Playing with fire/Gets one burned, located in the WestEnd folder. Chronologically it goes: There But for The Grace of God in the Old Villain, New Start folder; Playing with fire in WestEnd; this below, Questions, Answers, and Revelations here in Old Villain, New Start.]


Belial had vanished. For near on two weeks the Ancient sought the link with her sibling to no avail. Then, one night, there she was. In the Inn. Clueless as to the time missing. Zinging with overcharged energies that sloughed off her like a waterfall.

Relief. Concern. Clinical organization and cataloguing of new feelings.

Bel and Sid spoke about matters pressing out in the alley behind the Red Dragon. Her sister's unexplained absence had not seen the Ancient idle of her own confounding situations and circumstances. There was the full reveal to Jodiah, and then the early morning hours of this very day when she listened into his mumblings of dreaming sleep. A revelation in itself that nearly ripped her head off and reset it backwards.

After the talk in the alleyway, Sid headed back inside the Inn. The information passed from Bel called for a stiff drink. Several stiff drinks, if not something else. And there he sat.

Discarding her leather to its peg behind the bar, she walked through a blue-grey haze of his tobacco smoke as Jodiah sat smoking from that silver-worked pipe. The scent made her nose wrinkle in memory of her Crow and dislike of a plant not favored by Truebloods.

Glamoured blue eyes scanned the commons. Few remained into this late hour, perhaps this was as good a time as any for the plan she made after hearing his nightmare ramblings. If she looked upon his face, fell into those brilliant green eyes, lost herself in the hard-worn scars and features, she wouldn't be able to strike ahead.

No. Drink.

Bending to retrieve the Midnight Tears from its secreted spot in a lower cabinet, she wondered briefly if Jodiah had ever noticed the particulars about that bottle. The same old glass, with the very same coating of dust that never seemed to wipe off was always the one in place behind the hidden panel. She wondered if he realized after drinking down a few cups - and she knew he indulged in it often - the bottle never ran dry. Now was really not the time for such mental wanderings, though.

Wordlessly, his brilliant green eyes followed her. Thin lips twitching until he looked as if his face might fall off. She loved that look. He killed his pipe, smoldering contents tapped out onto the floor and stomped beneath booted foot. She knew he'd noted her reaction to the smoke. Knew also that the aging knight would very likely not have done that for anyone save her. And there it was, something she was becoming intimately familiar with of late - The sharp pang of Guilt.

"Belial move along, Obsidian?" His words came in that comforting velvet rasp with which she was beginning to grow accustomed. Quiet. Dangerous. Deadly.

"Aye, an' apparently I be under semi-orders to be headin' back to WestEnd." Glamoured blue eyes rolled as she came out from behind the bar, small spherical-like cup and bottle in hand. Bel had been worried over her. The feeling was mutual.

Thin lips pulled into a faint smirk. Lips she wanted to experience over every inch of her frame. "Semi-orders? You going to be heading on, then?"

"O' course nae. Do I be lookin' underage to ye?" The Trueblood's words brought a twisted little smile from Jodiah. Oh, how he enjoyed the Ancient's attitude.

"I suppose you do not, at that." Pausing long enough to let Sid call down to a patron about the bar's late night self-serve status.

"Tell you what . . . " Patting a hand to the stool she braced her own against as if it might bite him. "...If you're going to be leaving, instead of staying and sharing your Midnight Tears with me . . . at least stay long enough for me to get that box from my room? It's dreadfully large, and you know how full my room gets."

That could only have been in jest. Ayreg lived the most spartan existence of anyone in recent memory. When you spoke inside his room there were echoes. "Box? For me?"

"Yes. For you. You saw it earlier, yes?"

For the first time all day those elflocks ringled soft and bright with the perking of the tips of her pointed ears. "I be nae goin' anywhere. An', o' course I be sharin' me bottle." Happy as she sounded, when the Ancient turned her head to grab another cup over the bar's edge, silvered brows furrowed in a frown.

