Deter the Tyrant
Sept 6, 2015 21:21:42 GMT -5
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Tapi, blackdragonflame1, and 8 more like this
Post by Deleted on Sept 6, 2015 21:21:42 GMT -5
((Read Rabbit: Final first))
Tea had never heard his master scream. No, not like this. He retracted his secondary limbs, third eye, new tail, and new horns at the sound. Gemmy retreated within him entirely, abandoning him in the face of the Puppet Master. Tea felt the panic start to rise as Gemmy disappeared within his head. The hollow, broken noise that Liam unleashed was almost feral, and Tea had been the one to wring it out of him. How?
“He’s . . .,” Liam was on his knees, hands ghosting over the still body of the dire bat. “He’s . . .,” Tea still felt the scratches marring his back and abdomen where Relic had attacked. He still felt the cracked bone in one of his arms, which hung limp at his side. He felt everything. Everything except the agony of the grief-stricken Puppet Master. For just one second Tea almost felt for his master. Then Liam turned on him, eyes glowing and teeth gritted as he clutched the body of his most faithful puppet. “You!” he hissed, and all of the sympathy Tea hadn’t wanted to entertain anyways faded completely. “On. Your. Knees.”
Tea cried out as his body obeyed without his consent. He was already so horribly ripped open. Relic had already done his damage in his failed attempt to protect his master, what more could Liam do to him?
A lot. There was a lot more Liam could do to him and he knew it.
Liam neared and Tea flinched at the encroaching human, ready to strike. Upon realizing this, Liam ordered him to be still. Tea’s heart ground to a halt and his breath hitched as he fought the commands. He struggled, but every nerve protested painfully. Every bones set in place obediently, every muscle seized, and Tea’s eyes were wide with fear. His blood was everywhere, All over his torn legs, chest, back, on the floor his master stalked across. He was weak, so weak, and Liam’s influence was making him weaker.
But he still had his tongue. He had not been ordered to be quiet this time. “You were wrong about them,” he snapped as Liam came to stand above him. A painted hand snaked through Tea’s hair, yanking his head back so hard Tea felt the roots give.
Liam’s glare was the worst he’d ever seen, his face red as his nails. Tea cringed. He wanted to apologize, wanted to take back all he had said and all he had done. But he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. He refused. “There was always something about you skinwalkers,” Liam hissed through sharpening teeth. “You were always so goddamn hardheaded, so resistant to orders.” He shoved a nail, now a talon, just into Tea’s mouth and began cutting through his cheek. He squeezed his eyes shut and withheld a cry. It hurt, oh God it hurt. “I was foolish enough to believe your empathy would make you more receptive.” He drove a foot directly into the opening in Tea’s abdomen where Relic had started to tear out his organs. Tea let out a gush of air at the pain, glimpsing Liam’s now blood-soaked shoe. “But you turned out to be just like all the others of your kind.” That shoe then connected with Tea’s jaw, head twisted at such an angle his neck cracked again. He collapsed on the ground, landing on his broken arm. “You should have been wiped out like the rest of them.”
But he hadn’t been. He was alive. He was alive, and he wasn’t going anywhere. Struggling against the orders still in place, he growled out, “Too late for you.”
“Is it?” A stomp to his side broke ribs, and two very sharp hands grabbed at his good arm. Tea screamed as his master stood on his waist and started pulling it from its socket. His throat grew sore rapidly as Liam pulled and pulled until not just his joints and bones but his very flesh was tearing. “I think,” he declared as he dropped the arm at last, kicking Tea in the gut again to silence him, “it’s too late for you.”
Tea simpered on the floor, tears fleeing his closed eyelids as he lay unable to move. Survive. He had to survive. He would survive. But at what cost?
Liam yanked Tea back up despite his devastated body, the giant shouting, “Stop!”
“You didn’t!” Liam retorted. His talons sank into Tea’s cheeks as he gripped his jaw to force the puppet to look at the master. “And now Relic is dead.” His voice faltered like he was actually going to cry. Then he snarled and raked another set of claw marks down Tea’s still bleeding chest. “You think they will save you?” He began cutting a collar into Tea’s neck, like he’d forced Tea to do to Lola. “You think they actually care about you?” Liam mocked him, almost laughing as a crazed smirk hit his lips. “They are beasts! Beasts don’t feel like humans. They don’t care like humans. They cannot compare to us, to even you.” Liam pulled away and backhanded Tea. Miraculously he did not fall over, but his blood filled mouth now had a tooth threatening to free itself from his gum. “A halfling MONSTER!”
