Here's to a 6 HECKIN YEAR LATE MAKER CHAPTER! I'll have an about for where I've been at the end of the chapter. And what a lemon boi it is! Again, the second last section is NOT for the faint hearted, it is plot driven lemon k

The other 6000 words however, all goood :) Thanks for reading!

Another dream, every night. A dream rendered incomprehensible, tokened in it's own weight in Genevieve's soul, body and bed.

Leaving naught but the feeling of rising belly-up from the veil of her dead sleep back onto reality. The explosion of ethereal caws beyond had spiked her awake. The dream's form visageless yet so heavy inside the scalp as if it could pour out of her ears, taking the memory of how to breathe with it. She regulates her air with the winds that roll over the sill. Rest dredged out from behind her lightly crusted eyes. She rubs them clear; already knowing to have herself pointed to the dusken cool morning open to her. She sees the crow again.

At the far edge of the window, atop the windows gate. Dust's black talons hop down to meet her at the bottom with a wingspread of billowing feathers. He lands bubbling almost inharmoniously; with his steps and little head swivels. Creeping toward his master's kept, as if a bit apologetic to the compulsive rain of feathers.

"Quit staring at me like that." The siren croaked, sweeping the feathers out off her makeshift nightshirt and out of her hair. The amulet sways, it's chimes just as slumbersome. Both having had the honour to be cast into a daily ritual under the feathered creature's watchful eye. He has become a cawing alarm clock and the main reason for the lack of tardiness. Genevieve wishes that the irrelevance of time would have finally bled into the immortal beings that she works for. Even with that taken, she has come to enjoy the welcome back into the new kingdom she had come to make her home. At least, for the time being.

"How long has it been?" Something she should have recalled better through each passing of night. The growth of her fingernails, another tally to her mental calendar. The days are so long here. .

She brushes the thought along the unpreened feathers glowing an oil slicked hue reflection of yet another new day in her eyes.

"Look, you got me, I'm awake." She retires him a smile; curls her raised nails into the plumes. "How about some breakfast?" as the bird purrs.

The girl works at the Maker's forge these days. Due to the fiascos of spilled lava layering the workshop on multiple occasions; the third time of the stowaway's clumsy occurrences led Alya to pen another name for the youngest member of the Forge.

"Valus, are you about finished with the new armor for the wee Kit?" The armoress calls from over her broad shoulder. Her brother, the even broader oresmith is on the last slam of his hammer into the scriptured anvil centered in the workshop. The mighty pang shakes long after his turnaround to dip the contents into the malformed waterpot and answers his sister's call to her side. The Kit lets out a sigh to her nickname, refines her tune when she sees the new garb made by the most expertised armsmen in the three realms. Already seeing the shimmering appearance of bronzed glit sewn together with the armor plating through the fresh steam. It makes her glimmer as well, relieved on how much easier training under the scottsman's axe will be. She straightens to attention, holding out her hands, eyes low, a tad snide in privilege.

"Doll clothes." The masked armsman's curtness unchanging as he drops the armor. It nearly slips out of her hands, catching with a stagger from the inertia of the great height. A small thank you is harrumphed through the immeasurable heat on her kilned porcelain skin. Alya chuckles, freckles pushed up with her grin.

"Sounds about right." She beams at him, alternating to the stowaway she deems Kit. "Mythril is a very scarce metal to work with. Barely enough to even glove a makers hand!" Alya's sounds light without the need to laugh at the rouge and steam about the humans face below. "Clearly, we needen't much for you." Aware that Valus is not as content to be reduced to something of a seamstress for dealing with such an undersized project. "It should help with what is to come."

"What's coming?" Genevieve asks, sifting through the ruffles of impeccably light chainmail, marveling quietly at the glowing orange-yellow scriptures in the stone greaves and gauntlets.

"Anything out there." Alya specifies by pointing south into the mouth of the forest. The girl's head follows the direction, where Karn is stationing guard down the road. "We figured, since you may lack in the creation sense. Instead, you will be out in the Forge with the pup." Genevieve noticed the bald head of a giant guarding the wall even from a quarter mile away. He catches her as well, waves. She waves back, the little Kit already making suit until she is caught in the shadow of volumous ginger hair overtaking the gold glow in her own by simply stepping in the way. "Now, now, girl." The smith imposes," You know the drill, that being. . ?"

"'Practice makes perfect and perfect takes pain.'" Oh, how the mantra nails itself ever in behind rolling golden eyes.

