(.Round the First.).Feel the Red.(.Set the Fifth.)

Stars shone in the velvet that was the night sky. The moon, like some distant mother, stood watch over the landscape below. It beheld the sight of sweeping, gothic architecture that loomed over alleyways, streets, sewers and impasses. The gloaming concealed the figures of lost, futile vagrants that were stuck in this labyrinthine visage of spires and archways.

The streets were illuminated by some aethereal light that come out of everything and nothing, confusing and beautiful. Metal walls gleamed in ways that were unfathomable and deep in all concerns. Brick was an alabaster-red, a hue that dazzled the eye and tricked the mind.

One vagrant in the city was not lost, merely wandering the twisted ghoul-city. In one hand was grasped a round shield that became a blade at its edge. It sliced through the air as the man’s arm gently swung while he walked. His face was solemn, holding eyes that seen many battles and lived to keep them secret. His mouth was curled slightly at its ends, a whispering grin that showed he was care-free in most exploits. His gait was nonchalant and stepped with bare feet upon jagged vertexes that drew blood. Such pain was not noticeable within his expression.

Timaeus was at peace in this city. It was one he had visited many times on his errands as the Gods’ Messenger. The buildings leaped at the sky, tearing through several dimensions and rifts, folding in on themselves at impossible angles that made the Angel think in ways that made him calm and resolute. He felt the air unlike most did; He walked through the realm’s presence as one would wade through the swathes of some sea.

At the epicenter of the plane-folds there was one building that defied all logic. It danced into the sky to infinite heights, and yet managed to have a spire at its top and an ending at the bottom. Within, concealed by many angles of chaotic warp-metal, were rooms that ripped through each other in directions that could not exist, unlimited spaces of bleach-white walls that peeled and sagged in on themselves, squeezing through places that made natural law sick and disgusted to a point that it was almost lacked of entirely.

Towards this building Timaeus walked, scarping his bloodied feet in a continuous pattern. His journey took him past windows that revealed pale lights that were prominent against the dim backdrop of the city about him. Gargoyles hunched at the precipices of roofs, snarling in rage at the pathways below. Cold winds blew through the streets, billowing through physical substance and moving objects to new destinations. Clouds slowly began to ripple across the horizons, encroaching upon an empty space at the sky’s centre, a bullet-hole in the shroud.

As if in some kind of stubborn, half-witted refusal, the clouds, plump with rain, held their load tight within their stomachs, but only for a few minutes. Water began to fall from the sky, leaving almost now air between the drops that were thick and warm as freshly-oozed pus. Timaeus’ sods were placed in water inches thick, which sluiced around his legs like the aether-thick air.

He arrived at his destination, saturated. Like a rose, it shot up, thorny and spiked, with random blooms of twisted architecture jumping outwards from the irregular form of the base. Timaeus exhibited a relaxed, loving glance as his eyes strayed across the looming construct before him. It was the only place he had the capacity to call home. The light around seemed to be in lack on the figure of the building, as if the darkness clung to it with some fervent longing.

Timaeus brought his feet through the water and onto the dry, bent steps and sauntered up towards the threshold. As he stepped through the gargantuan, dark oak doors, he was welcomed by an ashy smell and an intense heat that made his skin crawl with pleasure and anxiety. The floor was a caliginous red marble, streaked with traces of grey. Gas-lamps hung on the walls, casting a sepia-glow across the room, and the air seemed to catch it also. The air was muggy and close, but stirred slightly by some inter-dimensional breeze. It filled his lungs, and he exhaled it with a new-found vigour. His blood pumped.

Then, in his peripherals, some dark, hazy figure ran through the half-light. His eyes tried to follow it, but for some reason unbeknownst to him, he could not. He chased it through a door; a room with alabaster walls; a stairway of infinite length; a brass and steel room; darkness. Darkness. He fumbled, fingers slipping across edges that were unfamiliar and made him start suddenly at every touch. He felt some lost emotion, like a light in the congealing dark. After much fumbling and knee-knocking, bending double after unknowingly crashing into concealed corners, he ascertained that the room had no exits. Blood. Blood.

He smelt blood. He felt the red.