Suddenly Tea was being dragged across the floor by red strings, which jerked him off the ground and slammed him into a corner of the room. He was dizzy on the impact, slumping into the restraints and vision fading at the loss of blood. Pain. So much pain. With no working arms, legs like jelly, chunks bitten and scratched out of him and organs lying everywhere but in their rightful place, Tea was in shambles. He shouldn’t be alive. Staring at his own innards, his own blood, tasting it all, he knew he shouldn’t be alive. His eyes fluttered open and closed. Fading. Everything was fading. Even his hearing could not pick up on the words that rolled off his tongue. “I’d rather be a monster.”
Liam stalked towards him with an outburst of rage, oblivious to the individuals now entering the room. Tea only felt them. He did not see them, his gaze fixed on his master who had never had to use his strings on him before. “Then it’s time I treat you like one.” Tea vaguely registered the man pulling the mummification instruments he’d used on Tea to make him bend to his will completely, the ones he’d stolen Tea’s very mind with. Liam’s hands neared Tea’s face, tools ready for insertion.
Tea did the one thing he was never supposed to do under any circumstances: he bit the hand of the Puppet Master.
Liam cried out at first, then the shock silenced him. They stared unblinkingly at one another, Tea’s eyes narrowed and unashamed of his actions. Liam dropped the tools, eyes wide and unfocused for a moment as it dawned on him what Tea had just done. The fury that bled across Liam’s face sank into Tea’s system.
Just like Liam’s fingers sank into his ripped throat and started jerking off his head. The words, “They can’t have you!” were the last to meet Tea’s ears before everything went black.
---
Tea's head was halfway disconnected from his neck and shoulders when a feminine voice cooed, "Now now," and Liam's body froze entirely at the snap of someone's fingers. "You've had enough fun for the last few decades or centuries I'd say." There was another snap and he felt his hands start to release the giant's head. He resisted, digging red talons into a blonde scalp. His very veins strained against him, obeying the unspoken commands of the woman.
Liam snarled, "What is--?" His body jerked around and was forced against the wall adjacent to Tea. He glanced up in horror and a masked woman, who held her hands much like . . . like a puppet master controlling a marionette. His body filled with a horror he had not truly felt since losing his heart. "What are you--?"
"I'm going to need you to release your puppets," she declared before tilting her hands up slightly. His back arched and he felt a strain on his spine that made his eyes widen and his lungs ache as he gasped for air. "If you do so quickly and calmly, your death will be a lot less painful."
"Which is more than you deserve," came an enraged voice. Liam's eyes darted to the other speaker, a woman whose body was as fluid as the smoke that made it up. Their leader, he thought vaguely. She was here, just within reach, and he could do nothing. Even attempting to lift a finger didn't seem feasible. Not without the permission of the masked woman, who Tea had never made mention of having this ability.
Another individual popped up. One he recognized but . . . not quite. The demon. The demon was possessing his puppet, Liam's puppet, Lola was his--!
Another strain against his spine made him gasp as the masked woman declared almost playfully, "I can do this all day."
"I can't," Alulle whispered from within Lola's body. "She is weak. She can't hold me in much longer."
"I'd say the fucking traitor can't take much more either, but that'd be a lie," Tapi said bitterly as she glanced at the remains of Liam's prized puppet. "I hardly need to punish him. I think you tried your damnedest already." Her tone told him that didn't mean she didn't still have her plans.
And that rekindled his anger. "You will regret--."
He was cut off when a cloud of smoke enveloped his throat. "Release. My. Cult. Members." Orange eyes burned beneath blacked out glasses as the leader's power rippled.
It registered with Liam that this was the end. He was . . . he wasn't making it out of this alive. His eyes fell on Relic's body and fresh pain hit him. It hit him hard enough that his lips started moving.
And he didn't have the wherewithal to stop.
