(function () {\n\t"use strict";\n\tversion.extensions['youtubeAudioMacros'] = {\n\t\tmajor: 2,\n\t\tminor: 1,\n\t\trevision: 0\n\t};\n\tvar ytplayers = {},\n\t\tvideocount = 0,\n\t\tready = false,\n\t\treadyBuffer = {},\n\t\ts = document.createElement("script"),\n\t\tprotocol = location.protocol == "file:" ? "http:" : location.protocol;\n\ts.src = protocol + "//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/swfobject/2.2/swfobject_src.js";\n\ts.onreadystatechange = s.onload = function () {\n\t\tvar re = new RegExp('(?:playbgm|loopbgm) ([^"&?/ ]{11})', "gi"),\n\t\t div = document.getElementById("storeArea").firstChild,\n\t\t done = [],\n\t\t d;\n\t\tfunction newplayer(hash) {\n\t\t\tvar id = "YouTube-" + hash;\n\t\t\t insertElement(document.body, "div", id);\n\t\t\tswfobject.embedSWF(protocol + "//www.youtube.com/apiplayer?enablejsapi=1&playerapiid=" + id, id, "0", "0", "8",\n\t\t\t\tnull, {}, {\n\t\t\t\t\tallowScriptAccess: "always",\n\t\t\t\t\twmode: "transparent",\n\t\t\t\t\tmodestbranding: "1",\n\t\t\t\t\tversion: "3"\n\t\t\t\t}, {\n\t\t\t\t\tid: "ytplayer-" + hash,\n\t\t\t\t});\n\t\t};\n\t\twhile(div) {\n\t\t\tdo {\n\t\t\t\td = re.exec(div.innerHTML);\n\t\t\t\tif(d && done.indexOf(d[1]) == -1) {\n\t\t\t\t\tnewplayer(d[1]);\n\t\t\t\t\tdone.push(d[1]);\n\t\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t} while (d);\n\t\t\tdiv = div.nextSibling;\n\t\t};\n\t};\n\tdocument.head.appendChild(s);\n\twindow.onYTAudioError = function (e) {\n\t\talert("There is a problem with the YouTube background music (" + e + ")" +\n\t\t\t(e == 2 ? ": The video ID (" + hash + ") is probably invalid." :\n\t\t\t\te == 100 ? ": The requested video (" + hash + ") was not found." :\n\t\t\t\te == 101 || e == 150 ? ": Embedding has been disabled for the video (" + hash + ")." : ""));\n\t};\n\twindow.onYouTubePlayerReady = function (e) {\n\t\tvar hash = e.slice(8),\n\t\t\tyt = (ytplayers[hash] = document.getElementById("ytplayer-" + hash));\n\t\tready = true;\n\t\tyt.style.visibility="hidden";\n\t\tyt.addEventListener("onError", "onYTAudioError");\n\t\tyt.mute();\n\t\tyt.loadVideoById(hash, 0);\n\t\tyt.LOAD = true;\n\t\tvideocount += 1;\n\t\twindow["onYTAudioStateChange_" + videocount] = function (newState) {\n\t\t\tif(newState == 1 && yt.LOAD) {\n\t\t\t\tyt.pauseVideo();\n\t\t\t\tyt.unMute();\n\t\t\t\tyt.LOAD = false;\n\t\t\t\twhile(readyBuffer[hash].length > 0) {\n\t\t\t\t\treadyBuffer[hash].shift()(yt);\n\t\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\tif(newState == 0 && yt.LOOP) {\n\t\t\t\tyt.playVideo();\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t};\n\t\tyt.addEventListener("onStateChange", "onYTAudioStateChange_" + videocount);\n\t};\n\t["playbgm","loopbgm","stopbgm","pausebgm","unloopbgm"].forEach(function(e) {\n\t\tmacros[e] = {\n\t\thandler: function (e, t, n, r) {\n\t\t\tvar yt, fn;\n\t\t\tif(n[0]) {\n\t\t\t\tyt = ytplayers[n[0]];\n\t\t\t\tswitch(t) {\n\t\t\t\t case "playbgm":\n\t\t\t\t case "loopbgm":\n\t\t\t\t\tfn = function(yt) {\n\t\t\t\t\t\tyt.LOOP = (t == "loopbgm");\n\t\t\t\t\t\tif (n[1]) yt.seekTo(n[1]);\n\t\t\t\t\t\tyt.playVideo();\n\t\t\t\t\t};\n\t\t\t\t\tbreak;\n\t\t\t\t case "stopbgm":\n\t\t\t\t\tfn = function(yt) { yt.stopVideo(); };\n\t\t\t\t\tbreak;\n\t\t\t\t case "pausebgm":\n\t\t\t\t\tfn = function(yt) { yt.stopVideo(); };\n\t\t\t\t\tbreak;\n\t\t\t\t case "unloopbgm":\n\t\t\t\t\tfn = function(yt) { yt.LOOP = false; };\n\t\t\t\t\tbreak;\n\t\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t\tif (fn) {\n\t\t\t\t\tif (!yt || yt.LOAD) {\n\t\t\t\t\t\treadyBuffer[n[0]] = readyBuffer[n[0]] || [];\n\t\t\t\t\t\treadyBuffer[n[0]].push(fn);\n\t\t\t\t\t} else fn(yt);\n\t\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t}\n\t}\n\t});\n}());
The mage uneasily tapped his boots against his tenuous foothold. A wave of pebbles slipped over the edge and into oblivion. Yet somehow the path continued to support his weight. “Why anyone would even want to drag your ass out is beyond me.”\n\n“Keh, is it really now?” Dark shook his head side to side tutting in mock disappointment. “In millennia past, back when the world as you know it was still molding itself together, your predecessors had the mind to direct praise and worship my way. In gratitude, no less, for sheltering them from Light’s judgment. You could stand to learn from their example.” \n\nBrows gone flat, Russo exhaled through his nose. “You’re going to get tired of leading me on eventually.”\n\n“Unlikely,” Dark snorted in amusement. The black musculature of an index finger slid against his thumb. \n\nBehind the deity another platform yawned against the void. A solid slab of white stone dabbled with strokes of black heeded his call. \n\nThe edges of the moon tucked inside the jackal's noggin glowed, restoring the all too familiar crescent. Sounds of rocks crunching and clacking against each other in mass were accompanied by a shit-eating grin spread wide upon Dark's muzzle.\n\nRusso snapped his head to the side. Chin resting against his shoulder he eyed the gravel tapering off into oblivion like a waterfall. Dammit. Readying another Teleport spell he was forced to roll his eyes at the snide laughter rumbling before him. "I hate dying more than I do listening to you. What of it."\n\n"Keh." The jackal delightedly turned his nose up at the demand. "Better hurry," Dark advised as the fingers and wrist upon his right arm unraveled into a mesh of tendrils. \n\n"Like this'll stop me from dragging my feet." With that, Russo vanished in a flash of light. Reappearing on the carved marble he cautiously tread besides a sizeable rectangle punched through its surface. Was that... was that a doorframe? \n\nThe writhing mass dangling down from Dark's shoulder shot out towards the angular platform and anchored itself to it. A solid grip established, the deity vaulted the gap between one disappearing foothold and the next. \n\n“Strength, guidance, knowledge, wealth.” One pointed finger after another uncurled themselves from their resting place against a palm comprised of slick musculature. “The selfish and selfless. Ceremonies spontaneously tossed together and planned months in advance. Quaint as they were, every attempt met with the same response.” A purple pallor clouded over the surface of the dark moon nestled within the god’s empty eye sockets. “Any and all who have the gall to so much as decide for me when and where I manifest myself will be put in their place.”\n\nIt required little effort on Russo’s part to imagine what kind of fate befell those with even worse luck than him. They’d be lucky if even stains remained where they once stood. “So.” With great hesitation the mage nudged the conversation further down its predetermined tracks. It ate away at his pride to grant the bastard any kind of victory, however small. “What was so special about Light smiting folks that you decided to run interference way back then?”\n\n[[Russo: Hound at history | History]]\n\n
Stifled laughter spilled out from between Russo's lips. "He's jealous. He's actually jealous. Oh fuck this is too good," he thought. His chest rose and fell with every snicker and chortle that was forcibly silenced. Thoughts failed him while an imagined stream of laughter reverberated inside his head. "Ha. Haha. Ahahahahahahahaha." \n\nThe entirety of the celestial body hovering inside Dark's noggin flickered to life for but a moment. \n\n"H-hold on, hold on. I'm not done yet." The mage clutched at his sides and let loose gasping breaths of laughter. "You. Jealous?" The thought alone was enough to kick off another bout of wheezing. \n\nDarkness draped down over the top half of the heavenly orb in Dark's nogging in an instant to reduce the full moon to a half moon. "So be it." The jackal pulled his melded ankles out from Russo's shadow and resumed propelling himself with his own two legs. "...Right, the creation of the world you currently call home." \n\nRusso struggled to control himself and continued giggling all the while.\n\nDark ground his teeth together noisily. His composure faltered and for a moment a new moon, entirely devoid of light, populated the interior of his noggin. When the human's laughter faded so did the curtain of darkness draped across the celestial body. Snapping his fingers, the contrasting chunks of marble slid into one another with the consistency of oil and water at the deity's behest. Never mixing nor melding together, the two colors of stone were at least capable of coexistence. Dashes of white continued to poke against their black canvas like stars. Streaks of black shaped themselves into ever more complex shapes, such as moons rife with craters and shattered worlds just barely holding together, all against a bright backdrop.\n\n"Our failures littered the cosmos. Keh, initially we took pride in the fact we were able to recreate that first flub. Seething spheres of brimstone and orbs encased in ice became commonplace. Still, it was never enough to satiate me. Extremes and absolutes bore me to no end. I craved, I knew, that something far more interesting lied between the opposing ends of the spectrum." Jaws parted, Dark stared hungrily at the makeshift sprawl of space at his feet. \n\n"Now that's more like it," Russo thought to himself. That was the conniving monstrosity he had grown to loathe and hate.\n\nThe god of darkness took to his canvas once more. Plucking at the open air, the tainted brush strokes of stone began to rotate. "It took us ages to grasp, much less come to an agreement, on how to approach the nuances involved with doing so. I'll spare you the finer details as those are beyond your grasp and interest." A brilliant white orb glowered in the eye of the swirling mass of blackness. \n\n"Oh ho ho someone's feeling salty," Russo mused. Immeasurable pride welled in the human's chest at the thought of dissuading another wall of exposition. \n\n"After an eternity or two of gnashing and bickering a world unlike any other came to be." The marble reacted to the splaying of Dark's fingers. Far far away from the circular mass of white that now resided at the center of the platform two new spheres were carved out from the blanket of black. A greater and a lesser appeared, both tucked close to one another. The smaller was nearly pristine save for dark rings and craters masterfully carved into its surface. On the larger model, monochrome blotches painted out vaguely familiar landmasses upon a shining sea of white. \n\n[[Russo:Get to the point |Point]]
Trudging through the shadows, Russo glared at the god's back. The illuminated musculature drank in most of the light the mage's conjured flame cast upon it. A faint sheen manifested on the individual strands of flesh that compacted together to give shape and form to Dark's current body. "I can only imagine Light felt the same way," Russo stated.\n\nThe jackal continued to plod ever forward. "Light... was less than pleased once my clandestine efforts bore fruit," Dark replied sans his typical snark. \n\nRusso sank his teeth into his lip, biting back the urge to snap back with a sarcastic response. "He wouldn't have brought it up if he didn't want to hear himself drone on about it..." Rolling his eyes, the mage directed his attention towards the branching paths passing him by. The silent sentry of armors tapered off gently to reveal nothing more than barren, empty walls. To his left and right he spied wide gaps in the walls that led to... somewhere. What little flames he had gathered were unable to so much as push back the darkness collected within them. \n\nThe mage's gaze briefly flit back to Dark. He could just barely make out the god's form from their lightless surroundings. Meh, a quick [[sneak | Foreshadowing]] couldn't hurt.\n\n"I suffered Light's burning barbs and slings, patiently waiting out the gradual transformation of her creations. Those ribbons of darkness slowly embedding themselves into your very souls... that moderation of opposing influences allowed for everything between slavish obedience and mindless rebellion to manifest within you." \n\nA clot of purple energy coalesced in the jackal's palm. "The changes were subtle enough at first. Her dutiful and ever loyal followers began to splinter and disagree on how best to revere and worship their creator." Twiddling his fingers, wisps of it broke off and trailed between his digits. "The light remained within them, it had just been dulled and deprived of its purity."\n\nThe deeper into the structure they traveled, the more oppressive the darkness became. Russo's wavering lantern of orange flame failed to illuminate anything more than the few feet of ground separating him from Dark. "The first to fall, huh?" Russo mused aloud. Their footsteps echoed through the encroaching abyss. "You must have been so proud." \n\n"In more ways than you know," Dark answered. For a time the duo continued walking, neither picking back up the reigns of the conversation. Silence descended to fill in the vacuum of gab. \n\nRusso's heart thumped erratically when he realized his footsteps were the only ones sounding in the void. Pouring fuel into his magical flames did little to sooth his welling worries. "Shit, I would've thought I'd be used to this by now," the human feebly thought to himself. \n\n"For as much Light underestimated yours truly..." Menacing gnarled teeth, each one a veritable spear of marrow capable of running Russo through, appeared alongside the human's head. "...it never occurred to me that I was guilty of the same. She remedied those mistaken assumptions soon enough." \n \nResisting the urge to recoil away from the mangled cavern of teeth and into another potential pitfall, Russo settled for trembling uncontrollably. "Don't freak out don't freak out don't freak out you'll only just encourage him," he repeated ad infinitum in the confines of his mind. \n\n"Wracked with disbelief, Light tried to remedy their disputes." A tired and bitter laugh spilled forth from Dark's maw. "Keh, I feel that the only reason she had yet to grasp the gravity of the situation was because they still heeded her word. A fleeting hope remained and she clutched at it desperately, even as absolute control crumbled between her fingertips." \n\nSparks and stray embers drifted down between Russo's digits. His concentration faltering, the flame cupped in the palm of the mage's hand wavered unstably. "Okay okay okay, I get it!" \n\nDark audibly inhaled. \n\n"Knock it off!" Russo yelled. He retracted his arm and held it close against his chest. Trails of smoke wafted off his vest.\n\n"Heh. You're no better off than she was," the god tsked. Dark contentedly carried on after receiving a scowl in response. "Conflicting interpretations of her decrees developed and disseminated amongst her flock. Petty disagreements turned into irreconciliable differences that threatened to devolve into violence." That monstrous maw curled up into a subdued grin. "There was a brief instant where I worried that you were doomed to tread down the same path my mistakes did. Yet, you didn't. How relieved I was to see that, while you possessed the potential to visit harm on those around you, it wasn't an impulse you were incapable of resisting." \n\nThose teeth clacked together briefly as they parted. Dark's expression grew manic and unnverving. "You defied expectation and grew difficult to predict. The outcomes ceased to be inevitabilities and a world of unknown unknowns was opened to me. There was no going back. Too late did Light begin to see the faintest traces of those detestable demons residing in her own pride and joy." \n\nThe mage shuddered when he felt a gust of cold air drape down his shoulders in concert to the god exhaling. Protectively, he cupped his hands around his sole source of warmth and respite from the darkness. \n\n"I reveled in my victory. You were something I helped create, something I could be proud of." That hovering set of teeth swung to Russo's opposite side. "Light seethed with barely contained anger at my transgressions. That in and of itself was as much a victory as your creation."\n\nRusso stared back at his host as he stoked the flames at his fingertips. "So every sin can be traced back to you, is that it?" The human sighed. This... goddammit, this shouldn't be so hard to figure out. Dark ruined a good thing, didn't he? Hell, you would think trashing a peaceful paradise would be an unequivocally shitty thing to do. But if even a fraction of what he said was true...\n\n"For which you're welcome." Dark growled in smug satisfaction at the human's muted response. "Light wasn't anywhere near as grateful or understanding, however. I expected her to assail and impale me with her radiance in retaliation." \n\nThe god of darkness recalled staring her down from beyond the lines burned into the earth that served as the boundaries for her former paradise. His form amorphous and hers rigid, both impossible to fully comprehend. "It wasn't supposed to matter what she threw at me. I had broken the rules of her little game and taken what I wanted for myself. Whatever price she extracted from me would have been well worth it." Dark remembered smiling maniacally when Light raised her hand against him, her cracking digits peeling back and unable to house the energy roiling within them. "There's a saying you mortals have, 'You can't win if I can't lose.' Light chose to conduct herself in much the same manner." Pangs of uncertainty and outright shock gripped Dark for the first time in his existence when Light aimed her attack away from him. Behind her, swathes of her work and tainted creation simply vaporized into molten ash. \n\n[[Russo: Better the devil you know...| Necessary Evil]]
"You need her and she needs you, from the sounds of-" Russo was cut off as paper thin tendrils of darkness oozed up from the inside of his shirt and tugged at his neck.\n\n"I'm just-" Those black vines surged up and pinched at the human's cheeks. He rolled his eyes and kept his lips pursed together. Brows furrowed, he stayed his tongue until he felt the tendrils start to recede. "Well fuck you too," Russo spat out before they could clamp down on his mouth.\n\nDark smirked to himself at the sorry sight. "There's an ebb and flow to these conversations, Russo. A tit for tat if you will." With a tap of his fingers against his slick palm, the jackal prompted those writhing extensions of himself to retract. \n\nRusso exhaled loudly through his nose. Fine, he'd drag this conversation back onto its rails. "Something something Light something something stars because of you."\n\n[[Dark: Resume | Envy]]
