Moods of Blue IV

Iskra walked, her arms behind her head and her blue eyes focused forwards as she conjured images of stewed meats in her head. These sort of places usually had scrap-meats as well for dogs. Those had been a perennial favorite for her, and she'd often frequented the kitchen-refuse areas of the Village of the Moon just to find the rare delicacies. Indeed, people who cooked food at home instead of at outposts like these often found uses for the most unlikely of organs and bits.

But outposts were different. She followed her nose forward, salivating at the thought of the meal to come.

The bear bellowed again. It was much noisier than a normal bear as well, and often huffed and puffed and snorted when he walked with his lumbering gait.

"You should ride him. It'll make him look like a mount instead of a wild bear. I don't think anyone will have a problem with him being around if they think he's a pet."

The bear snorted in seeming disgust at the idea, but not enough to make him seem smarter than the average bear.

[ EXP: 211 || +1 TEXP (2nd thread) ]

Iskra appeared confused at the thought of just leaving the bear outside, and moreover that Lethe would say it was his pet. "Well, it's not your bear, it's mine." The assertion was short. "I'll say what happens to my bear, and I will answer any questions concerning said bear."

It was obvious that she had become annoyed somehow, whether it was at the men cracking jokes about the relationship between her and the bear or Lethe's insistence on it staying outside would be hard to determine, but the scent of food always put her in a more possessive mood.

The bear walked up to the bottom of the steps of the outpost and sat down, groaning at the door in the odd way that beasts who know how to roar often do when they're trying to express themselves without scaring anyone. Iskra walked up the steps past him and knocked on the door.

By the second knock, the door swung open from beneath her hand. A rather short woman with squinted eyes stood there. Her face was concealed behind a layer of white paint, save on her red-stained lips, and she didn't seem as though she could see very well. There were many middle-aged and elderly people who had modern optometry to help their sight before the dawn, so it wasn't unusual to find a person who looked as though they were half blind.

"Custahmahs?" Presumably she was trying to say "customers", but much of her meaning was hidden behind her thick accent and shrill voice. "Good. You come in and buy."

It seemed that once she knocked on the door, Iskra didn't have much further say in the matter. With surprising speed, she found herself seated with a menu before her. Fortunately, there were huge illustrations to compensate for the high illiteracy rate among travelers, and this allowed her to get some idea of what she wanted.

The woman returned to the doorway. "You men, all you men come inside too."

[ EXP: 378 || +1 TEXP (1st post) ]

The little woman seated the rest of the warriors with a surprising indifference until suddenly turning back towards the door.

It was open, and the bear was politely looking in.

One could almost see a little exclamation point pop up over the painted woman's head, though her eyes didn't open any wider than a silken thread from the Village of the Moon.

"What are you doing out there, man? Come, come sit with other smelly men!"

The bear opened its mouth and grunted lightly, a confused look on its face, as though to say, "But..."

"No buts! You no squat outside for free, you buy!"

The woman scooted out a chair for the bear, though after seating the tremendous beast who somehow failed to break the chair, she was unable to push it back in.

She shoved a menu into its paws. "Tell me what you buy."

The bear simply roared in its confused way.

The little woman seemed to lose her patience. "And drop that stupid disguise!"

She smacked him across the muzzle, and in a flash of light, a horned, masked, muscular incubus was sitting where the giant bear had been.

He blinked, confused before looking down and noticing that he was now less... grizzly.

With a nervous smile, he looked around at the men and at Iskra. "Ummm... sorry about this, guys. Let's see... I'll take the honey-baked salmon."

Iskra appeared completely unphased. "I'll take whatever's the cheapest meat you have. Don't worry about my stomach."

The "waitress" looked expectantly towards the barbarians.

[ EXP: 305 ]

The woman left in a very big hurry to go fulfill the orders.

Iskra shrugged. "I don't know. Why don't you ask him?"

"Rivers," the toned incubus said, extending his hand for a shake and flashing what would have no doubt been an incredibly charismatic smile were it not for the mast that concealed most of his face. "You can call me Rivers, my last name. Everyone did when I was younger."

