The Airship

[XCandy and LunacyX]

It had been a very long time since the Red Crayon Aristocrats had held court, and they had a great amount of bloodshed to make up for. Illium thought this as she struggled on the ground, under Pierce's harsh grasp, while Antha circled the pair of them. He had broken her wrist, she knew that, and she was crying now, pleading as she hadn't since her title had been 'Poor'. But she was the Viscountess now, wasn't she?
No, she couldn't deny her fall from grace. Lawrence had already taken the Social Ranking from the wall, put the red crayon to it and scratched out her name. No, she was fallen lower than ever before---the Gegor. The victim. Her cousins were here, most of them piled atop the throne-altar of boxes draped in old tarp, to place their judgement upon her.
"You are terribly pathetic." A single blow had come from Antha's foot with her words, squarely in the girl's stomach, and done the intended job of crippling her, quieting her so that Pierce could release her and let her lay gasping upon the floor, her eyes shut tight. "I should think we've tolerated you long enough. Of course, that is only my opinion..." In her arms she held the shoddy little box they kept off to the side of the altar, and within were the slips of paper upon which the aristocrats had written their judgements. Antha quite literally held the girl's fate in her hands. "Let's take a look, shall we?" And she giggled, exactly as she had five years ago, and took her young cousin's dark hair in one hand, pulling her head up to watch as she sorted out the papers with the other hand, read out, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, over and over again. If there was a 'not' to interrupt the repetition of the word, the girl didn't notice---she was doomed anyways. "Yes, yes, I thought as much. You've been a terrible excuse for family you know. It didn't have to come to this---though, I would be lying if I said I didn't prefer things this way---but you drove us to it, dear Illium. You brought yourself to this point."
The young girl had opened her mouth to speak, to hiss curses and scream in her own defense, but Antha had slammed her head back down against the worn strip of red carpet before the sound could escape her throat. That was where they left her, mostly unconscious on the floor, as they ran off through the door, which led now not to the attic but to the airship, to find their offerings.
"Dorian?" Antha had lingered in the altar room beside the door and smiled innocently now at him, all aglow with the pleasure of not restraining herself, "The game has started, we need to find our gifts before the others snatch them all up." 'A hungry spider', the poster said. Certainly she hadn't come up with it---her demands tended to be a little more difficult, more creative than a simple spider. Though, catching one alive might prove testy all on her own.
All that Illium saw of her as she swept out the door was her clicking heels and the swoosh of her sullied skirts before she was gone down the hallway, towards the storage room, calling Dorian's name with a bit more force. Then the candles were out and she was left struggling to her feet alone in the darkness, nursing her broken wrist and desperately in need of a spider. Not that the offering would change anything---even if she handed over the best gift, dozens of beautiful spiders in pretty jars, she was already guilty. She was already the victim, and the victim never left the airship alive. She could only delay the inevitable by playing their games.  

[Okimiyage]

Dorian ghosted his way through the dark corridors, darting around corners and leaving behind laughter and foot-prints upon the dusty floorboards. Much larger footprints than they had once been; it had been so long since their merry court had traipsed these passageways. He could sense Antha behind him--too far behind, and he sang out to give her something to follow.
"A BIG black spider lived in a hole;
A terrible spider was he--
As big as your hand, and with hairy legs,
And a mouth as red as could be.
The beetles and flies at the sight of him fled,
And even the birds were afraid.
He had two great nippers, and eight wicked eyes;
How he ran ! and what leaps he made
I and all who lived in the garden knew
That terrible spider's lair,
And told their little ones, under their breath:
' 0 never, 0 never go there! '
--Hands out, Antha, my darling, there are webs ahead!"

Dorian did not call out to her in idleness; he himself had just torn through a filthy, matted shroud of cobweb, and there were more to come. With the court all disbanded for so many years, there had been nothing and no-one to prevent the airship from taking on new occupants. The spiders were one of these. This web looked abandoned--he hoped the web had been abandoned, at least, as he picked strands of spider silk from his hair--but others, further in, would most certainly not be. Peering through the gloom, he realized that he had not been the only one with the bright idea to investigate these web-woven halls.
But his spider would be best, and biggest, and have mandibles that clicked and dripped with poison. He wanted to impress his peers, after all.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

