Post by Angelique on Apr 12, 2012 12:15:50 GMT -8
I stood mixing colours for hours it seemed, trying to find the best match for the sun at dawn, just as it crests the horizon. Azrael drifted from the shadows in silence and in his usual manner studied the room before announcing his presence, I had no idea how long he had been there only when taking a deep breath did I smell his tell tale signature. The air had mingled with incense and the sent of old books and I knew he was in the room with me. “Allo sir,” I greeted turning to him smiling, “Sataa,” Azrael responded his eyes a bright silver; his lips smiling back at me. I repeated the greeting back to him, still not comfortable speaking the language of our kin, one day it will all be part of me.
Azrael and I have talked at length about choices in armor and how they can enhance the skills we choose to develop. I noted his attention to the armor I was wearing, I had made several changes to what I normally ware in preparation of adopting a new fighting style. Azrael nodded in approval saying, “well crafted, much more appropriate to your new pursuits;” smiling at his approval I added, “and silent!” Softly I mentioned that I was not leaving home but the new choices and training feel like an adventure. “I am pleased to hear that you find it satisfying… am I interrupting?” Azrael’s eyes moved down to the dyes and tubs at my feet then back to me, I giggled realizing what he had caught me engaged in, “no just a little girls fancy, mixing the colours helps clear my mind.” Azrael smiled at me and responded, “It is important that each of us find effective ways to clear our minds…especially with the beast ever-present.” I explained that I often found it necessary to meditate and occupy myself with little diversions. “I have sensed you in the confines of Nocturne,” Azrael said nodding slightly, “I find it quiet,” I told him; Azrael went on to tell me he was glad I found it adequate, and that I was welcome there anytime. Asking if I had disturbed anyone, he let me know that I had gone unnoticed to all but him and the Setess, and mentioned that the roof offered him a place to meditate effectively.
Glancing to the door Azrael said, “I wished to assist you further in your original request… finding peace within the earth.” I had been anticipating working with the Seti in moving forward in the discipline of Protean, more and more I find myself out in the wilds away from buildings and stonework, running barefooted through trees and under growth. As time passed I felt more kinship with wolves then kindred. “Will we need anything?” I asked feeling a bright smile form on my face, seeing a slight smile form on Azrael’s as told me we would only need a place to put out belongings, that at first equipment and excess armor would impede our progress. We moved into Sorrian’s lair and as I removed everything but my chest piece and leggings dumping them on a chair, I watched as Azrael meticulously placed every piece of his equipment neatly in a pile adjusting items to fit some calculation he must have been using. Azrael turned to me once everything was in place and asked, “Are you ready to begin?” “Yes,” I answered watching him look between the two doors to the dirt floored cells I had Sorrian build in his tower, Azrael asked, “would you be comfortable sharing the same plot of earth with me, or would you prefer they were separate?” I answered thinking about the confines of being underground, “I would prefer you close sir,” Azrael responded, “ I would prefer to be such.”
Azrael and I stepped into the cell, it smelled of rich, moist soil and I confirmed that the foundation beneath Runescape had been designed to allow the patches of dirt in the two cells I had built extend down beneath the permafrost of the mountains the tower was situated in. As we faced each other Azrael explained the goal of tonight’s lesson, “The most difficult aspect of this stage in Protean is learning to train the mind for the confines and intense weight of the ground. So before showing you how to do this, I would like to show you what it is like, so that your mind may begin to adjusting to the strain put on ones beast…” Azrael extended his hands out to me and I put mine in his, I nodded to him understanding how we would proceed. Azrael stepped closer firming his grip on my hands and leaning his forehead to mine, closing his eyes he said, “No matter what your initial reaction remember…I am right here…and…” In my mind the image of a door appeared, the same door from when Azrael taught me to block the mental bond between Maceo and myself and I heard a light knocking, I smiled seeing the door and in my thoughts said, “Come in sir.” Seeing the door open and Azrael’s silvery eyes, bright and intense more so than in the material world greet me I felt at peace and ready for what was to follow. In my mind Azrael finished his statement, “I am here as well…”
Azrael closed his eyes in my mind concentrating, my feet felt the first sensations of something happening, a pull from below; Azrael clutches my hands a bit more tightly as suddenly the ground gives way and we rush down as the ground swallows us completely. The pull ends abruptly and the scent of fresh earth filled my senses. I immediately gripped his hands stiffening, I could feel Azrael’s body close to mine curled in a slight fetal position, where ever we were far below the surface, I could feel him pull me closer as the heavy earth settled around us. As the dirt pressed against my eyelids, into the openings for my ears, against my mouth and into my nostrils, my mind rushed in panic to register what had happened. The heavy weight and a sinking feeling began to register as a trap sealed tight and there was no way out; I had been buried alive under tons of soil and rock. In my mind Azrael whispered my name softly, his voice slow and rhythmic, “focus on my voice…” he said as panic washed over me. I began to squirm, but felt Azrael wrap his arms down around mine, his strength like a marble statue not allowing me to move from him.