Russo lifted a foot off the ground and shook the offending limb violently in a mock attempt to spurn the deity. To his dismay, Dark impassively rocked back and forth to the flailing beat of Russo’s own shadow. “So… what, you two are responsible for more than just light and dark magic?”\n\nDark flicked a finger curled against his fleshy palm forward. The contrails of energy hissing from between the individual strands of jet black musculature abruptly solidified in the open air. Black crystals formed at the tapering tips of the wisps and slowly crackled back down from whence they came. Layers of ice and permafrost quickly spread along the god’s outstretched finger. “Hardly. Every single spell your mortal minds can fathom are, at best, laughable derivatives of what Light and myself wield.” \n\nAnother digit unfurled. Purple continued to give way to black as the wisps thickened into plumes of smoke that coiled together. They came to settle and coagulate together into a suffocating fog that hovered ominously above the jackal’s fingertip. “Those pitiful displays of spellcasting… at best they’ve been able to mimic but a single aspect of the purest darkness and light that all your magic stems from. Some of which you have yet to even begin to grasp.” A third finger scraped up against up his palm and in an instant the wafting trails of energy vanished. \n\nEyebrow cocked, Russo regarded the display with a dismissive air. This was Nadie’s thing, not his. Not like… not… the hell? The mage’s eyes focused on the absence of a display. Something was off. Traces of light shimmered and reflected off the surface of some sort of translucent sphere hovering over Dark’s digit. \n\n“Now Light would never confess to this, but she’s always been dependent on me to shape our shared creations. Her powers are as rigid and uncompromising as she is.” The dense black fog and crystals were tugged towards the distorted sphere of light by unseen forces. “It’s always been all-or-nothing with her. Either her radiance has to overwhelm everything around it or else it’s reduced to a pinprick that pierces anything that has the poor misfortune to be in its path.” \n\nEntire swaths of the fog and chunks of blackened crystals were ripped free and violently circled around the sphere. “When Light and I were still needling each other in our tit-for-tat all I cared about was snuffing out her influence entirely. Those accidents of ours… that I could shape, keh better yet, warp her precious power proved enlightening.” Caught in the condensed darkness’ event horizon, powerful enough to trap light itself in its pull, what remained of the fog and ice was dragged into its orbit. The closer they came to the unseen sphere’s center, the more strained and flattened they became until finally all that remained floating around it was a fine mist. \n\nDark forced a sigh between his clenched teeth. With a flick of his wrist the various conjurings of dark magic were dispelled. “Though I’m no better. Without her there would be nothing to twist into shape to begin with.”\n\n“She can do what you can’t and you can do what she can’t.” Russo stared down the god. To think that a primordial entity that shaped existence itself was just as bitter and petty as anyone else brought a mixture of horror and relief that locked up his shoulders. “Shouldn’t that be all you need? Just rub her nose in it and call it a day.” \n\n“Quaint.” Dark slid around the platform, dragging Russo’s shadow with him. \n\n“Oh for fucks sakes how is this even possible?!” The human that cast it was forced to match his shadow’s movements. Russo’s legs skittered along the platform hovering in the void of their own volition. \n\n“My very nature, my power, is defined by absence. Where warmth is lacking, it is cold. Without light, there is darkness. In the absence of life, death.” Resting on the precipice, Dark gazed out into the void. What few structures could be seen, cobbled together into a patchwork existence, were all put together by hands that were not his own. “My ‘work’ has always been constrained and entirely dependent on others. By either removing their influence or mangling it into something unrecognizable. So perhaps I am… envious, of Light’s abilities. I’ve always felt that I was dealt a bum hand.” \n\n[[Russo: Whut|React]]\n[[Russo: Ha. Hahahaha. HAHAHAHAHA. HA. | Cackle]]
<<silently>>\n<<set $RL = 0>>\n<<set $RP = 0>>\n<<set $display = 0>>\n<<endsilently>>\n\nRusso stared back at the black veil draped across his vision, angry crackles of green and blue rippling out from where he could feel his fingers rubbing against his eyes. Not yet. As he drew breath his chest expanded and pressed painfully against the cold uneven surface beneath him. “Slowly… slowly…” The mage reluctantly creaked his eyelids open. “Nononononononopenope. Try this again.” Those eyes of his clenched shut once more. Ignoring the rocks and pebbles that were imprinting their misshapen forms into his cheeks and forehead, Russo remained splayed out upon the ground. “Goddammit why am I not back in my bed yet.”\n\n“That’s not quite how it works, you know,” Dark snorted bemusedly. The jackal, comprised of nothing more than thousands of tendrils compacted together into a bilious black musculature, tilted his head to the side. A half-moon tumbled from one empty eye socket to the next. “I do admire the token resistance though.” \n\n[[Russo: Rise|Russo: Proactive]]\n[[Russo: Resist|Russo: Lazy]]\n
<<silently>>\n<<loopbgm LJLDWJQKqb4>>\n<<endsilently>>\n\n"What the hell are you talking about?" Russo clasped his hand around Dark's forearm and pushed away. Or tried to, anyway. The deity's limb swayed but refused to remove itself. "Urk!" The mage winced as painful pinpricks manifested in the narrow gaps between his ribs. \n\n"You, mortal. You flawed contradictory creature." Dark's pointed finger unraveled. Strands of sinew branched out across the human's chest and burrowed their way into his flesh. \n\n"Get aaaaaahhhhhhhh!" Clutching at the god's arm, Russo's screams were cut short as air forced itself out of his lungs. The agonizing piercings faded as fast as they came. In their place a growing and unnverving pressure flooded in to fill their absence. "You...you..." Veins of darkness encroached along the periphery of his vision. As the mage's limbs vanished from his vision so too did all feeling in them. His clenched fingers relaxed their grip and slid off the jackal's musculature.\n\n"Much like the stars above and earth below, your kind was the result of a cooperative effort between Light and myself. Though... you were never intended to be as such." The mesh of splintering black flesh extending out from Dark's digits, fog clinging to every tendril, ensnared the human's torso. "Mortals... heh heh heh the very thought I played a hand in making you into what you are today fills me with more pride than you can fathom. It was well worth suffering the consequences for corrupting you in Light's eyes." \n\nHead tilted back and body gone limp, Russo wheezed in response. He... he...his head felt so... had it always felt so murky? Robbed of his sight and touch the mage's auditory senses had yet to fully fade away. "Shouldn't I be...even a little bit..." Completing thoughts, much less formulating them, had become a herculean task for the human. It was so much easier to let Dark fill his head for him... \n\n"As I'm sure you'll come to agree." Dark pulled his arm, and the weave of tendrils, back. Squelching and slipping out from between the bones in the human's chest something resisted the tugs and pulls of the tendrils. "Suffice to say our frequent failures and successes taught us much. So much so that we became capable of shaping a planet that could sustain life. Though, I'll do you a kindness and spare you those troublesome details." \n\nRusso's head bounced against his back and shoulders from the repeated tugs. Neck slinging to and fro, inertia was eventually able to carry the human's skull forward. "..." Disconcerting quiet was the only answer the human was capable of providing now. His chin smacked softly against the retracting black flesh as the capability for conscious thought faded entirely. \n\n"Ahhh I'd knew you'd come around to my hospitality." Dark's cheshire grin faded to a subdued smirk. He slung his splintered arm side to side only for Russo to ragdoll in response. "Hmmph... Silence doesn't suit you, Russo. Fret not, your soul will be returned to its proper housing soon enough." With measured caution the jackal continued to pull back his arm. Ensnared in the bilious flesh that had just freed itself lie a brilliant white mote. Concentric layers surrounded its pristine center. The rings shifted in hue from gentle greys to blackest night the further out one traveled from the center. \n\n"Merely cultivating the conditions for life was not enough for us. The dull and primitive flora and fauna that sprouted into being, while I suppose remotely interesting to behold, were shaped by the world around them." At Dark's command weaves of blackened tendrils carefully coiled around the nearly parted soul. "With you we sought to change that. ...Or to be accurate, Light did." With a sigh the jackal's hollow eye sockets transfixed themselves on the mote's brilliant white center. \n\n\n[[Russo: ... |Empty Vessel]]
Light’s searing rays burned bright even when assailed by crushing tides of darkness, slowly fading to a red hot glow as it sank into the cosmic depths. Giving up ground as quickly as he had taken it, Dark’s receding presence left a smoldering sphere in its wake. Light’s heat and radiance compacted and compressed by the crippling weight and gravity of Dark’s nothingness had resulted in something wholly unexpected. \n\n“In the tumultuous flux where both darkness and light overlapped a nascent world was brought into being.” The conflict between the two deities came to an abrupt halt. Both Dark and Light regarded the irregularity with a mixture of suspicion and awe. \n\n"That's what this is supposed to be?" Incredulously, Russo tapped his boots against the curiously arranged impurities embedded into the marble below. \n\n“It's a representation, not a replica," Dark mumbled. Coughing into a clenched fist he urged the conversation forward. "Cooperation, at the time an entirely foreign concept to us, was given life.” Dark couldn’t help but smirk at the results of their earliest efforts. Pedestrian they may have been, they filled him with pride. “Now…while our sloppy efforts bore hellish and monstrous fruit, we did manage to create a world entirely without intending to. If that was what we were capable of on accident then what boundless possibilities would arise if we so much as even tried?” Wringing his hands together, the god settled his disconcerting gaze on the human before him. “I nursed, obsessed, over the potential dancing at my fingertips. And so I sought out a melding of her powers and my own.” \n\nThe black vines encroaching onto the 'representation' of Light's territory upon the chiseled marble receded. Their retreat bolstered the darkness' forces and repelled the piercing white columns that dared to encroach. Once more the platform was split into equal and opposing color schemes, save for the inscription in stone that Russo trampled underfoot.\n\nThis served to signify that Dark’s priorities sharply changed course. Whereas before both deities had been obsessed with subjugating and extinguishing the other, Dark now sought to only to match Light’s efforts. Shores of darkness lapped steadily against blinding walls of luminosity. Not so much seeking to overtake them as to maintain a steady boundary. Where the contrasting forces held steady, celestial bodies burst alive. \n\n“It certainly didn’t help that Light was aware of my shift in policy yet chose to stay her course.” Teeth bared, Dark let loose an irritated sigh. “She perceived it as a moment of weakness, an opportunity to encroach where she had been unable to before.” The jackal turned his attention away from the human and dismissively waved boundary behind him. \n\nThin rods of white marble punctured the darkness. They methodically pushed back and overtook the blackened impurities that dared to dwell on the stone. \n\nSince she no longer had to concern herself with the task of regaining any territory lost to her rival, Light doubled down on her offensive. Dark chafed under the constant pressure as his sphere of influence was slowly pushed back. \n\n“Fortunately, I was eventually able to bring her around to my way of thinking. Turns out she’s a sucker for things as luminous as herself.” \n\nBlotches and specks of black marble were squeezed and flattened between the advancing columns of white. They twisted and contorted themselves as they were overtaken. Outlines of circles and ovals, misshapen and otherwise, remained in the darkness' absence. In time even the outlines dissipated and only the pristine and polished white marble surface remained.\n\nAs Light steadily burned back the tides of Dark’s influence she couldn’t help but notice the curiosities left in the wake of his crawling retreat. Twinkling orbs that belched plasma and crackled with radiation greeted her upon approach. They vanished into the blinding deity’s radiance as she advanced, much to her dismay. In time, Light purposefully chose to stay her hand. Out of fear of undoing those precious creations she halted her march forward. \n\n“Light has always been enamored with the stars that dot the heavens above. She adores them as extensions of herself. Raging infernos that pulse back and maintain a steady vigilance against the ever present darkness.” \n\n“…But those were only possible because of you, weren’t they?” Russo’s stomach sank and knotted in on itself. He didn’t like where this conversation was going. \n\n[[Russo: Interrupt | Interruption ]]\n[[Dark: Pride and Envy | Envy]]
Russo's eyes began to glaze over after peering into the little light dancing on his palm. "...She could start fresh. You-" \n\n"Can start fresh." \n\nThe darkness lapping at Russo's feet relented. Like a receding tide it pulled back from the mage in waves. The human turned his head so as to follow its retreat. It clumped around the crescent moon hovering behind him and once more Dark's familiar form took shape. \n\n"It's still well within her power to do so," Dark plainly stated. With the suffocating veil of darkness lifted, the tall arching hallways returned. "I stopped her back then and I continue to do so even now." \n\nHoly hell the implications of this were getting confusing. Russo ran a hand through the locks of brown hair curling down the back of his neck and sighed. "If I can't lose, he can't win," the mage thought. Dark won by corrupting and taking Light's 'toys' for himself. And how could Light stop him from winning? ...By seeing to it that there were no 'toys' at all left to play with. "So. Light tried to wipe the slate clean?"\n\nThe celestial body hanging in one of the jackal's empty eye socket filled out to a slanted half moon. "Precisely," Dark answered with marked displeasure. "She adopted a policy of casual genocide when it came to you mortals. You were tainted, impure, in her eyes. Rather than make an effort to render you pristine and pure once more, Light opted to remove your kind from the picture entirely. Why repair what she could just as easily remake? If she couldn't have her way than nobody could." \n\nTeeth clenched together, Russo uneasily inhaled through them. "Yeahhh can we not use those words together? You know the ones I'm talking about." \n\nDark rolled a hand about his wrist. "Slaughter, extermination, unmaking; call it what you will. She methodically put an end to each and every existence she brought forth until I intervened." The deity's lips pulled back to reveal a half-formed snarl. "As you said, Light could start anew. I could not. I wasn't about to let her deprive me of my sole source of entertainment." \n\nThe mage narrowed his eyes and glared back at the jackal. It was one thing to implicitly know that all he was to Dark was a fleeting form of entertainment. To hear it spoken aloud was something altogether different.\n\nEmboldened by Russo's antagonism, Dark's teeth curled together into a malicious grin. "Does it really matter why I acted? I'm willing to wager that I did, what I take it to be in your eyes, the right thing for all the wrong reasons?" The god took slow and measured steps towards his guest. "If I hadn't, you wouldn't be standing here before me. To put it bluntly..." Dark strode alongside the mage, his hollow eyes level with Russo's own. "You, and your kind, exist because I allow it."\n\n"...Care to skip to the part where you two beat the piss out of each other?" Russo replied as the pockets of craters lining the half-moon's surface glowered at him. "Wouldn't mind hearing about the both of you getting your asses kicked up and down both sides of creation." \n\n"Hah." A blast of stale air billowed out from Dark's maw. "Come now, we both know that's not why you came here." Dark continued to saunter forward, coming to rest inches before the end of a crumbling walkway. \n\nThe hallway abruptly emptied out into the abyss. Hundreds of feet out in the distance, across the empty gap, the hallway resumed. To the left and to the right curving walls topped with ramparts, curiously missing some entire intermittent sections of the raised walls, connected the two separated halves of the structure. It was almost as if whatever once filled the circular gap in between the two had simply been annihilated from existence. \n\n"What's there to say?" Dark shrugged, his back to the mage. "It wasn't like we hadn't fought before." He briefly recalled striking out at her for the first time in ages as the world burned around them. Light shrieked as clots of purple and black energy seeped into her limbs and dulled her brilliance. Her arms boiled and seethed as she seared off pieces of her own body to halt the darkness' spread. "If anything it was a return to the status quo." Dark's teeth clenched painfully at the thought of her retaliation. Rays of light pierced his frame and set him ablaze. Bilious black lifeblood gushed from his wounds as writhing red-hot tentacles were expelled from his body in mass. The deity reformed himself after shaving off an untold tonnage of smoldering flesh. \n\n"That's it?" Russo gnashed his teeth. "All this build-up just to gloss over it in an instant?" He papped his free hand against his forehead and tugged at his hair. Fuck, he was falling into Dark's tempo. What did he care if that bastard skimped on the details for once? The sooner he was out of here the better. "Know what, forget it," Russo said with a dismissive wave of his hand. \n\nThe jackal contentedly gazed out at the abyss before him. "Another time, perhaps. That decisive fight between us did shape the very world and the entities that inhabit\nit alongside you, after all." Dark hmmed while a familiar slab of iron bubbled up from between the musculature coating his knuckles. "But this is where we finally draw your query to a close."