaced, turning its gaze from the girl to the twisted thing once more. It felt a taste of madness on the edge of its mind, a warped and twisted thing. A quiet voice begged and from its lips the sound escape.

"Take it, take everything, I'd let you, if I could."

But that was but a voice. All it could do was make a sound. The beast reacted to the threat as the beast would. Its opponent made itself into a ballistic missile and launched towards him Rem wrapped itself in its arms and bore the impact well. Together they slid backwards, bones creaking under the force, and slammed through a false wall, through expensive equipment that might have once been sold in auction now that all its present users had been turned to carrion.

"Hideous half-thing, you would dare to waste any of this precious time of mine? Priceless moments of this endless oblivion?"

A hiss of electricity and shattered electronics sounded and then Rem bellowed fury and hungry. It lashed out, forcing the creature off of it then lunged forth, trying to seize it and hammer it against the ground beneath them as well as it could.

"Squandered! Wasting! Hated thing! I will grind you down to nothing! You and your worthless doll!"

It felt a rage building in this scent of madness that filled the air. It had not known hate in this life but it felt it writhing within now.

[Delphi Renaud]

Delphi caught the vision of the beast upon her and felt nothing. It had been some time since a monster was chilling to her. The only thing that could stand her hair on end was a whisper, and this context was a maddeningly shallow grave she was content to lie in. Atropo Wisteria was otherwise preoccupied trying to cognize the nearing fate of its opponent, leaving Delphi to stare boldly back into the glowing hexed eyes of that which they shared this massacre with. Un-phased and empty, a hand moved into her hair before tossing it back, leaving that for its last taste before her doll crashed in their resulting chaos.

Vix had stifled the smoldering nature of her Reiatsu until it was nearly gone, a strain around her lungs signaling her masking from the senses of the animals that yowled and crashed around her. She sucked it in, inhaled the vestiges of her spirit's breeze, and kept the victimized air within her throat while she turned around a corner. Her presence seemed to blink out within that moment, the other side of the wall following Delphi's trace of thin, bloodied fingers across the plaster. She left little drops of their spoils in the divots, painting a macabre picture without a look spared to her creation. She couldn't leave without returning her doux destin to its home inside the rotten cavity of her chest: but she could excise herself from its play before she had to find the strength to join in. She wasn't built for fighting; but disappearing? That was an acquired skill and she was the best in the business.

She could hear their screams until she couldn't make out the words anymore, curling into a dark corner a few doors down and controlling her breathing to keep up a facade, even just for herself. She was fine. She was always fine. There was nothing to worry about. The night always ended. Morning always came. It would always be okay. There was always a new game. Faces always blurred by. Colors always ran. She was always back here, dirty, decaying. She always found her arms around her knees. She always hugged them to her chest. She was always staring forward. She was always this spoiled flavor of licorice, sharp and bitter and sickening.

"Hideous!? I am my deerling's flower, and I am -" a guttural shriek, thrashing on the floor it was brought to by the arms upon it. Atropo Wisteria screamed and screamed, tossing its neck, grainy white hair spazzing across the space its head connected with the denting floor. It put up its fair fight; giant claws and sharp teeth, smashing and tearing and ripping at its fellow creature. Sightless eyes bore into it and into nothing at all, looking desynced around the room. "Beautiful! Beautiful! You are ugly, disgusting, virtueless--your fate is bleak! It is nothing! You are nothing, you are hideous, hideous, the hideous one! Ugly, ugly spiderling!" Its vibrant, violent mist spilled and billowed out from its pores, agitated by the spider-like appendages in their death throes under its battered back. "I can make you beautiful! I will make you beautiful! I have divined this! I can see it! I can taste it! I can taste you! I can taste you taste you taste you taste taste taste--"

Its tongue was long and thick, grey and lurching out of its spiny maw while their skittering limbs clamped around the roaring Hollow. The tongue snaked to lap along the creature's chest, up its collar, its neck, stopping to zip back into its mouth before it could reach the hungry teeth at the other's. It cackled, wildly. "Delicious, delicious, beautiful - you can be made beautiful! Let me! Let me taste you! More! I can serve you up. I can cut you down. I can cut you UP, feed you to Deerling, yesss, no no no, Deerling can't eat, but I can! I can savor! For her! I will indulge, enjoy, indulge, SATISFY. FOR BOTH."

