Reign Over Ice

[Forsaken]

Within one of the many colossal ice dunes in the endless snowy wasteland surrounding the City of Manticore, there was a great hollow. It was filled with hand sculpted spires and obelisks, with many a balcony carved into it's crystalline walls with no clear purpose in mind. It was a place that didn't know if it wanted to be a castle, a cathedral, or a stage. One of the greatest treasures in this quiet place was a series of cascading pools that poured from a hot spring that entered through a low opening in one wall and emptied into what appeared to be a final slightly larger pool in the floor, but which actually opened up into the ocean. Thousands of years ago there would have been nothing here but a small cliff looking over an ocean. In this day and age, the cliff and coast had been encased deeply in ice that was perfect for carving; it had not melted for centuries.

It was a nice gig they had here, Anonyma and Remsing. A nice gig that she didn't care one iota about when she woke up tangled with him in a pile of snow camel pelts and stolen blankets, having no immediate memory of how she got there. Last thing that she remembered was being captured by the white ghoul and taken to his fortress. Then she had been talking to a tree- wait a minute. She slapped a hand against her neck. No collar. There was no collar!

She clawed her way free of the blanket nest like a wild animal and shot into the cavern like a cannonball, a gleeful and resounding shout of "I'm free! I'm free and you'll never catch me again, ha ha!" Her voiced echoed back to her, bouncing off the walls. She turned into a bear-sized raccoon and rapidly climbed up a large obelisk until she was perched at the top. The ice of the monument was already gouged deeply with hundreds of claw marks. It gave her a weird sense of deja vu, but she was too busy scanning the place with sharp icey eyes for her nemesis to linger on the feeling. There he was, the wily bastard, in the blanket nest she'd just left.

She shifted back to her human form so that her dramatic pointing in Remsing's direction wouldn't be diminished by how silly it looked to see a raccoon point in accusation.

"Okay, you really need to explain this to me. Since when have we been cuddle buddies? Where are we? And also don't even think of touching this ice tower I'm on, it's mine, I claimed it."

[Seven]

((Please do forgive me. I’ve furiously tried rereading various threads on foxflame, but I am a bit nervous. It’s been so long since I’ve played any of these characters, that I fear there will be an unnaturalness to my words. Particularly after all of your exceedingly lovely posts.))

Remsing really would have given it up by now if sleeping alone were anything short of impossible for him. The moment his furry bedmate had bolted for her obelisk, he shot into a sitting position with all the coherence and alertness of the undead. He gummed his teeth together, lazily taking a look around, wondering briefly how the wily bastard managed to get out of his grip when his sleeping habits would have suggested he had been cursed into an octopus creature rather than a …whatever he was. “White Ghoul” had been the moniker attached to the infamous Forsaken that ravaged the streets and rebellions of Manticore and Wyvern some plus seventy-five years ago, a name befitting the strange chimera of a creature unlucky enough to have been some nearly-as-unlucky Guardian’s once “delightful experiment.” His escape with the raccoon beast — the only of its kind then and since-- propelled their status from infamous to legendary.

Speaking of said raccoon beast, where did that mangy beast get off to? His eyes flicked up to the obelisk when she did him the favor of shouting down to him, and he relaxed back onto his bent forearms, lips marked by a lazily sly smile, only less charming for the way it froze midway at the paralyzed side of his face. Ah. There she was. Stalagmites over stalactites today. Still up to her usual morning antics.

“Oh,” he began, the vowel extended to project his nonchalant indifference to her plight. “Well, you know.” Each new word gave him a little more alertness, and that more carefree dismissiveness. “I’ve just decided that today is the day I finally eat you since we are so deeply in love and such. The collar is off so you make halfway decent game till I catch you, and the “cuddles” are since I am so benign and conscientious a master, I figured you deserved at least one last mortal comfort—and what better a selection since you are so entirely obsessed with me?” The lazily fond smile at this point had evolved into its fully smug smirk as he watched her devilishly with all the interest a cat holds for its mouse. He was well aware of her dreams, her peculiar brand of madness (of which he was not much better).

Was playing into them sadistic? Probably. But hysterical? Unquestionably. He propped his chin on his hand, brows raised, waiting to see what madness she’d unfold into next.