\n\n"Finally." Well, he had already suffered and slogged through enough as it was. May as well see this thing through to the bitter end. "You said something about being hands on way back when. I take it that was in reference to preserving your playthings." \n\n"Anything less on my end would've spelled your extinction." Dark gently ground one tooth against the other while staring at his likeness, now pinched between his fingertips. "Via means subtle and heavy-handed I shepherded handfuls of you mortals to the closest thing to safety I could manage."\n\nRusso furrowed his brows at the realization. "Like the inside of a mountain. Pitch-black and out of her sight." He resisted the urge to approach the deity and instead remained locked in place. Back and forth his feet wobbled on the uneven grooves in the stone floor.\n\nHis back to the mage, the jackal snorted and flicked the iron offering into the void. Whatever appeal Light had seen in having mortals worship and wait on her every word was lost on him. "Something like that. I made do with what was available, spreading pockets of survivors where her incandescence struggled to shine." Dense forests, tundras, hollowed mountains. What mortals remained were dragged into one set of shadows and tossed out of another. "Beggars can't be choosers," Dark thought before continuing on. "The best I could hope for was that you were capable of looking out for yourselves. Your preservation ceased to be a priority once my own was threatened."\n\n"So she did kick your ass. Hey, if you're allowed to get your shits and giggles from watching me get beaten and battered then I'm going to do the same." Smirking, Russo crossed his arms about his chest. An angry silence filled the air in response. Russo sighed. "Eugh, I do kind of like existing. Guess it's for the best that you won." \n\nDark laughed wrly to himself. His empty gaze flit along the curved walls spread out before him. Really had been a while since the god surveyed his most recent haul. "If only. It was less a victory and more a stalemate. Bloodied and broken, neither one of us was able to command a decisive advantage over the other." Such an outcome required drawing on every desperate tactic that Dark could fathom. "None of which are likely to work again," he thought with an unfamiliar mixture of disdain and trepidation.\n\nThe mage didn't press the deity any further about the absence of finer details. He had grown used to being force fed lies of omission from Dark but... even so, the reason for them seemed different now. "Am I really going to pass up the chance to needle him about being cagey?" Russo frustratedly thought to himself. "...Dammit. Yes. Yes I am." Fortunately, he didn't have to wait long for his host to resume flapping his gums.\n\n"We slunk off to our respective realms and nursed our wounds while your sundered world scarred over and healed itself. What few of you mortals that survived both Light's judgment and my forced relocation struggled to scrape together an existence. Keh, to be honest that was the best outcome I could have hoped for. Light and I too weak to interfere or dabble in your development. The two of us capable of little more than silently watching you come into your own. Light smoldering in anger as you strayed further and further from the path she had laid out for you. While I reveled and took delight in watching you tread your own, one that I couldn't predict." \n\nArms held out to his sides, Dark laughed as he took in the featureless void at his feet. "I had rendered you blank slates. Free from the inevitabilities etched into the very being of those that came before you. Every time you triumph or falter against the world or those around you proves to be entertaining. There are patterns, certainly, in how you act and react but the outcome, your choices, that is never guaranteed. Your contradictory nature guarantees that."\n\n"You two have done a lot more than just watch, lately." Russo slowly shuffled forward towards Dark. The return trip home wasn't going to be a pleasant one, that much he was certain of.\n\n"While that's not entirely untrue, that's your fault not ours." The jackal dragged an arm out before him and twitched his muscular digits. Rings of purple pulsed out from the center of the abyss and lapped against the stony shores. Wisps of purple seethed and sizzled against the bricks in place of bubbly foam. "Though I've tried to keep it that way. Containing Light is of the utmost importance. Wherever and whenever she concentrates her power I am there to stifle and smother it. Her ambitions to wipe this world clean haven't dulled in the slightest. Nor have mine to let it persist unmolested."\n\nMindful not to approach where the walkway ended, or Dark for that matter, Russo dared to venture ever closer. "So Kaya's friends or whatever they were to her, they just happened to be people you... saved?" Holy hell it felt weird saying those words in that order.\n\n"Directly, no." Dark continued to orchestrate the welling energies manifesting at his beck and call. Where there was once nothingness there now sloshed and churned a lake of black. Its tumultuous surface was tinged with hues of purples where the waves overlapped one another. "Merely descendants that held near and dear a history that's long since been forgotten by your kind. They knew that the darkness had delivered them, that I had spared them from certain annihilation by the forces of light. Unlike you, some of your ilk have shown thanks and gratitude for what I've done for them."\n\n"I take it they didn't know that you were the one to put them, along with everyone else... ever, on Light's hit list to begin with." Russo clenched his fists and scraped his fingers against his palms. Gahh this was getting confusing. Dark was both the initial source of the ills plaguing mortalkind and the only thing stopping all life from ending in an instant. His entry into their lives was ruinous and his departure would be even more so. He was here to stay... a necessary evil.\n\nA biting bout of laughter spilled out from the jackal's maw. "You're still going on about that?" Satisfied with his work, Dark turned his attention towards his guest. As his mood lightened, a smug grin creasing his lips as opposed to a menacing one, so did the moon hovering in his empty eye sockets. "If it's really that bothersome for you I could remove my indelible influence entirely from your soul." \n\nDark plodded towards Russo with slow, measured steps. "Your darkness, and light, defines you. It could even very well be said that the person you are now would die or simply cease to be where either of those constituent elements removed." Eye to eye with the mage, the jackal tapped a pointed finger against his chest. "Would your friends recognize you or even remain as such should that come to pass?" Dark couldn't help but chuckle as Russo's hardened expression softened. "I could go on." \n\n"Are we done here?" In between sighs Russo relented and broke eye contact. "I asked and you answered."\n\n"I keep offering you chances to be free of me but you never take advantage of them!" A manic and triumphant grin comprised of gnarled spears of marrow hovered just before the human's face. "Looks like you're stuck with me." \n\nBrows flattened, the human shook his head and marched past the disparaging deity. His boots shuffled towards the hallway's crumbling edge. Pebbles tinked off into the mass of shadows below. Hums of energy sounded every time a teensy rock pierced its wavering surface.\n\n"For now though, my greed has been sated. What you see before you is a corridor." His back to Russo once more, Dark sauntered towards the lightless hallways they tread just prior. "Now, much like then, I've tied together the shadows. A corridor of darkness linking them together."\n\nTeeth clacked together, Russo grunted when he peered over at his alleged ticket home. "That leads from here to where?" His expected non-answer never came. "Uh hello? Dark?" Turning about in place, the human found himself alone. All was quiet save for the intermittent sloshes and hisses coming from the lake of dark and magical energies. "To hell with it. I can just teleport home from wherever this takes me." \n\nBreathing in deeply, Russo balanced the sole of a boot upon the uneven break in stone that marked the end of the line. Weight placed down upon that limb, he pushed himself off from the ledge and leapt. \n\n
"You're... jealous." What was intended to be a question came out as a statement dripping with disbelief. Air wheezed in though the gaps in his clenched teeth. Goddamn this was getting awkward fast. "...Okaaaaaay. That's ummm. Ummm. Good to know. C-can we go back to you being plotting and obnoxious?" To think, he actually preferred it when the deity was outright antagonistic and malicious.\n\nThe entirety of the celestial body hovering inside Dark's noggin flickered to life for but a moment. Darkness draped down over the top half in an instant to reduce the full moon to a half moon. "So be it." The jackal pulled his melded ankles out from Russo's shadow and resumed propelling himself with his own two legs. "...Right, the creation of the world you currently call home." \n\nSnapping his fingers, the contrasting chunks of marble slid into one another with the consistency of oil and water at the deity's behest. Never mixing nor melding together, the two colors of stone were at least capable of coexistence. Dashes of white continued to poke against their black canvas like stars. Streaks of black shaped themselves into ever more complex shapes, such as moons rife with craters and shattered worlds just barely holding together, all against a bright backdrop.\n\n"Our failures littered the cosmos. Initially we took pride in the fact we were able to recreate that first flub. Seething spheres of brimstone and orbs encased in ice became commonplace. Still, it was never enough to satiate me. Extremes and absolutes bore me to no end. I craved, I knew, that something far more interesting lied between the opposing ends of the spectrum." Jaws parted, Dark stared hungrily at the makeshift sprawl of space at his feet. \n\n"Now that's more like it," Russo thought to himself. That was the conniving monstrosity he had grown to loathe and hate.\n\nThe god of darkness took to his canvas once more. Plucking at the open air, the tainted brush strokes of stone began to rotate. "It took us ages to grasp, much less come to an agreement, on how to approach the nuances involved with doing so. I'll spare you the finer details as those are beyond your grasp and interest." A brilliant white orb glowered in the eye of the swirling mass of blackness. \n\n"Oh ho ho someone's feeling salty," Russo mused. Immeasurable pride welled in the human's chest at the thought of dissuading another wall of exposition. \n\n"After an eternity or two of gnashing and bickering a world unlike any other came to be." The marble reacted to the splaying of Dark's fingers. Far far away from the circular mass of white that now resided at the center of the platform two new spheres were carved out from the blanket of black. A greater and a lesser appeared, both tucked close to one another. The smaller was nearly pristine save for dark rings and craters masterfully carved into its surface. On the larger model, monochrome blotches painted out vaguely familiar landmasses upon a shining sea of white. \n\n[[Russo: Get to the point |Point]]
“I’m not really in the mood to indulge you today. Can’t you antagonize me some other time?” Eyes still closed, Russo yawned. Fuck it, he would sit here and do absolutely nothing purely to spite the bastard. \n\n“You’re speaking with an entity that precedes your entire kind’s creation. Delaying the inevitable is amusing but ultimately ineffective.”\n\n“Doesn’t mean I can’t bore the hell out of you for a couple hours then.” The human nuzzled into his uneven and coarse pebble crusted pillow. \n\n“Keh. Far be it from me to dissuade you from picking a fight you can’t win.” \n\nRusso felt his limbs go stiff and heavy. Doing nothing was proving to be surprisingly taxing. “If I’m lucky he’ll send my ass back home.” Another wave of yawns escaped from his jaws stretched open wide. “Worth a shot anyway,” the mage mumbled as he resumed his nap from where it had been rudely interrupted. \n\n-----An indeterminate amount of time later-----\n\nGroaning, Russo cracked his eyes open. His limbs still heavy and lethargic there was little if anything else he could do at the moment. A familiar void graced his vision upon waking. \n\n“Rise and shine,” Dark sniggered.\n\n“Goddammit.”\n\n<<silently>>\n<<set $RL = $RL + 1>>\n<<endsilently>>\n\n[[Russo: Play along|Russo: Inquire]]\n
"Wait a minute." Arms draped down along his sides the mage eyed traces of red at the periphery of his vision. His crimson cloak. Russo tilted his head down and rested his stubbled chin against his chest. The black laced gloves adorning his hands, the ones that came up his forearms, dominated his vision. "Then what the hell was the deal with Umbra?" \n\n"Who?" Dark's voice echoed throughout the abyss. \n\nEyes twitching, Russo balled his fists. "Umbra! The demon you sicced on me!" \n\n"Ah. Now I recall. And what about that wretch?" The deity's tone dripped with disgruntled disinterest. \n\nRusso's shoulders sank while he stared incredulously at the moon. He raised one of his arms and pointed a finger accusingly at the crater pocked eye staring back at him. "You went out of your way to have her harass me. Don't act like-" \n\n"You are mistaken," Dark curtly replied. "That thing already had its sights set on you long before I entered the scene. Need I remind that it was you that approached her and not the other way around?" \n\nThe mage's arm swung down and brushed against his side. "...I like what I like, so what," he mumbled in embarrassment.\n\n"Feh." The moon radiated with an ominous intensity. "What worth that demon has is derived solely from its relationship to you. That creature is a convenient tool, one requiring little effort or skill to wield, to push and prod you with. Nothing more."\n\nRusso's lips parted and hung in place. He choked on his words and sheathed the first retort that came to mind. "She has a name, you know." Russo pondered the reply that he dared not speak in confusion. Did... did he just actually contemplate defending Umbra? "N-never mind," he told himself as he shook his head side to side. "They must've done something to piss you off," the human said aloud while his fingers slipped through the gaps in the gate's iron bars. \n\n[[Russo: Subdued interest |Fake it]]
“It’s an admittedly rare occurrence nowadays. It’s been, what, a good century or two the last time I was summoned forth?” \n\nThose shadows burnt into the walls of Light’s chamber flashed at the forefront of Russo’s thoughts. Swallowing hard, the mage shakily pulled himself out of his indent in the ground. Sickly brown plant matter poking up between the gaps in the cobblestone road crumbled to dust as Russo struggled to free himself. \n\nDeep and guttural laughter spilled out from Dark’s maw at the sight of his guest’s lips curling down. “Now you understand. Though Light is nowhere near as subtle as myself.” The jackal sprung from his embedded perch on the road flipped vertical floating up above. He crashed down with a thunderous impact against the platform, shattering the brick and mortar beneath his soles. Fissures splintered out towards Russo from the sagging patch of road slowly crumbling into the void. \n\n“Scars and evidence of her judgment remain littered across the mortal realm to serve as warnings to those intelligent enough to comprehend them.” Stepping back from the depressed slab of road moments before its collapse, Dark casually motioned towards the exposed heart of the structure. Streams of dried blood, rendered hues varying from crimson to jet black, could be seen upon the sides of the exposed stones. “You’ll find that I am much more thorough and pronounced in obscuring my presence when I’ve been forcibly drawn forth than Light ever will be. It’s for the sake of maintaining my hands-off approach to your lot after all.” That disconcerting smile, monstrous and proud, crept back up along his visage. “Even if it means risking perpetuating the cycle of summons and utter destruction.” \n\n"Unnghhh..." Russo groaned as he wobbled to his feet. He coughed loudly. Whatever retorts his tongue had readied were hacked away into the cloud of dust settling around his feet. How the hell was he supposed to react to someone who killed so... so casually? \n\nReeling from its mortal blow, the cobblestone hemorhhaged shards of polished stones as cracks splintered out towards the edges. Crumbling from the inward out, both the jackal and the human's footholds were fading fast. \n\n"Shall we?" Dark inquired after drawing forth a gravel road from another ripple in the void. \n\n"Some choice," Russo bitterly complained as he readied a Teleport spell.\n\n"You should know this routine by now, Russo. I'm never one to remove or cordone off options." Planting a hand across his hollow heart, the god feigned sincerity. "I will admit, I do have a knack for making some of those potential paths far more attractive than others." \n\nThe human reluctantly placed his preservation before his pride. Clenching a gathering of sky blue magic between his fingers he hastily relocated to the shifting and unstable path laid out before him. \n\n<<if $RP eq 1>>\nDark slithered up from the underside of the mass of gravel and continued speaking without missing a beat. “Earlier you asked where these shattered fragments of your world originated from. I suppose it wouldn’t be disingenuous to say a… sizeable portion have resulted from unexpected visits to your realm.”\n\nMustering enough courage to color his tone with accusation, Russo spoke up. “I thought you said you only plucked up what had been abandoned and long forgotten?”\n\n“That doesn’t preclude me from being the one responsible for that becoming the case.”\n<<else if $RL eq 1>>\n“Though, now that I dwell on it, I have tired of endlessly turning the wheel of fate for those self-appointed heroes of lore.” \n\nRusso turned down to see his shadow, ill defined and wavering upon the gravel, flapping its gums.\n\nDark grunted between bared teeth. “Their journeys are trite and predictable. It makes no difference whether they succeed or fail.”\n\nRusso blinked rapidly in disbelief at the offhanded comment. “What.”\n\n“How many venues do you think are available to someone desiring this world’s destruction or enslavement?” The jackal shrugged his shoulders in irritation. “Those attention starved megalomaniacs that without fail prompt those heroes to rise to the challenge have a painfully limited set of options laid out before them.” Dark would roll his eyes to that, provided he had any. All or nothing plots that hinged on utter domination or annihilation were obnoxiously overdone patterns he had seen far too many times. “Assembling the means to call down the power of the gods is a tired approach I’ve seen all too often. While the ‘new’ gods of yours are impressive by your lax standards, they still lack the power required to reshape the entirety of creation. That capability belongs solely to myself and Light.”\n\nHands cupped against his face the mage sighed into his tensed fingers. “No.” Muffled groans spilled out from the gaps between his gloved digits. “Even when their evil plans come to fruition, you inevitably get summoned.” A snide chuckle sounded in response to Russo’s observation. “And you proceed to kill the hell out of them and those jackasses are doing all of that for nothing aren’t they.”\n\n“Hmmm, your words not mine,” Dark chuckled while his misshapen form bubbled up out of the human's silhouette. \n<<endif>>\n[[Russo: Decrees of destruction |Decree]]
