[color=gray][CENTER][img]https://i.imgur.com/DxXCQ1u.jpg[/img][/CENTER][indent][sub][COLOR=978184][B]Location:[/B][/COLOR] [I]The  Gulo Dorms - Pacific Royal Collegiate & University.[/I][/sub][sup][right][COLOR=#978184][b]Dance Monkey #4.006:[/b][/COLOR] [I]dread wolf.[/I][/right][/sup][/indent][center][sup][color=#2e2c2c]_____[/color][color=#373534]_____[/color][color=#403d3c]_____[/color][color=#494644]_____[/color][color=#524f4c]_____[/color][color=#5b5754]_____[/color][color=#64605d]_____[/color][color=#6e6965]_____[/color][color=#77716d]_____[/color][color=#807a75]_____[/color][color=#89837d]_____[/color][color=#928b85]_____[/color][/sup][sup][color=#9b948d]_____[/color][/sup][sup][color=#928b85]_____[/color][color=#89837d]_____[/color][color=#807a75]_____[/color][color=#77716d]_____[/color][color=#6e6965]_____[/color][color=#64605d]_____[/color][color=#5b5754]_____[/color][color=#524f4c]_____[/color][color=#494644]_____[/color][color=#403d3c]_____[/color][color=#373534]_____[/color][color=#2e2c2c]_____[/color][/sup][/center][INDENT][sub][color=#978184][B]Interaction(s):[/B][/COLOR] &&[/sub][SUP][RIGHT][COLOR=#978184][b]Previously:[/b][/COLOR] [color=gray][I]the undone. & rare birds.[/I][/color][/right][/SUP]
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Amma Cahors is tired.

It goes beyond the leagues of physical fatigue and ventures into the unknown chasm of a hungering void reminiscent of a famished creature, a well of yearning that situates betwixt flesh and bone and weighted her body liken to stone. Rigid and unyielding and rapt with obsidian inlays of that once resolute willpower that personified the woman of cruelty many assumed her to be. The unknown, the in-between, the All that was Made, the –

– who was she? What was she?

Was she Amma, was she Tiamat, was she Ammar —-
Was she The Foundation, The Dragon, The Beloved

	[i]Was she the advocate for the depraved and the unhinged. 
	Was she rage, pain. 
	Was she –[/i]

Did Amma ever exist, whoever it was that gazed on back through silver and glass with eyes of the void wrought with crystalline blue and power that clung to her dilated pupils constricted in a hellish ring of scarlet. Liken to twine, chains maybe, that defiled her glare the more she looked on with darkened circles blemished upon the hollows of her eyes. The return to the Gulo Dorms had been met with silence and trepidation, heralded by the figure as she that loomed through the doors. Her chin lifted and eyes narrowed, a dominating impression, the mystery that often shrouded her likeness now lesser by the realization that Amma could be wounded, hurt– that she was indeed, [i]human[/i].

Did that now make her a student of P.R.C.U, was she a true member of Blackjack? Did she deserve to be? Did she want to be?

Her mind wonders, gestures knotting through damp locks of ebony that twisted over raised ink and scars. No matter the answers to her inquiries, she would always be one thing above all: a monster. And though the world had enough to reign true in the nightmares of their reality, she remained as one of a forsaken beast that had nowhere to call home. Neither here on the island, nor there among pyramids in an ocean so tranquil and deceiving, and though she may return there (she pauses then, fingers stilled before the shaking begins anew) it did not mean she would be welcomed back or even belong. If she ever did. Suppose she could ever be free. She made it no secret how she felt in the last year, refusing to entertain conversation and better acclimated herself to remain garbed in shadow and distrust, playing well into the role she had to perform and adhere to. A once ensured sanction of purpose that now gave pause and hesitation to the finality of her words whenever spoken aloud. She smooths her thumb against the pout of her lip, swollen still with her bite, a bruise of violet christened to the pink of her full mouth from where the fear of the dark unknown had almost seen her undone. 