"Then pour me a glass, Obsidian, and I'll be right back down." Silver-worked pipe was left on the bar to cool and off he went, up the stairs.

How could she do this? What was she going to say? She knew it had been a bad idea from the start this morning. This was all Ber's fault. She was going to kill Lankyn. Yep. Lankyn. Dead. Well, wishing he could be when she got through with him. And tonight, Bel's telling of Gabriel and his . . . Hybrids? What was this madness? She thought when Michael had righted himself and the all storming Legions of the Above were finally called off after the spell Ber wor . . . A sneer grew cold on Sid's thin, pale lips. Lankyn. She was going to kill Lankyn. All right, if she could find him, that is. Conveniently, he'd cut himself from the link with her and Belial. Yeah. Convenient. He deserved to be slowly roasted over a spit of adders.

Back down the steps Jodiah came, shouldering the large box. Sid almost jumped as he slid up onto the stool after setting the box to the counter top. That was another thing that was bothering the Ancient. Normally highly attuned senses were dulled, and she oft found herself oblivious. This just wasn't ri . . . "Ah, Jodiah," nudging over the cup of Midnight Tears she'd poured for him. Looking at the box. "Aye, I do be rememberin' seein' ye with tha' afore Bel an' I left earlier."

Sid itched to grab it and open it. There was a bit of the magpie, a bit of the crow like her mate in her. Summer's blue eyes sparked quicksilver flash, taking in its size and pondering on the contents.

"Yes . . . Ah . . . I'm no good at this." Jodiah Ayreg gave a weak smile, lifting his glass and pushing the box over toward her end of their shared bar space. "Still working on being nice, you know. Here. I heard about these, and I thought, you know . . . that . . . well, they seemed like something you'd use. Not to say that you have to, understand, but . . . ah . . . well, yes." He gave a cough, taking a sip of the Midnight Tears. The taste was pleasant, as always - If a thunderstorm could be bottled, it would be labeled Midnight Tears. And how was he acting now? It very much seemed like his mouth was falling down a flight of stairs, didn't it?

A shadow was stuck in the depth of Sid's gaze, even as she smiled at him. The action appeared genuine, warm and bright as it ever was when she gave one to him. Snowy lids dipped to the counter, the smile growing, and she reached for the box. "Jodiah, I . . . Uh. I dun know wha' to say. Ye didna 'ave to get me anythin'. Though . . . " Those eyes of magiced color drifted back up to his face, that hard-etched face she wanted to equally smother with kisses and rip right off his skull at the moment. Her smile morphed to a fox-lit grin and shined forth. "I be glad ye did. I be likin' presents." Pulling the box over, she shook it. "Wha' be it?" It was a silly question, but this was the game.

"Yes, well, I . . . ah . . . felt it pertinent. You gifted me, so I now gift you." Jodiah Ayreg gave another of those weak smiles and leaned in close, eyes dropping to the sapphire-inlaid silver necklace hanging about the Ancient's neck. "Though, between the two of us, perhaps I should not have. People might begin to think we're betrothed if I keep giving you things." He chuckled, glass over gravel, as if he'd made a joke he found to be amusing. "Open it, go ahead." A waggle of fingertips offered as he sipped at his cup.

Wasn't that a horrifying thought? Images of him acting with the kissy-wissy faces and the loud proclamations of undying devotion coursed through his mind, and he very nearly wanted to sick up at the idea of it.

Throaty and low, sultry, came her chuckle. Leaning into him to speak. "Ye be goin' to ruin ye rep afore people be thinkin' we be betrothed, Jodiah." Tossing a wink, she eagerly tore into the box. The first thing she saw was white wrapping paper. Folded in several layers around whatever it was that was actually in there. Tissue paper? Phbbt! That lasted about as long as snowballs in Hell. Gone! Shreds!