---
"As the master of Leland, Nicoli, Lola," he listed off a few other names, Tapi listening intently as she recalled every member he'd taken from her and violated, "I release them." Afterwards, he looked weaker, like he'd been drained of energy.
But there was one name he hadn't listed. Chronic picked up on it immediately. She clicked her tongue. "You forgot one." Liam glanced up, gaze much duller than before. "Let me help you remember," she forced his head to twist uncomfortably to the side and the Puppet Master wound up staring at the blood soaked, broken, torn, seemingly lifeless and nearly headless body of his puppet. His last puppet. "Let him go."
Tapi saw the spark reignite in Liam's gaze before he turned and growled, "No."
"What use do you have of him when you'll be dead soon?" Chronic asked.
"He will--."
"No," Tapi snapped. "He won't die." The smoke around the Puppet Master's throat tightened. "He's mine now."
Lism grew angrier and louder as he bit out, "He belongs to me. He will always. Belong. To me."
"No. He. Won't!" Tapi's smoke plunged down Liam's throat as she lost patience with him.
"Tapi!" Chronic uncharacteristically shouted, dropping her hands at the loss of composure in the leader.
Liam's body convulsed as Tapi burned him from the inside, his body crumpling to the ground as his strings around Tea began to fade with his life. Tapi's eyes burned, her body less corporeal as she turned the Puppet Master's insides into a lava pit, watching her smoke burn through his skin, reddening even the outside. Unlike with Lance, she did not waste any more breath on Liam's than she had to except to answer Chronic, "He will die and Tea will live." When the Puppet Master's body only moved now due to her smoke and the red strings had faded enough that Tea dropped to the floor and came apart like a ragdoll whose seams had been severed, she withdrew her smoke slowly just for good measure. "Somehow."
Alulle stole away with Lola. Chronic lingered alongside Tapi as they neared the bodies of puppet and master. They stared down at what had become of Tea, who lay in literal pieces. Chronic a noise of displeasure.
They looked to their fellow cult member, then to the man that had controlled him. He was dead. Just to be sure (or rather for her own satisfaction) Tapi kicked Lism in the face. When he gave no response, she grunted in confirmation. They had cut the head off the snake. The Candle Cult was theirs once more.
Then again, it had never truly belonged to anyone but Tapi.
Tea had never heard his master scream. No, not like this. He retracted his secondary limbs, third eye, new tail, and new horns at the sound. Gemmy retreated within him entirely, abandoning him in the face of the Puppet Master. Tea felt the panic start to rise as Gemmy disappeared within his head. The hollow, broken noise that Liam unleashed was almost feral, and Tea had been the one to wring it out of him. How?
“He’s . . .,” Liam was on his knees, hands ghosting over the still body of the dire bat. “He’s . . .,” Tea still felt the scratches marring his back and abdomen where Relic had attacked. He still felt the cracked bone in one of his arms, which hung limp at his side. He felt everything. Everything except the agony of the grief-stricken Puppet Master. For just one second Tea almost felt for his master. Then Liam turned on him, eyes glowing and teeth gritted as he clutched the body of his most faithful puppet. “You!” he hissed, and all of the sympathy Tea hadn’t wanted to entertain anyways faded completely. “On. Your. Knees.”
Tea cried out as his body obeyed without his consent. He was already so horribly ripped open. Relic had already done his damage in his failed attempt to protect his master, what more could Liam do to him?
A lot. There was a lot more Liam could do to him and he knew it.
Liam neared and Tea flinched at the encroaching human, ready to strike. Upon realizing this, Liam ordered him to be still. Tea’s heart ground to a halt and his breath hitched as he fought the commands. He struggled, but every nerve protested painfully. Every bones set in place obediently, every muscle seized, and Tea’s eyes were wide with fear. His blood was everywhere, All over his torn legs, chest, back, on the floor his master stalked across. He was weak, so weak, and Liam’s influence was making him weaker.
But he still had his tongue. He had not been ordered to be quiet this time. “You were wrong about them,” he snapped as Liam came to stand above him. A painted hand snaked through Tea’s hair, yanking his head back so hard Tea felt the roots give.