The last few hours at the infirmary had been taxing upon her mortal frailties and mental constitution, her emotional aptitude fairing even less as she considered the name unspoken, the name that heralded more power over her spirit than all the epitaphs carved onto the wall of obsidian fortified to her heart and soul. [i]He knew her mother.[/i] He knew Charlotte Cahors and somewhere within she yearned for the answers a child of barely ten had been asking for the last ten years and more: where did she go? And above all else: why? Deeper still than those fated inquires too she wondered if she had the will, the constitution, to receive those answers. Would any of it matter? The past would remain as it was: ill-bound and fated to the cruelty of many this world yearned for, the power of humanity spent and lost to the depravity of man’s ever-persistent inclination to pillage the different; the misunderstood; and not being as they should. 

She dropped her towel, left bare and vulnerable, water clung to her modesty heavily endowed in scars and ink, and palmed over the crisscrossing of pale, silvered malice wrought through her flesh and heralded with the likeness of a netherworld she was owed. With a held breath Amma returned to the adjacent bedroom, gaze immediately snapped and drawn to the bouquet that sat upon the edge of her academic desk where books and papers were aligned, beset with spiral-bound notebooks and a plethora of miscellaneous objects afforded to a student.

Earlier in the day she awoke and waited for her discharge paperwork, but there had been something off in the first encroaches of dawn, pale light chased by the peculiar sensation that she had missed something vital, her room awash in the dregs of her powers that sparked and fizzled out on the cusp of her fretted emotions then and there. The delicate effect of Aiden Roth’s gratitude weighted through her body and the realization and lingering toils of emotion that came to when she had saved Lorcán’s life. Death then, the reaper more so, had come to her that fated hour and wrent asunder her nightmarish world, to exact the toll stolen from their influence in illustrations of fiendish black that shattered through her body. A creature she knew naught of that screamed and shrieked at the beast within that bellowed with the might of life undone, fissures that formed unto blue eyes of her likeness beset on a face of perfect nihilism that roared in defiance and possessive qualms to the life that she had saved; again.

Not for the first time, and not for the last. The many lives she spared and saved and touched, and barely there were words of gratitude spun from one who affected her more than most, but refused to even meet her gaze. Even so, Blackjack (well, maybe only some, she thinks) would dub her the malicious and be done with it. To become nothing like her, as one had sworn.

Would they know; would they care?

But then she had noticed the flowers, their arrangement is done with purpose albeit with an amateur’s grace by the uneven heights of many different blooms. Their presence gave her pause and Amma wondered who would’ve visited her in the night, coming to her after the realizations of her own heart, and thus she reached forward –

Only for her powers to respond immediately, arcs of red shearing through the ebony petals of a rose, eyes rounded and lifted in surprise as words slithered against her mind: 

[i]Objective.
Mission.
A different breed.
A task; a challenge.
[/i]

	[color=000000][i]Oh, Amma. Tiamat. You’ve done it. We’ve done it. A prize possession. I’ve found 	it now- through you, I will finally — there is so much we can do. 

	So now, let us begin.[/i][/color]

She had balked, the shaking in her hands beginning, and for hours they would not stop, they would quake and even in the garden beyond where she had basked in the sun with a winged girl who now understood her and the horrors endured, they would continue to tremble. Her hands would shake for a time unseen and unknown, the world beholden to the delicacy of Amma Cahors’ fear.

	[color=ffffff][i]Oh, what beautiful flowers! We’ll make sure they get back to your dorm with your things, now 	before you go, we just want to…[/i][/color]

The arrangement stood there as a representative of something unnamed, but she could not ignore the spooling words through her mind eternal, words she had heard in another place, another time that now swept through her tenfold as she studied each blossom and pondered their meaning. Whispered words undone through the dead of night as she trembled with the exhaustion of her powers shuddering through every link of bone and nerve.