OoC: I would be so hyped if this wasn't a Tournament battle. I digress; Nathan's in the sig. Also, before you accuse me of spelling errors, look up the British dictionary >>;;

IC:

Falling. Falling. The same image pulsed through Nathan’s head continuously as he leaned against the frigid wall. His clothes were soaking and clung clumsily to him; saturated by the drenched wall. Falling. His eyes were clenched shut, terrified of the ghostly dimension he had landed in. His arms, shivering, were wrapped tightly around his knees. Anything to block out this world. How long? Why? He didn’t know. There was only the falling, then here.

He felt slumber coming on, his grip on everything loosening. The pain began to fade away, then was suddenly heightened by the awakening crack between realms. The sound never ceased, always lurking in the background, ready to dash any hopes that survived the rain. Nathan clenched even harder. Falling. Stop falling. He would never stop falling, not until he was out of this hellish place inhabited only by demons. There was no escape then, not from a place that is only entered by falling.

His eyes snapped open. How long had he been under? It didn’t matter. He had let the darkness in and survived. He was going to escape. The boy took a moment to survey his surroundings: an impossibly thin alleyway with no windows leading into houses; two wet walls, and a dead end. The twinkling stars shone radiantly out of the obsidian sky; clouds, massive, lolled gently on ethereal gusts; the moon was impossibly large, dwarfed only by the impossible building far off in the distance. It was pure bleach white, except for the sudden rends in space which were an impossible black. Countless spires and roofs flew off from the main structure, creating a malevolent and demonic tree. The thin tip was perfectly visible, even though it seemed to stretch beyond the very universe it was housed in. Past the stars and pallid moon it rose, beyond the sky itself, inevitably into the dimension Nate had come from.

Hope. A rare feeling in such a horrific world. It glimmered through Nate like a single beam of light flashing through a pristine diamond. He just had to get to the top of that building, then he could easily climb over into his own world. First though, he had to get there.

He abandoned his sodden waist-coat and shirt; the dimension was at least warm. Walking out of the alleyway, his eyes met thousands upon thousands of ancient buildings, with an even greater number of carved gargoyles staring directly at him. “Hellish indeed,” he whispered quietly to himself, as if the gargoyles would overhear. The buildings themselves were quite low, but took up huge masses of the ground. Ornate windows portrayed scenes from some twisted and contorted bible worshipped by devils. Nate shuddered as he envisioned the inhabitants of his demonic prison.

He didn’t see anyone but the condemned souls in white sheets who plagued the ground. They too had an ethereal sense about them, as if Nate could walk through them devoid of notice. Their faces were shock white, eyes full and round, mouths frozen wide in terror. It was like something from a horror novel.

The number of lost souls seemed to increase as Nate left behind the throng of cathedrals. Next there were only fountains spewing water with the faintest shimmer of red. The robed people swarmed to the fountains, seeming to almost drink the crystaline liquid that exuded from the faucets. Nathan suddenly missed his waist coat; what was there to hug tighter around him and shrug off the ghosts? Nothing. If the spirits turned malevolent he was completely defenceless. Thinking that, he ran hurriedly out of the park.

Finally Nathan saw the foot of the tree. He hurriedly jumped up the carved steps before gazing in awe at the ornate doors before him. The oaken doors swayed easily as Nathan pushed them inward. The heat that met him was intense, unpleasant. He silently thanked his own wit for leaving his effects behind.

Light was provided by hundreds of gas lamps that were draped intermittently along a huge corridor. Nate’s feet made a provocative click along the red marble floor as he crept further down the hall. Another door lay ahead of him: pitch black with a shimmering gold knob. Nathan opened it hurriedly and stepped through the threshold into an entirely different room. It looked like the foyer of a grand mansion, complete with cliché spiralling stairs that lead to more insane rooms. Nate focused on what lay ahead, though. A third door lay in wait, enticing and off-putting at the same time. Nate couldn’t refuse, he ran across the white marble into the next room.

A sound. Something he hadn’t heard in days: the breathing of another person. It was heavy, with a frightened edge to it. Someone was in trouble, and, friend or foe, Nate had to find them. He practically sprinted through the next few rooms: clinical white ceilings; a Victorian music room; emptiness. He had reached his destination, if you could call it a place. If outside was hell then this was purgatory. An acrid smell stung Nate’s nose as he tried to find his way around. He lit a ball of electricity, instantly doused by the lurking shadows. He gripped the wall instead, his hand getting smeared in a thick, sticky liquid. He retched, but there was nothing to throw up. He recognised the smell. Blood.

He was falling again.