He laid back, seeming apologetic for his deception even though nobody else had seemed to mind. "The horns, you see... well, I was visited one night by a spirit from heaven in the form of a ram. I woke up with certain powers."

"I got involved in the supernatural, which I suppose was my downfall. One of my irate ex girlfriends transformed me into a bear." That particular memory seemed to make him very sad, but he quickly cheered up when the food arrived with abnormal speed.

"I was stuck as a bear for awhile, but I figured out how to transform back for short periods of time. I apologize for seducing your boss. She's a wonderful woman."

Iskra appeared to ignore the compliment, munching placidly on a pile of half-cooked organs.

[ EXP: 230 || +1 TEXP (1st post) ]

The incubus, being an empathetic soul due to the nature of his possession, smiled, his eyes turning up and a stylized sweat mark dripping down his head. "I'm sorry I mentioned it. Heh. I thought you knew... already... umm... I'll just be quiet now." The honeyed salmon before him was a strange dish, but it emitted a truly wonderful smell. Rivers put his hand up to his face, preparing to pull down his mask so he could eat. "Ah, I am honored b--"

A dark hand reached over and slid the plate away from his spot. Iskra had taken it upon herself to remove his plate from his spot, as she'd already emptied her own with undue speed.

"Ummm," Rivers began, a little perplexed and still hungry. "Excuse me..."

The woman simply snarled a terrible, deep snarl without looking up from her meal. She considered herself the leader of the group, after all, and that had a significant effect on her table manners.

The incubus appeared to give up and just leaned back casually, asking to be left a little bit of meat.

Iskra's blue eyes lifted slightly, but only to study any meat anyone else might have bought. The fish wouldn't last long.

[ EXP: 230 ]

The woman thoroughly enjoyed her feast of fish, even though she didn't look at it, and one might have guessed that she didn't taste it at all with the way that she simply inhaled the gourmet dish like a snake on fast-forward.

It was fairly normal for the woman. In fact, it was slower than she might have eaten in her true form, but it was with the same sort of intent.

The incubus's golden eyes teared up almost comically. "...for me?"

Iskra paused mid-reach with her fork.

"I... could never thank you enough, sir... Well, I could. I probably will tonight but..." He carefully sliced a piece of the steak with a knife and chewed. His eyes turned up in the middle and his cheeks drew up with his giant grin. "...it's delicious!"

Iskra frowned. Well, that was awfully kind of Lethe. For a moment, she considered simply raiding the plates of the more slower-eating barbarian company before it occurred to her on a sapient level that she could just order another steak.

"Hey, little woman! Give me one of those steaks! None of those weird white lumps with it, though."

[ EXP: 220 || +1 TEXP (1st post) ]

When Iskra finished, it was with a hostile and tense air about her that gradually melted away as the fullness of her belly registered with her brain.

The small woman came back with a hefty bill.

"What you trade me for food? Quick quick quick, you pay!"

Iskra slowly reached for her purse. Her actions were very deliberate and unhurried. She didn't want to frighten the little woman away or mistakenly think that she was planning to attack as she carefully removed her chained blades and sat them on the table.

Her slowness dissolved as she upended the bag over the little old woman's head. Stuff poured out, more stuff than a purse that size could reasonably expect to hold. It tumbled out until it made a pile bigger than the woman herself.

A small mushroom, the final item that the bag coughed up, bounced off of the top of the chaotic mess.

"Keep the change," the matriarch grumbled, yawning. "This is a tavern, right? We'll just show ourselves to the rooms."

And the demon stood up, following the general scent of fresh sheets up the stairs without another word to anyone.

The incubus blinked. "Bedtime? Already?" He thought for a moment before a blush came over his cheeks. "I LOVE bedtime!"

And he pranced up the stairs.

[ EXP: 257 ]

Something about the bear-come-charming-man's manner seemed to put Iskra in an apathetic, drained mood. Either that, or it was the copious amounts of food she'd just consumed.

