Collab with [@Bloodrose] [img]https://w.wallhaven.cc/full/j5/wallhaven-j5p3zw.jpg[/img] Morgan awoke in what seemed to be the back of some battered old van. She could feel the road bouncing beneath her, whilst the truck’s metal walls rattled and shook. “Fuck…” she hissed, wincing in pain. She could feel the fresh gouge in chest pounding and burning. Ghostly nerve endings cried out in torment. The wound was healing, dead flesh knitting itself back together, fighting to seal up the bloody hole that stake had left in her bosom. “I could never decide if it was more painful to be with you, or without you, amica mea.” Calantha murmured, sitting across from her, in the back of the van. The Tzimisce gazed at Morgan with tortured, yearning-filled eyes. “You’re not the one with a fucking hole in your chest.” the Malkavian hissed back. Calantha was splayed out across a seat, which looked as though it had been converted from someone’s timeworn sofa. The towering Brujah and the flame-kissed nosferatu sat on either side of her. “Where are you taking me?” Morgan demanded, still cringing in pain. “Our little club house.” The nosferatu tittered, in her raspy, grating growl-of-a-voice. The Malkavian heard one of her hushed, fluttering ghosts whispering in her ear, through the gashes in her mind. [i]”Down, down, down, beneath the earth,”[/i] the voice told her, [i]”however far light travels, darkness has always traveled further. The sun will wither, and die, but darkness is eternal.”[/i] It wasn’t long before they reached their destination. The giant, dark-skinned Brujah forced Morgan out of the van, pressing the tip of his mammoth broadsword into her back. They drove her out into the San Francisco night, and up the stony steps of Grace Cathedral, the Nosferatu disguising herself beneath a dark hood. “If you charlatans were half as brave as you made out, you wouldn’t skulk in the shadows.” Morgan spat, earning her a sharp slap across the back of the head. The Sabbat shoved Morgan inside the cathedral, guiding her past enormous white pillars, and rows upon rows of polished pews. A myriad of colourful, glistening stained glass encircled them, passing soft beams of moonlight into the cathedral. The enormous chamber was deathly quiet, and as empty as a water tank, which had been drained down to the final drop. “Take her into the pit,” Calantha instructed her subordinate, “bring her before [i]El Conde.[/i] Through the will of the dark father, he shall remake her.” “They call my kind crazy,” Morgan snarled, “but you’re the ones who are fucking insane. Does it hurt, having a brain filled with the Sabbat’s poison and lies? Does the madness ache? Do you suffer?” Calantha let out a sharp eruption of laughter. “Madness doesn’t hurt, amica mea,” she cackled, “it makes us whole. I treasure every delicious second of it.” Calantha Teohari was the product of unimaginable torture, and indescribbably suffering. She had been ripped apart, and put back together, over and over and over again, by her demented sire. In the decades since, she had glutted herself on a banquet of the most deranged, and psychotic souls. Her favourite pastime was embracing particularly sadistic serial killers, before diablerizing them, and gorging on their essence. She stalked them, trapped them, and feasted upon their insanity. Those crooked splinters of malice and monstrosity had embedded themselves within her, burrowing beneath her skin, and drilling into the psychic tissue of her mind. Morgan doubted that any of her treasured friend was left. Secret passageways webbed out of the Cathedral, and burrowed down into the darkest echelons of the earth. The Sabbat forced Morgan down, into a spiraling corridor, and marched her through their underground network of hidden tunnels. “How typically villainous of you,” Morgan chuckled dryly, and without humour, her tone dripping with scorn, “an underground lair.” “It has its uses.” The towering Brujah replied, curtly, his voice bouncing off of the craggy walls. Jagged stone underpasses surrounded them, carved out of crooked rock, and engulfed in complete darkness. Without their supernatural night vision, the vampires would have been unable to see even marginally infront of them. “El conde will transform you, beloved,” Calantha promised, as the group stepped out of the shadowy hallways, and into the Sabbat’s colossal, underground chapel, “we will become one in -” The Tzimiscie stopped, dead in her tracks. “Points for presentation, but the substance is lacking.” The voice sounded bored as it rose from the pews lining the chapel. The figure sat among them, his feet up on the row in front of him with a typical lack of reverence as the figure beside him finally crumbled to ash, consumed by his ministrations. “I remember when the Sabbat didn’t scurry in holes in the ground, when all of Europe bowed beneath the whims of your Popes and Bishops. They called you Anarchs back then. By the Dark Sire, that was a ‘real’ war.” The figure continued as he stood, buttoning closed the jack of the three piece suit he wore, even hidden in darkness. The ash didn’t stick to him this time, tumbling away to leave his appearance painfully perfect. “I wasn’t going to kill you all, I really do promise, but then I found this little rat, and it really sullied my mood.” Lubbock half-growled as he stooped to lift the exsanguinated body of Andy Warhol from the floor beside him, examining the stricken kindred with a look of pure disgust. “Moden art was such a terrible mistake.” He bemoaned, before casting the body aside, striking a pillar with such force the kindred simply came apart in a cascade of bone and corpse-ash, the last of the undead will holding it together collapsing entirely. “Come on then, I haven’t got all night.” Morgan’s head was swarmed with the shrieking, screaming voices of the unseen. Countless invisible kindred cried out, begging her to turn, and run. “You don’t belong here,” Calantha snarled, striding forwards, with fire blazing in her eyes, “these dark halls will be your tomb!” The Tzimisce raised one long, slender hand, and her underlings rushed forwards. Gracie and Tate charged towards Lubbock, the giant Brujah hoisting his broadsword up above his head, whilst he roared like some ancient berserker. “Calantha, please!” Morgan grabbed hold of the Tzimisce’s hand, slipping her fingers between