"That's right!" If Alya had a gold star, she could press it on the sparring pupil's forehead. Genevieve had better ideas on where she could stick it. Given the small throwing knives nestled in the inner pockets of the stirrups, she perishes the thought. Keeps her eyes straight to the giantess. "You would better get those on, little one. Thane awaits your arrival." She winks, "Give him hell." "Right."Genevieve pivots her footing past to the descending staircase. Even with being treated a bit childishly for the incomparable ages. Alya does look out for her. "I won't make him wait."

It's been hours, but the sun has not fallen yet. Noon mocking two individuals from the highest point in the sky. The giant towering closer to it has had to watch over the educational aspect of his small apprentice's stay in the Forgelands, teaching her hand at the sword. Predictably, progress has been less than promising. A favor Thane rues for requiting to keep and he makes it vocal wherever he can.

"Bah, you're still so slow!" Being one of many crude observations the apprentice hears. She takes another swift stab into the deeply cutover pillar. Lets it roll off her shoulders like any other negativity, but it gets caught in her hair by the knots in her backplates. They're pulling strands; it's stressing her out. "Again!" Her breath hitches when her scalp tears, she pulls the blade harder. Thane observes rather boredly at the off landed scrape at dummy's non-vitals. Splinters hail, another minuscule engravement. "You hear that? It's your hit, it's off balance." Thane advises downward. "You're second guessing." Genevieve hoped to creation that Thane truly did not know of why. She would rather blame it on her stance. Maybe contest the maker's handiwork, begetting the newfound weightlessness of her furious clips throughout the air when they slit the atmosphere. Pretending that each hit dug into the most loathed creatures in her mind. The repetition upon repetition of all the memories so painful; actually dying comes into consideration. She would confess that tendency before taking on the latter. To even think about who she wants with the same name. More specifically, at the end of the blade. She misses the roped target marks in the dummy every time she imagines him. "Awful!" Another pull, hair snaps like patience.

"Enough!" The warclad apprentice stomps up her short frame to the story tall militant she has trained with day in as well as out."Have you probably noticed something about how deep I've been driving this blade in for the past week?" Genevieve gets the look in Thanes mug that sees only immaturity in his pupil. Grimacing, she turns back to try again. "It's. . . Difficult." Her own west country accent gone thick with her developing one from the states, bleeding through the aggrievance of her blow, her first direct hit. Thane chortles at it; agreeing, still unimpressed.

"Aye," The giant concurs passing out of Genna's occupied eyeline, still watches with her other senses. Such as distinguishable rummaging in the weapons rack, "But a warrior's path may not be an easy one, but at least it is simple." There's a low, toying menace hiding in the back of the scottsman's throat. "If ye know how to fight back."

"Oh?" The girl reads in, another hit. "And who told you that?"

"Your awaited master." Thane requites with choice in hand, the leather gloves tightening around the weapon. Only then does Thane get the blue flames after tossing gas the young warrior's fire.

"You filthy old bard, how many times do I have to reassure everyone!? He is NOT MY FUCKING—"The rookie nearly chokes on the outburst as she turns; sees a pommel to the aged, twenty—foot axe she still swallows at the sight of. Her blades mere, only a cutlass in hand and pretty canteen knives to compare on her straps.

"Now, don't fret, I promise you will see your lad again. If 'ye quick enough." It sends shivers up her spine. When he finally turns himself face-to-face, the coldness seizes her straight to her arms, locked back with the emotions she feels that only pile up. Bubbling over like a witch's brew of emotions to what is to come, poised in on the tip of the blade she tries to keep it balanced, unable to allow admittance to her fear in combat. What would her tutor think if she did?

Death's was more impressive.

"Stop it, brain" Her only rational thought while keeping focus on Thane reeling back for the stride of the chopper's swing, The cauldron still obstructs the center. The blade peeking from the side. strangely hopeful that it is not the last time she would see it. And apparently, goes the same for whether she would see what get to recall what the Harvester looked like. How it curved, how he used it. She would have thought Death's use for blades would have bled through toward knowledge of using his own. Dying is not an option if she were to get the chance she dreaded to have again. She only knows to come back when the axe closes in nearly perpendicular to her neck, off by mere degrees. Thane is minimizing speed in hopes to cause only blunt force trauma to the head instead of a clean cut through.

"Now remember." Thane advises, axe picking up speed. She spaces her stance to run, her mind screaming to survive. "Don't think, only move."

As if attempting to coil into a ball, the girl ditches her weapon and tumbles trying to predict the other's own landing. The far more fragile scapula collides with the quaking earth, vision turning to blurry smears in the momentum. First seeing the blends of the sky, back to the ground, a shadow, the axe. Then nothing with the seismic blast of the mere practice shot hitting the ground. The powderized rubble kicks up throughout the training ring, obscuring the vision of both sparrers.

