Within the seconds of Valborast's mortal frame finding repose in the attendance of their soul, that which had been cast out, rejected, driven from it's moorings alongside the others who would corrupt it and sup upon it's vital blood and indeed, soul, found themselves within a crimson existence, a place of shadow and death, edged by steel and sunlight, a prison, a crucible, a doomed place that few have any sense of. A purgatory of endless will, fashioned by the desire of a knight to be free, imprisoning four, relentlessly faced with one another.
As the mortal Valborast found support from his comrades and mercy, the other contained faced a prospect few might imagine, much less survive.
Hatred layered and folded over a thousand times in an ocean of blood bled, wept and shed for the cause of existence as it boiled and crashed upon the endless waves of itself. A tempered blade of sunlight edge when the cause demands by appropriately sanctified hands, a stream of consciousness that crackled, hissed, bit and scorned the enemy that existed outside of it. Almost all considered enemy. Almost all considered foe. The souls other than itself looked with baleful eye and crashed upon each other in short order after senses were gained and brief conversation was had. The vampiric spirits were short and brief before they swooped in soul against the other.
Only one of us can rule here.
I feel the same. Die. Die!
Draw your will and be undone by my power!
The mortal had much more words to summon before their arcane will, left in knowledge and potency of the blade's blessing and curse was commanded. The oceans of blood that existed within the consciousnesses of the blade trembled at the proclamation of a soul most blackened. The words made the waters part, to command the entirety of this place. For it seemed far more at home within the confines of the steel and darkness than it ever had done in the mortal frame of Valborast.
The voice once mortal cast it's doom upon the scene, before all hell revealed itself to the three
vampires that crashed upon each other in a pale imitation of the genuine scorn that the corrupted soul of a knight did command, in power, in malice, in authority.
In life and frame, I hated, in this purgatory, I hate on, I hate still, I hate with all I am, and I am greater than you three in this evil degree and pedigree, parasites. Face me then and feel my wrath to exist, as only mortals care to feel. I am not prey. I am your jailer once removed from flesh. I exist on. Darkness be my succor. Death be my byword. This prison be my sanctum. I exist on in spite and hate and blood and as my former self rejects me, I am reborn, purer, purer than you have wit to comprehend, fiend, devil, parasite, subject, scum. Face me. Face hate as you have never witnessed from my former name.
A moment of silence from the three. The waves became as boiling at the master of this domain's command and baleful edict.
Come then. Face the crashing waves of a man freed of all nobility, all trappings of restraint, all echos of honour. For there is nothing but hate left for you to feed upon. And I have a thirst for your oblivion, a deeper need that shall be slaked by your subjectation. I will not suffer your company. You face a death beyond death. You face that which is riven.
To feed. That is the desire that ruled the three. Such might seem advantage to the three. But a deeper scorn lies within that mortal contained. The other spared this carnivorous appetite but replaced by a thirst for annihilation and conquest for all but itself.
The thought of freedom ruled the three vampires, but to the corrupted soul of the damned human ripped from it's former place and companion soul, this was not the objective. Existence in this form was enough. And such an existence would be bargained against fate and will through sheer force and absolute threat that knew no mercy. If there was ambition of something more, it was silent in this privotal moment, even as all thoughts were unbarriered between them. Discipline ruled this corrupted soul of mortal born existence, echoing the nobility of knighthood in mocking tones that gave it further power beyond it's frame. For expenditure of energy in doubt and fear might leave them all weak to the other. And in this most precious moment, the vampires feared the corrupted shade of Valborast, for it knew the weapons of terror in life far better than they did command in undeath, in this prison. For the mirror soul that incarcerated it understood the meaning of it's removal, the techniques and intent. It accepted death, and so, was reborn. It had memory of what is was to
Valborast Valchek, and spared no time in mourning itself. For it was anewly driven, free from humanity's restraint, free to hate, free to kill, free to render it's creators the fate that was demanded by scorn.
What remained, contained, was a shadow of humanity, shackled presently to the grim prospect of bitter and ravenous fellows. It would not entertain such an existence but for a moment, even if that was the intent of the human that cast it in at such a terrible cost to itself. But such as children sharing the womb are often want to consume one another without any grievous fault being committed, this ground of primordial forces is a place to feast upon one another, until one remained.
Such deeds were carried out without clarion call of battle, it was swift, the blood rising and consuming the other,
vampire, starved, savage, struck quickly after a brief stalemate. The physical blade itself a horizon that will never be crossed, to be gazed from within, a refraction of close quarter reality turned sanguine battleground. The blood and souls of the contained found themselves contending for space, time, ambition and will. Yet only one would remain, and subsume the other.
Any victory would come at a high cost. To consume another and replace them in the hallowed space provided...this was the eeked existence of the damned, the rejected.
It happened quickly. Soon after imprisonment, the four met in combat most foul, the will of magic and soul sparking within it as it cut at nothing and fed of nothing except itself, becoming more, becoming unified in derision of the outside. There would be no peace between the four. One would remain, changed by the victory they would find for there was no afterlife to escape to, nothing but the satiation of appetite. And while it might seem that the corrupted mortal soul might be at disadvantage in such a pitched battle of savage instinct, it's hate somehow was far more refined, focused and brutal in it's unyielding desire to be alone. For while Valborast thought that all traces of nobility would lie within that which remained within his mortal shell, there was purpose behind the hate that was contained within the blade.
Driven from the place of it's birth, the mortal soul of a corrupted knight awoke with unrelenting hate that at first, the others balked at, dismissed as the anguish of a dying soul soon to fizzle out. But while the others needed blood to sustain themselves in their frame, Valborast's corrupted soul sought much more, and had a far more mature and driven sense of hatred for those it was greeted by in the brief peace between the four of them. Layered like the steel that contained them, edged by sunlight that was the perimeter of their prison, the soul of the corrupt mortal Valborast set about it's blame not against it's former self or the knights that had aided in ripping it from it's former self. No. A clarity of purpose was his.
And so, the corrupted soul of Valborast fed in hatred against his vampire foe, and in doing so, became something...different.
It's first thought was thus that repeated as a pulse, calm, as one voice, pounding, the final words heard and spoken by the vampires, the first words of something that existed within the soul, furious, hateful, observant, malicious, yet obedient and disciplined to itself and purpose. Anyone might hear such a low thrum about it, as it repeated it's words that confirmed it's victory and new existence. The mortal soul was now something else entirely. A predator of the vampire. An ocean of blood that now stilled as the winds of conflict died down.
It spake these words continual, mournful, defiant, assuredly, endlessly repeating as it formed new terrible consciousness, for all to hear as if but an echo of a nightmare.
“
I am Riven.”
Continued here: https://chroniclesrp.net/threads/for-gods-to-menace-fools.4507/