The girl whined at her cousin when her he called out to her, pausing to discard her shoes. They were a dreadful hindrance, and she had run around barefoot as a child anyways. "I hope you know that I'm going to find the best spider," she purred against Dorian's ear, picking a single silvery thread from his shoulder before she turned and pranced off into the darkness, dodging the silky spider city that loomed above her head. "Look lively, the clock is ticking," she called out, amid the flurry of her own giggling, as she took the old creaking metal stairway up to the service area, through the engine room and the workers' quarters to the catwalks of steel lattice and rough wooden boards, lighted by the glow of a few scattered halogen lamps. The sound of the machinery was not so deafening here as in the engine room, but rather a thrum that reverberated off of the rounded metal walls.
The catwalks branched off into various rooms filled with machinery and controls that she didn't know how to work and in general found quite boring so it was not to these that she went but rather to the service elevator at the far end, just before the pathways became a maze, to the single elevator in the entire ship. She took it to the third level, a draftier and ever more dismally depressing set of pathways than those below, and it was here that she began looking. There were more spiderwebs here than anywhere else, so many that she had to claw her way through them to exit the elevator shaft. After all, the third level granted access to outside by way of a little compartment that allowed the insects inside, and the more insects there were, the more spiders.
Lawrence, of course, had drawn the same conclusion. He had followed her without meaning to down to the elevator and then up to the highest level and now stood drawn and embittered, watching her pick through webs and scrutinize the spindly little things that fled from her. "What has you so very dour tonight?" she questioned, sparing him a brief glance over her shoulder as she set her trap up.
A fight ensued from these words, much to Antha's displeasure. She was not completely in the dark about where he had been that night, what he had been doing, but was disturbed to realize the extent of what he had uncovered. Lawrence was also disturbed, to a more frantic degree.
It wasn't until two hours later that Courtland and Jack, comparing their offerings, heard his scream reverberate down the hallway and went running to find him crumpled at the bottom of the stairs, only half conscious and spitting out blood. However, if they cared that Antha stood quietly at the top of the stairs, shameless and threatening, they made no indication of it, only took Lawrence's arms and hauled him off to the sickroom to lay him down.
It was yet another hour until the speakers crackled and a child's voice---Nicolae's, to be precise---announced that their time was up, and to please proceed to make their offerings. Antha was already stationed upon the altar, at the foot of the throne that she had grown too big for, turning her glass jar around in her hands to inspect the widow spider she had obtained, the bright red markings upon her black body that looked rather like hearts. It was the most venomous she could find upon the ship, if not the largest, and certainly the prettiest she thought. Besides, she could appreciate something that tore it's lover apart when it was through with him.
"No gift, Illium?" she greeted the young girl with a start as she limped through the door, her face tear stained, and the others sneered at her, "Oh dear. That is an offense of the highest caliber. But you know that, don't you?"
Yes, of course she had known it. That had been the whole point of breaking her wrist, of the internal bleeding, making sure she wouldn't be able to catch a spider so that they could end up at this point, with Jack latching the door behind her and Vittorio lunging for her as she shrieked, crying and screaming, trying to evade him with no success. By this time Courtland had fetched the latest contraption, which he had stashed behind the altar, and was setting it up in the middle of the room. The 'onion bag' Lawrence had called it, large enough to fit a fully grown man and tough enough to contain even the most frantic of them. It was here that Jack and Vittorio dragged her, stuffing her into the coarse depths and grabbing hold of her limbs through it to keep her still as Antha took the collection of their offerings, all of the various and mostly poisonous spiders, and dropped the open container into the bag with her, closing them all up together.
They waited for the screams to become deafening before Courtland got sick of it, hunted around for his aluminum pipe and brought it down on the squirming blob within the bag. "That's enough!" Antha called when the screams went quiet, going to stand beside it only to step in the warm blood beginning to seep through, "Damn it, Courtland, did you kill her already?"
The boy shrugged, dropping the pipe with a clatter to the floor. "I'm not checking," he said simply, stepping back, to a general groan of irritation from the others. "Those spiders are all riled up and on the defensive!"
"Dorian," Antha snapped, motioning irritably at the still bag, "You check."  