Unable to move physically my eyes flashed open in my mind, and I heard Azrael’s voice louder and with greater force, “Laeldril Do’ghym, Focus!” As the feeling of heavy earth pressed in upon me further, I focused on Azrael standing in front of me his focus on me as I stood there. I locked eyes with him and slowly let myself adjust to the feeling of the weight pressing upon us. Seeming to know when revelations were to take place I felt Azrael extend his hold wrapping his arms completely around me holding me closer beneath the earth. As the pressure of the soil seemed to lessen slightly the realization that there were several things moving all around us erupted in my mind. I began clawing at the dirt and opened my mouth to scream but nothing came out. Within me the beast growls and began tearing its way to the surface of my mind, I could feel the Gangrel in my blood scratching for control at being so confined; a cage, one for an animal… all around me with… no way out. I pulled and strained against his unyielding marble arms, as the beast began to emerge in my conscious thought. In my mind my eyes whitened out and the kinetic energy of wanting to run built within.
In my mind Azrael’s voice now booming, cold and precise, “Laeldril! This is a false sense,” all around me the world began to shake, and my control to waver, threatening to shatter, and before it was lost a piercing silver light the colour of Azrael’s eyes shone in my mind, its warmth soothing, as it pressed against the grip of the tomb, the pressure lessening and the beast…the beast pauses. I crouched low to the ground breathing deeply, listening as Azrael said, “we have no need for air… no need for breath, or movement… we… are not alive. This body is only a vessel. Survival is not threatened! Azrael seemed to be speaking to the beast directly as he continued his slow, rhythmic discourse, “This is earth…you are within the mother… she is holding you as a mother does a cub.” I reached down and drew my fingers through the dirt in my mind, the ground unusually warm and moist beneath the permafrost of the mountains of Istas. The warmth of the soil and the light are ever present in my mind, as I pick up a hand full of the soil squeezing it between my fingers before letting it fall, the image of Azrael standing before me, perfectly still is now clear in my thoughts. I look up locking eyes with him and stare for a long moment before reaching out my hand; slowly Azrael takes it and moves down to me crouching in front of me, his eyes bare the same bright warm silver as the light filling my mind.
Azrael’s slow careful speech resonates as he continues talking to me, “for you Gangrel, more so than any of us, this place, this earth and soil and system of life, this is your home, none can understand it as you do.” I lean forward to him and touch my forehead to his, closing my eyes allowing the sensations to wash over me. The soil around me beneath the bitter permafrost teams with life; with potential and as the warmth floods into me for a moment I feel all directions at once. A sense of a living creature, the planet, breathing, bleeding, giving birth…loving; and vast, one complete organism. As we coiled together beneath the earth I stopped my struggle as the panic was released in my mind. In my mind a tear slides down my cheek as the Gangrel for a moment understands that the planet and everything on it, is one complete organism, a vast creature from which we all spring, on which all things live, with rivers like blood vessels, and oceans pump and ebb like a heart. Far away near its core, I feel a pulse, a vast wave of energy rolling from the center out… and another… and another… I quiet my thoughts and follow the beat and Azrael says softly in time with the eternally slow cosmic beat, “You see the truth of it…yes?” I whisper back to him, “yes.” “Above all things, this is what makes you a Gangrel,” his hands reach up and wipe the tears from my cheek, “this is what makes you unlike any of our kind…” “This is home,” I whispered, Azrael responded, “this is home, and for you it is home in ways even I will never begin to comprehend. You Gangrel, and your kind, understand better than any other a need for the protection of the wild, of the purity of life and death, so the cycle can be uninterrupted.”