A bite into its arms. Delphi couldn't bother to cover her ears from their cries. She felt the emotions of the burden she shared rasping around her heart, knowing no amount of shielding herself would do anything for the diabolic hunger it was feeding into. This wasn't her, it was, it wasn't, it was. She loves me, she loves me not. A rattling breath. A look over to the walls that separated her. Anywhere but here, she thought. If she focused hard enough, believed, she could be anywhere but here. It wasn't that hard to slip outside of her body. To look down on herself. To float away.

She should have brought alcohol.

[Rem]

The new sensation grew with every breath as it grappled with the twisted insectoid crustacean wraith. It urged. It raged. It lusted. It hungered. The void wanted all. Rem had no real words to put to the feeling. It was familiar with them, in a detached way it had seen it in others. It had felt frustration at seeing worked and labour wasted. It knew longing, as it sought its end. But all of these were subdued and quiet. These emotions were chaos and they grew with each passing second tracked by the maddening tick of some clock which did not seem to recognize that all the mortals it used to serve had expired.

Rem let out another roar, glad to have cut the noisy thing's words short, finding success in slamming it against the ground. Rem howled as it was clawed, as its teeth tore strips of flesh from its arm casting a pool of blood over the pair. It delighted in the sensation, it delighted in the pain. It could recognize the joy for what it was at last, a joy at tasting an end, and then the anger that swept in at knowing it wouldn't find it in the here and now.

"SHUT UP!" Rem bellowed. Grappling with its twisted claws and hesitated a moment in complete uncertainty as the tongue of the creature snaked its away along its body, along the shape of a form that it hadn't recognized in many years as its own, along its collar, to its neck.

Alone. Like this. Alone forever. Was there someone I used to call mine? Was there a light in the darkness that I used to ward away the certainty of the end of my own imagined existence? I think I remember them, but not a name, or face, a sensation though...

I lost them so long before the end. I didn't die beside them. They died before me. Miles away. I wanted to pretend I thought of them at the end but, I just wanted it to be over...

Rem pulled itself away, howling as it seized a limb. "Cease! Your prattle! Cease your ravings! You twisted little mad creature! You seek me for your empty vessel? Are you unaware of their contempt! Of their hatred for you, mad little thing! You think a gift of me will please them? They hate you! They will always hate you! It's the only thing they possess the ability to do! Unloved! Unwanted!"

Rem pivoted, seizing its grip on whatever it could and hurling it as far away from it as it possibly could. "Begone!" it roared its determined command. But already it found itself drawn towards, stalking forward autonomously.

[Delphi Renaud]

Every scream and wicked cry and act of frustration drawn from the beast that battered its sickly orchid form into the ground sputtered successive delirious laughter. The noises Atropo Wisteria made bordered between shrieks and giggles, a maddening cacophony of delirious evil. A mist, roiling and spiking with violet streaks within purple-pink fog, collected around their tangled shapes and clung to them like a liquid. It seeped and leaked from every limb, pooling in mouths as a tasteless ghost-like sensation that something should be there but there never was, there never will be. That thick grey tongue flailed and lashed through the air, disconnected from any purpose outside of pure sensory overload. "You see! You see? Do you see, spiderling, do you see taste smell touch hear?"

Every unclaimed trinket of a memory in the hoard of Rem's thoughts that bubbled to the surface were there for the tasting of the raving doll, spiderlike legs scrabbling across the other's back and arms as if trying for a hold. A claw seized around its side, pinched in, met a combination of tugging and pushing that left the flesh underneath wartorn. Feet kicked, shoved, stamping into the chest and upper-legs of the aggressor. "You can! I can! I can see, spiderling. I divined your future. I know what you are. I know what you were! I know what you will be! How pathetic! Ugly! Disgusting! Alone! This flower is never alone, no no, Deerling needs her flower, Deerling has ME. AND I AM ALL SHE NEEDS, AS NEITHER WILL EVER BE ALONE, WE SHALL INTERSECT, INTERACT, INTERVENE AND EMBRACE --" It screamed with rows of pointed teeth in the mask that met it, no pupils in the gaze that bore down. Its skin was stretched taut, incredibly thin, over the boney structure of something that once was yet never had been a woman.