Her sword clanks along the training ring. Thane pries the axe from the deeply buried carves with ease. A warrior never wastes time to check their previous mark, a lesson he seems to forget to teach himself. For he had missed, to his dismay, there was something the girl had left behind mid—tumble in the crumpled gash. He knew it to glow sleek on her head but was already blowing away in golden clumps with the mountain winds.

He blinks his steely eyes at the realization of what he cut instead. "Oi, Genna? You ne'ar . .?" He scans his surroundings. Hears the only the trees, rhythmic panging from metalwork echoing the mouth of the fort, sees falling feathers of the coliseum's preening attendee, the black bird silently all knowing of her whereabouts.

No answer of words, only the feeling of a small stomp behind his metal greaves surprises behind Thane's knee. He turns with axe swinging as a newfound tug stretches behind his tunic, a human weight pulls the fabric behind his neck, a confuzzled choke escapes, Thane spins harder with the limbs flailing and hitting the armor at his back and a high growl below his pierced ear. "Is she serious?"

He lets his feet leave the ground, pushing his back down into the asphalt. Hard.

The self—inflicted blast momentarily snapped him into a daze. The blade at his neck snaps him sober with a small ack! slipping out.

His olden eyes refocus, seeing the knife's blade first. The blood soiling down the siren's dressed neck, past her red lips, up to the source of a broken nose. Her hair freshly separated from the years of growth in her strands cleaved above her shoulders. She can heal the nose at any time with the help of a swig of mordent dew, a known companion in her training aftercare. She has lost with far worse scratches sparring, let alone a haircut. The only true casualty this round, what she lost to survive the first blow.

"You know that you are only able to use that distraction once." He says, with casually raised hands as his brow. The apprentice with her blade unflinching, reaches back with her free hand to feel the sudden chills at her neck from the new space of air. Where once two feet of shimmering split ends no longer hang. She is harder to grab, easier to miss. Her head lighter at the cutoff of who she was, whom took it upon themselves to use such a forsaken handle. As if they were cut down as well, a fragile weight, made even lighter. She smiles through her paining nose; blood has already seeped behind closed lips.

She only exposes the red teeth when she says, "You wish to continue?" almost as boredly when they began, double as snide. She steps off her mentor with a flip of her fresh tousles, releasing him. Catching her tone; Thane grins, wagging a gloved finger as he climbs from the ground, tensed pressure shows in his fist when he uses the boulderous axe like a crutch.

"We shall see who cannot first, child of man." He spreads, switching his stance to default. Genevieve does the same, feet spread apart, head down. Knowing in herself that she will be ready when her cutting blade gets it's first taste of blood. Her strands recoiling shorter into curls in the wind, pulling away her dispositions like yellow grass in a forgotten battlefield. "Again!"

The forests skies grow cloudier, colder with each kilometer away from the Maker's base. The Trees' evergrown branches leave only enough room for a soft, magical energy to weave through them, enchanting the cursed forest. The chants are crude, human in nature. Words of the Third Kingdom said to be lost in void with the species. Yet it still permeates, sourcing point blank against the ears of the youngest ancient.

"If I mention your name
turn around on a chain
then the sky opens up for you.
when we grew very tall
when I saw you so small
then I wanted to stay with you.

Inside me I feel, alone and unreal
and the way you kiss will always be a very special thing to me."

Sat atop Karns unplated shoulder, with her head bobbing lightly with each step of her enormous co-scavenger. Gauntlets grip his shoulder. Now armored legs hanging over his left pectoral like a human sache. He was lost in thought, losing more in her song; just a bit. Karn begins his question.

"Inside me I feel, alone and unreal
and the way you kiss will always be a very special thing to me. . ."

"I don't really get it," His head leans over to look into the specks of cobalt that beseech the interruption of her mid-note. Her eyes perceived not as heavy a blue as the surroundings blend grayer, the symptoms of the siren's spell momentarily broken. "So you're saying that about a dozen billion of you were connected through an endless invisible network. This block being mainly used by most of you for. . . 'cat videos and pornography?'"

Genevieve laughs abjecting lightheartedly with a hand going below her short crinkled nose, hiding a new scar. Her companion can swear that her spell stays when it laces in such a sound. "I guess I could have explained it better. We used it to talk here and there."

"I would have preferred the idea of being out with all that you seemed to have." Karn says, "Life in the City of Angels must have always had something to do. Somewhere to go."