[Forsaken]

((How you manage to feel insecure when you write the most incredible posts is beyond me. I grinned like an idiot the entire time I was reading your response! Freshly woken, content Remsing is weapon's grade levels of cute. Put a hazard sign on that before you post next time; someone could put an eye out. ; ) ))

Anonyma just stared at Remsing in outright disbelief, her eyebrows slowly rising ever higher as he spoke until they melded with her cap and all but vanished from existence. Well, wherever the two of them were, whatever had happened, he still sounded the same. He was still going on about that whole garbage 'master' notion he had, and this whole cannibal consumption idea hadn't yet lost it's charm as far as he was concerned. This love business was a slightly new angle on all the teasing concerning her alleged lustful animal nature. Not exactly a leap in logic, but love for what he perceived as a lesser being seemed like the sort of thing he was too proud to speak of, even in jest. His strangely languid and content body language was another thing; it seemed unlike the ghoul captor whose  acquaintance she'd had the misfortune of making not even twenty four hours ago.

So much about him was as it had been before she'd woken up here, but the differences were unmistakable. Her accusing arm dropped back to her side and she huffed out a deep sigh. 

"That's a real likely story you've got there, you weird, anomalous ghoul. You know what I think? I think I slipped into a coma quite sometime ago and you mistook my silence for friendship and obedience. Countless tyrants have made such errors over the course of history, so don't be down on yourself for your mistake. It happens to the best of us." She shrugged dramatically, hands held palm up at her sides. Then she wiggled the fingers of her left hand. Then she stared at it, puzzled. Then she drew the flat of her tongue across her palm, thinking it must be an illusion and this was the most sensible way of confirming what her lying eyes were telling her. 

Her feral gaze flicked back to Remsing and she lifted her head. "Oh hey, remember how your obnoxious acid blood melted my hand into a pulped mess of blood and meat-" She held up said hand in the 'one moment' gesture, using the other to cover her mouth. Yes, she had triggered her own gag reflex. No, she wasn't going to vomit. 

"Anyway," She continued without acknowledging her own reaction, "It's fine now. Not even horrendously scarred. So I suppose I have no reason to hold a grudge." With that pardon granted, she folded herself into a relaxed-seeming seated position on top of her ice obelisk and stared instensely at a patch of ice just to the right of the white ghoul. Fine? Maybe her hand was, but she was going to need a moment or ten to process this. 

[Seven]

“Ah yes, that acid, flesh-eating blood of mine,” Remsing nodded sagely in agreement, arms loosely crossed, taking care to not get the spines at the back of his elbows caught up. “Tree must’ve fixed it. Glad to know there’s no hard feelings.” He did all he had to not to snicker. A fascinating thing those dreams of hers were, he’d have loved to have seen him—he meant them, no wait, he meant him after all. He sounded like a freaking force of nature from what she so often babbled. King of the god damn world. And acid blood? He understood that his flesh or body or something was poisonous upon consumption—probably not unlike some species of extinct frog—but now acid blood, that he would kill to have. Maybe it was for the best though. If he had had it, he’d have been far too tempted to slash at his own arteries and morbidly play blood-sprinkler at every possible opportunity. And he doubted that that was good for one’s longevity of life. Remsing sighed wistfully.

As for the Loony-Coon’s nightmares (Heh. Loony-Coon. That was good. He’d have to keep that one.) he understood the rough parallels for quite some time now. Dreams of a thief woman part of a noble, animal tribe race, who was captured by the notorious “White Ghoul” and brought to his cavern palace. He must have really messed her up when he brought her in all those years ago when he served as the unruly, terror-mongering Forsaken of the Guardians. At least, this is what he told himself—better to think he’d done it to her himself than some thistledown-haired fop in a dress.

All the while Anonyma rambled, Remsing took to slowly rolling his shoulders, cracking his neck, then interlacing his clawed hands before stretching his arms palms-out. He smirked up at her once again as he got that final kink out. “Okay Loony-Coon, no need to break your feeble mind over the matter,” he said, his nasal tone just as dry and aloof as she remembered. He rose to his feet, and though the lunged form he stepped into could be mistaken for a continuation of his stretches, the telling glower in his eyes and the sharp, predatory shine of his teeth from behind his smirk spoke otherwise. His head cocked to the side, like some sort of strange bird, and he softly sniggered his strange, but familiar clucks. “Kukuku—and I’ll try not to break that feeble body of yours, when you’re getting yourself got again.” See? What a perfectly benign master he was, even giving her warning before he shot forward and jumped for her obelisk with claws sharp and jaws and unhinged.