As the paper was torn away by the zealous Ancient, the next thing she saw was smooth, black leather of some kind, affixed with a silver zipper and a silver buckle. It appeared to be folded several times. It was not just any silver. It was sterling silver. As she made mincemeat of the packaging, Jodiah smiled in a kind of satisfied way. Taking a long, lingering sip of the Midnight Tears from his circular tumbler.

Oooo . . . Shiny!! Too much like her mate those eyes glittered on the shiny, covetously ran over the fine leather before it was yanked from the box and held up, her face buried straight into it, nose first. "Mmrrffnm . . . ffmrrffmmnnffm"

"It's some kind of . . . Hellcat? Hellfurr? Something to that nature. I understand they're designed specifically for those . . . iron horses . . . you seem so fond of. Baby, was it? I... ah . . . I hope you like it." He swallowed more liquid and took another sip immediately. Chaps, they were called, though he couldn't remember what the dealer had told him about their name. He just knew they would offer poor protection in warfare - imagine, armor that protects only the front! Hah!

"Och! Jodiah, this be spectacularly frellin' divine!" Furling out the chaps, the Trueblood looks them over with a practiced eye. "Chaps. I be nae 'avin' a pair nae more. Lon' an' lon' gone m'last pair be." She slips from the stool, holding them up to boyish slim hips, looking down upon them. "Ye really shouldna 'ave. But . . . " Leaning in quickly, she brushes a chaste kiss to his cheek. So much more she wanted to do to show her gratitude, but no use lavishing affections on the pig if one just has to kill it for the pot later. "Than' ye. I be wearin' 'em when I be givin' ye tha' ride on Baby I be promisin' ye. Soon as I be gettin' her back together."

A chaste kiss. Thin lips twitched, and suddenly Jodiah Ayreg felt downright grandfatherly. An uneasy shifting on his stool, he slammed back the rest of the Midnight Tears and reached for the bottle. "Try them on, let us take a look at you," he spoke in quiet rasp.

It was hard, really, for him to look at Obsidian and not see Manon. Harder still for him to look at her and not see the Divine in her. Yet, she had asked him not to react differently towards her, even after the mighty gift she had bestowed upon him with the rending of the veil she wore. Why did her touch not sear the skin from his bones? Why did her laugh not explode his ears in a fury of blood and sinew? Tipping the bottle, he made good on his intentions to refill his tumbler.

Wearing faded and holey jeans tonight, instead of her usual leather pants, Sid pulled the zippers of the chaps upwards along each leg. Undoing the buckle, she steps into the harness that would go about her hips. Grinning to Jodiah, she lifted her right foot to the stool's rung to zip that side down, repeating the action on her left. Finally, twisting and seating the top of them just right, she buckles the shiny silver buckle so they sat low-slung on her hip bones.

The aging knight straightened his posture a bit, turning more fully and nodding as she inspected them. Was that how they were meant to be worn? Wouldn't do for armor at all, he decided. "You look right polished, Obsidian. The fit is good?"

Turning about, the open seat of the chaps showed off just how rider-worn those jeans were. One pocket halfway ripped off one side, the other with a frayed rectangular impression. Turning again, beaming a smile at him, she pats her thigh and laughs. "I be lovin' the fit! They be right fine for ridin' in the chill. Again, than' ye, Jodiah."

Rider-worn, indeed. Brilliantly green eyes took stock and notice of those denim pants, though he lingered on the seat for other reasons than to look at the ripped-away pocket. He was a man, first and foremost.

Both hands reached for his free one, her fingers curling to it, squeezing tight. For a bare second that shadow passed across the Ancient's pale visage and through those magic-hued eyes. Releasing his hand, climbing back up to her stool, one palm rubbed over a leather-clad knee. Picking up her cup, the contents were taken in one gulp. She was struggling. These . . . feeling things. Yep. Lankyn would die.