[Okimiyage]

Dorian's smile, which had slowly soured as Courtland went at the onion bag like it was a pinata, returned at Antha's command. He clicked his heels together sharply--unlike the others, Dorian was too proud of his shiny black wingtips to give them up easily--and swept a bow. "As you wish, my princess." he said, as he straightened and turned to toss the bag's seeping contents a look of faint disgust. It was not a fear of the spider's venom which slowed his steps, as he approached the sack, but a fear that Illium was truly dead, and that--that would be too tragic. They'd only just begun their games. Picking up the discarded aluminum pipe, Dorian probed the sack cautiously before kneeling and untying the mouth of the bag. He stuck the end of the pipe in, and raised it up to peer inside.
His own offering, a spider as red and wetly shining as a pigeon's-blood ruby, sat upon the third knuckle of Illium's small, still hand. Her fingernails were broken and scarlet from frantically scratching at the inside of the sack; her white skin was already beginning to blotch and purple from the venom of her little companions. "I think they like her," he whispered, and his mouth curled up in a twisted little smile. Letting the mouth of the sack fall closed as he withdrew the pipe, Dorian turned around and fixed Courtland with a glower. Tapping the end of the pipe in his open palm, he made his way to his cousin, his steps echoing hollowly about the throne room. He stopped about six inches in front of Courtland, and stood on his toes to lean in close, to press his lips against his cousin's ear, and pronounce in a whisper fit for the theatre: "My darling cousin, you have absolutely no concept of restraint."
Dorian's knuckles were white on the aluminum pipe as he returned it to Courtland's grasp, although he handled it as delicately as though it were made of bone china. Beneath his breath, in a true whisper this time, he hissed, "She didn't even make it through a whole day. Who are we to play with now?"
He did not wait for an answer. Whatever one Courtland could have given, it would have been insufficient. The air about Dorian now was reminiscent of a tightly coiled spring, one that had only avoided violently breaking up until this point by sheerest luck. Turning his back on his cousin, Dorian stalked to Antha's side. "The Gegor is deceased." he reported. "No surprise, there."  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Antha went to look herself after Dorian, to press her fingers against the girl's wrist and wait for a pulse that didn't come. "Courtland!" she hissed, jerking the sack closed again, "You are too careless!" Rising, she stalked over to her cousin, taking the pipe Dorian had returned to him and ripping it from his fingers, throwing it to the floor before she struck him once across the face, just hard enough to knock him over onto the floor before she returned to Dorian, bringing her arms around him as she sighed, watching the bag, and whispered, "What are we to do now?"
There were choices, of course---Rynn and Vikteren and the dozens of little half-blooded Mayfairs running around the city. And yet, nothing seemed quite right. Nothing fit now, with Illium's premature demise. "Grab the sack," she sighed to Dorian at length, with a small gesture of her hand towards it, as she went for the door, "At the very least, we can fix her in the fish tank. Jack!" The boy stood at the call of his name, his eyes still fixed on Courtland as he rolled around on the floor, cradling his bloody lips. "See to Lawrence. We don't need him dying tonight, too. Vittorio, Eleanor, take Courtland to the rubbish room. He needs to be taught a lesson." She snapped her fingers then, setting everyone into motion as she fetched a heap of rope and motioned for Dorian to follow her out into the hall, back up the stairs and the way she'd gone earlier, past the elevator this time and further into the maze of catwalks, up and down stairs, to the very tail of the ship. It was here that there resided a little alcove, the walls of which Nicolae had had painted blue with crudely drawn little fish and bubbles. Above them, the criss-crossing pipes were strung with ropes affixed to the feet of small corpses, wrapped around their legs to the point of being completely obscured, while the rotting upper halves of their bodies were left bare.
"I can't believe him," she hissed, grabbing a side of the sack from Dorian and hopping onto the railing to shake it out, dumping Illium's crushed and bloody form upon the coarse wooden boards along with a few of the spiders, which went scurrying away into the darkness. The bag she flung over the railing, down into the seemingly bottomless darkness, as she seated herself precariously upon the railing, making an irritated gesture at Illium's corpse and the pile of rope beside it with her blood-splattered hand. She had no patience for it tonight, she would leave the girl's transformation into mermaid to Dorian. "Of all the times to get overexcited," she continued, venomously, "He is lucky I don't make him finish the game in her place! What are we to do now, simply return to the real world?" She gave a groan of frustration, wiping her bloodied hands on her sullied white skirts to distract herself. "It isn't enough," she murmured helplessly as she did so, mostly to herself, "It can't just end like this. It's so...anticlimactic."  