[Forsaken]

Most of what Remsing spouted back to her in his first volley was a recap of the world she came from, so she dismissed it for the time being. Her memories of this world and time she was in now were starting to press back into her mind, mostly as impressions, and they were the ones she needed. One thread in the many whispered that he knew these things because she frequently woke up here, speaking of them. He did not directly remember who he was. That many of the claw marks on this ice obelisk were hers. It was a difficult mess to untangle, the growing clash of two lives of memories in her head, but she was determined to make some headway here. She had a lot of questions, and most of the answers were already in her head if she could just concentrate.

The frown she wore deepened while Remsing spoke. Couldn't he see that she was trying to focus up here? Inconsiderate, is what it was. Nonetheless, she was beginning to remember waking up here on a different occasion decades ago, in a body that was different than it currently was now. She remembered being summoned, and that for a while there had been another stream of consciousness in her mind. No, sometimes there had been two; that of a fellow prisoner and, sometimes, a different captor entirely.

She suddenly remembered what Guardians were, what hers had been like, and decided to abandon that trail of thought for a while. There was nothing but pain on that path. 

As for Remsing...it turns out he had once captured her here as well, when she wasn't quite herself yet. Those memories bore the impression of another stream of consciousness entirely. She could tell the difference between the memories and dreams tied to her, and those of other people. She was a Dream Walker, after all. A descendant of the powerful spirit animals that had once held humanity in thrall. She learned to separate her consciousness from that of the minds she was visiting as early as she had learned to walk. Was it possible she had once visited someone here and had never been able to return?

That just posed a whole other host of questions, and Remsing wasn't sitting still anymore. He even had a new stupid nickname for her. It earned him a baleful glare, but she didn't immediately respond, seeing as she wanted to get back to the clash in her head she was trying to unravel. But then he had risen to his feet and primed himself to lunge at her spire, laughing in that strange way that had already taught her to expect something unpleasant. 

She rose into a crouch of her own. "NO." She scolded him, knowing damn well that it wouldn't deter him in the least, but unable to resist making a show of taking a stand. Even though she knew what was coming next, and should have been able to steel herself against panicking under better circumstances, these were not those circumstances. She was just too overwhelmed by everything else to handle his rush up her tower coolly. What she did do was straighten so quickly she lost her footing on the ice and promptly fell off the back of the obelisk which the ghoul was now rapidly ascending, but she at least snagged her own clawed hand in the ice for a quick recovery before she could fall far. Then she leaped off the formation immediately, tore off in the direction of another stalagmite and rapidly ascended it, leaping for a formation that protruded from the ceiling and could not be accessed from the ground...

By the time she had her wits back with her, she was a giant raccoon again and was on the far side of their large cavern, and she wasn't even sure where her pursuer was. Being white, he could blend in nicely. Now this was just embarrassing. Did she even deserve to be free after a reaction like that? Maybe she should just serve herself to him on a platter, since she was doing such a poor job of coming out on top. 

Cringing at herself, she made one last leap to one of the highest balconies and waited, perched on the railing, for him to show up again. Normally this would just be a good way to get oneself boxed in and trapped, but in a situation where she didn't know where the ghoul would come from next, it also kept him from sneaking up on her. She shifted back into her more human form and unraveled the whip (which she was relieved to still have) from around her waist.