Its Reiatsu was uncontrolled and unmanageable, unfocused explosions that ringed and then expanded from the two. "Wrong, wrong, wrong!" It continued as it was hoisted, ragdolling in the air and turning its head until it looked like it might snap off its neck while mid-throw. "Deerling doesn't know better! Deerling can't help herself, but I can, I can help, I can save I can feed I can feed I can feed--" It had reached the apex of the toss that was about to dislodge it from the Hollow, still howling. "Deerling loves her flower, she has to, she has to, I'm all Deerling has, I'm all she'll ever have, ever ever EVER no one else can have her because she's mine so she loves me, she can only loVE ME, SHE'LL ONLY EVER LOVE --"

And then it was gone, hurtling through the room and breaking down wall after wall that its body collided with. Its back hit one and it stuck, cratered, staring back at the other with a raving grin. "I'll never let her go. She'll always love me. Not like you. Not like you! You, with no one to love! No one who loves you! No future to love, of love, with love, our love -

- but me, me, me, I, my deerling's flower, my deerling's love, my deerling's only - I'll never let her go!"

"You will be proof of my love."

It ripped itself off the wall for a haphazard, twisted half-step of a jump that flung itself like a puppet back at the Hollow, one claw extended dripping with a viscous, bubbling source of the mist that seemed to pull at and apart at the Hollow's resurfacing memories the closer it came. It was going to eat it. It was going to take everything it had, leave it empty, then tear at the husk like carrion. It would bring Delphi back an arm. A leg. A horn. Something to show that it won for her. That it provided for her. That she didn't need anything else. She'd never have anything else. Just her flower. Just this sweet fate.

[Rem]

Rem howled as the creature dug in, lashed out, striking wildly, battering the creature but it held fast. They would feel something growing and became dimly aware of the soporific and maddening scent in the air at once. The world came into focus around them, albeit through a dim and growing haze. It could feel those claws worming their way inside it, beyond its flesh and into something more ephemeral.

There was always Rem, it knew that it exists as the entity before it as Hollow, and persisted into the now. Rem was the whole.

Then there was the Beast, and it knew that it existed when it became Hollow, and for moments before while it grew as an embryo in Rem's heart.

The Beast forced Rem to persist, forced it to have a continued existence. When it howled, when it fought back, when it struggled, when it hunted, that was the Beast. It drove it to eat, its hunger ever grew, its capacity for violence grew even greater.

Rem existed before the Beast, it knew there was a life it had lived before it knew the Beast. Rem was aware, in some dim way, of some parts of that life remained. The memories were buried, forgotten. They had been allowed to slowly rot away as time marched ever onward. That was the only oblivion Rem had been allowed by the beast, oblivion of the past and so Rem had allowed that part of its self to atrophy. By now it had forgotten those parts even existed aside from reasoned ruminations that there must have been a self before the Hollow. It knew there must have been something before, but the shape was lost.

Now, like a lightning bolt through Rem's spine, it became aware of that shape once more, and the same twisted creature that made Rem aware promised oblivion. She could just take them, no slow erosion but a sudden and instantaneous erasure. An oblivion the Beast would not oppose.

So could it surrender? The price of a meal was worth the erasure of those unwanted, forgotten, twisted elements of an abandoned past. To be free of it all at last.

And yet.

Rem howled. Hurled the creature away, through wall after wall. Rem lurched forward in agony, its entire body seeming to ripple and pull away as its muscles fought against itself in a haze of uncertainty.

Why? Do not fight this.