In my mind I reached forward and touched his chest, looking up to him my eyes glistening with fresh tears, “my heart, it beats again…” Softly Azrael responded, “then this is my gift to you, for it was given to me by one of your kind long ago, and should be given freely back, to that the cycle may continue.”
Near me I could feel the suns warmth as if on the earth surface, setting the pace for the cycle of the beat that was still all around me; it doesn’t burn, it isn’t threatening, only warm as it cradles the earth and me. Azrael relaxes in his embrace feeling the sensations in my body and mind. “What do you feel?” Azrael asked soothingly. “The sun it rises, like my hand on the tapestry over my window at dawn, I can feel its warmth; it’s a long way off but I can feel it moving closer.” I felt the suns warmth build as it moved closer in the distance, rolling across my skin as it rolled across the planets surface. My consciousness spread further, the planet, cradled by the sun, and soothed at night by the moons, a vast cosmic system, cradled further by stars very far away, and further still all of it within a vast emptiness; all of it floating through an ocean of dark, an unassuming nothingness and as I reached out with my mind there at the edge, eyes of a creature so vast, so raw and primal, that it threatened sanity itself…what if one were to think past the edges of the darkness…
Softly, knowingly Azrael spoke to me, “do not stray past the edge, we are not meant to understand those eyes, and what lies beyond.” I paused staring into the eyes, they seem to focus on me, studying me as I study them, there is no colour and all colour in them and they begin to swirl…a spiral widdershins in direction; terror beyond comprehension lies at the fabric of its core, if you follow the spiral to the center you will not exist, and yet the spiral is fascinating… so destructive, wrong, and terrible that I can’t keep my eyes from continuing to creep along its maze like walls further to its center. “Where does it go…”? I whispered. There was a sudden sense of caution in my mind, Azrael’s caution as it darted out from the earth, past the sun reaching towards the stars. With a sense of urgency he says, “Laeldril NO!” The spiral dances for me, inviting me to the center, coaxing me to follow its curve to some vast truth; and the colours fade from the maze like spiral walls to black, pulling me to the center, I had to see the center there was something important there. I paused hearing Azrael’s voice, in my mind I felt him reaching out grasping as quickly as his consciousness could travel, scrambling to me and I felt his consciousness wrap around my mind like a net snapping shut and yanking me back. I closed my eyes to the spiral feeling Azrael’s grasp and let him take me back, the stars rushed past once more, the sun and moons, and my consciousness was thrown back into the cradle of the earth where I could feel the beat once more. In my mind I reached out and touched him gently marking his presence being within arms reach.
Azrael returned the touch softly and said gently, “It is the black spiral of werewolf lore, and it is the Wyrm, the eyes you saw; the destroyer, the madness of the end of all things. “It was so enticing, so compelling… it saw me,” I responded quietly. With a sense of warning in his voice Azrael said, “it… sees… us… all. I know enough from the fragments of Lupine legends I have found that they believe Vampires to be filled with it; we are an agent of its destruction of all life. None understand the truth, and the lie of this better than the Gangrel. “I am sorry, I didn’t mean to anger you,” I whispered to him, “I was not angered…only fearful of loosing you to it. It will bring madness to any mind that dances the widdershins, that dances to its center. A Gangrel once told me that there are those among the Lupines that dance the black spiral, and lose themselves to it; they are enemies of the Lupines eternally, much as the Sabbat is to the Camarilla.
Speaking softly Azrael said, “the beast within is calm now, I believe soon we can begin to show you how to let the planet cradle you, but Sol rises for us soon and we should return to the surface. I nodded against his forehead, and felt as he nodded back against mine; there was a pull upward, my hands once more in his as a complete release of pressure as we emerged from the earth no soil touching us, and no trace of our burial at our feet. Feeling the release I leaned against Azrael and felt him hug me close, holding me in the still silence, I curled my fingers around his arm as I adjusted to the quiet. Softly in my mind Azrael told me, “…it is moments like this that I feel most at peace…the silence found as if in answer to a question too profound to ask… it is somehow the perfect answer.” As he held me quietly…patiently, I trembled slightly filled with recognition of the truths I had just experienced and the awe in which they were revealed. I whispered to him as I finally turned my head up to meet his gaze, “Sir, thank you for everything,” Azrael answered in barely a whisper, “you are the future of our people…which means you thank me in every moment of your existence.” Later as I curled up on Sorrian’s shoulder nestled in the furs on our bedchamber floor I smiled as I felt the temperature grow in the room, knowing Sol had risen in the sky and the cycle of life we all were part of, marched forward into the day.