Only when it is frozen, can you feel the warmth.
Only when it is silent, can you hear the whispers.
Only when the raven crows its vesper bell, can you find the lighted beacon.

Any lambency had evidently fled; departed in a malcontent abode to the tenebrous opacity. Therein, gazing over the architecture—or, scrutinized, the contours of which—was a nirvana of nothingness. Plasmic rust boiled in the stone, reddening on ascent from the sepia undergrowth that crept through the decaying pavement—to the scarlet heights; an alabaster toned decay, bloody and ripe in the brick. The ancient city—remnant and lost—wormed itself, serpentine, into a sombre spiral, its culmination blanketed beyond the sky.

Deep within the abandoned metropolis—a walking contradiction stood. It was mere happenstance that someone would so much as come across the fabled ruin of a civilization, let alone inhabit it.

Yawning, the chestnut-rouged migrant rose in the dusk, scarcely discernable, despite a vivid sapphire lantern pulsing from the end of a unique weapon. Arched over the man leant a stone minaret, its balconies meandering a shadow, which framed the wandering mercenary. As he rose, his weaponry spat a lavish of splendour around the crimson battle-zealot; the fighter—Heishuro was his name, Heishuro Maruchi—rose and stepped out of the shadow, to find the radiant stars dancing through the skies.

“Wow…” He tried to think it, but he couldn’t prevent the sentiment escaping vocally. “That’s just…” Stopping mid-sentence, Heishuro noticed the lambent current vivid in the air. The plethora of light overflowed the eclipsed capacity, depositing sparkling lighted alluvium along the way as it drained through a nearby passageway. Not exactly cat and mouse, but I need to follow it, the fighter mused.

Ten minutes later, Maruchi’s enthusiasm had dulled. The light had long overrun his sight, yet he persevered down the alabaster-bricked avenue. Fortunately, the fallout dust that dropped from the light could guide his way.

When in such a dismal place—a sober, melancholy place, some feel like life is being sucked out of them; some feel overcome with depression; some feel right at home.

Heishuro didn’t feel anything; he was emotionless. He’d have been scared of that, but he couldn’t feel any fear. It was a strange feeling—or lack of which—that coincided with the martial artist at this moment—and not in a good way. He felt as if something were missing from his soul; he clutched his stomach upon the thought.

The movement of his arm snapped him back to reality, as he realised he has stopped walking, and was gradually getting wet from the ongoing downpour that had begun during his ‘emotional time’ as he liked to call it. In truth, it was more like a deep daydream.

As he regained his stride, he noticed a glare of light flash before him—not unlike one from a television screen. Turning to the source, he noticed a milky window, almost dripping into the building it held insight to. The window signalled the end of the alleyway, it was a dead end from here, so he had nowhere to go. Raising an arm to his brow for a shadow to the glow, Maruchi stared through into the seemingly ancient cathedral, as it would seem.

He had to cover his mouth with both hands to catch his gasp before it left him.

Inside were dozens—neigh, hundreds of what could be described as anything other than daemons. Chalk-white faces, as emotionless as they were devoid of colour; they stalked each other like assassins, though they didn’t seem hostile towards each other. Most of them were huddled over a stump, of some sort. Their pure white bodies curved down as if they were kissing something. As one of them moved, the fighter’s vision included this ‘something’, or ‘someone’.

Blood. It was everywhere, all over the monsters; all over the remains of the body; all over the floors. Heishuro screamed; he didn’t yell a manly yell; he didn’t groan a painful groan; he screamed as an emotion finally returned to him; fear. Yet, that was perhaps the most foolish thing he could have done, for the daemons weren’t without hearing.

Every single one of the vampiric abominations heard the fighter. Every single one turned to him. Every single one advanced. His eyes widening in horror, he began to walk backward, eventually stumbling into a run. Behind him, he heard a window breaking—not the most comforting of sounds whilst being chased by dark agents, as Maruchi toyed with the idea that they could be servants of Satan.

To his despair, the martial artist had to come to an abrupt stop. In front of him were just as many daemons as that which came up behind him, circling him in terror.

Looking down at Xuriken, he knew he had to fight his way out of this. That thought was—strangely—a comforting one; he knew it was all down to a skill of his that he was actually good at; battle.

Taking a deep breath, he let his nunchaku strengthen him; flow through him; calming him. He knew he should have been fearful; he knew this wasn’t exciting; but in amongst this, all he could think was, ‘everybody was kung-fu fighting!’