The creature was barely phased by its violent egress through several of the interior walls, she was already bounding back towards Rem who hunched over and sat still. Rem had quieted whatever part of itself resisted. There was no need to fight this, Rem thought, the Beast does not oppose. It could finally be free. It offered those memories up freely as she approach-

these are mine

A mote of black energy with an eerie red corona formed in the middle point of its row of seemingly painted white teeth. It surged briefly, then collapsed, imploding in on itself before expanding suddenly outward into a chaotic red field that was the size of Rem's head. There was a hiss like the rushing of air that heralded the sound of the collapse a moment earlier.

you can't have them

And then, as Rem fought to stop it, its maw opened up revealing the black pit that lingered behind its mask and the floating chaotic mass of red energy vanished. From that nothingness echoed out a wave of a destructive energy. It surged forth, a tidal wave that devoured the atmosphere in its wake leaving the oozing scent of ozone behind, it rushed towards the creature, seeking to devour her and out, through the remaining walls, through the bodies and through the wall out into the city behind it.

[Delphi Renaud]

Atropo Wisteria could not die. Not of its own accord -- not without Delphi, as Atropo Wisteria could not exist without her as much as Delphi was no longer allowed to exist without it. The body was just a body, a form just a form, but the heart would always live on in place of Delphi’s own. This is what it meant to be a Bount. To be nothing but a shape, a mass, the doll and Bount both: the true nature of either an acrid tumor taped over the ruins of a soul. Delphi could not die as long as Atropo Wisteria wished to survive, and Atropo Wisteria could not die without taking Delphi with it. This was the circular, insidious existence they held.

As two unequal parts of a whole both could tell when either form was to meet its end. A bright red had taken over the space the doll had occupied mid-air, and at the peak of its raving was its voice cut short to a single pallid scream. Delphi did not hear but feel this, that incessant tugging returning to pull apart the strings of her heart and threaten to eclipse her in darkened strands. They were bloodied, choking her out of air as surely as her arms constricted around her knees. A vile taste built on her tongue and came pouring from her lips in a rivulet of blood, a cough snorting her from her misery and sending her forward over the floor.

Her hand curled into the carpet, shaking, excavating dust and fibers -- and this mirrored the twitching shape of the insect the length of the building away and its claw, raking weakly across dirtied patches. The dust couldn’t settle. It was stirred with every gasping movement the doll made, steaming from the heat of oxidation left by the beast’s rebuttal attack. One claw had been transplanted across the room under burning stonework, leaving only the one still attached to lift and fall, lift and fall. A body was just a body but pain remained pain. It choked and hissed, reduced not to tears but the horrified yowling of a trapped animal. In going to lift more than its remaining arm it was led to realize a leg had also betrayed it, the entire chunk of its right side cauterized clean off this form.

It did not bleed. The wounds it wore dripped with the same viscous liquid base of the perfumic mist it bubbled into. This lavender haze seemed to take the shape of what Atropo Wisteria lost at its side, though these approximations of ghostly limbs couldn’t solidify; fizzling, parting, and drifting out through the hole made in the building behind it like the rest of the smoke and flames. The sky had been alight with the beast’s Cero, a single blinding ray that would have whitened the doll’s eyes if it wasn’t already staring with nothing in them. Still, it searched. Desperate and wanting, in pieces, it glanced around as if it could see. The feelers it employed no longer twitched at its back, the remaining creature nothing more than a demon’s withered corpse and gnashing teeth loosing plaintive wails.

This was Delphi’s entrance, with Atropo Wisteria calling upon her vessel for the power it could only know to take, and take, and take. Delphi knew better. Atropo Wisteria had been outmatched -- if she allowed the doll to feed on what she had left and return to the fight, who was to say it would make a difference? Delphi valued her life almost nothing. She didn’t care if she lived. She cared, however, that allowing herself to die wouldn’t be as blissful and freeing as it sounded. The doll would keep going. It would puppet her corpse. Her identity - the vestiges of what made Delphi, Delphi - that was all she had left. It would be profanely desecrated if the two were to actually meet their end. She would always know when to give up. She would always give up. The monster in charge, however? It would never stop, until the very concept of Delphi Renaud, the Vixen of Lyon, ceased to have ever existed. Burnt up at the pyre.

Don’t forget me, okay? That’s a promise, okay?

