The Dance (Revised and Completed)

There hadn’t been much time. A couple of phone calls, only reaching voice mail, before the threshold of no return had approached. There hadn’t been anyone else, either. Just her, an island of deadly beauty amongst an ocean of men who wanted her dead.

It was a challenge of the most suicidal proportions, but something had to be done. It was now or never – so now it was.

She stood amongst bodies, the bloodlust a blatant fire in her eyes, hands balled in fists of rage and sorrow. Senseless. It was the only word that sprung to mind as she stood there looking something close to carnage incarnate. Senseless waste of life, a river of blood that should have served something else, something better. A sigh, then nothing. The armies were ranged before her in a vast collection of what they thought was righteous anger and indignation, the fist missing its delicate velvet glove. Generals, beasts, men, all stood before her, to serve their masters, their ambition, their blind greed – all would fall. Not because she was the righteous protector, come to smite them for some heavenly wrong…She was simply better. Their axes, swords, spears, anger…all of it fell away from her as water from a duck’s back. Words whispered, death screams, tears of loss – all too rolled away, for today nothing could touch the woman.

More beast than woman, more mystic energy and training than human…

A song filled the air, impossibly dark and beautiful, following in the bloodied footprints of her wake.

Twist snap thrust throw, repeat. Scream. Repeat. Always repeat. Always, for without repeat she would end up being the one screaming, begging, crying. Without repeat the world wouldn’t fall away, but consume her, mind, body, and soul. Repeat. Always repeat.

Distantly the phone rang. She didn’t hear it, couldn’t hear it above the din of gory delight and reveling groans in her head. On the other end was help, hope, and salvation…

The phone stopped ringing soon. But the clamor in her head just kept getting louder.

Men turned to metal in a maniacal and rather surreal twist of scenery, and it seemed all her senses bled together, a beautiful symphony of destruction. The song soared; man and mech screamed in harmony, lifting their voices to give power to the ultimate dance they were all playing at – the Dance of Death. Even the stars themselves turned aside their eyes to look elsewhere, for the destruction, in all its haunting beauty, was too much for their venerable minds to comprehend.

The moon rose over the ruins to reveal one man and one woman, staring at each other in promise of the deadliest conclusion. It ended here for one of them. His shadowy master crept back behind the closed doors of the civilized, and the impassioned defender screamed his power to the world, the gift of darkness his master had bestowed…

“ I…am…NICTUS!”

She closed her eyes.

It was time.

---

Mreep! Mreep! Mreep! The alarm clock was screaming in equally cadenced and shrilling notes, just like a well practiced whore. Smack!, and the beast was silenced, letting out an almost contented sigh. Her feet hit the floor, body following in a jerking, illogical motion as the blonde stumbled towards the bathroom. Toothpaste, mouthwash, a splash of water, and all the necessary morning rituals that society forced upon us at the early age of several centuries before…But there was comfort in the ritual, just as there was in any well practiced set of activities. Once of the dead, she didn’t let herself take for granted the small things, the small comforts.

Her phone was flashing and beeping. Odd. Voice mail was nothing better than a black hole of voices; she wondered why she cared enough to listen to it now. She wandered about, phone in one hand, other pulling out the equipment for the day. She was already stripping off her sleep wear by the time she got to the message that had been left the night before.

Ten seconds later, she dropped the phone, incinerated her clothes, and pulled on whatever she could find that would make her decent. She didn’t even bother to close the door on her mad dash out and away.

She might blame the woman for a lot of things, but she still loved her.

And that message was four hours old.

---

She was a wonderfully nasty creature, and she knew it – the fact that most everyone chose to ignore it made her giggle. A healthy slathering of eye batting, sensual smiling, and unabashed blushing had made her popular amongst the boys and girls alike. But the club scene was not for her, not tonight…There were things afoot that must be witnessed, a transformation or decimation that must be seen and felt, not for progeny’s sake, but for her own.

Vileness had to have its start somewhere.

Cimerora was a blood soaked frontier tonight, a mass grave of the dead or shortly dieing. Screams, sobs, terror, agony – all of it split the night air in song, woven by the very nymphs of hell to the great delight and adulation of the one who walked the paths up the hill. This was something of great beauty to the twisted creature.