"Sleep where you will," she grumbled, immediately walking towards her room and not bothering to yank the door closed. She simply collapsed on the bed, where her body churned back to its hyena state. Once upon the bed, she was immediately asleep, though even in sleep an alertness belied her perpetual, subconscious awareness of her surroundings that was inherit in all things that lived in constant danger of pain far away from the softening shelters of civilization.

The incubus had halted at the door, thinking for a moment before finally deciding. "It's settled then!"

He moved into the room simply and crawled into the bed next to the large hyena, snuggling her like a large teddy bear instead of the thousand pound mass of muscle, bristling fur, teeth designed for no other purpose than destroying flesh, and a bite that could crumble bone with force hardly comprehensible. No, he seemed hardly afraid of the demon despite just meeting her.

Iskra snorted once, shortly, but otherwise continued her nap.

[ EXP: 243 || +1 TEXP (2nd thread) ]

An hour or so had passed since the company retired to bed. Rivers awoke, both amber eyes slowly opening. The room was dark, though the door had been left open. The window revealed only a vista of stars, beneath which the traffic and labors of crickets and frogs provided more than enough noise to cloak the soft, painfully careful sound of his soles meeting the floor. Iskra was vaguely aware that her current bedmate had tipped off of the mattress; even his light weight produced some vibrations that her body, in its constant state of alertness, perceived.

But she ultimately didn't care. He wouldn't run off. She closed her eyes again, her breath resuming its regularity.

Another door was open as well: the door to his target. The incubus looked left, then right to ensure that nobody was there to observe his progress into the room.

Once inside, he didn't get on the mattress as a normal incubus might be expected to. In fact, he didn't even touch the covers that touched the floor.

Instead he knelt down on the wooden ground adjacent the sleeping Lethe, like a child praying before bedtime, and spread his hands forward, concentrating, chanting imperceptibly.

If the spell was successful, the slightest of winds would stir the room, and the barbarian king would find himself in a very realistic dream, one wherein his greatest desires were fulfilled.

[ EXP: 276 || +1 TEXP (2nd thread) ]

[ +1 TEXP (5th post) ]

A bead of sweat rolled down from the incubus's eyebrow, rolling past his closed eyes on towards his chin before it fell towards the floor, the salty drop splattering in a puddle created by its predecessors. Drip. Drip. Drip. He kept his heavy breaths silent, bearing the burden of the dream like a mute oxen pulling a plow. The blood rushed through his body, hot and alive, and in this moment he felt purpose.

Rather, though his muscles knotted and swelled as though pulling an invisible burden and his breathing came heavy and hot, he was being replenished.

He had lied to Lethe when explaining his origins.

It was how he lied to every human, lest they judge him for his hellspawned blood.

There once was a demon of dark and devilish desire who killed a pair of kami shortly after the dawn. These kami had an adult daughter who, responding to the strong bonds of blood and caring between her kind, grieved for her fallen parents for weeks and weeks on end. That daughter departed for Terra, and upon landing went on a rampage of interrogations and killings until she confronted the demon in her grief.

And so powerful was her grief that her mind was laid open like a book.

She bore him the child, Run. A child who became a man who cared for his mother and wished to use his inheritly wicked powers for good.

Pleasure wasn't evil, he'd decided long ago. It felt good physically to feed off of it as he was feeding off of Lethe's. It felt good spiritually to know he was letting the kind barbarian see a world wherein all of his desires came true, if only for a fleeting moment...

...fleeting because the hybrid sensed the sun coming up.

It wasn't any light or any sound that let him know that the daybreak would soon come. Rather, the kind of demon that fathered him worked best in the nighttime, and his instincts gave him far-in-advance warning when the great shining sphere would begin its travel across the sky.

The dream was coming to a head anyways, the point of greatest intensity, and too much pleasure often manifest as pain. The session had been long enough. He gently, gently let the lord back down from the vision until he would be safely back in the blackness behind his eyelids.