Ayreg gave as pleasant of a smile as he could manage, and for once didn't feel like his face was about to fall off. "Well, it pleases me that you like them, Obsidian. I was told you would, but what do gnomes know, truly? You're known to them, you know - those gnomes I work with, over at the Dragon's Breath? Apparently, Tsiolos has the most dreadful infatuation with you."

The Trueblood shakes her head once, those elflocks a bit off-key. Pouring more Midnight Tears to her cup, she tops off Jodiah's. Guilt. Shame. These were surely the worst of the lot. Absently, short nails scrape along the inside of her left forearm. It would be so easy. So easy to forget. To let go. "Gnomes?" She blinks out of the fog. She had to tell him what she'd done. No! She couldn't. "Um . . . Mayhaps they be knowin' tha' horrid slacker I be hirin' to work the mess about the kitchens? Drax?"

"Dunno. I'll ask them about Drax, next time I go into the forge to work."

A mischievous glint hit those glamoured blues. "Tsiolos, huh? Mayhaps I be needin' to make a trek o'er to the forge an' say 'ello."

As Sid continued speaking, Jodiah took on a positively flattened look, complete with furrowed brows. It lasted only an instant, and then faded back into trying to be pleasant. More like neutral, but he tried. "If you want to. He's the one that's usually strolling around with a mop, pretending to work. He is, however, an excellent gem cutter. It was his little invention that made your sapphire so nicely shaped. Gnomes are certainly ingenious little creatures, are they not? I'm not exactly sure how it works, but . . . I just know it does. Set the groove onto the gem at the angel -" A loose fist snapped up to cover his mouth and he coughed. "The . . . uh . . . angle you want it to be cut at, and press down and forward. Straight through, with no questions asked. Ingenious device."

The Ancient's fingers lifted the pendant as he mentioned it, and she looked down. Summer's blue eyes got overbright as she turned it and admired it. A harsh swallow undulated her throat, and she bit her lip 'til it reddened so stark it looked to bleed. She took a sharp inhale of breath through flaring nostrils and her words came low and choked. "Oh, Jodiah."

"Amthy came to me near the beginnin' o' Spring. I be supposed to return to the 'Lands. A festival I be neglectin' to attend." In my honor, and haven't been there in centuries. Blahblahblah. Keep it together! "An', well, somethin' Amthy tol' me . . . "

Sid held to him, and little by little, inch by inch, she was drawing them closer together. Silver-true eyes swam with darkened thread as she fell into his brilliant green depths. "An Unseeliegh wizard tricked the pix into a bindin' promise. His name be Renaurd. I be to champion the pix Underhill an' gain back wha' he held o' her. Ye understan' tha' the nature o' these thin's be . . . O' her, Jodiah. Her true name. Blood. Hair. Thin's like tha'."

She reached across the tiny span of space between them with will. Did he get what she was saying? Did he understand the significance of these pieces stolen? Did he care? Or, did it frighten him with the implications?

Self-control was the death knight's forte. When annoying little mongrels disturbed his rest, it was everything he could do not to maim them and leave them for the buzzards and insects to feast upon. It was self-control that kept him from kissing her, so close as they were. A familiar sensation erupted in his mind, and he wanted to kiss her. He also wanted to kill her? He very nearly trembled. Mixed emotions, clattering one atop the other, and infiltrating him from some unknown source.

Jodiah Ayreg could imagine in his mind's eye of taking the Celestine, here and now. He could imagine sticking his thumbs into her eye sockets, and sending the massage of his fingers directly into the matter held within. He wanted to wrap his hands around her bosom. He wanted to wrap his hands around her throat. He blinked, twice, and then again. It was a strong thing, these feelings, but Ayreg was not without his self-control. Utter strength of iron-will deflected baser instincts. It's what separated the civilized from the beast, after all. "If you challenge this . . . Renaurd . . . and gain back what he has taken from Am'thyst . . . then there is a chance that she can walk this earth again, once more allowing all that is green and good to grow where she walks, and flowers to bloom where she touches? Is that it?"