Delphi returned on the record while dropping her Willful Manifestation, the spark of her presence reigniting behind the beast that was so unfamiliar yet so familiar to the nature of her soul. Her hand, small and lithe, placed at its large back -- and she whispered, her canines sharp and protruding from her bloodied lips.

She could not feed on the Hollow. Her twinned and defiled soul would meet the new agent and the aspects it was made of would find it an enemy and self-destruct, combusting on the spot. She couldn’t eat it, no, but she could take it into her mouth and spit it out -- hadn’t she practiced enough for this day? Chagrin, grim and tired. She breathed in - the beast’s Reiatsu redirected to flow into her open-fanged maw - sapping the other’s strength along with it and ideally keeping it paralyzed long enough for her the next play. She could note - perhaps fairly - that the attack it had made must have used much of its energy, and if she could take just a small advantage from this opening, then …

“Leave, or I take it all.” Her voice was so very thin.

[Rem]

It inhaled hot ozone and exhaled the same, seething as steam drifted between its clenched teeth. Its entire body rippled as it remained in place, raging against itself as it hungered, as it raged, as it wondered.

That power had been unknown to it before today, but within itself, something possessed the ability to perform it and surrendered the knowledge. Rem knew in an instinctual way that that was Cero. It might not have really known much else but the name was there on the edge of its consciousness to be plucked. What part of knew how to do it, though? What was within it to grant it that knowledge?

Whatever had stepped forward in that moment was gone, consumed? Rem wondered, but at the very least no longer offering its present leaving only itself and the Beast.

When had it begun to understand that divide? The Beast and Itself. Was that new?

In the echoes of the blast the air began to clear and Rem's mind went with it. That was okay. It was still reeling, whatever it had within it to utilize the Cero had depleted it in other ways, it was weary in a new way. And that fatigue had dulled a desire to eat in an equally strange way.

In the moments that passed slowly while it regained its breath, its wits, and reflected the little doll had chanced to sneak upon it. Rem could feel an icy chill down its spine. It twitched briefly and frozen, still as a statue. Rem had, of course, underestimated her. At first glance, she was a nothing. A husked marionette, dragged along by her owner. In the din of madness it was easy enough to forget she even existed. Yet again, Rem appreciated the surprise of these 'humans'. They had such potential under the right circumstances. Rem enjoyed the sensation of seeing their potential, and how artful they could be guided along towards it.

"Ah," Rem spoke evenly. The deep baritone rumbled forth in a quiet way. "I did not presume you to possess such initiative." It seemed amused.

Rem began to rumble just so, craning its neck to regard her, the most it felt it could do, marshalling its strength in case it needed to do more. "Fragile thing. Curious thing. I suppose I commit the same sin as your owner to overlook your true value," it spoke a bit distantly and trailed off at the end.

Mmm, what was this feeling? Perhaps something in the air that lingered yet filled it with such a strange sensation.

It had use for them, these broken things. But not as they were. Perhaps with the right approach and a steady hand, it could create something worthier? Not really Rem's call in this moment, but it felt like it could be graceful in defeat. Could it overcome her? Like this, perhaps not. But then, it had no reason to display the weakness it felt.

Rem's maw widened just so as it spoke. "I wonder if you know the method to overcome your master? Such a thing could be done. Surely, affection for it wouldn't hold you back?" It let that thought linger, and Rem wondered if it had ever thought it possible. It soon continued.

"I'll depart. I've gotten more than I wished from this meal. Release me, and I'll depart in peace. Before any others arrive."

[Delphi Renaud]

A hand splayed steady fingers across the beast’s warm back, her chilled expression reflected in the touch, seeming to consider a thought while she listened to it speak. To tremble here would be to have fear - and Delphi had nothing to be afraid of. What was it going to do? Turn and crush her? She wasn’t such a simpering waif to be cowed by dimwitted predators with big arms and growled threats. It, like all else, was nothing more than a burden. Emotional labor. Playing at what she was, committing these atrocities, placating her monster: they were all one thing, drawing at a muddied well of inner strength she already had to pull from just to remain on her feet. Facing this beast? It didn’t qualify. It couldn’t scare her - the terrors she lived through dwarfed the concept of bodily harm.