Azrael and I have talked at length about choices in armor and how they can enhance the skills we choose to develop. I noted his attention to the armor I was wearing, I had made several changes to what I normally ware in preparation of adopting a new fighting style. Azrael nodded in approval saying, “well crafted, much more appropriate to your new pursuits;” smiling at his approval I added, “and silent!” Softly I mentioned that I was not leaving home but the new choices and training feel like an adventure. “I am pleased to hear that you find it satisfying… am I interrupting?” Azrael’s eyes moved down to the dyes and tubs at my feet then back to me, I giggled realizing what he had caught me engaged in, “no just a little girls fancy, mixing the colours helps clear my mind.” Azrael smiled at me and responded, “It is important that each of us find effective ways to clear our minds…especially with the beast ever-present.” I explained that I often found it necessary to meditate and occupy myself with little diversions. “I have sensed you in the confines of Nocturne,” Azrael said nodding slightly, “I find it quiet,” I told him; Azrael went on to tell me he was glad I found it adequate, and that I was welcome there anytime. Asking if I had disturbed anyone, he let me know that I had gone unnoticed to all but him and the Setess, and mentioned that the roof offered him a place to meditate effectively.
Glancing to the door Azrael said, “I wished to assist you further in your original request… finding peace within the earth.” I had been anticipating working with the Seti in moving forward in the discipline of Protean, more and more I find myself out in the wilds away from buildings and stonework, running barefooted through trees and under growth. As time passed I felt more kinship with wolves then kindred. “Will we need anything?” I asked feeling a bright smile form on my face, seeing a slight smile form on Azrael’s as told me we would only need a place to put out belongings, that at first equipment and excess armor would impede our progress. We moved into Sorrian’s lair and as I removed everything but my chest piece and leggings dumping them on a chair, I watched as Azrael meticulously placed every piece of his equipment neatly in a pile adjusting items to fit some calculation he must have been using. Azrael turned to me once everything was in place and asked, “Are you ready to begin?” “Yes,” I answered watching him look between the two doors to the dirt floored cells I had Sorrian build in his tower, Azrael asked, “would you be comfortable sharing the same plot of earth with me, or would you prefer they were separate?” I answered thinking about the confines of being underground, “I would prefer you close sir,” Azrael responded, “ I would prefer to be such.”
Azrael and I stepped into the cell, it smelled of rich, moist soil and I confirmed that the foundation beneath Runescape had been designed to allow the patches of dirt in the two cells I had built extend down beneath the permafrost of the mountains the tower was situated in. As we faced each other Azrael explained the goal of tonight’s lesson, “The most difficult aspect of this stage in Protean is learning to train the mind for the confines and intense weight of the ground. So before showing you how to do this, I would like to show you what it is like, so that your mind may begin to adjusting to the strain put on ones beast…” Azrael extended his hands out to me and I put mine in his, I nodded to him understanding how we would proceed. Azrael stepped closer firming his grip on my hands and leaning his forehead to mine, closing his eyes he said, “No matter what your initial reaction remember…I am right here…and…” In my mind the image of a door appeared, the same door from when Azrael taught me to block the mental bond between Maceo and myself and I heard a light knocking, I smiled seeing the door and in my thoughts said, “Come in sir.” Seeing the door open and Azrael’s silvery eyes, bright and intense more so than in the material world greet me I felt at peace and ready for what was to follow. In my mind Azrael finished his statement, “I am here as well…”
Azrael closed his eyes in my mind concentrating, my feet felt the first sensations of something happening, a pull from below; Azrael clutches my hands a bit more tightly as suddenly the ground gives way and we rush down as the ground swallows us completely. The pull ends abruptly and the scent of fresh earth filled my senses. I immediately gripped his hands stiffening, I could feel Azrael’s body close to mine curled in a slight fetal position, where ever we were far below the surface, I could feel him pull me closer as the heavy earth settled around us. As the dirt pressed against my eyelids, into the openings for my ears, against my mouth and into my nostrils, my mind rushed in panic to register what had happened. The heavy weight and a sinking feeling began to register as a trap sealed tight and there was no way out; I had been buried alive under tons of soil and rock. In my mind Azrael whispered my name softly, his voice slow and rhythmic, “focus on my voice…” he said as panic washed over me. I began to squirm, but felt Azrael wrap his arms down around mine, his strength like a marble statue not allowing me to move from him.