those of her former lover. Calantha Teohari was so stunned that she didn’t ressit, caught off-guard by the sudden display of affection. “Down into the jaws of the beast,” Morgan whimpered, re-conveying what the shadowy voices were whispering to her, bloody tears welling in her eyes,”a child of the minotaur, in the skin of a knight. Dancing on roses of ash, and mountains of bones.” A burst of panic flashed across the Tzimisce’s pale features. Lubbock didn’t even move as the Kindred charged him, he closed his eyes, opening his mouth to taste the rage, and the building fear. His tongue lapped around the emotions like a thirsting animal, savouring the hot tangs of their mayfly lives. Then he spoke. “Kill each other.” When the words slipped passed his lips, Lubbock’s eyes blazed in the darkness, leeching the colour of ichor into the air itself, the words pulsing through the air like a shockwave, the very darkness itself fleeing from him. The pair of kindred didn’t miss a step, their charge turned on the next motion, barreling them into each other in a tumble of claw,fang and body. To kill a kindred was not a swift or easy thing with brute force, even to another kindred, and the pair were still fighting, cutting visceral chunks of each other away as Lubbock stepped over them. “You are right, broken thing, your myths and legends, I am them, when humanity was young and barely knew the bones of gods it scrabbled upon, I was there. When you elders croned about the dangers of the ancient ones, they spoke of me.” He continued to walk closer, the burning brightness of each eye a mote to lose the soul in, utterly transfixing the Kindred before him even as their comrades limply still tried to fulfill his orders, dying, bleeding ash on the floor. “Do you see now? Your Sabbat is not truth, you are just the children who needed the greater lie.” The pounding in Morgan’s head was like the beating of a hundred thousand thundering war drums. The beast within her was thrashing, and fighting, and screaming in terror. She felt her dead body growing stiff, and cold. She was frozen to the spot; petrified by the transfixing touch of unadulterated dread. “We prepared for this,” Calantha hissed, her fangs unsheathing, “the sword of caine has planned for your awakening, monster!” The Malkavian could feel ancient fires crackling against her skin. The scent of smoke, long since extinguished, flooded her nostrils. Mary’s dying screams filled her ears, threatening to engulf her, as they had done all those years ago. Then, suddenly, a single voice cut through the wailing. [i]Do it for me, Morgan. Do it for Calantha. Do it for yourself. A brighter future is counting on you.[/i] Morgan Holloway let go of Calantha Teohari’s hand. The Malkavian took a step forward. “Its my fault that the Angel found you, Calantha,” Morgan said, locking eyes with the mighty demi-god infront of her, “its my fault that you got pulled into this fucked up world of monsters and demons. You could have had a normal life, but I took that away from you.” The Malkavian drew her claws. “It's high time I did something about that.” Without warning, Morgan Holloway soared forwards, racing across the ground, in a sudden burst of swiftness. Her mind’s eyes opened, and the ethereal fires of London poured fourth. A raging inferno of insanity bled out into the world, bursting out of her head, and smothering Lubbock in a cacophony of cackling madness. “RUN, CALANTHA!” The Malkavian roared, throwing herself upon the Antediluvian, “RUN!” For a few glorious moments, Lubbock was drowned in madness. His mind plunged into raving lunacy of a London long passed. His consciousness danced in the flame, pirouetted among the damned and dying of the city he had once called home. Kindred had a natural revulsion to flame, but instead his soul craved it, seeking the glorious final absolution the fire offered. A chance for blessed annihilation. There, in the smoke drenched ruin, he found her. The dallying mayfly spirit of the Malkavian. He felt her desperation, her fear, and most deliciously rare among the souls of his kind, her love. She had been brave, admirably so, every inch of her being had been thrown into this final act and his heart would be stone to be unmoved by such a thing. Without even a sigh of effort, he scattered her mind. Her being was already an amalgamation of broken shards, barely held together by a fading will. His presence unleashed her entirely, the glass breaking and spiralling away into madness, then nothingness. That was when his physical form took her, his fangs sinking into her neck, pulling her very essence into him in a span of moments, even as his soul still danced in the London of her creation. He would not let a spirit so motivated from something as beautiful as love been condemned to unreality, he brought her into himself, melding her spirit to his, without consuming her. There she would swim until he grew bored of her, or found a final release a fitting reward for her actions. Reality crashed against him like a dark tide, the cold bite of the living world bringing a snarl from his features as he was himself again. He could not fault the Tzimisce for not being able to flee either. Her lover’s sacrifice had bought her a single second. He was upon her before she could even blink again, a hand to her throat driving her into the ground with enough force to crack the stone beneath them, leering over her, his eyes bore into her own. “I feel her thoughts, Calantha, did you know at the end she still loved you? After everything you’ve done.” His fingers flexed, feeling the weakness of her bones beneath his grip. The memories were his now, and what had brought fear to the Malkavian inspired only rage in the ancient Toreador. “It is a shame I need your little, twisted, soul.” He mused, before his own features began to swim. To the kindred he pinned, the form of Lubbock twisted, murky, rippling. At first in the now, but then her memories swam as well, being remade as surely as they were in the present. Eventually female features looked down at her, pinning her just as effectively with hands the colour of one who had been born under the Mexican Sun, long before there had been a Mexico. When Lubbock spoke, it was with the voice of a grandchilde’ not his own. “Find me, have your vengeance.” Then the thing that had been Lubbock vanished.