[Seven]

Anonyma was fast, and she was damned good, Remsing appraised even as she was mentally berating herself. However, all the skill in the world couldn’t save her from him… along with the fact that her madness had her playing into like patterns, morning after morning. His head turned like an owl, blinking one eye and then the next as he observed her. But no, really, it was all him. He’d have gotten her even if he hadn’t already anticipated her leap from icy column to column to balcony. It was true, their surroundings gave him a notable advantage of camouflage that made springing upon her from the misty whites of snow and rising steam simple. All he ever needed was the right moment to get a—

Remsing dropped down on her. From the ceiling. Where he had been spider-sitting in wait. She was immediately pressed to the floor of the balcony by his weight clobbering her, and from her new pancaked position, she was pinned down with his spindly hands at her shoulders. There was a manic gleam in his glaring grin as hovered over her, the white mane of hair casting a shadow over his face and those malicious, hungry teeth bared as he inched closer and his lips pulled back wider. Terror hopefully now properly instilled, he spoke in a low, hushed hiss, “Kukuku—you’ll never escape me, Beasty. And now, for my prize—“

“Blaaaaah.” From the tip over her chin over her right eye, Anonyma had been licked by the long, slimey tongue. And again, and again—and it really didn’t help that he was still making those disgusting slurping, licking noises for effect. Still pushing her down, he pulled himself up to smirk at her like the arrogant bastard he undeniably was; he looked still as smug as a self-important cat as he waggled his eyebrows. “Looks like you belong to me again for the rest of the day,” he said in light explanation. “Now then, do you remember me now, or do you need more reminders of all the other times you’ve lost?”

[Forsaken]

Anonyma went down with a startled, angry sounding raccoon sound that was a cross between a snarl and a bark. Of all the nooks and crannies she could have chosen, what were the chances Remsing would have chosen it first?! The flash of memory came belatedly, allowing her to finally remember that this was one of her favorite vantage points, and she chose it often. She had been predictable. It would have been very helpful if she would have remembered that earlier. She was too clever to make mistakes like that! That bizarre ghoul had purposely chosen to go after her when she was disoriented. He wouldn't stand a chance otherwise.

His crazed grin did indeed send a thrill of fear through her, but with it came a peculiar feeling of comfort that was unique to this version of Remsing. He was very good at pressing all the buttons that triggered fear in her primal instincts, but he usually let her go unharmed at the end of it. She was afraid. She was also safe. It really made very little sense, but it was what she felt. 

By the time he started speaking, she was grumbling irritably but had ceased her brief, flailing attempt to get him off. The grumbling became more of a tense growl when he started licking her face. Did he have to be so dramatic about it? It was normal for animals to groom themselves and each other, but he was being extremely weird about it and he knew it, the maniac. 

"Yes, I remember you, Other Remsing, now get off." She shifted back into a bear-sized raccoon, her mass alone lifting him up off the ground with her as she stood. Then she shook her fur coat like a wet dog, just to make sure he was listening. "You know how weird it is that you neither have clothes nor fur when you pin me down like that? The answer is 'very'" The giant raccoon paused thoughtfully. "And the other answer is 'You're right, Anonyma. I will wear a jacket like a civilized ghoul monster when I pin you to the ice.'"

She asked for so little. 

[Seven]

“Other Remsing,” she could hear him mutteringly scoff at the notion. It was a great offense to him that anyone could think that there was anyone else as great as him, and worse, that he would be the imitation of the other. But she rebounded, becoming that creature that shifted the entirety of her mass and as such lifted him off the ground. He too, of course, rebounded, returning to the smug, devil-may-care smirk as he landed lightly on his feet but remained crouched like the wild thing he was. Remsing laughed at her tauntingly, quiet little man-laughs that still had a cluck interjected here and there as if he didn’t know if he wanted to mock her or was just legitimately having fun--or perhaps more likely was that he was legitimately having fun at her expense.

He cocked his head again. “Now why is it that you’re always thinking of me naked? Please Beasty, do try to control yourself. I know I am irresistible, and you no doubt wonder at what so meek a creature as yourself did to be blessed with my lingering presence, but you sound desperate.” He winked at her, from the white half of his face. “Or obsessed,” he emphasized, and went back to sniggering.

[Forsaken]

"With blessings like you in this world, what need is there for curses?" She scoffed in turn, rolling her eyes. She shifted back to her mostly human state. "Look, almost no creature runs about bald all day. I'm not even sure why you do." She squinted at him. "It's almost as though you're doing this for attention." Given that he'd once told her it was a matter of ghoul culture, she was being more than little disingenuous here, but she'd never been a paragon of truth.