Unable to move physically my eyes flashed open in my mind, and I heard Azrael’s voice louder and with greater force, “Laeldril Do’ghym, Focus!” As the feeling of heavy earth pressed in upon me further, I focused on Azrael standing in front of me his focus on me as I stood there. I locked eyes with him and slowly let myself adjust to the feeling of the weight pressing upon us. Seeming to know when revelations were to take place I felt Azrael extend his hold wrapping his arms completely around me holding me closer beneath the earth. As the pressure of the soil seemed to lessen slightly the realization that there were several things moving all around us erupted in my mind. I began clawing at the dirt and opened my mouth to scream but nothing came out. Within me the beast growls and began tearing its way to the surface of my mind, I could feel the Gangrel in my blood scratching for control at being so confined; a cage, one for an animal… all around me with… no way out. I pulled and strained against his unyielding marble arms, as the beast began to emerge in my conscious thought. In my mind my eyes whitened out and the kinetic energy of wanting to run built within.
In my mind Azrael’s voice now booming, cold and precise, “Laeldril! This is a false sense,” all around me the world began to shake, and my control to waver, threatening to shatter, and before it was lost a piercing silver light the colour of Azrael’s eyes shone in my mind, its warmth soothing, as it pressed against the grip of the tomb, the pressure lessening and the beast…the beast pauses. I crouched low to the ground breathing deeply, listening as Azrael said, “we have no need for air… no need for breath, or movement… we… are not alive. This body is only a vessel. Survival is not threatened! Azrael seemed to be speaking to the beast directly as he continued his slow, rhythmic discourse, “This is earth…you are within the mother… she is holding you as a mother does a cub.” I reached down and drew my fingers through the dirt in my mind, the ground unusually warm and moist beneath the permafrost of the mountains of Istas. The warmth of the soil and the light are ever present in my mind, as I pick up a hand full of the soil squeezing it between my fingers before letting it fall, the image of Azrael standing before me, perfectly still is now clear in my thoughts. I look up locking eyes with him and stare for a long moment before reaching out my hand; slowly Azrael takes it and moves down to me crouching in front of me, his eyes bare the same bright warm silver as the light filling my mind.
Azrael’s slow careful speech resonates as he continues talking to me, “for you Gangrel, more so than any of us, this place, this earth and soil and system of life, this is your home, none can understand it as you do.” I lean forward to him and touch my forehead to his, closing my eyes allowing the sensations to wash over me. The soil around me beneath the bitter permafrost teams with life; with potential and as the warmth floods into me for a moment I feel all directions at once. A sense of a living creature, the planet, breathing, bleeding, giving birth…loving; and vast, one complete organism. As we coiled together beneath the earth I stopped my struggle as the panic was released in my mind. In my mind a tear slides down my cheek as the Gangrel for a moment understands that the planet and everything on it, is one complete organism, a vast creature from which we all spring, on which all things live, with rivers like blood vessels, and oceans pump and ebb like a heart. Far away near its core, I feel a pulse, a vast wave of energy rolling from the center out… and another… and another… I quiet my thoughts and follow the beat and Azrael says softly in time with the eternally slow cosmic beat, “You see the truth of it…yes?” I whisper back to him, “yes.” “Above all things, this is what makes you a Gangrel,” his hands reach up and wipe the tears from my cheek, “this is what makes you unlike any of our kind…” “This is home,” I whispered, Azrael responded, “this is home, and for you it is home in ways even I will never begin to comprehend. You Gangrel, and your kind, understand better than any other a need for the protection of the wild, of the purity of life and death, so the cycle can be uninterrupted.”
In my mind I reached forward and touched his chest, looking up to him my eyes glistening with fresh tears, “my heart, it beats again…” Softly Azrael responded, “then this is my gift to you, for it was given to me by one of your kind long ago, and should be given freely back, to that the cycle may continue.”