Simply, she had little in the way of fighting it on her own - even if she wanted to, even if Atropo Wisteria didn’t demand the spotlight - and the opportunity created at this moment was a weary necessity. There was never a dance here. This was a job, and she wanted to clock out. Finality. How she wished to hole away and wait for it to be done. How she ached for the idea of being done. How exhausted she was of dirtying her own hands for other’s ploys and other’s wants and other’s needs -- to have to climb out of the darkness she curled into just to sate a raving demon or bite back the big bad wolf. She wasn’t lost on this forest path; she had nowhere to go. Eat someone else’s grandma.

“It’s your fault I had to get up at all.” She chastised, the edges of humor threatening her tone like a forgotten sugared coating. It didn’t make it before melting away, taking the sour along with the sweet -- she couldn’t work up the venom while meeting its eyes with her impassive stare. Dull steel stood weathered but unbroken in the confines of a rigid blue. “Don’t worry about it. We all judge books by their covers. Personally, bête, I quite like to. I tend to know what I like when I see it. People do the same with me. It works.” She shrugged her shoulders as if she cared that she didn’t care, the performative hand against its back pulling away until only the tips of her fingers remained. They were gentle, thoughtful. Not for it. “You were just wrong this time.”

Her head slowly tilted, watching. She wasn’t examining out of interest or to try and get a read of it - sure she would find nothing surprising in its heart - but to watch. Wait. A demonstration of will & power like Delphi could meet the other on equal ground. If anything, she allowed herself, she had. With all her wits about her she still stood here, not attacking nor running away. That had to account for something.

Disgust flared within her gaze, tarnishing it, ruddying her irreproachability with its filth. She wanted to deny feelings for the doll. To cast aside her warden and stomp out its chains. Spit on it. Proclamate her hatred, overwhelming and overburdening, and for once meet that horrid madness with her own. So long she had swallowed it down and taken her lashes, but what if she could use this chance to stand up? She was already off the floor, wasn’t that the first step?

This, however, did fill her with that familiar fear. It petrified all thoughts of revolution, subduing the insane notion she had been having in the moment that this was her somehow reclaiming her agency. No, it wasn’t. She had already lost her life, her heart & her dreams torn away, and spent so much time pinned beneath its weight and suffocated. How much more could it hurt her if it knew? How much more could she lose if it wanted her to lose more?

“That’s enough. Find another tree to bark up. You’ll find nothing for you here.” She managed a measured response despite the sudden quavering in her heart, and with that uneven beat she loosened breaths of the beast’s spiritual energy back into it. Slowly. Unafraid, maybe, but not stupid. A step back, and another, and she raised the hand she dropped from its back. A twist of her wrist. “Rentre à la maison, doux destin.” Come home. There's nowhere else for us to go.

The distant shrieking died to nothing, a rush of that sickly sweet scent heralding the thinning fog that rushed to Delphi’s arm and condensed at her palm. Five petals, the amethyst’s color muted and the edges of the charm blunted. She affixed it to her ear with eyes remaining on the other still, the idea at the front of her head that she could call Atropo Wisteria again should this take a sudden turn -- and this idea she dismissed, somehow knowing better of the creature that stared back. There was a kinship to their disinterest. She nodded to it. “Run along, then, bête. I hope we never see you again.” She had no well-wishes for the Hollow, but there was more on the tip of her tongue she couldn't place or express. It was if there was more to say. A conversation unfinished.

She ignored this.

[Rem]

The moment she spoke Rem knew was sure it was safe. There existed the possibility to lash out, perhaps? What could it hope to gain if it decided to? The possibility of food today had been dwarfed. It was hungry, sure but the gnawing hunger seemed further away than it had almost any point prior. That and, was it sure it could take her? Unassuming package, she might have looked empty but she'd proven she had fangs when she needed to.

Rem considered apologizing, grinning wider as she chastised him, an ominous display of teeth to follow. It watched her for opposite reasons, it was interested, it did want to get a read of her. It might have given up the idea of continuing the fight, but Rem's potential for violence could not be disguised. She knew what it meant to lower her guard, and it was probably true that Rem would not have been able to hold itself back if she hadn't been so mindful.