Liam’s glare was the worst he’d ever seen, his face red as his nails. Tea cringed. He wanted to apologize, wanted to take back all he had said and all he had done. But he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. He refused. “There was always something about you skinwalkers,” Liam hissed through sharpening teeth. “You were always so goddamn hardheaded, so resistant to orders.” He shoved a nail, now a talon, just into Tea’s mouth and began cutting through his cheek. He squeezed his eyes shut and withheld a cry. It hurt, oh God it hurt. “I was foolish enough to believe your empathy would make you more receptive.” He drove a foot directly into the opening in Tea’s abdomen where Relic had started to tear out his organs. Tea let out a gush of air at the pain, glimpsing Liam’s now blood-soaked shoe. “But you turned out to be just like all the others of your kind.” That shoe then connected with Tea’s jaw, head twisted at such an angle his neck cracked again. He collapsed on the ground, landing on his broken arm. “You should have been wiped out like the rest of them.”
But he hadn’t been. He was alive. He was alive, and he wasn’t going anywhere. Struggling against the orders still in place, he growled out, “Too late for you.”
“Is it?” A stomp to his side broke ribs, and two very sharp hands grabbed at his good arm. Tea screamed as his master stood on his waist and started pulling it from its socket. His throat grew sore rapidly as Liam pulled and pulled until not just his joints and bones but his very flesh was tearing. “I think,” he declared as he dropped the arm at last, kicking Tea in the gut again to silence him, “it’s too late for you.”
Tea simpered on the floor, tears fleeing his closed eyelids as he lay unable to move. Survive. He had to survive. He would survive. But at what cost?
Liam yanked Tea back up despite his devastated body, the giant shouting, “Stop!”
“You didn’t!” Liam retorted. His talons sank into Tea’s cheeks as he gripped his jaw to force the puppet to look at the master. “And now Relic is dead.” His voice faltered like he was actually going to cry. Then he snarled and raked another set of claw marks down Tea’s still bleeding chest. “You think they will save you?” He began cutting a collar into Tea’s neck, like he’d forced Tea to do to Lola. “You think they actually care about you?” Liam mocked him, almost laughing as a crazed smirk hit his lips. “They are beasts! Beasts don’t feel like humans. They don’t care like humans. They cannot compare to us, to even you.” Liam pulled away and backhanded Tea. Miraculously he did not fall over, but his blood filled mouth now had a tooth threatening to free itself from his gum. “A halfling MONSTER!”
Suddenly Tea was being dragged across the floor by red strings, which jerked him off the ground and slammed him into a corner of the room. He was dizzy on the impact, slumping into the restraints and vision fading at the loss of blood. Pain. So much pain. With no working arms, legs like jelly, chunks bitten and scratched out of him and organs lying everywhere but in their rightful place, Tea was in shambles. He shouldn’t be alive. Staring at his own innards, his own blood, tasting it all, he knew he shouldn’t be alive. His eyes fluttered open and closed. Fading. Everything was fading. Even his hearing could not pick up on the words that rolled off his tongue. “I’d rather be a monster.”
Liam stalked towards him with an outburst of rage, oblivious to the individuals now entering the room. Tea only felt them. He did not see them, his gaze fixed on his master who had never had to use his strings on him before. “Then it’s time I treat you like one.” Tea vaguely registered the man pulling the mummification instruments he’d used on Tea to make him bend to his will completely, the ones he’d stolen Tea’s very mind with. Liam’s hands neared Tea’s face, tools ready for insertion.
Tea did the one thing he was never supposed to do under any circumstances: he bit the hand of the Puppet Master.
Liam cried out at first, then the shock silenced him. They stared unblinkingly at one another, Tea’s eyes narrowed and unashamed of his actions. Liam dropped the tools, eyes wide and unfocused for a moment as it dawned on him what Tea had just done. The fury that bled across Liam’s face sank into Tea’s system.
Just like Liam’s fingers sank into his ripped throat and started jerking off his head. The words, “They can’t have you!” were the last to meet Tea’s ears before everything went black.
---
Tea's head was halfway disconnected from his neck and shoulders when a feminine voice cooed, "Now now," and Liam's body froze entirely at the snap of someone's fingers. "You've had enough fun for the last few decades or centuries I'd say." There was another snap and he felt his hands start to release the giant's head. He resisted, digging red talons into a blonde scalp. His very veins strained against him, obeying the unspoken commands of the woman.