Near me I could feel the suns warmth as if on the earth surface, setting the pace for the cycle of the beat that was still all around me; it doesn’t burn, it isn’t threatening, only warm as it cradles the earth and me. Azrael relaxes in his embrace feeling the sensations in my body and mind. “What do you feel?” Azrael asked soothingly. “The sun it rises, like my hand on the tapestry over my window at dawn, I can feel its warmth; it’s a long way off but I can feel it moving closer.” I felt the suns warmth build as it moved closer in the distance, rolling across my skin as it rolled across the planets surface. My consciousness spread further, the planet, cradled by the sun, and soothed at night by the moons, a vast cosmic system, cradled further by stars very far away, and further still all of it within a vast emptiness; all of it floating through an ocean of dark, an unassuming nothingness and as I reached out with my mind there at the edge, eyes of a creature so vast, so raw and primal, that it threatened sanity itself…what if one were to think past the edges of the darkness…
Softly, knowingly Azrael spoke to me, “do not stray past the edge, we are not meant to understand those eyes, and what lies beyond.” I paused staring into the eyes, they seem to focus on me, studying me as I study them, there is no colour and all colour in them and they begin to swirl…a spiral widdershins in direction; terror beyond comprehension lies at the fabric of its core, if you follow the spiral to the center you will not exist, and yet the spiral is fascinating… so destructive, wrong, and terrible that I can’t keep my eyes from continuing to creep along its maze like walls further to its center. “Where does it go…”? I whispered. There was a sudden sense of caution in my mind, Azrael’s caution as it darted out from the earth, past the sun reaching towards the stars. With a sense of urgency he says, “Laeldril NO!” The spiral dances for me, inviting me to the center, coaxing me to follow its curve to some vast truth; and the colours fade from the maze like spiral walls to black, pulling me to the center, I had to see the center there was something important there. I paused hearing Azrael’s voice, in my mind I felt him reaching out grasping as quickly as his consciousness could travel, scrambling to me and I felt his consciousness wrap around my mind like a net snapping shut and yanking me back. I closed my eyes to the spiral feeling Azrael’s grasp and let him take me back, the stars rushed past once more, the sun and moons, and my consciousness was thrown back into the cradle of the earth where I could feel the beat once more. In my mind I reached out and touched him gently marking his presence being within arms reach.
Azrael returned the touch softly and said gently, “It is the black spiral of werewolf lore, and it is the Wyrm, the eyes you saw; the destroyer, the madness of the end of all things. “It was so enticing, so compelling… it saw me,” I responded quietly. With a sense of warning in his voice Azrael said, “it… sees… us… all. I know enough from the fragments of Lupine legends I have found that they believe Vampires to be filled with it; we are an agent of its destruction of all life. None understand the truth, and the lie of this better than the Gangrel. “I am sorry, I didn’t mean to anger you,” I whispered to him, “I was not angered…only fearful of loosing you to it. It will bring madness to any mind that dances the widdershins, that dances to its center. A Gangrel once told me that there are those among the Lupines that dance the black spiral, and lose themselves to it; they are enemies of the Lupines eternally, much as the Sabbat is to the Camarilla.
Speaking softly Azrael said, “the beast within is calm now, I believe soon we can begin to show you how to let the planet cradle you, but Sol rises for us soon and we should return to the surface. I nodded against his forehead, and felt as he nodded back against mine; there was a pull upward, my hands once more in his as a complete release of pressure as we emerged from the earth no soil touching us, and no trace of our burial at our feet. Feeling the release I leaned against Azrael and felt him hug me close, holding me in the still silence, I curled my fingers around his arm as I adjusted to the quiet. Softly in my mind Azrael told me, “…it is moments like this that I feel most at peace…the silence found as if in answer to a question too profound to ask… it is somehow the perfect answer.” As he held me quietly…patiently, I trembled slightly filled with recognition of the truths I had just experienced and the awe in which they were revealed. I whispered to him as I finally turned my head up to meet his gaze, “Sir, thank you for everything,” Azrael answered in barely a whisper, “you are the future of our people…which means you thank me in every moment of your existence.” Later as I curled up on Sorrian’s shoulder nestled in the furs on our bedchamber floor I smiled as I felt the temperature grow in the room, knowing Sol had risen in the sky and the cycle of life we all were part of, marched forward into the day.