Whispers In The Dark [ Invite Only ]

[The Sadist]

How long had it been since she had physically occupied her room? Far too long, she was actualy shocked to find it still available to her, but then again a courier always paid her tab and left her check at time as an open end deal. Standing in front of her window depths of liquid steel watched the slow sway of the trees. In less than a weeks time the world as she knew it came crashing down and now the immortal daughter was in the process of rebuilding it. Seems that was the only constant in her life, her rebuilding it. Sometimes her demise was at her own hand, other times she had help. Slender arms reached aover her head to pull the stiffness from her body, a body that had taken a beating unlike ever before, and the beating ventured into the emotional as well thanks to him.

Why after all this time had he decided to come back, to hunt her down when the years had passed without as much as a peep from him. Granted it was a two way street, but the Sadist had her pride, and it wouldn't permit her to go chasing him down like a faithful puppy. That was something her mind just couldn't fathom, so she had assumed that when he was on his death bed he would send for her. However, that was not the case at all. What came to pass was something not even Malice would have ever seen coming, at least not from him of all people. He had always been her closet friend, the one person she cold always trust and the one person she always looked over when it came to affairs of the heart.

Memories had a way of taking hold of ones self and not letting go. With a slight shake of her head that send duel color strands floating around her the memories were vanquished. That was the past, and it would remain there. Exhausted he had fallen asleep holding her against his chest and Malice was content to listen to the steady rhythm of his breathing....at least for a little while. She needed to think, to put her ducks into a neat row, to make sense of the chaos and sort what her next move would be but when she returned to her room, he was gone...and had been for hours. Perhaps confession wasnt as good for the soul as people were lead to believe. Either way, it was time she faced him, no longer would she avoid him and she'd have the answers he skirted around last night.

Booted feet spun quickly as the shadows crackled around her. With feline grace Malice was out the door, down the steps and now stepped onto the soft grassy path that lead to the woods. That scale embedded in her flesh seemed to burn the closer she came to him. The irony was not lost on her, and trademark smirk came to hold fast to velveteen softness. Her own personal homing beacon to the tormenter of her flesh. Sparse trees gave way to thick underbrush and a thick canopy of green. No sounds could be heard, not even the melodic song of a bird. Nothing...but she was use to that. It wasn't until she heard the rumbling of water she knew where to find him...he always did love waterfalls.

He now stood with his back to her, looking out over the water as if he was mesmerized by it. She didn't need to announce her arrival because if the truth be known, he knew she was on her way. That had always been their connection, her brand in his flesh always let him know where she was and now the scale and brand in her own porcelian skin no doubt had the same effect. Stopping a few steps behind him, slender arms came to fold across her stomach. "Penny for your thoughts Khell."Mantilla of ebon slowly lowered over depths of liquid steel as the shadows settled in around their mistress.

[Rodry Pol]

Long enough that her scent had been so faint that he hadn't picked it up in the Tel'Ranaemyn Inn when his children had sent him here. Hadn't realized her presence until that fateful day that he had been looking through the check in book. That name assigned to one of the suites had rocked him to his very core. So many years gone, so many memories which had come flooding in as if it had been yesterday rather than five years since the leather-clad Sadist and he had last seen each other. Five years lost. Five years too long. It had been with that thought and the idea of revenge filling his mind more completely than anything else that he had scrawled that note into her door.

Pride may have kept her away, yet it had been a combination of things for her closest confidante. Pride, pain and above all else fear. Malice may not have wanted to run to him like a faithful puppy, though perhaps that was merely because of the fact that it had been Khell's role for so very long. Not once had Malice ever been forced to seek him out, Khell had never been far from her side, had never let the Sadist face her greatest enemy, herself, without her dragon at her side. Without Khell's protective yet enabling force at her back.

Time had changed her old friend, had left him broken, merely a shell of his former grandeur. Merely a wraith of the honorable, moral man he had once been. Malice had hurt him terribly, had forever scarred him in a way that no other had. Malice had destroyed his health, had left him in this broken and sickened body. Even if her own admission revealed that she had never meant for such a thing to happen, it had. While her mark had only been meant to weaken him the greater the distance apart they grew, the longer they were separated, the fact that Khell was a being whose lifeforce was magic itself had left that link sucking the life from him as eagerly as Malice had lapped at his veins.

It had been because of all this that he had set out to make things right. To end his own torment. The solution had been simple in his mind.

Malice would die, so that he could live.