She could read people. It was the skill of anyone street-savvy. She had the benefit of eons of experience knowing someone's gestures. The twitch of an eye could declare a lie, the twist of a lip a displeasure. If she could read him now, in such a way, there sparked a glimmer of hope in his softened green eyes. There was no fear of the implications, and there was no neglect. The feeling, though, wasn't exactly definable, what he had felt, as he gazed back into the natural, unglamoured silver eyes of the Ancient.

And still, saliva gathered in her mouth. Her thighs opened to allow him closer, pressed against his own corded muscles as he stood there. Sid couldn't help, despite the subject and what she was seeking, her gaze often went to his lips. For mere milliseconds, but she felt the tenuous grip she held on lucidity stretching with his nearness. Yet, she did not want him farther. It was a razored edge, but one she was not unused to walking.

As he spoke, she watched and waited and at the end her smile blossomed. Knowing. Telling. "There be such possibility, Jodiah. Ye know o' me. Ye 'ave seen through the Tellin'. I make nae promises I can make it happen, but I 'ave created such as the pix used to be afore the shell she wore in death. Mayhaps it can be so tha' she may spark greeness an' goodness where she walks once again." Her face was so close to his, lips a breath from the shell of his ear, her whisper warm and fragrant across it. "Mayhaps we can let Amthy live this plane once more, Jodiah."

What a sight they would have been, should any to have entered now. She drew him in like a spider would a fly, and into the web he went oh-so-willingly. He stood between her thighs, his wiry body against her own slender one. His hands rose, now, one setting against the edge of her slender sloping elbow, the other curling up over her cheek. Dig in the nails, and rip her face off. Caress it gently. Stroke it. Maul it. No! Take her. Now. Kill her, and be done with it.

The Voice was not there. This was something else. It seemed to just radiate from somewhere he couldn't describe, and his mind did not want to stay locked on the topic long enough to consider the possibilities very much. His lips parted, as if to kiss her, but then his teeth clamp together as she continues speaking. As close as two people could be without becoming one, and he spoke again. Breath, warm and alive with the endlessly abundant energy of the human spirit. "She was taken from us, Obsidian. She deserves life, yet others linger on. Tell me what to do, and I will do it, if it will bring her back."

He held no illusions that things would be like they were before. The secret rendezvous, the hidden non-feelings. It did not matter to him one whit if she didn't even remember him at all, just so long as she was brought back to them. His thumb twitched, causing the calloused pad of that digit to lightly caress across the Ancient's cheek for a short trip.

For a moment, while he talked, her hands he'd left vacant slipped to rest upon his sides. His breath moving them in and out such a powerful connection to the physical; to fragile, short-lived human life. Lives so often wasted, neglected, burned out before their time. At the touch of that sandpaper hand to her cheek she flowed to it like water, eyes never leaving those verdant green pools. It was there. It was all right there. In the rhythm of his breath, the light within his eyes, the cadence of his speech. Sorrow. Regret. Confusion. He knew something, all right. But, whatever it was he knew, he wasn't the one responsible. The Ancient would swear this to be so as she knew her own true name, the one so long ago from before she met the dirt. A name of Legion.

With the short stroking of his thumb, her hands raised and lay upon him oh-so tenderly, bracing both sides of his hard-worn face. Darkened silver trues bored to the abyssal depths of his gaze, her forehead a feather touch to that lined one of his own. Words came like the night winds, secret whispers across sleeping lands. And yet, though this close he might strain to hear, the power of this voice was one that broke mountains from the seas, birthed continents from oceanic fathoms. "Aye, Jodiah Ayreg, I do believe she be taken from us. Aye, I do believe this to be truth."

