12-04-2018, 01:32 AM
Armande was strangely quiet, a habit that her great love did not often nurture. Valeriya found the silence unsettling, and she would give her left toe for insight into the cyclone that must be his thoughts. But Rowan demanded her attention, and Valeriya lit like a candle when their hands clasped so sisterly. She was one of these channelers that Armande described, but even Father Rasputin commanded magicks. How evil could these dark arts be? Winds and charms were not frightening despite the unholiness that Apollyon wielded. Rowan was not so evil, was she?
Then her opportunity came. Vale licked her lips and the darkness in her eyes stirred like dusts long settled were disturbed by ghostly specters. “You can awaken, sister of the Eye.” In that moment her own fuzzed into temporal distance. The future was fluid, but amid the rivers of time she saw Rowan glistening in the waters washed red by her atonement. It could come to be, if Rowan agreed.
She released the voodoo queen’s hands hesitantly, but only so to gesture at the stoic Armande nearby. Her gaze lingered on his smooth cheeks a moment, recalling the first time she beheld his bubbled, oozing flesh in the Below. Her voice thinned to ice, cold and reverent. “The Great One is before you now,” ownership of love’s possessiveness swirled in her gaze. Pride, perhaps. "The Great One of old was Grigori Rasputin, who saved us by preparing a sacred dwelling before the great battles of the Empire’s revolution. When our Glorious Father perished, his children became the Eye, and we awaited his return."
One such daughter, Valeriya, was the Eye now, powers passed down from her great father, now perfected in her. "I present to you the Great One of our time. Cast off your sins and awaken from the darkness that grips your soul. You must open yourself to stir the slumbering soul caged in the darkness of your body. I’ve done it,” a haunted smile tugged her lips, “We all have.”
The others were gone by then, and even Armande and Mikeal faded. It was only Rowan and Valeriya who remained. The two eyes that together might reveal the entire world. She leaned close and whispered, “I’ll help you.” Hands squeezing tight.
Then her opportunity came. Vale licked her lips and the darkness in her eyes stirred like dusts long settled were disturbed by ghostly specters. “You can awaken, sister of the Eye.” In that moment her own fuzzed into temporal distance. The future was fluid, but amid the rivers of time she saw Rowan glistening in the waters washed red by her atonement. It could come to be, if Rowan agreed.
She released the voodoo queen’s hands hesitantly, but only so to gesture at the stoic Armande nearby. Her gaze lingered on his smooth cheeks a moment, recalling the first time she beheld his bubbled, oozing flesh in the Below. Her voice thinned to ice, cold and reverent. “The Great One is before you now,” ownership of love’s possessiveness swirled in her gaze. Pride, perhaps. "The Great One of old was Grigori Rasputin, who saved us by preparing a sacred dwelling before the great battles of the Empire’s revolution. When our Glorious Father perished, his children became the Eye, and we awaited his return."
One such daughter, Valeriya, was the Eye now, powers passed down from her great father, now perfected in her. "I present to you the Great One of our time. Cast off your sins and awaken from the darkness that grips your soul. You must open yourself to stir the slumbering soul caged in the darkness of your body. I’ve done it,” a haunted smile tugged her lips, “We all have.”
The others were gone by then, and even Armande and Mikeal faded. It was only Rowan and Valeriya who remained. The two eyes that together might reveal the entire world. She leaned close and whispered, “I’ll help you.” Hands squeezing tight.
The Eye of the Khylsty