Dark couldn't help but grin down maniacally at his guest. "You represent many things to many parties." The jackal twiddled his fingers against his forearm. In tune to the arching of Dark's digits, tendrils breached the surface of the shadows cast by the human's prone form and commandeered him to his feet. \n\nThose fleshy puppet strings held Russo upright even as he groaned in pain. Legs that trembled and threatened to buckle under the load of his own body weight were reinforced by the coiling black tendrils. "Holy shit. All of this to..." Russo's head dipped low as he struggled to fill his lungs with air. He could barely feel his chest contract and expand with every shallow breath. "All of this to answer some stupid question?"\n\nSquelches could be heard as Dark shoved a hand into his empty eye socket. "It was you who broached the topic, not I."\n\n"Well now I wish that I hadn't. Past me is a son of a bitch." Russo sighed and struggled to regain his breath. \n\n"I very well could fabricate a falsehood and send you on your way-"\n\n"Please do."\n\nDark retracted his closed fist from the interior of his skull with another sickening mixture of splorps and squelches. "Hah. So you would expend the effort to go out and be fed lies rather than do nothing and live in blissful ignorance? That doesn't sound like you, Russo." Hand held out before him, the deity unfurled his fingers to reveal a familiar slab of polished metal. \n\nRusso's eyes dipped down to the sides of his sockets begrudgingly.\n\n"I thought as much." The deity took to tracing a finger along the mark of the crescent moon branded into the iron emblem's surface. "And what fun would there be in providing you an answer without the context to frame it in? My stories are indelibly tied into yours, after all."\n\nWith a violent jerk of his limbs Russo ripped free from Dark's puppet strings. The tendrils coiled around his arms and legs fell to the ground with loud wet smacks. He kicked at the extensions of the god of darkness as they slithered back into the shadows. "Fine. You were saying?"\n\nTurning his gaze up from the iron memento to the mage, the Cheshire grin curled up on Dark's face proved an unnverving complement to the crescent moon now bobbing inside his head. "As I was saying, you mortals hold great significance to many entities. To Light you are a mockery of creation. To myself, keh, you are the pinnacle of it. To demons... well, they have yet to realize it but to them you are a grave threat. After all, your very existence renders Light's creations and my failures redundant and unnecessary. You are everything that they were and were not." \n\nRusso furrowed his brows and attempted to parse the meaning behind Dark's words. Shit, would Dark get more enjoyment out of seeing him struggle to make heads or tails of it or would that tentacled monstrosity love nothing more to drone on further? He brought his eyes up from his feet only to be greeted with the jackal's snickering veneer. "Jackass..." Russo grumbled. It was like his every action and inaction was expected, if not desired, by the deity. Shit, was there even a way to respond without playing into Dark's hand? Before Russo could lose himself in his own doubts and second-guessing, the raucous scraping of stone against stone disspelled his thoughts.\n\nSlabs of stone bubbled forth from the inky abyss. Grinding against one another, former homes, roads, temples, pillars, and wells all came together into a patchwork staircase. "Coming?" Dark inquired as he seemingly glided down the steps. \n\n"Why am I not surprised," Russo grumbled. Eyes cast down at his feet, the black stains upon the marble platform left in Dark's wake were pulsing and growing in size. The reflective sheen upon the tainted stone vanished, leaving it indistinguishable from the void it yawned against. Almost like the spreading darkness banished whatever it touched from existence entirely. "You'd probably just whip up something for me to slam into even if I did fall through," the human stated with a roll of his eyes. Shuffling on over to the stairs, Russo carefully kicked off his descent. \n\n[[Russo: Dive down to the dark below| TDB ]]\n
No light remained to be seen in Russo's eyes. The human's blue irises paled as his pupils contracted to pinpricks. \n\n"Taking inspiration from the mindless beasts milling about, Light carved out vessels for her power from the clay and bedrock." The jackal's unraveled musculature carefully coiled and slithered around the mage's extracted soul. His tendrils grazed against but never dared risking direct or extended contact with the fragile thing. "Her warmth and radiance, once rendered intrinsic and inherent to her creations, proved powerful enough to animate them." A subdued sigh rattled out from between his gnarled teeth and once more he took to gently shaking his guest's limp body to and fro. "Should said light ever be removed or snuffed out completely, however, you mortals would be rendered little more than lifeless husks." \n\nRusso's chest rose and fell in time with his shallow breaths. Basic bodily functions were about all he was capable of now that his soul had been left hanging on by little more than threads. \n\nDark clenched his crooked teeth against one another in irritation. Perhaps a demonstration wasn't the right way to go about this. It reminded him far far far too much of back then. "There was a time when Light doted and looked fondly on your kind. You were her beloved creations. Brimming with her magnificence you were wholly obedient and loyal to her every utterance." \n\nThe crescent moon hovering inside the jackal's empty skull filled out to a half-moon while his smile faded to a frown. "...At least you were until I interfered. Imagine this if you are still able. A glowering incandescent being speaks down to you and doles out commands unendingly. Without hesitation you slavishly follow them. Not because you want to but because you are incapable of doing otherwise." Dark smirked as the right side of his lips curled up into a crooked grin. "And I don't mean that the option to disobey resulted in such unpleasant consequences that you simply never chose to do so. Light's words were your very thoughts. You were utterly incapable of thoughts or actions that were not prescribed to you by Light herself."\n\nDark reached forward with his remaining limb and clutched at the mop of disheveled brown hair adorning his guest's head. "Then, much like how you are now, Russo, mortals were nothing more than empty vessels. Mindless automatons comprised of flesh and marrow." Tugging up on the mage's noggin, the jackal's empty eyes stared into Russo's own. "And then, much like now, that bored me to no end." \n \nThrowing his weight behind his right shoulder Dark leaned forward and thrust his splintered arm into Russo's torso with a squelch. Countless tendrils pierced the human's flesh, forcing the mote comprised of equal parts light and dark back where it belonged. \n\n"Gahhhhhhh!" Screaming, Russo's senses came rushing back to him. The darkness clouding his vision abruptly dissipated as light poured into his pupils. Blots of blue, green, orange, and purple danced painfully across his eyes. "..." Panting, the heavy haze weighing down his thoughts had yet to lift. In place of coherent thought a feeling of dread had begun to fill his head. \n\nHis demonstration done Dark retracted his fleshy musculature from Russo's form back into his own. The air displaced by the coiling tendrils cracked and snapped loudly in the void. "Can you imagine how-"\n\n"Unnnffff!" Pulled forward by the retraction Russo slammed into the cold marble with a painful and bone-rattling smack. He writhed and groaned as he slowly sorted out what was hurting where, one ailment at a time. Ears ringing, ribs burning, eyes aching and vision spotty; It was too much to take in at once. \n\nDark turned his nose up at the interruption and paced around the human. "As I was saying, can you imagine how mind numbing and tedious that was to behold?" The jackal's pointed fingers clutched at the open air. "Every action accounted for as her word was absolute. No guesswork, no surprises. Your kind rendered perfectly predictable, perfectly complacent, perfectly boring." Dark cast his hollow gaze down towards the human at his feet. His teeth clenched as the half-moon tucked deep inside an empty eye socket glowered intensely. "My influence may have been indirect but the conditions necessary for your very inception could not have come to be without my help. I deserved just as much a say in your development as Light did." Lips curled back the deity growled softly. "She disagreed."\n\n[[Russo: Guhhhhh | Writhe ]]
<<silently>>\n<<stopbgm LJLDWJQKqb4>>\n<<endsilently>>\n\n"You bitch and moan more than I do," Russo snorted. He grunted as he felt something tug at collar of his cloak and the layers of vesting underneath it. Cloth constricted painfully around his neck as he was lifted off the ground. "Worth it," he weakly mumbled to himself.\n\n"No worse for wear, I see." Dark relinquished his grip upon the human.\n\nRusso's legs buckled under his weight as he dropped to the floor. His strained breathing became wracked when his knees clapped against the cold stone. \n\nDark dug a pointed thumb into his cheek, shoving it between the narrow gaps in his black musculature. "You act as if we're omnipotent. For which I'm grateful we are not. If fate was predetermined then what fun would there be in plucking at its strings?" He twiddled his fingers against the stale air. "Fate itself is malleable and can snap and fray courtesy of forces both internal and external. I prefer it that way." \n\nMuscles aching, Russo opted to allow gravity to carry him toppling to the ground. Even kneeling was still too much to manage. "So I'm still free to fuck up my own life and those of everyone else with the poor misfortune to surround me? Least I have that going." Cheek pressed flat against the ground the mage let out yet another pained groan. \n\n"The capability to decide for yourself, and others, be it for good or ill." Dark's finger scraped along his teeth. "Funny. It was only when Light's influence and my own melded that you came to resemble us in the slightest."\n\nRusso furrowed his brows and blinked. "That's... huh." If people were made in their image, relatively speaking of course, that... kind of explained a lot. Since mortals were made to be like them then did that mean Light and Dark conducted themselves like any other regular person would? Near omnipotence aside. "Well then," the mage worriedly thought to himself as his eyes darted about their sockets. "That's horrifying." The thought that those all-powerful assholes could be just as bitter and petty as anybody else was... uggghhh. He shuddered at the thought. \n\nDark rubbed his fingers together in disinterest. "Shame that it took a string of successive failures to strike the proper balance. I have yet to get over what a scathing disappointment your predecessors turned out to be."\n\n"Predecessors?" Russo mumbled. "Who else is there for you to even fuck around with?" he thought as the side of his head flattened against the smooth stone.\n\nThe human quietly mused to himself as a welcome silence answered him in response. "The gods themselves?" he pondered. Well, the lesser ones anyway. Russo hrmmed in contemplation. Mmmm... probably not. The various gods and goddesses of rain, sunshine, harvest and whatever weren't uniformly dickish enough to be Dark's doing. ...Unless them not being so was exactly why they were a disappointment. Or maybe it was oh forget it. Russo exhaled heavily through the one nostril that wasn't compressed against splotched marble. It wasn't worth the effort trying to understand what went on inside the depthless hollows of that freak's skull.\n\n"Demons," Dark bitterly acknowledged. \n\n\n[[Russo: Woah now | Refuse]]\n\n
“Now that takes me back.” That familiar crescent moon burst to life within the hollow confines of Dark’s skull. “Long long long before Light so much as conceptualized you, the two of us existed in a tenuous ebb and flow. She the primordial light that singed and radiated across creation. I the primordial darkness, bleeding out and suffocating swathes of existence with my presence.” \n\nHand held out before him, with his knuckles to the sky, Dark's fingers plucked and twanged against the air. The impurities in the marble below reacted to his puppeteering. Streaks of black embedded into the stone collected beneath the jackal's feet and piled upon one another. \n\nRusso shuffled back towards the opposite edge of the platform. "Nobody likes a showoff." The polished white stone, now removed of any and all blemishes, glistened.\n\nThe god tilted his head skywards to drink in the all-consuming blackness that could smother the stars themselves. A smug grin curled up along his lips at the thought. Heh, how many times had he failed to resist the petty temptation of snuffing out the constellations Light had painstakingly dotted across the cosmos? “We never really were on the best of terms, constantly encroaching on and retreating from one another’s territory.” \n\nBlack vines creeped through the cool stone from Dark's side of the platform to Russo's. An equal and opposing effort was mounted in response as angular white rows of marble creeped towards Dark's feet.\n\nRusso forced an exasperated sigh through his teeth. “You two have never not hated each other. I feel like I'm starting to sense a running theme.”\n\n“Mouthy one, aren’t you?” Dark slid across the line separating the now colorfully inverted halves of their shared stand. “Not that I should be surprised. The only reason you’re even capable of doing so is because of yours truly.” A dismissive laugh tumbled out from between the jackal’s crooked teeth.\n\nAt Dark's behest a sliver of black snaked out through the platform. It undulated towards the human, thinning as it encircled him. \n\nBrows furrowed, Russo exhaled in exasperation. Fuck it. It wasn't worth the effort arguing with the big bastard.\n\n“Now now now, what’s all this?” Circling around the human, the deity growled in smug satisfaction. Veins crackled from the black ring wrapped around the mage towards the interior of his pristine white foothold. “It’s not like you to hold your tongue. What point is there in granting you such a gift if you’re not going to use it?” \n\nRusso held his tongue. Teeth clenched and grinding against one another, there was simply no winning with the bastard. Whether the mage was cowed into a begrudging silence or baited into any sort of reaction it would delight Dark all the same. Even so... the almighty ass did have his attention, loathe as he was to admit it. \n\n“Such a shame. I suppose I’ll just have to pick up the burden of carrying our conversation onward.” Dark shook his head in mock disappointment. The crescent moon slid from one eye socket to the next with every bob of his noggin. “As I was saying, Light and myself have never really seen eye to eye. Our constant clashes gave rise to peculiarities that neither of us expected, however.” Dark’s sneering veneer softened as he recalled the first time he laid eyes on the fruits of their unintended efforts. \n \n[[Dark: Goaded cooperation | Cooperation ]]
Arms at his sides, the human cautiously approached the end of the path. Pebbles and chalky flakes silently tumbled off into oblivion as his feet scuffed against the uneven stone. “Mementos, huh?” Russo mumbled to himself. A patchwork and fundamentally broken existence lay dotted out before him. “More like an entire world in and of itself.”\n\nSlabs of cobbled stone, marble, limestone, and quartz stretched out before him. Gaps of nothingness separated one pathway from the next as they gradually inclined out and up into the omnipresent darkness. In the distance he could spot a cluster of structures scraping against the void and defying a condemnation to non-existence.\n\n“You’re leading me somewhere,” Russo thought aloud while he eyeballed the distance between his current foothold and the next. Curiosity had burned him badly the last time he had been in the presence of a deity. “Any hints as to where?” The human called out, neck craned over his shoulder. \n\n“Now that would be telling.” Dark looked down from his perch upon his garrulous guest. \n\nRusso shook his head side to side and turned his back on the god once more. “Fine.” With a running start he jumped the gap from one stone foothold to the next, clouds of crystals wafting up around his ankles as the rough quartz crunched underneath his teetering gait. \n<<if $RL eq 1>>\n“If tediously dragging this out didn’t work then what the hell, I'll just rush my way through damn thing.” \n<<else if $RP eq 1>>\nHis feet dragged hesitantly along the narrow depressions in the crystalline path worn in by countless footfalls of passerby. A lot of people once considered this patch of path home, or at least a familiar haunt on their way home. The thought that the same fate could one day befall Tedrah was a sobering one. Some sentimental speedbump in history known only to a handful of the dead. \n<<endif>>\n\n[[Russo: Venture | Venture]]\n[[Russo: Warp | Warp]]
"If I had known you'd rigged it like this from the beginning I wouldn't have bothered running," Russo mentally complained between pants and gasps of breath. His chest rising and falling with every heaving inhale and exhale he glared at Dark while waiting for the inevitable. \n\nEven though he knew it was coming, a startled gasp slipped free from Russo's lips as he tumbled into the abyss.\n\n"Though this is a nice start," Dark smirked.\n\n[[Russo: Brace for impact | Hard landing ]]