Its message had the desired impact. Rem never knew what words would work, but it became more and more obvious that the words did not come from Itself, and they certainly didn't come from the Beast. Empathy was forgotten to the Hollow, and yet the ability remained. Shots in the dark they might have been, but they landed more often than they missed. Why? It wondered. What lingered inside? What other abilities did it possess?

"Of course," it replied casually as if it expected to be rebuffed. Rem made no sudden move as it was released it remained still as if the bind remained until she completed her movement and steadied her gaze. Then it rose up slowly and turned, to as full its height as it could, just before its head would press against the ceiling. Slightly hunched like that it watched her for a moment longer, and extended its long limb, a clenched fist which opened to reveal something the size of her fingernail. A thin black seed.

Rem's hand tilted, dropping the seed to the ground where it remained, easily forgotten. "A token for sparing me. It will wither in time if you leave it behind, as you wish, or take it with you. Should you find suitable loam, should it take root and eventually bloom, I will return to it in time." Rem kept an eye on all of its potential harvests.

Perhaps her spoken hope was dishonest? Perhaps it had taken root? Either way, it could do no more here and now. It reached forth to the space between them and gripped the curtain between their respective worlds. "Farewell then, Enigma."

It pulled the curtain back, an exhausting effort it did its best to make look effortless, and passed between the void and vanished as the curtain closed behind it.

[Delphi Renaud]

She watched its offering with an expression bordering the space between weariness and boredom, though never quite leaning enough towards the latter for her to emulate disinterest. It was difficult to keep a grasp on herself - on her surroundings, this beast - as the seconds ticked by, and as the silence in her head settled around her quieted doll she could feel the tension building at her neck. It was so rare and treasured to be graced with these moments of nothing in her thoughts but herself. It wouldn’t last for long -- the lower limits of her soul were already being drawn into that hungry void to refuel from the carnage.

A breath. Wholly her own, for now. “Oh, am I to take up gardening, bête? Really, I’m touched, but I’m such a busy woman, you know -- it’s hard being this popular.” The bitter-coated saccharine was a reflex she couldn’t catch before it left her lips, bitten down to bloody streaks, and it was voiced wrong. It sounded wrong. Dull and off-tempo, like she was reciting a script, even to herself. She clenched and released her fist, dropping gracefully to a leaning position over the offering and examining it a moment longer. She wanted to make another comment, muse how it might look if her touch caused it to bloom, but the words died in her throat before they, too, could escape. That was enough, Delphi. That was enough.

She didn’t even lift up her head to see it off, just staring down at that trivial black seed and finding herself with an oddly identifying perspective. The difference, she surmised, was that she had already withered and died out. This wretched little thing still had hope of turning into something beautiful. It was a dark thought, really, and one that twisted and sighed through her head as if tempting her. Who's to say if it won out? If that’s the reason she took it between two unmanicured nails, rolled it over a knuckle and then pocketed it away? It didn’t feel right leaving it discarded.

When raising herself back up she managed to confirm that she was now alone, truly alone, and the thought first came detached and impersonal… an outsider looking in at the candy-coded girl and her trembling arms. It then came down at once. It brought her with it, hitting the floor, fists so tight they bled white.

She slammed them down once more. Again. She flung out and sent a chair screeching across the aisle, hitting a desk with a thud and teetering to a fall. The sound of its crash harmonized with her screams; tossing, throwing, punching, clawing; she couldn’t see through tears, warm and salty forcing her eyes to shut during her rampage. She couldn’t feel better. She couldn’t calm down. The destruction didn’t help, but her body ached for an outlet and she couldn’t think of anything else to do. She couldn’t stand still, she could only hit something, and then hit it again, and then find something else to hit when that stopped pretending like it was satisfying.

The moment wouldn’t end. She wore this iniquity for hours into the dead of night. When she stopped, it was not out of catharsis or release. Her body simply quit, and she left. Dragging herself through the motions. Taking each step while the world bled together with her, and the conceptualization of thought deadened to a drone.