And with catlike tread, he stood and departed the room.

The light of day found the incubus back in his originally designated room, hugging the form of his master.

[ EXP: 483 || +1 TEXP (2nd thread) ]

Iskra awoke with a stretch and a yawn that would put the fear of the gods into any sane mortal or spirit.

She scratched behind her ear with one hind leg before hopping off of the bed, her nose curiously to the ground.

Her pet had awoken last night and gone somewhere. She figured his path would tell his story.

Her nose lead her out of the room, around the corner, and right into Lethe's room, where the smell picked up perceptibly. Yes, it was the smell of... incubus sweat. A pleasant scent, really. She sniffed the spot for a few moments before lifting her head and sniffing something in the room.

Perplexed by the familiar peculiarity in Lethe's scent, she poked her nose towards a spot in his sheets and took a few deep breaths, exhaling quickly and inhaling audibly. Sniff. Sniff. Sniff. Whatever it was, she didn't really lift her head from the spot for awhile.

A story was beginning to come together in her head. "What did you dream about last night?" she asked without so much as a "good morning".

[ EXP: 209 || +1 TEXP (5th post) ]

Iskra stared him in the eyes for a few moments. Her expression was perfectly neutral.

She turned, sniffing the ground once more briefly before continuing out of the room with a side comment of, "He was in here the entire time, right there next to your bed. He's going to have a hard time waking up. It's bad."

Her voice was heavy with annoyance. Once outside of the door, she shifted up to her human form without even breaking her stride.

True to her predictions, the dream-invoking man still lay on the bed, his mask covering most of what would have been an innocently sleeping face.

The spirit calmly opened the window curtains. The incubus slept on. She opened the window, allowing birdsong to fill the room. The incubus slept on. She grabbed the bottom of the bed and flipped it, accurately sending the incubus soaring out of the window.

Run's cries could be heard as he fell a full story to the ground.

Iskra poked her head out of the broken glass. "Wake up!"

Having finished that, she walked back out into the hallway, shouting, "Lethe! Get your men awake. It's time to go."

[ EXP: 228 ]

Downstairs, the little, short woman seemed to still be buried under the pile of loot from the night previous.

The hyena spirit didn't really care to check on her, but she advertised her alive condition by a short shout of "Come again!"

Of course, there was one thing that required immediate attention outside, and that was her pet.

For all intents and purposes, he was fine, though he moaned and cried out about the pain of the fall and the cruelty of Iskra for waking him in such a manner and how incubi needed their beauty sleep. The latter phrase inadvertently revealed his demon heritage and that he'd been lying, but the leader of the group didn't really care.

She pulled him to his feet as though gravity had no more bearing on him than a feather. "Come on. I know you were up all night in Lethe's room."

Her voice was loud and poor-natured, and she didn't care who heard, even the company of men that Lethe led. "Maybe next time you'll ask permission before you do such things. Come on. We've got a lot of ground to cover."

[ EXP: 214 ]

The incubus, cover blown, blushed a vibrant shade beneath his concealing mask.

"Well, umm... Lethe, sir, you see..." The lone, amber eyes fell towards the ground, afraid to make contact with the steely amber gaze of the barbarian. "I just wanted to... pay you back for being so kind to me. I didn't mean any harm by it. Please forgive me... it's in my nature."

Iskra found her foul mood lifted slightly by the circumstances. It was amusing, the way Lethe seemed so disconcerted by the fact that her pet had spent the entire night in his room. "Is it really that big of a deal? He was on his knees and working hard all night to please you as incubi do." She walked over and petted the horned man on his head, as though to reassure him that there was nothing wrong in what he'd done. "I wouldn't ask anyone to act outside of their nature. After all, I wouldn't want the same to be asked of me. Pleasure is in both of your natures. Embrace it."

And with that surprisingly philosophical statement, she began to walk off with the assumption that the two men and the barbarians would follow.

[ EXP: 222 || +1 TEXP (1st post) ]