[Okimiyage]

Dorian, wrapping the age-blackened rope about Illium's ankles--Illium now, no longer the victim or the Gegor, just a somewhat pitiable girl who had the misfortune to become caught up in their games before her time--secured the first of the many knots of the mermaid's tail, tying it tightly around her bruised and distended flesh. Spider-bite was not a pretty way to go, and Courtland's stunt with the pipe had not assisted. Her face was obscured behind the tangle of glossy black hair of which she had been so proud of in life, but even though he could not see the purpling of her poisoned cheeks, the congealing blood that oozed from her skull, he could feel the damage done to her young, broken body. Pressing his fingertips against her legs as he tied another of the innumerable knots, he tsked at the sensation of shattered bone inside. "Disgusting--rotting meat--" he whispered, under his breath, as though he had forgotten completely that the girl whose body he attended to in death he had once called 'darling cousin' and drank tea with. (His had been spiked with hard liquor, of course.)
When Antha spoke, it jerked him out of whatever place his mind had inhabited. Brushing a hank of golden hair from his eyes, Dorian looked up and fixed his Princess with a grin. "Had we not already decided on the obvious choice? The ill-made mute's brother--get him. It'll be ever so much fun. And he will last us far longer, I am certain, than this dull girl did. Think of this only as--as practice." Making the final loops about Illium's wasp-slender waist, he knotted the rope as tight as he could and stood up. His movements were made efficient by repetition; his body had not forgotten his time in the airship, even if the adults in the outside world preferred not to acknowledge even the existence of the Red Crayon Aristocrats. Throwing the end of the rope over one of the pipes, he hauled Illium up to join with the other mermaids. "They'll be happy, I think, to have a new mermaid to play with. Maybe they'll even sing for us, one day." He laughed, and set the body swinging with a light push.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"I told you," she snapped, more than a little bitterly, as she hopped down from the railing, walking to stand before the girl's dangling corpse, "Not yet." Her hand wrapped briefly around the pale wrist that hung lifelessly before her face, letting the blood that seeped down it spill over her pale fingers. "But perhaps...perhaps I have a better solution. A more worthy sacrifice even than Rynn." Her hand came away scarlet then, though she hardly noticed as the gears began to grind in her head, her eyes to darken thoughtfully. Antha's anger had taken her to terrible places before, stolen things from her that she eventually came to mourn the loss of, but this was a new level entirely. "Dorian, what if..." She fell silent briefly, biting her tongue on the words that the thing demanded be spoken, because once she gave life to them there was no turning back. "What if we were to set Vikteren up as our gegor?"
Throughout the cold hull of the airship, the lights flickered momentarily, ecstatically, as Antha considered the possibility of it. Letting him leave had been a mistake, she knew that, and in the outside world she never would have considered such a thing. But it was there now in her mind, spurring on the hurt of rejection, and she wanted it suddenly. Wanted to make him bleed, suffer, and wanted to kill him with her own hands. She wanted to make him pay, and in the end to set him up as a forever lifeless doll that could never escape her, never leave her terribly heartbroken in the rain again.
"Let us see what the others have come up with," she said with a sudden start, snapping out of her own thoughts to take Dorian's hand and, sparing a parting glance at the new mermaid over her shoulder, start back towards the altar room. If she should change her mind, she made a note to herself that she should like to find the elusive Cyrus when she returned to the real world. It was of dire importance to her suddenly that he find Vikteren if she was not going to include the latter in their games.
When they returned to the main sector of the airship, Antha left Dorian's company in favor of the rubbish room, from which she ejected Vittorio and Eleanor so that she might finish dealing out Courtland's punishment herself. It was nearly an hour before the two of them emerged again into the altar room, Courtland only half clothed and bearing the stains of dried blood all down his chin and neck, dark bruises blossoming all about his torso and even a sliver of one upon his cheek. He did, however, look suspiciously pleased with himself all of a sudden.
"Well?" she asked of her cousins as their eyes turned to her, climbing the tiers of the altar to stand beside her small throne and look down upon them all, "Are there any suggestions besides Rynn Calais or are we all going to return to the real world until it is time to bring our judgement upon him?"  