Liam snarled, "What is--?" His body jerked around and was forced against the wall adjacent to Tea. He glanced up in horror and a masked woman, who held her hands much like . . . like a puppet master controlling a marionette. His body filled with a horror he had not truly felt since losing his heart. "What are you--?"
"I'm going to need you to release your puppets," she declared before tilting her hands up slightly. His back arched and he felt a strain on his spine that made his eyes widen and his lungs ache as he gasped for air. "If you do so quickly and calmly, your death will be a lot less painful."
"Which is more than you deserve," came an enraged voice. Liam's eyes darted to the other speaker, a woman whose body was as fluid as the smoke that made it up. Their leader, he thought vaguely. She was here, just within reach, and he could do nothing. Even attempting to lift a finger didn't seem feasible. Not without the permission of the masked woman, who Tea had never made mention of having this ability.
Another individual popped up. One he recognized but . . . not quite. The demon. The demon was possessing his puppet, Liam's puppet, Lola was his--!
Another strain against his spine made him gasp as the masked woman declared almost playfully, "I can do this all day."
"I can't," Alulle whispered from within Lola's body. "She is weak. She can't hold me in much longer."
"I'd say the fucking traitor can't take much more either, but that'd be a lie," Tapi said bitterly as she glanced at the remains of Liam's prized puppet. "I hardly need to punish him. I think you tried your damnedest already." Her tone told him that didn't mean she didn't still have her plans.
And that rekindled his anger. "You will regret--."
He was cut off when a cloud of smoke enveloped his throat. "Release. My. Cult. Members." Orange eyes burned beneath blacked out glasses as the leader's power rippled.
It registered with Liam that this was the end. He was . . . he wasn't making it out of this alive. His eyes fell on Relic's body and fresh pain hit him. It hit him hard enough that his lips started moving.
And he didn't have the wherewithal to stop.
---
"As the master of Leland, Nicoli, Lola," he listed off a few other names, Tapi listening intently as she recalled every member he'd taken from her and violated, "I release them." Afterwards, he looked weaker, like he'd been drained of energy.
But there was one name he hadn't listed. Chronic picked up on it immediately. She clicked her tongue. "You forgot one." Liam glanced up, gaze much duller than before. "Let me help you remember," she forced his head to twist uncomfortably to the side and the Puppet Master wound up staring at the blood soaked, broken, torn, seemingly lifeless and nearly headless body of his puppet. His last puppet. "Let him go."
Tapi saw the spark reignite in Liam's gaze before he turned and growled, "No."
"What use do you have of him when you'll be dead soon?" Chronic asked.
"He will--."
"No," Tapi snapped. "He won't die." The smoke around the Puppet Master's throat tightened. "He's mine now."
Lism grew angrier and louder as he bit out, "He belongs to me. He will always. Belong. To me."
"No. He. Won't!" Tapi's smoke plunged down Liam's throat as she lost patience with him.
"Tapi!" Chronic uncharacteristically shouted, dropping her hands at the loss of composure in the leader.
Liam's body convulsed as Tapi burned him from the inside, his body crumpling to the ground as his strings around Tea began to fade with his life. Tapi's eyes burned, her body less corporeal as she turned the Puppet Master's insides into a lava pit, watching her smoke burn through his skin, reddening even the outside. Unlike with Lance, she did not waste any more breath on Liam's than she had to except to answer Chronic, "He will die and Tea will live." When the Puppet Master's body only moved now due to her smoke and the red strings had faded enough that Tea dropped to the floor and came apart like a ragdoll whose seams had been severed, she withdrew her smoke slowly just for good measure. "Somehow."
Alulle stole away with Lola. Chronic lingered alongside Tapi as they neared the bodies of puppet and master. They stared down at what had become of Tea, who lay in literal pieces. Chronic a noise of displeasure.
They looked to their fellow cult member, then to the man that had controlled him. He was dead. Just to be sure (or rather for her own satisfaction) Tapi kicked Lism in the face. When he gave no response, she grunted in confirmation. They had cut the head off the snake. The Candle Cult was theirs once more.
Then again, it had never truly belonged to anyone but Tapi.