She turned away and stepped over the railing, using her claws to slide safely down the wall of ice to the floor. If she kept talking to him about this, he'd just keep turning it back on her. She'd rather have the last word and flee, so that she didn't have to feel all the confusing...things she felt when he kept challenging her on the issue. In truth, she wasn't sure why his baldness made her so drastically uncomfortable. It was just weird. Only fish and worms should be bald, not mammalian creatures.

Not that he wasn't appealing in his way...

That thought just made her skin crawl in turn. She decided that now was a good time to jump in the hot spring and soak out all of the tension in her body. If she lurked like an alligator, maybe he'd go do something else for a while.

[Seven]

He huffed at her notion, arms falling akimbo at his waist to try to gesture his displeasure at that crazy notion. Retort sharp on his tongue, he was about to let her have it when she turned and fled. Ha! He grinned, for Remsing saw her “fleeing” just as much a sign of his victory as Anonyma saw her getting the last word in the sign of hers. He was just about ready to gloat when he finally realized he’d have nothing to gloat at.

With that, his hand curled over the railing and he threw himself off, catapulting with ease over to beside her pool. It was almost amazing how he made things that were easy for him look reckless, and the reckless things he did look easy, but everything was always backwards day when Remsing was involved. “Hey you, don’t go sulking away yet. Is your memory back enough to remember we have plans yet?” It might have been wrong, seeing his face as hopeful as an excited puppy’s overlapped with the cruel captor that was the Other Remsing.

[Forsaken]

Well, he had her attention again, just as she'd stepped onto the ledge of the pool. So much for being able to creep away for a while. Not that she could feel too irritated about the way he followed her when he looked as excited and harmless as he did just then.

"Our plans..." Even though most of her memories had come back, it still felt peculiar to see the ferocious Remsing show such blatant glee. She looked up at the ceiling as she muttered to herself, trying to remember.

It came back to her like a strike of lightning, infusing her with energy. "We're going to go outside and massacre one of those weird, gem-infused creatures!" Not all of them had all that many gems embedded in their skulls, but that was the part she really cared about. She sprang past him, toward the hidden outer door whose location she abruptly remembered, and the over-sized cloak and paw mittens she wore when going for long treks across the snow and ice. Her winter fur could handle most weather, but the hurricane-level blizzards that were known to blow through at a moments notice and stay for a fortnight were a bit much even for her. She took no chances.

"Why are we still here? We have places to be." She spoke impatiently, as though it was Remsing who had been holding them up all along. Now a large raccoon once more, she quickly slipped into all her gear.

[Seven]

Remsing watched her as she bounded past him, a whirlwind as she prepared herself for the journey, and carefully took note not to grin as he rolled his eyes. “Loon,” he muttered again. And she had the audacity to accuse him of being the manic maniac. Just to be contrary, he straightened his back from its usual ghoulish curvature --as if he meant to masquerade as a man-- and walked over at his leisure. Eventually, he reached the storage closet and leaned on the wall beside wear she was preparing herself.

“Oh? Are you certain? With how slow you were moving before, I had thought you had hoped to remain holed up with me here for another month.” He too was more than antsy to get out. As charming as the place was, cabin fever was the real murderer in these parts. He watched with lazy interest as more and more gadgets were attached to the raccoon woman’s body, tucked away here and there. Where the hell did she put it all? He turned away, not wanting to admit her brilliance with things, and leaned fully against the wall, arms crossed, as he scoffed. He certainly didn’t need that much stuff. He then smirked. After all, he already had her. Anonyma could hear the arrogant ghoul snickering to himself again.

[Forsaken]

Raccoon Anonyma had packed everything even remotely practical, and was considering what looked like a small stove, when Remsing spoke and she noticed him leaning against the wall. There was nothing more aggravating to a frantic packer in a hurry than someone who leaned around, obviously completely unprepared and nowhere near ready, showing no interest in remedying the situation. She let the end of the stove that she had lifted up (which was more useful as a generic heat source since she generally didn't cook her food) fall back to the ground with a loud, metallic clatter. 

"Is that really all you're going to bring? Just you?" She lifted her tapered muzzle up to the ceiling and nearly howled. "Every time. You do this every time!" With a wordless sound of exasperation, she returned her stare to him.