"Bastard child of darkness and light," Dark proudly stated upon observing his guest's descent, "your contradictory existence set the stage for Light and I's latest and greatest confrontation." \n\nClothes and cloak flapping in the air, Russo traded gazes with the never-ending blackness. \n\n"Following my repeated attempts on Light's creations she grew to be... suspicious, of every action I did and did not take. If I were to so much as indicate or hint that I planned to approach your kind, she would lash out at me. And were I to keep to myself and stay my hand she became convinced that I was plotting and conspiring against her. And would lash out at me. Regardless of my actions she assailed me with her searing magnificence all the same."\n\nThe mage called upon what little experience he had with freefall from his time dueling Greg. He manuevered and readjusted his flailing body so that at the very least he was no longer plunging head-first into the unknown. "Given that I'm mouthing off to you right now, she wasn't wrong." Russo could've sworn he heard a dismissive snort in response.\n\n"Details, details. But come now what else was I to do? With Light conducting herself as if I was always at fault what harm was there in validating her suspicions? After all, she was going to make me suffer irrespective of my innocence or guilt. May as well enjoy myself while I'm at it." \n\nRusso could practically sense what was sure to be a monstrous and toothy grin contorting up along Dark's mug. Having exhausted all of his creative complaints and any available means of resisting the deity's proddings the human finally relegated himself to the role of an active listener. "Why tell me all this?" \n\nSomewhere out in the smothering blanket of black, Dark hmmphed to himself. "Because you asked of course. Who am I to deny-"\n\n"Oh for- no. You know what I mean." Russo rolled his eyes while he bit back his words. "I mean, what do you expect me to do with all this knowledge? And when am I-" No. Stop. Bad. The mage heaved a sigh of relief at having caught himself. "Oh thank fuck I didn't just ask him when I'd land," he thought while his heart pounded in his chest. \n\n"That's for you to decide." A wet snap cracked against the void, barely audible over the rustling of the human's clothes. \n\nWithout hesitation the mage immediately readied his most powerful barrier spell. A tingling sensation accompanied a flood of magical energy that seeped out from his fingertips to cover every inch of his body. Russo's body stiffened as the layer of energy coating his frame took on a green hue and hardened. Tesselating hexagons carved themselves into the protective magical aura, locking together much like the scales of a dragon would. \n\nRusso continued plummeting deeper down in nothingness. Stale air flicked against his nostrils while he waited for something, anything, to lurch up out of nowhere at him. "...Well?"\n\n"Hmm?" A dulled interest colored Dark's ever present voice. "What, were you expecting something?"\n\n"Uhhhh." The mage's eyes bounced around his sockets worriedly. Probably best not to give him any ideas. "No. No, I'm f-" Russo's evasive answer abruptly cut off as he slammed through a roof that wasn't there an instant earlier. \n\n"You're not the only one capable of subverting expectations, you know." Chuckling to himself, Dark's tendrils trailed down through the roughly human shaped hole punched into the manifested structure's graying wood shingles. \n\nIt took a couple ceiling rafters, a rounded stone table, and a hardwood floor but Russo's descent eventually slowed to a halt. "-UUuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck." \n\nThe jackal's form descended slowly from the clot of tentacles gathered around the opening in the ceiling. Tendrils tapering from his back into the contorted mass above lowered him gently to the ground below. "Now, where were we?" That familiar crescent moon hummed to life within Dark's empty eye sockets as he approached his guest groaning and writhing in the wreckage before him. \n\n[[Russo: Up and at 'em | Up and at 'em]]
Shady History
The mage uncomfortably shifted his feet. So. Apparently that was a thing that gods did. Okay, um. Eeesh. And apparently he would remain here until Dark had said all that he had to say about it. Awesome. "Told to your captive audience, no less?” Shoulders slumped, Russo adopted a defeated tone. \n\n“A mouthy one, aren’t you?” A wet snap of Dark’s slick digits sounded in the void. Ripples pulsed through the uniform blackness at his beckon. From whence the waves originated, stone structures materialized into the void. “We can walk and talk if you’d prefer.”\n\nThe human sighed in frustration.\n\n“Come now, Russo.” An insincere smile spread wide across his maw as the deity drew his arms out to his sides. “At least try to humor your host. After all, look at the lengths I’ve gone to accommodate you.” \n\nEyes half-lidded Russo remained locked in place. “Is all this really necessary? Just to fucking antagonize me?”\n\nCaustic and biting laughter spilled forth from Dark’s lips like venom. “You think that’s what this is about?” He slithered closer to the mage along his tree trunk like limbs. Tendrils branched out from their bottoms like roots. “What I have found in you is someone that has, courtesy of your interactions with Light and myself, removed themselves from their life’s own natural narrative. Prior to my interference you were immeasurably entertaining and amusing to follow because of how you flaunted and deviated from trite and tired patterns with such consistency. Now that I’ve been afforded the opportunity to directly interact and meddle though, how could I resist?” \n\nGnarled teeth hovering before his face, Russo swallowed hard. “What do you want from me?”\n\n“As I said before, your mere presence will suffice. Company is rare and I intend to take advantage of it. That and…” His lips curled up into a malicious grin at the thought. “You’re much more talkative than my last guest.” \n\n[[Russo: Stand your ground |Russo: Stand your ground]]\n[[Russo: Retreat |Russo: Retreat]]
Russo panted while he ascended the underside of a set of stairs. Stone pillars meant to hold up the structure and bolt it firmly to the ground instead rose up past him into the featureless sky. "Choice? What choice!? If I stop moving I'll die!"\n\n"Keh. You act as if that was the only option available to you." Dark's nebulous mass continued to advance on the mage.\n\nThe human ground his teeth at the thought. "This is going to be Kaya all over again isn't it," he groaned between strained breaths.\n\n"Remain still and let the darkness wash over you. Turn to your violence or your words to try to stave my encroachment. So many options were available to you, and of them you chose to flee." \n\n"Because it was the only one that didn't suck!" Wheezing, Russo plodded up to the final step and stared out over the edge. Emptiness awaited him. "You know, you, you could very well choose to stop being such a colossal dick." He looked over his shoulder at the staircase vanishing rapidly. "And we both know you're dragging this out. I know good and goddamned well you could end me in an instant," he finished in a subdued tone. \n\nDark's advance slowed to a crawl as individual steps gradually ceased to be. The pillars once held up by the stairs plummeted noiselessly into the abyss when their supports vanished from beneath them. "Kill you?" A forced and mocking tone of surprise echoed out from the abyss. "You must be mistaken, I wouldn't dare dream of such a thing. Now were the ground to vanish out from under you and your fragile form crack open against what lies in the murk and the grime below... well, that would be the fall that killed you. Not me." That set of pointed teeth gleaming in the seething darkness curled into a proud and wicked grin as the details surrounding Russo's possible demise were dissected.\n\n"You sure have a knack for plopping me into life-and-death situations, don't you?" The human turned his attention back to where the path ended. Still nothing.\n\nCaustic laughter rang out in response. "Delightful as that sense of self-preservation of yours is, I can't very well have you running off from every confrontation. What, and risk you growing stale and predictable in your interactions with others? No, no that just won't do." \n\nRusso winced at the sight of black lapping at what little remained of his foothold. Less than a handful of steps separated him from the deity. "That's not going to stop me from trying."\n\n"I'd be surprised if you didn't." Encouraged by the human's continued resistance, Dark took more and more of the shattered world back into himself. All of two steps remained. "When confronted with Light, in all of her terrible magnificence, you chose to run and escaped her wrath. Your continued existence is a grievous affront to her, after all."\n\n"If you haven't noticed by now I do make an active effort to not die." Russo stood his ground and glared down at his formless foe. "It doesn't matter what you or Light want from me. I'll do what I want, when I want."\n\nUndulating tendrils pierced the veil of darkness and coiled into shape around the hovering set of teeth and crescent moon. "Power enough to defy the gods themselves," Dark remarked proudly as he leaned in towards the mage. The jackal's half-formed muzzle contorted into something resembling a Cheshire grin. "It's no surprise that Light desires nothing more than your annihilation, so thorough and complete that not even your memory remains. Agency and free will have no place in her paradise."\n\nRusso balanced precariously on the single step that remained.\n\nThe jackal rested a forming forearm against the rectangular slab of stone. Where the fraying musculature and nerve endings touched the smooth surface, black blots manifested. "Ahhhhhhh you should have seen it. The very first time one of your kind openly questioned her." Dark's pointed fingers curled at the edge of the sole step. Solid stone halted their motion for but a moment. "That sense of disbelief, confusion, panic, and anger all roiled together. I have yet to find something to match it."\n \n\n[[Russo: Jump | Jump ]]\n[[Russo: Fall | Fall ]]\n
Russo groaned as he familiarized himself with his crater. Form-fitting and just his size it was as comfy-cozy as could be hoped for. "Guhhhhh..." He nestled his head against the pillow of pebbles that dug themselves into the minute gaps in the magical scales coating his head. \n\nHad he been subjected to worse? "I mean, I've slept on the ground in the middle of a fucking cave. The bar's been set pretty low," Russo mused. Eyes closed, he sighed. There were worse places he could be stuck in as Dark's monologues washed over him. \n\nAudible cracks sounded in the mage's ears. The tremors and vibrations of the rock he was embedded into carried through his body and alerted him to the fact that his resting place wouldn't remain as such for long.\n\n"So much for that line of thought."\n\n[[Russo: Rocking and rolling | Dark: Revel]]
“Is that what happened back at Light’s temple?” The mage recalled foolishly fumbling through that decrepit deathtrap’s lower levels. Like a moth drawn to a flame, he ignorantly trampled across a mass grave in absolute darkness. \n\n“They deserved all that and more,” Dark muttered. “That mere mortals would seek to exceed their roles and drag down a god to their level? Feh, both your ignorance and ambitions are limitless.” \n\nArms crossed about his chest, Russo made no effort to stifle his swelling grin. The new moon that shifted silently between his host’s empty eye sockets and glowered at him only encouraged the mage. “Hah, do as I say and not as I do. Is that how it is?”\n\n“You act as if our positions have been reversed.” Dark tread silently towards the human. “For someone so mindful and determined in their pursuit of self-preservation, I can’t help but wonder why you’d walk this path.”\n\nRusso’s smile slowly faded upon Dark’s approach. Bricks and mortar sank beneath the god's gait as the entire platform began to rumble.\n\nSaid rumble should've been the first clue something was wrong. Pebbles and refuse rolling past and klinking against the mage's feet was the second. "Shit." Russo could feel his feet sliding along the ground. "Shitshitshitshitshit." The curses flowed freely as the ground tilted up towards him and he was sent skidding down along its incline. \n\n"Speaking of walking... I can't help but notice you declined my earlier offer." Tendrils drilling down into the gaps between the stones, Dark clung tight to his post. "If you won't capitalize on it, I will."\n\nCaught in freefall, Russo tumbled into the infinite blackness. Another loud wet snap could be heard echoing from above. "Oh that's bad." Spreading out from his fingertips, a green aura snaked its way up along Russo's limbs. "Faster faster faster!" the mage hurriedly urged himself while he felt the familiar airy tingle of magic wash over the back of his skull and torso. It abruptly gave way to a dull weight as the dragon scale barrier solidified into-\n\nWHAP\n\n"That's never going to be not terrifying," the human shuddered, coughing at the cloud of dust wafting up around him. Russo laid there on the newly summoned road trembling inside his impact crater. \n\n“Putting you mortals in your place, now that's something Light and I can agree upon.” That familiar biting sting of smug indifference was absent from his voice. “Well, perhaps that’s not entirely true. She likely thinks of it as a chore, smiting those who would dare to invoke her presence. Her opinion of you mortals is low enough as it is. There’s little else you can even do at this point to antagonize her further.” Monstrous teeth bared, Dark’s tone grew proud and self-assured. “I see it as a rare and cherished delight. Those strict circumstances dictating my interactions that I constantly allude to? The only other time I find myself wheeling and dealing with mortals is when your lot forces me to.”\n\n[[Russo: Unstick yourself from your crater | Dark: Revel]]\n[[Russo: Ughhhhh | Comfy a crater as any]]
"You what." Russo's eyes strained at the edges of his sockets while he peered up at his sulking host. His mind buzzed in irritation, an unsettling cognitive dissonance rekindling his splitting headache. That Dark would have anything to do with demons was unsurprising. To be so angry and bitter about it though was not. \n\nDark provided an unfamiliar response. Silence. Turning his back on the mage he treaded towards the edge of the marble platform. Stepping over the edge his form unraveled, the individual tendrils comprising his body vanishing into the void. \n\n"Ooooookay." Rolling over onto his chest, Russo placed his palms flat against the blackened impurities in the marble. His arms trembled terribly as he rose to a kneeling position. "You wouldn't have brought it up if you didn't want to rub my nose in it," the mage grunted upon rising to his feet. With trepidation he retreated towards the center of his lonely island, darkness lapping at its shores. Heart thumping gently in his chest Russo awaited the next heavyhanded nudge that was bound to come.\n\nHe didn't have to wait long. A deafening burst of air that threatened to knock Russo off his feet buffeted the platform as something of indescribable mass slithered by.\n\n"Let's walk and talk, shall we?" Dark's voice thundered across the blackened expanse of his realm. Coiled tendrils, packed together into a pulsing, undulating wall of flesh that spanned past the mage's vision, slunk through the void. In the deity's wake scattered islands of stone rose from the bottomless depths. Each of them decorated with a purple mote to light the way. \n\nNerves frayed and his limbs heavy, Russo sighed. "These platforms are going to fall out from under me if I don't keep pace, aren't they?" The human readied a Teleport spell before an answer could be provided. With a snap of his fingers, sparks of magic trailing from his digits, a burst of light obscured his vision. When the light faded he found himself standing within the narrow and dilapidated pathway of a castle rampart. Mindful of his step, Russo avoided treading upon the stained souls littered along both the ground and the notches in the rampart's raised walls. \n\n"No need for such caution," the deity interjected as Russo tiptoed through the motes. "Nothing of value would be lost were you to destroy them."\n\nRusso continued to put in the effort to avoid trampling them regardless of the god's advice. In time he found himself standing at yet another precipice, flakes of stone and mortar crumbling silently into the abyss below. "But they were your doing. Probably," Russo accused with uncertainty as he scanned for his latest foothold. Another flash of light flared against the smothering darkness.\n\n"At best they were nothing more than stepping stones." As Dark continued to deride his own creations the moon flickered to life on whatever served as this realm's horizon and promptly replaced it. Terrible and titanic in size it bathed Russo and the string of stone islands in an unsettling grey pallor. "And they've long since served their purpose." The celestial body's chalky mountainpeaks and ruinous craters proved imposing when magnified to such detail. \n\nHis breaths short and strained, Russo stumbled across the slanted and uneven footholds of a decrepit courtyard. Rust red splotches were streaked across the premises in a seemingly random pattern. As were countless motes that were either purple or shades of gray. Snapping his eyes ahead, the human simply chose to shroud himself in blissful ignorance with regards to their origin or nature. Ahead of him a pair of iron gates served as the entrances and exits to this sordid plot of land. Though they did nothing to keep the gaping emptiness lurking just beyond at bay. \n\n"Better to have him antagonizing me with his words than with his... everything else," Russo thought while he unclenched his jaw. "You're just going to keep elaborating whether I ask you to or not. But fine, I'll play along." He strode forward and placed his hands upon the slabs of metal and leaned into it. With a raucous creak the gate swung open to reveal a new handful of islands that tapered into the abyss. "So. What's your beef with demons?" \n\n[[Russo: Feign interest |Fake it]]\n[[Russo: Speaking of...| Umbra ]]