Yet, despite his original conviction, Khell's will had failed him. That indomitable spirit had wavered, his refusal to simply lop off her head, to chop The Sadist into tiny pieces and consuming her as she had consumed his power for so long ... had petered out. Like a great blaze, that murderous rage had burned, consuming all before it. Logic, reason, even Khell's once strong faith.

Despite all it's fuel, the blaze wasn't hot enough to destroy the past, to leave him so cold as to be able to kill Malice. Funny how he had thought he had been dead enough inside to truly believe that he could murder her.

The thundering falls were a steady and soothing noise. Where he stood on one of the large rocks that edged the pool, he was able to let the chill mist linger about his legs. Able to stand on the precipice and feel the algae slicked rock beneath his booted feet, treacherous footing. His eyes were shut, yet he did not need them to know she was coming. Didn't need to hear the whisper quiet sound of her feet moving through the grass. The dragon had reverted, had once more adopted that human guise. The simple charcoal hued suit would have made him near invisible in the dark, had he not been silhouetted against the moonlit water, had it not been the daughter of darkness herself striding up behind him.

His arms were crossed, though for once in many years it wasn't to ward off the cold. Since Malice's return he certainly felt better, though he couldn't say if it was simply the lack of strain he had been putting on himself or if her presence was truly allowing his body the chance in needed to recover. To heal. Khell hadn't bothered to braid the length of his long hair, the iron grey tresses dancing upon the breeze, a few errant strands joining those loose bangs where they were obscuring his gaze over the waterfalls reservoir pool. It hadn't taken long after she had gotten out of bed to leave him waking. Khell had become a notoriously light sleeper in recent years.

Head turned faintly, to glance over her shoulder to see Malice where she stood. She knew that it was his good eye. That while the illusion hid the fact, that he was blind in his left eye.

"Just ... reflection."

It seemed that Malice wasn't the only one haunted by the past.

[The Sadist]

There was a sadness almost she detected in his voice. It was foreign to Malice, because Khell had always been the happy one of the pair. Moving until she was at his side, petite hand came to take hold of his own in an almost reassuring nature. Cant of head would bring her gaze to his face. Ivory dagger moving to nibble lightly as she watched him in silence. "Regretting the decision not to take my head? He wouldn't be the first, nor the last to want to disconnect her head from her shoulders.

The Sadist gaze turned back to the water, the way it rippled and lapped around the rocks. It led a tranquility to the pair it seemed as they both stood haunted by the past, but yet trying to move on into the future. Together? That was the impression he gave her, but yet he never really confirmed it either. Vengenace was the mother of all evils, and he was so hell bent on it she really wasn't confident this wasn't part of his scheme to gain her trust, have her open up to him like before only to chop off her head. The thought alone brought a very twisted laugh to erupt but it was soon stiffled. If anyone knew the femme fatale it was her best friend and she was sure he already knew what she was thinking.

On her right was a nice sized boulder so releasing his hand svelte frame clad in leather lowered to perch on top of it. Knees were hugged tightly to her chest, as her cheek rested against them, her face continuing to study her dragon, who now stood in his rather fraile looking human form. Fraiglity that she had caused and currently hated herself for."So what now, Khell? What do you want to do? I bared you my -soul- last night, but you kept aloof. I want to know what you are thinking." Malice could be bossy, hell who was she trying to kid, she was always the one in control and if memory served her right Khell enjoyed it more than he probably should have. The thought alone brought a very rare smile to her lips as she waited to see what he would say and do.

[Khellendros Solomantharus]

Khellendros had always been the one that lit up a room with his presence. Bringing warmth and comfort, friendliness and welcoming at his hearth. The dragon had been the warmth between the two of them. All that had changed though with the decline of his health. The distance he had put between himself and the world around him had would have been seen as cold and bitter to those that had once known him. The people here at the Tel'Ranaemyn Inn didn't know him, not like Malice had. Few here had known him from his days in the Alliance and to his knowledge only one person actually realized who he was. The change wasn't all that bad ... it gave credence to his disguise. No one realized that Rodry Pol had been born from the effects of Malice's marking.

No one but Malice herself.

Khell's head had turned back, to look upon the falls and the pool their pounding roar filled once more after answering her. Brilliant sapphire gaze looking upon the water as if it held some secret, some knowledge that he desperately desired. That need for closure had brought him here, that need for absolution. While he had long ago forsaken his faith, there was always one person that Khell was forced to answer to. Himself.

The weight of her hand upon his own was cold, the small delicate fingers pale against the weathered tanned skin of his human forms decrepit fingers. The sight of it left his gaze moving away from where she touched him back to the pool. Looking for answers that would never be found in the calming rush of the water.