A man reached out and grabbed her ankle in supplication; she rewarded him by planting a spiked high-heel in his eye socket. His gurgled moan brought a hot flush to her cheeks, lips curving in a sinister, gleeful smirk; his rattling death cries put a new bounce in her step as she walked upwards. She crouched at the edge of the hill, eyes searching eagerly for the reason she’d come here tonight.

The scene below her made her breath catch in her throat.

The entire platform before the temple was covered in body parts, Roman armor, and blood. Two stood near the center, one man, one woman, exchanging blows, while dark nicti hovered around, attempting to aid their equally dark master. The man was enormous, dressed in the armor of the times, but that was not the most noticeable feature – shadows and pain hung around him in folds and waves, and it crooned to the White Queen in an exquisite way. He must be a nictus himself, or at least imbued with the power, she silently mused as she watched him and his partner dance along trading blows. The woman was in his shadow, but she stumbled a few paces back into the moonlight. Her hair, silken silver, lit up like a halo around her beautiful face…For a moment, even the Queen had to admit that she looked like an exquisite creature freshly minted from the halls of Valhalla.

The man fell…one of the nictus replenished him. The snowy haired woman swore loudly, raising her sword again to do battle.

“Mmm, wish I’d brought popcorn.” The Queen giggled to herself and settled in for a long fight.

---

Everything hurt, shrieking for time to heal and rest, but he kept coming like a hell spawned demon of the most irking variety – an incubus. She had neither the time nor energy to smile at her own small joke before having to parry a blow meant to split her scalp in two.

He forced her to one knee just as the first ray of dawn crested the temple, and a savage grin crossed his features as he basked in his glory just a bit too soon…She fell back and summoned up every ounce of strength she still had, pulling a slight blade from her wrist and plunging it into his chest in a lightning quick motion. Normally it would have been a survivable wound had she not dropped her sword amidst his confusion and plunged her free hand into his chest, pulling and tearing at the delicate tissues around his heart.

His lips formed a surprised little ‘O’ as he fell back into the waiting arms of death.

She rose slowly, his heart still beating in her clenched hand…rose just in time to see the nictus essence racing towards her in a desperate attempt to reach its master…

---

She was too late. Somewhere, deep down, she knew it, but it didn’t stop her from her desperate plunge through time and space in order to reach her friend. The reddened landscape was a blur as she flew, faster, faster, always faster, towards the temple she’d been instructed that the Nictus were. In her blind dash, she didn’t notice the snowy haired figure walking down the bloodied hill; her eyes were only for the woman lying listlessly in a pool of a dozen men’s blood.

She didn’t stir as the fiery vixen landed. Bad sign.

A touch to the woman’s skin felt the fever brewing beneath the surface, but nothing more for the moment. Aestas stretched her senses further…And what she found scared her.

Darkness abounding and everlasting permeated the unconscious woman’s body – she was scared that when Satine woke up, there’d be purple smoke in her eyes.

Aestas picked up the unconscious body of her dearest friend with a soft sigh, spiriting her off to the City.

---

She groaned. She moaned. Sometimes she even screamed. Ariel paced back and forth in the sterilized hospital room, sighing as each pace brought no new insight into how to ease her friend’s pain. Satine writhed on the bed as the nictus within sought to tear her body apart in a desperate attempt to flee its captive host.

Back and forth, forth and back, squeak at the turn… Doctors shaking their heads, nurses watching in sympathy, Kheldians sighing in utter frustration…

Forth and back, back and forth. Scream, scream, cry, cry. Hours, days, still nothing. No new news.

Khlashtar had come to sit and comfort Ariel through this trying time and to offer her knowledge and insight to Satine’s plight the day before. Khlash, who had so many answers, had none for this. She tried to explain the whys, that this nictus wasn’t a true singular nictus, but rather a compound melding of multiple nicti for the express purpose of making their master’s pet an unstoppable force. No one had really gotten a chance to see one up close like this before, and now, no one wanted to. The best thing the doctors could offer was increasing amounts of pain killers, restraints, and to simply make her comfortable in the wait for her inevitable death.

Ariel had thrown the young doctor and his Kheldian accomplice through a wall at that last suggestion.