"Not interested," Russo dismissively called out while his eyes remained locked on the inferno ahead. With his back to the advancing presence he allowed the flame cupped in the palm of his hand to falter. Flicks of red and orange tinted magic flowed over his fingertips as it dwindled in size. It abruptly took on a blue hue before the mage crushed it in his closed fist and vanished in a flash of light. \n\n"Ack!" Smoldering ash papped painfully against the human's cheek the instant he manifested upon the platform. With a grumble he tossed up his crimson hood and took to skulking alongside the illuminated wall. Loathe as he was to do so he hugged against wall. If there had been another slab of stone flanking the other side of the dirtied walkway it had collapsed ages ago. Blackened plant matter and soot were trampled under his boots as he followed the flames snaking along the wooden trellis. \n\nA rumbling sigh echoed across the void. "Such painfully dull creatures, they are. Every request made of them can be counted on to be ignored. There's no fun to be had in shepherding or manipulating something that without fail does the opposite of what it's told. Feh, every outcome is a foregone conclusion with them. Well, save for one exception." \n\nAgainst the crackle and pops of embers falling free from the trellis the heavy beating of wings could be heard out in the darkness. Russo halted in place, blinking worriedly while he brushed ash off his shoulders. "And that would be?" \n\nDark's subdued laughter rattled the entirety of the abyss. "In time you'll come to find demons are intellectually stunted things. The only means with which they have to interact with the world around them is through violence. Perhaps they simply abhor anything and everything filled with the light they lack. Who's to say? Keh, but if an opportunity to end a life presents itself, they'll take it. Regardless of whether or not they've been instructed to abstain or indulge themselves."\n\nThe swooping displacement of air, steady and rhymthic, suddenly stopped. Russo's chest tightened subconsciously in response. "Fuck." He steeled his nerves for whatever unpleasant surprise he knew was imminent. \n\nA skeletal figure noiselessly glided up from beneath the crumbling brick walkway and hovered before the human ominously. Nestled deep within its ribcage lay a discarded demon soul, purple veins of energy arcing out from the orb and wrapping around the figure's spine. Tiny pinpricks of light could be seen inside the sockets of what looked to be a horned feline skull. \n\n"Fuuuuuuck." The human started to scooch further along the narrow platform. \n\nWith a flap of its wings the reanimated demon lurched forward.\n\n"Fucking fucketiy fuck! FUCK." Russo screamed as it slammed him into the trellis, smoldering splinters and ash raining down on the both of them. \n\n"Couple their penchant for violence with that stubbornness of theirs, that or poor impulse control, and it didn't take long for the detestable things to catch Light's attention. She did me a kindness with every one she erased from existence. Pity that some of them managed to avoid incurring her wrath." Turning his attention towards his guest, ripples of dark energy cascading across the moon's surface as he did so, the deity snorted in amusement at the unfolding struggle. \n\nNothing intelligible tumbled out of the partially reconstructed demon's mouth as it curled its bony fingers around the mage's shoulders. The mass of marrow and instincts rose into the air, dragging the human against the burning wall as it did so. Planks of wood tunked against the brick below and a handful bounced over the edge into the gaping darkness. \n\n"If you hate them so much then why did you just bring this one back?!" Russo screamed out angrily while he was scraped against the crumbling trellis. "Better yet, why am I even asking you this?! Why am I wasting my breath?! I already know the answer is going to be 'BECAUSE I'M A BORED ASSHOLE.'" Grunting, his neck tugged back painfully every time his cloak caught on the disintegrating surroundings. \n\nDark continued to laugh, encouraged by Russo's defiance. "These broken tools of mine have proven particularly troublesome for you haven't they Russo? Keh, the tribulations they provide almost makes me think it's worth permitting their continued existence." \n\n"KNEW IT." Propelled onward by a mixture of anger and fear, Russo readied his counterattack. A white film of humming energy manifested upon his fingertips that hurriedly extended out to cover his entire hand. As more and more magic was concentrated into the spell the faint hum grew violent and unstable. In seconds it transitioned into a furious crackle. "So I have a sucky record against demons. This time'll be different," the human reassured himself. Arcs of electricity lashed out and incinerated the splinters and chunks of wood raining down on him all the while. Slinging his arm forward, Russo sent a thunderous hook careening towards his aggressor. \n\nOn contact a deafening clap sounded out. Russo's fist sailed clean through the creature's skeletal muzzle, shards of blackened bone coating his knuckles. Suddenly missing a sizeable portion of its face, the reanimated demon understandably reeled from its injuries and abruptly relinquished its grip on the mage. Russo gracefully landed face-first on the ground with a bone-rattling thud. \n\n"Well," the mage brought his hands up to his ears and pressed against them gently. The tone of the ringing was at least changing when he covered and uncovered his ears. "I wasn't wrong." Ash and embers tapered down onto his back like snowflakes while he lay there pondering whether or not he just blew out his freaking eardrums. \n\n\n[[Russo: Done | Losing Record]]
Something vaguely comparable to a groan rumbled out from Russo's shivering form. "What did... what did you do to me?" Eyes clenched shut the human forced strained breaths in and out through gaps in his teeth. It was... it was like... holy shit had similes always been this hard? \n\nDark sauntered across the pristine marble with unknown purpose. Blotches of black stained its surface once more wherever he tread. "It's the closest I could come to showing you the state Light chose to leave your predecessors in. Well, that's not entirely true." The moon swiveled from one eye socket to the next. "Darkness in all its forms, the physical and metaphysical, spreads and retracts at my command. I very well could draw out that indelible stain upon your soul." The jackal's curled lips flattened at the thought. "Though I doubt you would approve. Nor would I." \n\nRusso's continued moans and groans drowned out whatever spiel Dark was spinning. "I... I..." The human's half-formed thoughts petered out as his forehead tapped against the smooth stone. "Is the ground still here?" Swallowing hard, pained and exhausted breaths wracked his frame. "I can... I can think. Thinking is a thing I can do again. That's good. That's really good." Russo continued to pant as tears trailed down his cheeks. Groaning, he brought a trembling limb up to his chest. He clutched his fingers only to find nothing amiss. ...Unexpected but not what he'd call undesirable. His vest was wrinkled but wholly intact. Nor did the mage feel a warm and sticky weight tugging down on his clothing or staining his gloved fingers. \n\n"That loathsome state she relegated you mortals to irritated me to no end. Keh, Light denied and ignored my repeated requests to dabble in your development. So I chose to ignore her warnings to leave you unmolested." With a sigh the half-moon hovering in Dark's noggin faded in luminosity. "...Though molding your kind into what you are today was not without its difficulties." \n\n"The ground is still here, right?" The twiddling of his fingers against the flat cold surface painfully pressing up against his flattened nose confirmed as much. "Ground is good. Keep doing what you do, ground." Slowly, he dragged his arms back and forth across the stone surface and moaned in pained relief. "Normally I," Russo kneaded at his throbbing skull and slowly shifted upon the glorious ground. "Oh fuck it. You keep monologuing I'll... something, I don't know." Groaning, he dragged an arm along the splotched marble. The mage didn't know how to even begin to describe it. His body going numb was nothing new, what with the fairly frequent beatings, but numb was still different from nothingness. Being unable to feel, see, or hear was... know what, maybe in hindsight it was a good thing he had been rendered nearly brain dead. \n\nDark turned his gaze towards the empty void littered with broken mementos of towns and tribes long forgotten. "Mistakes were made along the way." Dragging an arm across the length of his body, ripples pulsed through the darkness laid out before him. In their wake twinkling purple lights could be seen radiating against the jet black backdrop. The deity's lips pulled back at the sight \n\nTrue to his word Russo allowed his host to continue on without interruption. Eyes closed, the human rubbed his forehead against his forearm and quietly waited out the skull-splitting migraine that showed signs of subsiding. \n\n"I acted rashly and reactively at first, seeking to cancel out Light's influence entirely." Twiddling his fingers, the darkness spilling out from Dark began to clot together. Streaks and bolts of black dashed across the stone surface, conglomerating into a pool of darkness that frothed and bubbled just before Russo's collapsed form. \n\nFace matted firmly against his forearm Russo arched his brows in response. "Freak me the fuck out with whatever that is later," he mumbled into his limb. \n\nA deathly pale figure rose from the pool of accumulated darkness, propped up by tendrils that silently pierced the marble's murky surface. Human in shape, its eyes lacked light and pupils. \n\nDark sighed at the sight of the once vibrant vessel. "The corpses that accumulated served as an embarrassing and bitter reminder about the nature of my abilities. Light is the only one who can animate your mortal coils whereas I am the only one who can strip them bare." The jackal furrowed his brow at his first failure, musculature crinkling in the gaps between his eye sockets. "Though its not without its uses. No fun is to be had in snuffing out the spark of life that is the soul. The vessel that houses said soul however, keh. Now that's something altogether different." \n\nA guttural and biting laugh tumbled out from the jackal's maw. Memories of centuries past gave reason for a cruel and menacing Cheshire grin to contort those black lips of his. "Death doesn't have to coincide with the rot and decay of that fragile frame." Swatting his palm down against the stale air, Dark commanded the coiling tendrils to do away with the hollowed out human. In an instant it was dragged back down into the seemingly endless depths of the bubbling marble. \n\n\n[[Russo: Keep not caring | Don't care]]\n[[Russo: Boo-fuckity hoo | Shush]]\n
Setting one foot down gently before the other so as to muffle the echoes and reverberations of his tread, Russo slunk off down the hallway to his right. "Don't know what I expected to find," he thought to himself as he cautiously advanced a couple paces. To his sides were the same suits of armor that had persisted at his periphery and at his feet were-\n\nA crunch sounded out from beneath his boots.\n\n"...Kay." Russo swallowed hard and tried to ignore the ratcheting intensity of his heart pounding worriedly in his chest. Anything that deviated from Dark's twisted norm was cause for alarm. \n\nThe mage brought his hand down to his waist and warily eyed the path he had, perhaps foolishly, chosen to walk down upon. A dried puddle comprised of a kaleidoscope of reds, blues, purples, blacks, and yellows greeted him. "Nope." Russo turned his back on the sight and took measured but hasty steps back towards whence he came. He failed to notice, or simply ignored the fact, that the pile of bile trailed back to an empty slot in the wall that was missing its armored sentry. \n\n[[Russo: Return | Our darkness defines us]]
“Your presence. Nothing more nor less will sate my greed.” \n\nRusso clenched his teeth in response. \n\nThe crescent moon hovering inside Dark’s hollow skull took on a menacing glow. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it?”\n\n“Don’t act like you didn’t bait me into this.” Furrowing his brows, the human returned the god’s glower with a scowl. Its eerie luminescence rendered the edges of Russo’s vision fuzzy and distorted. “Fine,” the mage spat out as he broke eye contact. Hands shoved into his pockets, he fumbled for the souvenir he claimed while spelunking on Kaya's behalf. “Your brand. Why were there corpses guarding it?” Fingers dipping along the crescent carved into its surface Russo tossed the polished metal at Dark.\n\n“Now that takes me back.” Catching it out of the air, Dark twiddled the memento between his fleshy fingers. “I wielded a rather hands-on approach during that millennia. It was necessitated to ensure your continued survival after all.”\n\nA wheeze of air whistled between the gaps in Russo’s teeth. Eyes dipped against the sides of his sockets, the mage refused to acknowledge that he had been successfully suckered. \n\nGuttural chuckles twanged with tones of snide satisfaction rumbled out from Dark’s maw. “Now that's quite the tale to be told,” he replied while arching his fingers. The emblem tumbled into his open palm where it sank into the gaps between his musculature. “Some millenia ago I was forced to come to your aid for the sake of preserving your continued existence. Light had adopted a policy of indiscriminate murder that I may or may not have been responsible in stoking.” \n\n\n[[Russo: Stifle storytime|Stifle]]\n
<<silently>>\n<<loopbgm GX7uxdc6YLg>>\n<<endsilently>>\n\nRusso shuffled back to distance himself from the encroaching deity. His heart lurched into his throat as the ground simply ceased to be beneath his heels. “Great. Don’t you have anyone else to hassle?” \n\nDark paused to contemplate the query presented to him. Flicking a thumb against the musculature composing a fleshy cheek, the crescent filled out to a half moon once more. “There are… limited options available. None of which I would consider satisfying or worthwhile.” The fleshy roots spreading out from the jackal’s legs retracted into his form. “Strict criteria have to be met to warrant my interaction with mortals after all. Pickings tend to be slim.”\n\n“I get to count myself among those unlucky few thanks to Light.” The human clutched at his left arm. \n\n“Keh. Come now, I deliver you from her wrath and all you can muster in thanks is a backhanded compliment?” A wicked smirk graced Dark’s visage as he shrugged. “I’ll accept it nonetheless.” \n\n“You waited to make your move until after she seared my fucking arm off.” \n\n“And yet here you stand before me, no worse for wear.” Dark reveled at the rise he got out of the mage. “You should be grateful we met under those circumstances. Among mortals, you are the first to come into Light’s presence without desiring to do so. Whereas there have been many before you that purposefully sought her out.” What little light that was reflected off the celestial body hovering inside the jackal’s skull faded. The dark moon reflected the deity’s souring mood as he clenched his teeth. “Or worse yet, called her forth.”\n\nRusso took a noted interest in the rising ire dripping from Dark’s diatribes. So the big bastard actually had some buttons that could be poked at. \n\n\n[[Russo: Pry |Russo: Pry]]
“It’s that time again, huh?” So much for that powernap, he forlornly mused. Pressing his palms into the… Russo blinked in surprise while he took in his immediate surroundings. Shards of stone carved into rudimentary rectangles, with pebbles and sand stuffed into the gaps between them greeted him. “That’s new.” \n\nGrunting, he pressed his palms against the surprisingly solid surface. Slowly the mage forced himself up onto his knees. “Where the hell did this even come from?”\n\n“Nowhere important,” Dark brushed off the inquiry with disinterest. “Just one of the many settlements you mortals have managed to lose to the annals of history. I see no harm in claiming as my own what has since long faded from your collective memories.” Curling his pulled back lips into a toothy grin, the half-moon faded to a crescent within the confines of Dark’s noggin. “The unknown unknowns that vanished into the dark recesses of your minds. May as well make things consistent and remove their presence entirely from the physical realm while I’m at it.”\n\n<<silently>>\n<<set $RP = $RP + 1>>\n<<endsilently>>\n\n[[Russo: Play along|Russo: Inquire]]
"Is this what you meant by choice?" Russo grunted while he inched towards the edge. This fractured world would disappear regardless of his actions. The only thing the human still held some power, some control over, was how he reacted to it. Even if the outcome remained the same regardless.\n\n"Perhaps." Dark remained frustratingly tight lipped as the last vestige of the stairs slowly ceased to be at his very touch. A subdued smirk creased the god's lips, eagerly awaiting Russo's response. \n\nThe mage gulped when he felt the entirety of his weight concentrate on his heels. No stone remained for his soles to rest upon. "May as well be on my terms then," he thought. Russo kicked off against the sliver of stone and plunged into the abyss.\n\n[[Russo: Foregone conclusion | Hard landing ]]
Russo paced towards where the uneven quartz emptied into nothingness. Tips of his boots poking over edge he pondered whether or not it was worth it risking the jump to his next foothold. It was either that or teleport and... wait a minute. "I teleported." \n\nThe fact that he had previously done so had yet to fully sink in. "I... teleported. What am I, stupid?" Magic congealing on his fingertips, Russo snapped his thumb and middle digit together. A blaze of blue obscured his vision and Russo's boots shuffled slightly as they came to rest against a flatter surface. When the flare of light faded he was greeted by the comforting clutter of his disheveled room. \n\n"Why the hell did it take me so long to think of this. Honestly I-" The what should have been brief bout of blackness brought on by Russo's blinking eyelids lasted infinitely longer than it should have. He tentatively tapped his feet against the once more uneven ground beneath him. "...Shit." Shoulders slumped, the human scuffed his boots against the coarse quartz. "Right back where I started."\n\n"I do admire the effort." Dark's smug tone echoed through the void.\n\n"Welp, I tried."\n\n[[Russo: Leapfrog it is | Venture]]