"I never said regret. Reflection. Looking upon yourself in the mirror of your soul. Seeing all that has past, all the changes in ones life that have come as a result of decisions that we have made. Seeing that what I have become is beyond even the wildest imaginings of my younger self in my darkest times. Never did I think that I would be ... so stricken. Brought so low as to wonder whether I could live with the choices I have made in my life. I have always felt that I was doing what I must, what I had to in order to live."

What had happened to her old friend, the dragon who's thoughts had never seemed to have delved deeper than the glitter of a fresh bauble or a stone set in one of Malice's piercings. Who's most difficult thoughts were trying to decide between whether he wanted to have ale or wine with his evening meal with Malice down at the Recruitment Pub.

Khellendros had forever been changed by Malice's hand and it wasn't something that he would openly embrace, not any more. Though it seemed he was stuck in a paradox. Malice was his tormentor, had been for these long years past, yet here she was at his side. The dragon had been armed, could have fought, if he hadn't managed to kill her it would have only been because she had been forced to strike the killing blow or his weakened heart gave out on him. Regardless the result would have been the same. Peace. Malice standing here only brought up a maelstrom of emotion, of past memory and long forgotten pains and longings that he had never given voice to.

While he had changed much, it was cruel of Malice to think of him so. If there was one thing that he had always been known for, it was tackling problems head on. He had never had the patience to pussy-foot about things, to be conniving and cunning. It was one of his quirks. While Malice might have been the Mistress of Manipulation, Khellendros had always been predictable once she had gotten to know him. How many times had she gotten what she wanted from him by that subtle and masterful persuasion of hers. Both indirect and direct.

It was her moving away that finally drew his full attentions. Leaving him turning slowly where he stood, his hands sliding from their places upon his biceps down into the pockets of his slacks. Suit jacket spreading to reveal the black of the shirt beneath, while a bright ox blood hued tie waggled at his neck, stirred by the same breeze that still toyed with his hair. While his body might have been wasted, she could still see the subtle signs of the human he had once imitated. The boyish good looks that had matured in so little time to leave him looking old enough to be her grandfather.

"Now Malice? Now we see if I still have the will to live without the thought of lopping off your pretty little head to drive me. It has been a long time since I have just lived for myself, without any noble cause or perceived wrong to give me motivation. I am feeling lighter than I have for years. Like a weight has been taken from my shoulders. I can breathe, I don't feel like I have shards of glass rattling around in my lungs. It is ... a good feeling."

He had not addressed all that she had asked, but it was a start. Khell glanced back towards the water, one of his hands rising to loosen his tie slowly, pulling free the Windsor knot, letting it slide from around his neck with his hands encouragement. Dropping it without care on the rock at his feet. Watching the wind make it dance across the slick stone to catch against the boulder near her feet.

"I'm thinking that I am tired of letting the world pass me by. Watching everyone else live while lamenting my loss. I have wasted so much time, obsessing and letting my hate poison me that I almost fear I have forgotten what it was like without it."

That coat was slowly shrugging free of his shoulders, the heavy grey material warm in his hands as he crushed the collar in his hands, kneading the material faintly with his fingertips before tossing it Malice's way.

"I'm ready to give this all up. To let my soul keep warm with something other than the heat of my rage. I'm sick and tired of pitying myself."

Fingers were at his throat with his words, working their way gradually down, leaving the black silk of his shirt blowing open as he dragged it from where it was tucked into his pants. Discarding it on the ground, while his hands moved towards his belt. Quickly pulling it loose and tossing it with the growing pile of his garments. One foot rising to fight off that wingtip shoe while he spoke again.

"I think we both need to see what life still holds for us, Malice."

Shoes clattered to the stone, socks joining them, letting his bare feet with those fading scars press to the cool rock beneath his heels. Toes curling faintly against the chill of the stone. Khell's hands were once more at his waist, undoing his button and fly, leaving the grey slacks pooling around his ankles, kicked with the pile of his clothing, leaving him in the dark fabric of his boxer-briefs. Their low ride on his hips revealing the subtle pattern of the scar that was just below the waist band, the top of twin loops only partially visible. One hand held out towards where Malice huddled like a lost child there upon the boulder. Offering her a lifeline, the opportunity to try and leave behind all the troubles that had brought them here, to forget what it had been like to pity themselves and to hate what life had done to them.

"Swim with me."

That wasn't a question, or if it was his tone didn't relay it as such. While it didn't have the ring of command, there was definitely a firmness to his tone. As if he felt that it was the simple answer to a complex problem.

Of course, the question was if she could accept it as such.

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