And it was there the ringing began, something unseen that began small, a slowly building crescendo of a delicate, peeling sound before it crested ever higher with that dreaded noise. Betwixt her ears it lanced back and forth and to and fro, a hollow resonation and a droning echo that speared through her lobe with a terrifying sunder of darkness eternal and shadows without. Amma sunk nails through her tangled hair and scoured over her scalp to cease the noises toiling through her shattering mind, a silent scream peeling through her lips as the ringing continued evermore. It rose and then fell, a wave of sharp and intense sound as images flitted on through her mind’s eye, the third and all-seeing globe bisected with black and red– of shadow and blood and phosphorescent blue. Numbers ran by there, names and labels and metal in chains that looped over her body, brought her to her knees almost as fated blooms of scarlet power summoned themselves upon the stillness of the world beholden to her sudden weaknesses.

Helpless to her rage and pain, helpless against the creature within that would seek the revenge owed to her. Helpless to her might that shimmered in crimson cords that snapped and pulled and linked through her flesh as a cage of powerful intention. Splayed gestures fell over the glow of her eyes, peering through the fringes of her shaking hands as she pulled in shuddering breaths and speared nails against her temples to reign in the loose confines of her control.

Control, she pleaded, control. Even still as the ringing climbed higher and higher, accompanied by the buzzing of something else and the slithering trio of serpents she could still feel bunched over her skin. As if still bound and knotted over her shoulders to flick black tongues against her skin to feed upon her agony. That now clamored with want to feast upon the lingering figments of death and poison she had destroyed the night before to save the life of another. Her palms still recalled the sensations of her power sluicing through his body and the heat of his manifest banked and stifled before it answered to the callings of life. Her arms still bore the weight of power as she descended into the hated dark and the gates of hell that was nothing more than a shattered door and depths beyond a room she could not enter. Her past was shackled and bound as she was with a sliver of pain that vibrated down her entire body and wound her spine tight in tumultuous ache. Skeletal links through her back, the scars emblazoned anew as weariness swept through her and listed through her steps as she finally peeled her eyes away from the flowers and dressed on repetitive motions. Black on black, cotton materials and white accents lined through the shorts she donned, small comforts afforded to be without roommates to complicate her musings as she worked through her mass of damp hair. 

Her phone rings, vibrating across her desk. She ignores it, just as she has ignored the others, the texts illuminated back and forth, the news revealed of Haven’s rescue and Lorcán’s recovery. Amma knows these because she had [i]been there[/i], but even so, reading them had done something to her and she had wanted nothing more than just to sleep. At that, she recalls the one text she could not bring herself to answer but had confirmed her return to his bedside, no words to be spared because she simply had none to give. The soothing of her erratic mind, placating her demons alongside his own, melding into one another in simplistic comfort and understanding. He had admitted things to her, and she to him, but Amma could not fathom the complexity of admitting more than what ailed her upon the surface of her soul. Muted thoughts and feelings, she contemplated, allowing her ebonette strands to dry unbound. Her phone rings again, and still she does not answer, but this time she looks at least, to screen her persistent caller.

And there, she freezes. A number unsaved but one that had called her many nights ago on the beach, where the start of all of this had begun and where she allowed herself to forget. If only for a moment.

It rings again. And again. And again.
Missed calls stacking up and up and up. 

Her phone skitters in place and she slams her palm over the glass of it, lines of red wrought through the surface of her desk as it vibrates against her palm; demanding to be heard, demanding to be seen. Demanding to be answered as it rang again and again.

Amma’s fingers curl in and surround the fortified casing, intending to shatter it entirely, to destroy this simple and damning connection until it finally rings once more, and the name illuminated there in the descending sun that casts her room aglow in striking lines of vermillion, the herald of twilight where she wavered for a few seconds, debating on the answer.

Before it falls to her inbox (that she has not set up) she accepts the call with a whisper, his name spun from her mouth in a perplexed utterance, laced heavily with anticipation and punctuated by her breath.

	[color=#978184]“Gil?”[/color]

The following timbre that sweeps through her is damning in the implications they had chosen to ignore, the comforts spared in the ward now slowly bleeding out onto something more. His uncertainty gives her pause, if only for a moment before she sighs, a wealth of sound edging into soft breaths before she whispers a single word that could potentially seal her fate unknown:

	[color=#978184][i]“Okay.”[/i][/color]


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