Herod would not leave Satine’s side; he was the only one that she had wanted informed when her condition had taken such an appalling turn for the worse. Ariel had never respected the man as much as she did right now – he soothed poor Satine with a tenderness that Ariel could no longer muster, not after three days of the frightful cries for death, release from the pain.

Ariel had called James, but had not told him the nature of her friend’s illness, nor the severity. Best not to worry him.

A young red head walked down the hallway towards the room. She had a calm, confident air, burning silver eyes and pointed ears that gave her an air of mystery and guile rather than detract from her pretty features. She looked inside the door, then back to Ariel who was sitting in the waiting area. Ariel just rolled her eyes – probably just another reveler come to see the infamous screaming lady – instead, the creature, for human she was not, tucked a business card in the door frame and walked off calmly. Ariel stared for a few moments, then went and retrieved the card with a curious quirk of her eyebrow. Perhaps it was some funeral home or the like, she mused as she walked over, preparing herself to head back into the room of horrors.

“She can help” was all that was scribbled on the back of the white card – a number adorned the front, but no name. She pulled her phone out and dialed, watching through the door’s small window as Satine writhed and moaned, Herod doing his best to hold the tortured woman down so she wouldn’t injure herself.

--

No shirt, no shoes, no admittance. Such silly signs did not bother the woman walking down the hallway of Atlas Park Hospital. People stopped and turned to watch her as she walked down the hallway with a purposeful step, awed by the simple power of her presence.

Midnight black hair tumbled down her shoulders in soft waves, framing a pretty, milky-smooth face with full pink lips and deep-set, calming green eyes. She was tall and wiry, but with litheness to her, creating the illusion that she was flowing instead of walking along. Her clothing was a loose, sleeveless white cotton dress, belted at the waist to accentuate her figure. Her feet were bare – an odd occurrence especially at a hospital.

The terminal cancer patient in room three twenty one took heart as he watched her walk by. Unbeknownst to him, in a week’s time he would learn that his inoperable tumors were in recession. The nurse attending him, who had been deemed infertile by every expert in the field, would conceive the daughter she’d always wanted that night and have a healthy, picture-perfect pregnancy.

Small miracles.

She approached Ariel in a fast yet unhurried fashion, coming to a halt in a soft swish of fabric. The two women locked eyes for a moment, before Ariel nodded, moving away from the door. The dark haired woman walked inside, acknowledging the red mechanical man with a small inclination of her head; he too moved aside to let her by. Her only thoughts were for the woman tied down to the bed, sobbing from pain into the pillow.

As she spoke, her voice was smooth and soft, like a lilting harp gently plucking words and chords from delicate strings. “Hello Satine. How are you feeling?” A grimace and groan were the only verbal response, but she felt the weight of a tortured mind crashing against hers, but did not flinch as the woman spoke the only way she could manage at the moment.

<…How the hell do you think.>

“I do not know. That is why I asked, my dear.” She smoothed the hair back from Satine’s sweat-soaked brow. The touch seemed to ease the pain for a moment, and unconsciously, the smaller woman pressed her cheek against the hand.

<…What are you?>

“I am here to help, if you will let me.”

<…But how?>

“Too many questions for now. We do not have much time, Miss Satine, so I am going to do what I can.” She turned to the man in the corner. “Please, a bit of privacy for her. Everything will be alright, I promise.” Satine nodded at Herod, and he left without much a fight, but those burning red eyes suggested he was less than happy with the situation.

The door clicked softly behind him, and the two women were left alone for some time.

---

Satine sat up, a small smile on her face. “You are truly an angel.” The raven haired one shook her head.

“I am but a vessel, Satine, nothing more. I do what I can to help, and am glad that I can.”

“And you don’t even have a name. Shame.”

“I left it behind with reason, though. Call me what you will.”

Satine reached up, brushing the hair back from the other woman’s face, revealing the starred eye, tattooed in a heavy black ink. “I think I shall call you….Midnight’s Star.”

Midnight quirked a brow, “But why?”

“I have my reasons.” Satine laughed, putting a hand upon her stomach, where only hours before a nictus had been doing its best imitation of a wood chipper with her essence as its logs. Now she looked happily content, sitting there.

“Don’t waste that.”

“I won’t.”

“Good.” Midnight slipped from the room quietly, motioning for the apprehensive best friend and fiancé in the waiting room to go in and see their beloved Satine.