Russo continued to leapfrog from one chunk of land to the next. Surprisingly, he found himself craving the foreboding emptiness he had long grown used to here. \n\nFragmented streets flanked him on both sides. He spied a dilapidated well on one chunk of land. The circular stone walls had crumbled away, revealing a hole that punched right through to the darkness below. Elsewhere, individual walls of homes could be seen floating by their lonesome. Windows still embedded into their stone structures and waxed over candleabrum hanging above the doorways. \n\nTreading along a marble walkway, his boots reverberated loudly against its smooth surface, the mage came to a halt before the latest gap. "What the hell."\n\nMotes of light twinkled amongst the latest wreckage laid out before Russo. Marble columns flipped onto their sides flanked a polished path crumbling into the void. "Everything here is meant to bait me into a conversation, isn't it?" He groaned. The lack of a response from Dark, not even so much as a snide or caustic remark, prompted Russo to turn his gaze back towards whence he came. His hated host was nowhere to be found. "Great. So much for walking and talking."\n\nWait. "Why am I even complaining?" he thought to himself. Dark's present and continued absence was a godsend from the, heh, god. \n\nWith a sigh the human closed his eyes. He readied a Teleport spell, slowly focusing on the sensations of his fingertips throbbing imperceptibly with every beat of his heart. Magic flared upon Russo's digits at the next pulse. In his mind's eye he imagined the cracked columns resting besides his ankles and a twinkle of light at his feet. The snap of his fingers punctuated a deafening silence as ribbons of blue and black danced along the back of his eyelids. Ignoring the jolting, yet momentary, sensation of freefall as the ground near simultaneously gave out and reappeared beneath his feet, Russo creaked open his eyes. \n\nA tiny mote comprised of equal parts light and darkness wavered atop the rubble before him. "Huh." Dropping to his knees, Russo peered closely at the curious little thing. A brilliant white center surrounded by murky black rings. What looked like frail and tiny veins of ink tried to work their way out from the edges into the luminous center. \n\nRusso extended a gloved finger out towards out. The orb of equal parts darkness and light hissed softly at his touch and simply reshaped itself around his digit. Upon retracting his finger it regained its original shape. \n\n[[Russo: Ask away |Archive]]
<<silently>>\n<<stopbgm LJLDWJQKqb4>>\n<<endsilently>>\n\nBleary-eyed and exhausted, Russo mulled over the various options available by which to express his apathy. Mouthing off was a classic standby. Mmff but that would require... effort. Well screw that. \n\n<<if $RL eq 1>>\nThe human weighed the costs and benefits of his continued inaction. Dark was perfectly content to let him drag out his stay, after all. "Not like it'll get me home any faster but at least I'll feel less shitty when I do."\n<<endif>>\n\nDark continued to drone on in the background. "...of squelching her influence I sought to warp it. Again, I-"\n\n"You're never gonna shut up are you?" Russo foggily thought to himself. He stifled a yawn as the parting of his jaw tugged painfully at the nerves in his neck.\n\n"The opposite extreme proved just as disappointing. Feh, if not more so since it came about by my hand." Dark cradled the corrupted mote of light between his pointed fingers. Only the tracest fragments of white light remained nestled deep inside its core. The remainder comprised of whirling sworls of black and purple. It was just the bare minimum required with which to animate what was once a mortal body. Before it had been twisted and reshaped by an infusion of dark magic, anyway. \n\nClosing his eyes the mage retreated to the comfortingly familiar den of darkness that greeted him every time he departed from the world of waking. Not Dark's dark. His dark. Uhh... well maybe Dark actually was responsible for that since he was darkness incarnate and all that and oh godammit forget it. Whatever. He was sleepy and now was as a good a time as any for a nap.\n\n"Boring you, am I?" \n\nRusso tilted his head up just enough to see past his forearm. Two jet black shins, the individual tendrils comprising them pulsing and throbbing, sat level with his gaze. "Wherever it is you want this conversation to go I'm too tired to carry it there. Talk if you want, I'm taking a fucking nap."\n\nDark reared his head back in mock surprise. "Oh come now is that all? Tsk, some guest you turned out to be." \n\nThe human allowed his head to scrape against the rough and ruffled fabric coating his gloves as he buried his face back into his forearm. "Whatever it was you just did to me, I feel like I should be mad about it." With a heavy exhale Russo's chest practically flattened into the ground. "Which I will be later."\n\n"I would have thought this would interest you as you have and will continue to engage with the topic in question. No matter." The jackal dismissively tossed the corrupted soul into the abyss with a flick of his wrist. "Not like I particularly enjoy recounting my successive failures. Damnable creatures, those demons." He clenched his fingers against his palm and the purple blots of light out on the non-existent horizon vanished. "I can almost sympathize with Light. If those mistakes were the only things I was left with then I could see the appeal in wanting to start anew. Fortunately," Dark dropped down upon a knee and curled his index finger towards him in a beckoning motion. \n\nThe shadows simmering under Russo's frame tickled at the human's chin. Much to his chagrin, slick tendrils tapped up on his jaw and forced his eyes to meet with the crescent moon flickering ominously that served as Dark's own. \n\nA monstrous grin, terrible and proud, creased along the deity's lips. "That wasn't the case." \n\n[[Dark: Salutations, my proudest creation | Origins]]
Dark tread upon the faint silhouette Russo’s form cast on the ground beneath them. The jackal’s musculature unraveled at his ankles and dipped down into the shadows. “Precisely. A pity that it took Light all of eternity to accept that. Such a stubborn and prideful thing,” he tsked to himself. A glaze fell over the poorly lit moon hovering in Dark’s eye socket. It bobbed and shuddered in place as it took in the human’s defiant and begrudging posture. Hmmm. So that’s where mortals inherited that tenacity of theirs from.\n\nRusso paced around the edges of the crumbling platform, eager to interfere with whatever Dark was planning. He cringed at the sight of the jackal slinking after him. The human’s shadow simply carried the deity with it.\n\nArms crossed about his chest, Dark twiddled his fingers against his fleshy arms. “In a realm of pure light you risk blinding yourself to everything around you. Whereas in utter darkness all that there is to see is hidden. These… fruits of ours, their very existence were defined by the contrast between Light’s powers and my own. It was only when both darkness and light were allowed to meld that the potential for creation was made possible.” \n\nWhere the slab of black marble pressed up against its white counterpart a tentative exchange took place. Luminous dots of light poked against the darkened floor, much like the stars in the night sky. \n\nPulling a limb up to his pointed muzzle Dark pinched his fingers together. He eased his bilious digits into an empty eye socket with a squelch and grasped at the prize inside. “Even though this is nothing more than a pale reflection…” Hand held out before him the deity rolled the miniaturized moon along the ridges of his palm. “It’s light all the same. Without its twilit pallor you wouldn’t be capable of distinguishing my form from the void that surrounds you.” \n\n“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”\n\n“If that’s what you’d prefer,” Dark cryptically taunted with teeth bared. He clenched his fingers around the celestial body, forcing it between the individual tendrils comprising his musculature. What little light had once graced this realm vanished in an instant. \n\n“I should really know better by now,” Russo whined. A suffocating blackness wrapped itself around him, effectively smothering his senses. The mage brought a hand up to his face and gently waved it back and forth in front of him. A startled gasp emptied his lungs at its next passing. Crooked teeth curled up into an antagonistic grin abruptly made themselves known. Only after he felt his gloved palm passing his line of vision, of course. \n\n“Now where were we?” Dark gleefully interjected. His point hammered home, the crescent moon returned to its sentry inside the jackal’s skull, bringing some semblance of light back with it. “Ahhh that’s right. She was loathe to do so, but Light finally acknowledged the truth. Holding that knowledge over her head I was able to coerce her into cooperation.”\n\nGrunting, Russo rubbed at his eyes. Blots of purples and blues whorled about his vision. Being thrust into and pulled out of absolute darkness on short notice left his head ringing and disoriented. \n\n“From then on our tentative alliance devoted itself to honing our craft. Mostly through trial and error.” The god of darkness tossed his shoulders back in an exaggerated shrug. “We were broaching the boundary of unknown unknowns. Neither of us knew what our opposing powers would yield when forced together in countless quantities.”\n\nTepidly, the deific duo brought their respective energies together. Rays of light shored up against a mass of darkness and coiled together. Whereas before when Dark’s tendrils enveloped Light’s shining beams, it was with the intent to smother it completely. Now though, he only sought to compact and compress what he had ensnared. \n\nCountless white dots continued to bubble up in droves along the black marble backdrop on the floor. Dark orbs appeared on the white marble in turn. Some were uniform in color whereas others were splintered with white stony veins, as if they were crackling and seething with energy. \n\n“The stars above were the first things we collectively mastered. Afterwards we turned our attention towards recreating that first accident of ours. Crafting a world from scratch is far more difficult than one would think.” The jackal, still anchored to Russo’s shadow, let his gaze drift down towards his furling fist. “Striking the proper balance proved troublesome. Too much of Light’s influence rendered our creations little more than congealing masses of fire and brimstone. When my own powers were cast in excess…” Dark paused as that crescent of an eye filled out to a half moon in frustration. “They were cold, dull, and dead.” Purplish-black wisps simmered off his splayed out fingers. “Both of us learned a great deal about our own capabilities while we toiled. The stark contrast between our powers laid those finer details bare. Heat, energy, and life landed squarely in Light’s domain. Frigidity, stillness, and gravity were relegated to my own.” \n\n[[Dark: Dilutions and Derivations |Dilute]] \n
Lumpy slabs of stone pressed against Russo's armored neck and chest. His ribcage expanded and contracted uncomfortably against the totaled table while he clenched his eyes shut and stifled a grimace. "Just because I have a new spell that lets me survive a whole hell of a lot of abuse doesn't give you free reign to take advantage of it."\n\nSubdued squelches sounded with every step Dark took forward. Those veins of blackened flesh extending up above retracted into his compressed musculature, dragging the remainder of his expansive body down with them. "That may be true." He came to a stop before his groaning guest. "But what's stopping me from doing so?" \n\nRusso's fingers sifted through the splinters and rubble as he pushed himself onto his feet. The mage mulled over his answer, knowing full well that the jackal would do as he pleased regardless. Eye contact with the deity was actively avoided. "...You were plotting something against Light?" \n\nDark's lips parted to reveal a lopsided and gnarled grin. He allowed a stifling silence to hang in the air as Russo stared intently at the floor. "Something subtle, but far-reaching." Dark carried the conversation forward without missing a beat. "Anything more and Light would be alerted immediately. Allowing her the chance to undo my work. Anything less and her influence could easily overpower what I had in store." Upon pacing by the human the crescent moon shifted between the jackal's eye sockets. It fixated on Russo and bathed him in a dull glow. "No, no what I had in mind required a deft hand. Something that Light wouldn't notice until it was far too late." \n\n"This place..." Stone tables arranged into an orderly mess along the sides of the open room that allowed for an open airy path straight down the center. Broad curved windows reaching up towards the rafters that would have allowed for the sun's warms rays to filter through. It reminded Russo of his guild's main hall. He cautiously trailed after Dark from a healthy distance behind him. \n\nThe jackal stepped out through an arched doorway and into a cavernous hallway that seemingly stretched on to the inky blackness of the horizon. "For all of Light's power she has never been able to separate herself from one painful truth. One indelible constant which has all but guaranteed that she will never be rid of me." \n\nRusso held his hand out before him and conjured a flame to dispel the suffocating blackness all around. Intricate suits of armor lined the walls, the silhouettes of their sharp and cutting forms dancing along the uneven rock walls. Beneath his feet the creak and groan of wooden planks gave way to the steady reverberations of stone. \n\n"Every light must cast a shadow. No matter its source." Dark's form flitted in and out of sight in the poorly lit hallway. "Light's vainglorious form allowed me unfettered access to her paradise. Whatever basked in and soaked up her incandescent rays, oh say... like her beloved creations, resulted in an absence of light elsewhere. Even she has her limits on how far she can extend her influence." \n\nWherever Russo's shadow graced the dusty floor, blackened flesh bubbled up from spidering cracks along its bumpy surface. "As do you, thankfully."\n\nDark hehed. "Laughably easy access was permitted to every single one of her creations. I seeped up from their very shadows, and stained their souls with the faintest traces of darkness." The jackal smirked at the sound of panicked struggling as Russo cursed and kicked at the tendrils wrapping around his ankles. "It may not have been quite that forthcoming, but you get the idea."\n\n"You've already left your mark," the human grumbled as he stomped and set ablaze the offending appendages. He clenched his left fist and thought of the crescent moon comprised of burnt flesh carved into his arm. "That's more than enough." \n\n[[Russo: Abysswalker | Our darkness defines us]]
<<silently>>\n<<loopbgm 5Hf7GjPoZyw>>\n<<endsilently>>\n\nAn opening presented itself as Russo stepped back towards the edge of the platform. Just over the pulsing musculature of Dark’s shoulder the mage spied another road to nowhere. \n\n“Never can keep still can you?” The god of darkness smirked at the burst of blue light that illuminated the depthless hollows contained within him. Swiveling in place Dark directed his attention towards the only gathering of magic in this realm that wasn’t his own. Before Russo had even reappeared the deity had his gaze locked on the swirls of energy in the distance telegraphing his latest guest’s arrival. \n\n[[Russo: Ascend| Russo: Ascend]]\n
<<silently>>\n<<stopbgm GX7uxdc6YLg>>\n<<stopbgm 5Hf7GjPoZyw>>\n<<endsilently>>\n\nStunted solar systems were smothered beneath the undersides of Russo's boots as he paced about the platform. "Would you cut to the chase already? I already know how this story ends." The mage's footsteps echoed into the void around them. \n\n"Do you now?" Dark dropped to a knee and plunged an arm into the blackened marble. Its reflective surface dampened at the god's touch and rippled as his limb sank deep into the smooth stone. \n\n"Light could tolerate you back then and she's furious with you now. You did something to ruin that." Arms crossed about his chest Russo had grown weary of hearing his captor out. \n\n"Such slanderous accusations!" The individual tendrils comprising the deity's submerged arm pulsed and throbbed. "Did it never occur to you that perhaps it was Light's doing that rekindled our animosity?" Grinning wickedly during the entirety of the exchange, Dark's clenched muscles loosened. \n\nThat half-moon hanging inside the deity's head glowered in intensity even as it faded to a crescent. Hmmm... change of plan. A demonstration would be far far far more rewarding and informative, after all. Settling his gaze on his guest Dark retracted his arm from the murky depths.\n\n"Call it a hunch."\n\nThe jackal chuckled as he rose to his feet. Head cocked to the side, his all too familiar crescent silently slid from one empty eye socket to the next. "Observant as ever. Let's put that attentiveness of your to the test, hmm?" Circling around Russo, Dark drained every drop of darkness permeating the platform into his being. A smoky black mist roiled off his increasingly ill-defined body. "I'll acknowledge, admit even, that I was the one responsible for Light and I's falling out. The very catalyst for our irreconciliable differences resides on this shred of sundered civilization even! Care to take a guess what that might be?"\n\nRusso arched both brows while his shoulders slumped forward. "You just fucking admitted to it." He lazily dragged an arm up along the side of his chest and extended an index finger at Dark accussingly. "First and only guess."\n\n"Close... but not quite." Mimicking the human's gesture, Dark pressed a pointed finger into Russo's sternum. "It's you," the jackal replied with monstrous teeth proudly bared. \n\n[[Dark: Demonstrate |Puncture ]]