[Okimiyage]

Dorian, abandoned to his own whims for the span of two hours, had had time to carefully consider Antha's proposal as he paced the airship's labyrinthine halls. He knew of Vikteren. Antha and her pet vampire had been inseparable until Llyr's Court, if the rumors were to be believed. What had gone down there, exactly, he was unsure of; the rumor-mill of Osiris City was not particularly reliable even when dealing with mundane subjects, and the reclusive Calais's emergence into the public eye had been anything but. Dorian's normally keen senses had been unable to sift through the unending retellings of the story to find the grain of truth at the bottom of it all; it was something of a sore spot with him, currently.
Which was partially the reason why he wanted the mute's brother, because--oh--wouldn't it be nice to hear from a first-hand source every once in a while? And the mute wasn't going to talk, obviously.
But why not? Vikteren had obviously done something to rouse Antha's ire, and if it pleased her to destroy the stupid creature, then Dorian would aid in any way possible. In fact, he would take the greatest of pleasure in it. He loved Antha, in the way that a dog loves his mistress. Whatever antagonized her deserved destruction; whatever made her unhappy deserved the same unhappiness a hundred times over.
When they returned to the throne room, Dorian went to Courtland like he was magnetized, and drew the lovely battered boy into his arms. Antha's question was posed; the hush that fell over the room did not last long. "I would like to nominate," Dorian spoke out, drawing a languid claw across Courtland's beautiful bruises, and watching to see if he flinched, "Vikteren d'Argnet, for the position of gegor and victim, which he so rightfully deserves."  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

As soon as the words had left Dorian's lips, before there was even time for the other cousins to let such a wild suggestion sink in---and that was what it was, wild, for they had never had a vampire as their gegor before, or anything very strong at all really, nothing that could possibly win their game---four voices around the room called out "Seconded!" simultaneously. Courtland of course, Jack, Vittorio, and oddly enough, Lawrence.
For a moment, Antha simply looked at them, blinking her eyes curiously. She hadn't quite expected them to take so warmly to the idea. "It might take a bit of time," she murmured thoughtfully, "Finding him settled near a door. We would need to take him in the daylight, I should think, while he cannot resist." At length, she shook her head and hopped down from her throne, going to stand before Lawrence. "It shall be your job to find him." He merely nodded, curtly---the others watched them rabidly in this short exchange, the vindictive glare of Antha's eyes and the way Lawrence bit his tongue, because none of them could fathom what had possibly gone down between them to make Lawrence so sullen and Antha furious enough to throw him down the stairs. "Dorian, you will assist him, given that it was your suggestion. Until you find him, I think it time to retire to the real world."
Vittorio had already gone to the door as she spoke, placing his hand against it as he turned the little dial until it opened to the dusty, sun-drenched attic of Mayfair Manor. Most of the cousins filed out and to their rooms---it had been such a long day, and they had been awake for over twenty-four hours---and the rest went to raid the fridge before they followed to their beds. Antha went to Malakai's room, ignoring the little voice in her head that told her to go look for Cian, and crept past her brother's slumbering form into the bathroom, ridding herself of her sullied, bloodied dress before stepping into the shower, washing herself clean of the rainwater, mud, and blood.
When she was clean and clothed in an old shirt, she crawled quietly into bed with her brother and brought his arm around her, her cheek on his shoulder. If Dorian and Lawrence didn't find Vikteren before nightfall, she had made up her mind to find his maker. For better or worse, she wanted to meet the creature that had inspired such fear in the vampire. And besides, if she couldn't find Vikteren to destroy him, she at least wanted to help put him in the custody of something horribly cruel .  

[Okimiyage]

At Antha's command, Dorian snapped his heels together and bowed deeply. He remained in this position until Antha had left the room, not even raising his head to look after her until the sound of the door's shutting clanged cavernously about the room.
Then, slowly, Dorian straightened. He smiled. It was a dreadful smile; he turned, and showed it to Lawrence. He laughed. He crowed.
"Some fun at last, and all ours! Lawrence--dear Lawrence--" He rushed to his cousin, and grasped his hands, tugging fiercely. His expression of elation turned sour at Lawrence's--in comparison to Dorian's--delayed reaction. "Come!" he snapped. "We mustn't waste time. Unless Antha left bruises on your brain as well as everywhere else, you've no excuse for standing there like a zombie. This is our chance to please her; we mustn't let her down."
Releasing Lawrence's hand with a tchah! of frustration, he dashed to the door himself and began fiddling at the dial. "Lawrence, help me with this. We've been away far too long; everything's rusted to hell and back--"
The dial clanked, and set. Somewhere far away inside the airship, metal groaned mournfully; the cry of an antique beast.
Dorian turned around, shaking the sudden chill from his hand, and looked at his cousin. "Well? What are you waiting for?"