His eyes shuttered, briefly, almost losing himself so near to her, and under the fiery burst of her palms cradling his head like a babe. He did not, though, and his eyes opened again. They were so close now as to nearly be sharing the same breaths if they timed it just-so. He swallowed, staring awe-struck into her steely eyes. Call it an uninhibited natural reaction to where they were, how they were, and what had been done; call it whatever you wished, but she could feel a singular grind - just once - of hips pushing forward against her between her thighs. The hand 'pon her shoulder left there, and moved up along the inner curve of her throat, burying itself into the base of elflocks that chimed the tune of fifty silver bells and nine. "I will help you, Obsidian."

As she felt him move to her, knees closed quarters. Booted feet left the rung of her stool and wound behind his legs. The shoulder his hand rested near rose to capture his touch upon her throat, and her body moved from off the seat for him to her hold her weight. There was an intimacy in this reading, in this seeking, and it was the only way the Ancient could truly know what she wished to find. She had found it, and she was not displeased.

Hands flowed like silk from his cheeks to the back of his neck, cupping there, fingers toying with the fine greying hairs. The tilt of her head before him such a delicately enchanting thing. The tip of her rose pink tongue darted out once to wet pale lips, and then she kissed him. In that kiss, mouth open, her body suspended on his, dependent on him for the moment, she gave her gratitude, her happiness and joy for the discovery she didn't hope to find.

The aging knight held her lightly, easily. He was a hard man, and strong, tempered so by a lifetime of conflict and hardship. His hands moved as she did, one snaking around her back to hold her against him, the other reaching beneath to support her body weight. Six feet five inches means nothing when you're only counting the torso, with the legs wrapped around his, and they came together like they were made for each other. She wet her lips, and then . . . then the world seemed to erupt into fire. A kiss from the Celestine, now in the form of an elf named Obsidian, was enough to shake the very foundation of a man's soul, and yet he took the pain of absolute joy in equal strides.

Thoughts, emotions, feelings . . . these things bounced back and forth between Jodiah Ayreg and Obsidian Shayd, so close and so intense as to make them seem as one. His head, acting on instinct, turned very slightly as the parted lips of hers met his own, fitting together for the deepest oral embrace that had ever graced that particular stool they were at, at the bar. A milestone, indeed. He would normally have qualms about being so forward with the Divine, but she - and all she represented - pressed so firmly against him that he would want for nothing more than to lose himself in this moment until his last breath was taken. The knight's tongue, rusted before the Nymph taught him once more the joys of the flesh, reached out between them, and searched for its counterpart in her own mouth.

The leather strap that held the tail of his greying hair fell to the wayside, a inconsequential flicker of sound as Sid felt his heart pounding in the blood that thrummed through her shell's veins. Hands moved up along the sides of his head, fingers splayed to his scalp, her touch reveling in the feel of hair and flesh, blood and bone. She wanted to taste him all, experience what his soul sang no matter what tune; dark, light, shades of grey. How long since she had taken a mortal as a lover? How long since this connection to the physical swam throughout her essence?

Her tongue danced and tangoed with his; tasting, tempting, teasing. She couldn't get any closer without being behind him, phasing together. His energy shot electric ice along her aura. Opening her eyes in that press of lips, the light within burst like twin suns. Her whole being sparked to his touch. Hips moved against him suggestively, needfully, as she seemed to want to fairly devour him on the very spot.

The sound of an entrance, at last, snaps Jodiah Ayreg out of his fervor. He made no motion to release the Ancient, but the kiss was abruptly halted and his head turned around to see who entered. A woman. And he didn't know her. Not to recognize her, anyway - he had seen her before. He noticed, now, that he was breathing quite heavily, and so began to make the conscience effort to do so more naturally.

He offered a... well, a sheepish grin, truly, to the violet-haired female, and turned his attention back to Obsidian, blinking slowly. Ecstatic ardor at the shared moment of kiss had turned instantly to frustration, but he nonetheless gently set her back onto the barstool from whence she came. "I... Obsidian, it is daylight outside."