A steady beating of wings sounded in the void while Russo's animated aggressor distanced itself from him. What remained of the skeletal demon's jaw clacked together noisily as it timidly brought a hand up to its fractured face.\n\n"It was amusing enough at first," Dark's wry chuckles rumbled in the distance. "Watching my demons descend upon Light's flock and carve through them without resistance. She never even bothered to indoctrinate them with simple concepts such as conflict or violence which rendered them helpless against my horde. They just stood there, incapable of processing much less reacting to the slaughter." The moon looming large vanished from view while the deity sighed. "The appeal faded fast." \n\nEars still ringing, Russo pushed himself back up onto his knees. "Okay," he could barely hear himself think. "Just because I can punch someone with lightning doesn't mean I should." Although, smacking that thing's face clean off its fucking shoulders was pretty badass. Senses and reflexes dulled, Russo received a delayed response when he tried to curl his fingers. "Still that... probably wasn't worth it." The mage warily turned his gaze towards his foe floating out just beyond the platform's edge.\n\n"In the short time it took for them to draw Light's attention the exact same scenario played out repeatedly." Off in the dark distance the deity snorted dismissively. "The only divergence that arose was when Light forcefully put a stop to their theatrics. Piercing their bodies with her rays and reducing them to molten ash. Hmmph, I suppose they weren't a complete failure in that regard. If I hadn't created them I never would have had the satisfaction of seeing Light annihilate their very presence." \n\nThe demon twirled about in the air to face its creator. Adopting a combative stance, hisses of air escaped from its mangled mouth. Its defiant display abruptly ceased when a bolt of lightning struck it from behind. Body convulsing, one of its arms was blown apart at the elbow. \n\nA crescent moon flared into being upon the horizon in concert to Dark's oppressive laughter. "Outstanding. Where there was once a monopoly on violence you mortals have viciously carved out your share. Not because you were compelled or beholden to by your basest impulses like your demonic precursors, but because you wanted to." Dark hrmmmed in delight as another bolt laid into the demon and shattered a handful of its ribs. "That your kind possesses the capacity to be just as bloodthirsty, vengeful, and depraved as those mistakes speaks volumes to their obsolescence. What can demons do to you that you don't already do to yourselves?"\n\nRusso continued to launch spell after spell at his faltering foe. "I'm sure you're making some sort of snide or snarky remark," he yelled out as the garrulous god's guffaws and dialogue rattled his frame, "but fuck all if I'm gonna pass up a freebie." Slinging his arm forward, a shower of sparks and molten marrow spilled off the demon's spine where Russo's latest bolt connected. \n\nCracked discs of bone tugged apart and ultimately fell away, along with a pelvis and the legs dangling down from it. All that remained of the reanimated demon was a damaged rib cage with some wings and a fractured skull attached to it. Battered and broken, the damnable creature refused to die again quietly. It dove towards Russo and into the volley of lightning with desperate purpose. \n\nUnsurprisingly the demon was torn apart on approach. Its lower jaw, additional ribs, and an entire skeletal wing were ripped away in the onslaught. Balance shot to shit, the stupid thing's flight path wavered wildly off course resulting in a crash landing. It bumpily skidded along the brick path before slamming into the still smoldering trellis. \n\n"A win's a win," the mage told himself upon his embarrassingly easy victory. No way in holy hell Umbra would ever go down that easily but hey, he beat a demon all by himself! No goddesses or raccoons needed. Russo bapped at his ears in an effort to do away with the constant ringing. The niggling thought that he may have been stupid enough to make himself go deaf was thankfully put to rest as bits of pieces of Dark's latest diatribe filtered through. \n\n"What little use I've been able to derive from them is dedicated solely to testing mortals such as yourself. In time I doubt they'll be able to satisfactorily manage even that. Feh, they're nothing more than broken tools that have outlived their usefulness." \n\nStill kicking, albeit barely, the demonic feline dragged itself out from under the burning wreckage with its remaining arm. Inches at a time the gap between the two was narrowed as the broken creature dug its bony fingers deep into the gaps between the bricks. \n\nDark snorted with contemptuous disdain at the sight. "Like any other broken tool, the only fate that awaits them is to be discarded and destroyed." A low rumble could be heard out in the abyss, emanating from the crescent moon. \n\n"This won't end well," Russo mumbled worriedly to himself. "Did you seriously bring that thing to life just so you could kill it?" \n\nThe ringing in Russo's ears faded only to be replaced by the steady roar of wind. A stale breeze gently flapped his cloak against his back. \n\nOkay, yeah, that's enough banter for now. Shit, he needed to put distance between himself and that broken demon and fast. He frantically whipped his neck side to side scanning for any new footholds. "Oh no..." Whatever islands in the rough he had traversed along the way here had vanished. \n\nEmbers trailing down from the crackling trellis were blown back into the wall as the wind kicked up and the din became deafening. \n \n"..." Russo warily eyed the source of his troubles lurching towards him in fits and spurts. "Well. I can think of one easy way to widen the gap." Scooching towards the skeletal horned feline, mindful to stay just out of its reach, the mage kind of sort of stuck his leg out and nudged the demon towards the edge of the platform. "Almost... almost... almoooooooooooost..." Reeling back every time it grabbed at or attempted to hiss at him, Russo gradually disposed of his foe by unceremoniously shoving it over the edge. \n\nThe wind strengthened regardless. Russo struggled to draw breath from the gale pinning him back against the extinguished wooden frame. It creaked and tore apart in the onslaught of air, planks and splinters blown off into the endless abyss. \n\n"Fuck it, I tried." Russo blinked rapidly as the very moisture was blown out of his eyes. A mass of coiled tendrils that spanned the entirety of his vision surged towards him. His eyes darted to the bottom of his sockets and peered down at the demon vanishing out of sight. \n\nThose pinprick pupils glared back at Russo for all of an instant. "Ashes to ashes..." the god of darkness rumbled. Dark's body, or a fraction of it, slammed into the reanimated creature and rended it into a fine mist of purple and gray. All of an instant later the remainder of the deity made contact with the island of stone. \n\nRusso's vision and hearing faded in and out after the initial explosive crash. Every so often, when his senses would allow, he perceived planks of ashen wood and shards of stone sailing past as he descended into the dark below. \n\n[[Russo: Brace for impact | Hard landing ]]
<<if $RP eq 1>>\nEyeing the god of darkness warily, Russo rose to his feet. “Good to know.”\n \nDark occupied the center of the path leading from and to nowhere; his legs branched out into tendrils that snaked their way through the labyrinths of sand and gravel. \n\n“This is an improvement over whatever part of you I was trampling on before, at least.” Nearing the edge of the road Russo cautiously leaned over its crumbling boundaries. An inky blackness stared back at him. Shards of stone displaced by the human’s footfalls tumbled off the side to be silently swallowed up by the all-encompassing void. \n<<endif>> <<if $RL eq 1>>\nThe human rolled onto his back. A featureless sky loomed overhead that was uniform in its blackness. “Can’t say I never tried.” Bringing a gloved hand up to his forehead, he brushed away the pebbles embedded into his brow and cheeks. \n\n“On your feet, Russo.” Hand held out before him, Dark curled his pointed index finger against his fleshy palm. Tendrils spread out from his legs like roots, snaking through the lines cutting perpendicular along the individual bricks in the floating road. Ripples coursed through the fabric of the mage’s cloak from where they slithered just beneath its surface. “You and I have much to discuss.” Squelches sounded from the human’s ankles as he was anchored to the ground. \n\nVarious pinpricks pierced at Russo’s spine and shoulders as he was forced upright and wobbled to his feet.\n<<endif>> \n“So.” The human locked gazes with his tormentor. “What do you want from me this time?”\n\n[[Dark: Elaborate|Dark: Elaborate]]
"They bore me," Dark answered with a restrained anger directed mostly at himself. A terrible rumble quaked the god's realm as waves of dark energy rippled across the moon's surface. The glowering celestial body dimmed in concert to Dark's diatribes. "That I created something as dull and uninspiring as Light's slavish automatons rankles me to this day." \n\nRusso retreated from the courtyard's exit as a suffocating blackness draped across his vision. He uneasily backed away towards the lingering light of the tainted souls scattered about the ground like garbage. They bathed him in a pale purple light, the shadows steadily advancing and retreating against their flickering radiance. "Since when is indiscriminate murder and hellraising not your thing?" \n\n"It ceased to be entertaining once those mistakes turned it into something rote and routine." A new moon, practically void of light, came to dominate the abyss it was slowly fading into. "Squelching Light's influence entirely brought forth undesirable results. So instead, I sought to twist and warp it."\n\nHand held out before him Russo conjured a flame. "And where was Light in all this?" The wavering orange orb of warmth that hovered above his palm offered little in the way of comfort as he regained the ground lost to the onset of darkness. "Letting you do your thing doesn't sound like her."\n\n"Oh she knew I was responsible. Without evidence, or bodies, to corroborate her accusations though she loathingly resigned herself to maintaining a closer sentry on her subjects. Not that it did her much good."\n\nRusso arched his brows and did his best to ignore the gnawing weight in his chest. Shooting the shit with a deity about how he leisurely kidnapped and killed people was turning out to be some sort of awkward mixture between soul numbing and emotionally draining. Most of all it was tiring and the mage simply didn't care to concern himself with it. \n\n"I feel like I should feel bad that I don't feel bad," the human murmured to himself while flicking flames over the edge. He didn't care about the fate that befell those before him. He just wanted to be fucking done with this. Embers sailed out towards the general direction of where Russo thought he had last seen those islands of stone floating about. \n\nDark hmmmed to himself. Vines of blackened flesh and sinew rose up from beneath the tarnished souls and clutched at their incorporeal forms. "I continued to pluck from her flock, reshaping her creations into everything they were not. Whereas Light's playthings were obedient, unthinking, and subservient to a fault my take on them left them rebellious, assertive, and single-minded in purpose."\n\n"And the wings and the horns?" Russo asked while he continued to hurl balls of flame over the edge. For every dozen or so that slipped silently into the abyss, there was one that would meet its mark and fizzle against the cold hard stone it briefly illuminated. \n\n"Those came about out of spite," the god smirked to himself. "I purposefully worked in the extra limbs and adornments only because I knew Light found them aesthetically displeasing." \n\n"I keep lowering my standards and you still keep managing to surprise me," the human mentally groaned while he sucked air in through his teeth. Those two monstrosities really were as bitter and fucking petty as they come. Thankfully he had a task at hand to distract himself with. The accuracy of Russo's spells gradually increased as flares of orange and yellow repeatedly illuminated his next foothold. "Seems doable..." he mumbled to himself.\n\nDark's tendrils drilled themselves into those purple motes. Feeding off the memories and magic contained within those discarded souls, the deity's appendages began to split and fray. The splintering vines of flesh extended back out from the radiating orbs after having taken root and siphoning off their energy. Slowly, the splitting tendrils contorted themselves into the skeletal likeness of the creature that once housed the demonic soul that served as their anchor. \n\n"The same, but different." A blackened ribcage ensnared the nearest purple mote. "Too late did I realize that's all my demons were." A forceful snort buffeted the abyss with a gale of stale air. "Just as predictable and just as loathsome as what Light brought forth."\n\n"Uh huh." Russo answered and continued to reply with every time a lengthy pause punctuated the silence. "Hmm?" Embers and sparks remained after the latest volley of fireballs. They were trying to eat away at... something. "If I could actually see where the hell I wanted to teleport to now that would be something." A couple more flicks of his fingers sent flames crackling down towards the fizzling embers. Pops and snaps cracked loudly as what looked to be a trellis spontaneously combusted. The criss-crossed wooden patterns laid against a brick wall glowered red in the heat and illuminated the path that ran alongside it. "Hah. There's no problem that can't be solved by setting it on fire." \n\nFootsteps, plodding along with a measured and heavy weight to their gait, interrupted the mage's prideful gloating.\n\n[[Russo: Nope | Move]] \n
By: RaddaRaem
The gentle clap of leather soles against a stone surface came in irregular fits and spurts. Navigating the haphazard staircase that rose and fell, narrowed and widened, without rhyme or reason was proving taxing on the mage. "Gahh!" Russo lurched forward as his foot slid against the latest step. He stumbled forward and collapsed upon the coarse and scratchy surface of a disintegrating thatched roof. Entire swathes of the bundled wheat and plant matter crumbled away between the gaps in the wooden ribcage that was the roof's support. \n\n"Light's disappointments, and my own squandered efforts, proved that you mortals are burdened with painfully drab and dull existences when either of us exercise our influence in excess." Dark's voice faded as he vanished out of view. \n\nRusso brushed off the stinging vegetation and cursed to himself. "Some stairs." He peered down through the openings in the roof while he continued to grumble. In the heart of the house below, a road had been lazily smashed through the front wall. "Shit, you didn't just half-ass this, you completely full-assed it." With a snap of his fingers he teleported down. \n\nA sense of unease weighed heavily on the human's shoulders as he took in his ruined surroundings. Boots sitting by the demolished front door, buried under thatch and rubble. A fireplace filled with soot and ash. Fraying coats draped over chairs. ...This place felt lived in. Like he was trespassing. The abruptness with which Dark must have taken this place from its former inhabitants was... frightening. "The less I know, the better," he reassured himself as he trampled the fractured iron and wood slabs of a door underfoot. Cracked and winding roads that blended cobblestone, brick, and gravel jutted down before him at a steep vertical decline. \n\n"In moderation though?" Dark's antagonizingly familiar voice returned loud and clear from behind the mage. "It was not only a path I had yet to pursue but it was also the one that Light outright forbid me from treading down upon your inception. The opportunity was too good to pass up." \n\nRusso begrudgingly turned his attention back to the abode he had just exited. His eyes widened at the distressing sight. \n\n"Come now, there's no need to make that face." The exposed interior of the empty home had been rendered pitch black. All that could be seen inside the ruined doorframe was a set of teeth and crescent moon hovering just above them. "You should be grateful, thankful, even. My decision then and there is what enabled mortalkind to craft their own." Dark stepped forward, his ill-defined form shrouded in shadows that wafted and hissed off his being. The darkness trailing in the god's wake swallowed up the house entirely. A blanket of black spread out from the doorframe and suffocated the structure's very existence. \n\n"If you wanted me to hurry up you could've just asked!" Wasting no time, the human dropped to his knees and skidded down the bumpy and burning decline. What the hell, his cloak could protect him from the fiery kinds of burns but not the frictiony ones? What a bunch of bull.\n\nThe encroaching mass of sentient darkness laughed derisively. "Ahhh even now you wield the gifts I so generously bestowed upon you!"\n\n"What gifts?! I mean, besides the arm, what have you done besides not kill me?" Russo patted at the burning bundles of nerves screaming out in pain along his back and arms. He continued to wear himself raw sliding down the path continually manifesting before him. "Why am I even wasting my time arguing with him?" he asked himself as the stone plane evened out and he skidded to a halt. "Not killing me isn't something to hold over my head, you all-powerful ass!" Russo yelled out while he painfully pulled himself onto his feet. Even if it didn't serve a purpose, it did feel nice to yell at the deity. \n\nShattered streets and walkways continued to bubble into being before the mage. The encroaching darkness surging from behind him swallowed up the path he had tread at roughly the same pace.\n\n"So ungrateful," Dark contentedly mused aloud. "I granted upon your kind a precious power, great and terrible in scope. Something that opened up limitless possibilities for you mortals. A power that can be used to uplift yourselves, destroy yourselves, or stagnate and fade into obscurity. I speak of the power of choice." \n\n[[Russo: Choose not to die | Keep running]]
"Pardon the mess," Dark's voice echoed from behind the mage. \n\nBathed in the light of the mote, Russo's form cast a faint shadow. His silhouette laid flat against the marble grew viscous, darkness incarnate bubbling and rippling throughout. The wavering humanoid shadow peeled itself off the ground while pulling tendrils that dug into the back of its head and spine up with it.\n\n"What you have before you is a soul stripped bare." Squelches and cracks could be heard as Dark's flat face contorted and stretched itself out into a muzzle. \n\nRusso's eyes focused on the multitude of motes punched against the black backdrop of the all encompassing void. "Do I want to know why there are so many of them littered about the place?" Rising to his feet, the human once more established a comfortable distance between himself and Dark.\n\n"Keh, it's not as if I dragged that many here by my own hand. Most of them gravitated here of their own volition, drawn towards the promise of an eternal dreamless slumber. All souls await that very same fate. Even yours." Rocking his jaw side to side, the jackal waited for his teeth to rearrange themselves to fit his preferred form. \n\n"Anytime now," Russo grunted while trying to drown out the disgusting cacophony of sounds with a steady stream of mental curses.\n\n"Better that they end up here than in Light's realm." Sinew and strands of musculature draping down from a still forming arm, Dark plucked up the errant soul between his pointed fingertips. "She never was too fond of the fact your kind came about from an undesired... collaboration. The deity flicked at the surface of the mote and peeled back translucent layers, each filled to the brim with memories and images of a life lived. \n\n[[Russo: Unwanted unity | History]]