"I'm leaving in thirty seconds." She said flatly. "You'd best figure out what you're taking with you, or I'm leaving you behind." Well, the threat of leaving him behind was an empty one and it was likely they both knew it. Going out alone had stopped seeming like a viable survival strategy decades ago. Over the course of their time together, he'd become as crucial a part of her arsenal as her whip, but she'd never just come out and say that. Besides, whether or not her phrasing was truthful, she had a point to make. Namely that she hated having to wait. 

Hated. It.

[Seven]

He lips split in that infuriating smirk that seemed to suggest that he lived to rile her up. “Now why would I need to pack anything given that you are bringing enough provisions for a one year expedition?” His face deadpanned, slightly curling forward as was wont of his species. “To the moon.” He then gracefully pulled himself back up, smile returning to his lips as his fingers scraped against the icy door to his room. “Besides the fact that it is a servant’s job to pack. And I am certainly no pack mule.”

Before she could respond to the insulting implication, he turned away, finally opening up the door he stood beside. “But if you’re going to make such a fuss about it…” He looked inside the glittering catastrophe within and hummed. One day he was really going to have to figure out where he had acquired this seemingly multiplying collection of valuables—or where to put them. It made finding his actual tools rather difficult. Not that he needed them. In fact, he found he preferred it. Anonyma had taken the room upstairs as her domain, but he liked to be low to the ground—in it even—and the glittering items covering wall, every spot of ceiling space, matched by mammalian tusks and bones hanging and standing at random made it feel as though his room were a cavern, magical at that, filled with a horde of treasure to which no adventurer could make it out alive save for this tiny domain’s master. (He had to ward Anonyma out of his room to all blazes of Hell, she was constantly trying to break in to steal just about everything within. He loved how bitterly jealous it made her.) It made him feel nostalgic for a home he knew he did not have.

After all, he might not have been able to remember it, but he understood he was some ordinary schmuck before he metamorphosed into his current, superior form.

To make more of a show of it, he looked over his satchel, turning his head, this way and that, as if bitterly embroiled in thought whether bringing a single bag was too much or not. Anonyma was right. He was a pain in the ass. He eventually pulled out a single toothbrush—he didn’t even need to brush those fangs he called teeth, where had he gotten that from?—and turned to her smilingly, as if he was read to go on some delightful picnic. “Yes. That should be sufficient.” He waved the toothbrush at her.

[Forsaken]

While the implication that she was a pack mule wouldn't generally rile her up all that much, the thought that he considered himself such a high and mighty noble most certainly did. She knew what she was; she was a scavenger who took whatever appealed to her without shame and always carried a portion of the resulting hoard with her when she left. It just made sense, to carry the things that gave her an advantage with her. She made sense. Arrogant hoity toity psuedo-nobles and their snobbish attitudes were what didn't make sense.

He'd be dead without her, and she would have told him as much if he hadn't opened the door to his room and distracted her. Her eyes became large, envious mirrors that seemed to reflect the sparkle of the shiny doodads within. She did indeed want to steal just about all of it back from him; it was the sort of treasure trove she could spend a lifetime trying to collect. In fact, hadn't she? Wasn't a lot of that hers? She wouldn't put it past the ghoul to steal her things in order to prove his so-called superiority, but while she remembered some of these objects she couldn't remember any of them being stolen. The connection was hazy, and made her feel strangely wistful. 

By the time Remsing turned around with the toothbrush she had already filled the doorway with her large, furry body, and was coyly reaching for a crystal with a funny little raccoon hand. She started guiltily when she realized he could see her, straightening quickly and cracking her head on the doorframe. She rubbed her head and looked at him so reproachfully you'd think it was all his fault. 

"So it's going to be a toothbrush, is it? I hope that keeps you warm when I inevitably toss you into the snow." She growled in annoyance, and grabbed him so that she could just tuck him under her cloak with everything else. It turns out there was a special 'Remsing pocket', that was actually more like a nicely padded saddle of sorts that also enjoyed the protection of her cloak, but calling it the Remsing pocket spared her pride. Really, it was even a fairly accurate description, if one thought of the ghoul as a useful object instead of a person. 

With Remsing stashed away she climbed straight up an ice tunnel to the door above them (it was more of a 'hatch', really) and hared off into the night darkened ice plains.