"Oh and the food!" Genevieve emphasized. The two unanimously sighed to the path, heavylidded. Wistful of things they could have tried before they were lost forever. Though, he would have enjoyed seeing the workings of third world weaponry, the imperious populace of concerts and conventions, home gatherings in Genevieve's previous life and youth, the idea of dating. One aspect of basic life that enthralled him to flush considerably and to keep his eyes straight ahead. To his bashful sense; he always kept to himself with the tasks at hand, even with her previous rags it proved difficult. Now, he has gone to how well she fit in her new attire, to which it has become a task of it's own right.

Adorned with a combinating protections of steel, stone, and the Shaman's blessings. Tethered custom in the reforms of a plated (surprisedley breathable) corset. The armor begins along her arms in shallow pauldrons and down her scriptured gauntlets that mirrored the kitten—heeled stirrups down below. To add an extra protection, the armor is covered with a cloak of bronzed mythril. A swaying translucence of her back and underneath; the short tunic does only so much for cover. Luckily, the lined thigh boots attempt to pick up where the metal skirt abstains, leaving a couple of inches space for the exposed thighs. Her holster for her double-barrel is what ties it together, being a combination of leather sheath and drapery strapped to her waist and down her dominant side. The amulet now chained to a light gorget plating her collarbone and around her neck.

She didn't look like a fighter, more like some stolen princess. Yet Karn believed that not to be true. Thane's training for his fighting strategies can be deadly, having heard the boom from the little Kit taking him down earlier this day. It has even made coming back from death's grasp more believable. Her resilient soul has to mean something, as their friendship did to this very point. Humans usually did something about that, he recalls from other conversations they had over the months. It had been a while since he had even known makers his age, this was much worse for him. It is more like connecting with an alien. His mind realigns how to turn the thoughts of her back to just a girl.

"To be honest," Karn admits, coming to a kneel, signaling that this was her stop. "You seemed like a bit more connected to one another than you may have thought." Her back glides down his bicep, the hot blood returns under his shoulder.

"I wish that were true." The fallen human laments, hopping off his arm. "Not like it matters now." Karn watched silently for a couple more short moments. Simply struck without another thought of what to do about man's only daughter with a raincloud atop her head. He would not stand for it. So much so, it gave him an idea.

They have reached their destination of a factory that ran sinuous rivers of water and lava. Genevieve had a feeling it's crumbled state had something to do with The Grim Reaper's last endeavors here. It was a mess where the factory hall had land, constructs with missing souls lie still with the stagnant pools turning to pond as the corpses and abandoned nests of dead beasts. Forestry slowly began to reclaim more corroded areas begotten of corruption. Such a section was blocked by a door that spanned to the ceilings as high as the stone divider was solid.

"The Couldron has parts of that may be a bit active. I'll check ahead, see if it's clear." Genevieve stares but fails to hear Karn as he takes the broken hatch of a few solid metric tons, carrying it effortlessly over his head, she silently recalls that this is normal. `Wait here a moment."

Leaving her in awe and to vanish to the other side, gravity slams the latch shut. Awkwardly, regaining her stance in the short earthquake. Though, it does not mean she is lost for her tasks temporarily keep company with her time alone. Armor, weaponry, metal rubble from past battlefields can recall what it was like to be wielded again as Genevieve, plated shins far submerged into the blistering glow of the her dressed gauntlets of stone, dips in to grab the smolten rock and metals. The lava drips and pops at her skin, and thankfully slides off the lining before it can reach past her corset.

Amassing a pile for them both to lug back home, Genna wonders where he went off to. If there was anyone out here, if she could truly believe she could handle her own. There's doubt in it, having caught the growls of something worse than wolves would test her yet again.

A crucifying mix between the laughter and snarls, starved looking prowlers creep into view from the thickets and holes divoting the stone, more emerge from behind her boast like hyenas. The hell dogs perceiving her to be dead meat, enclosing into a ravenous circle. She drops the equipment belonging to near corpses, laments of how their blades betrayed their ability, she takes her less primitive one off of the strap.

In a fluid motion of cocking the forestock in one hand, her other pulls the trigger only twice. It had consumed the bone and flesh of the dogs in the immense heat on contact by the first. The bullet doesn't truly explode until it collides with the opposite wall in such a vast room in the ruins. Genevieve dashes out the ring, the dogs reform into a pack to begin the chase. Running; already aligning the stock to her shoulder with the turn without need of reloading. Gen takes it as a time to practice, aiming to get them all with them in a perfect alignment of the cosmos. Fires, nearly getting them all in her second shot. The delayed blast ensues, causing a category three in the ruins. The final beast regains footing and closes in quicker than the fallen brothers and sisters. Another boom ensues, Genevieve questions it as she aims for it was not of her clip, or was that Karn slamming the latch in his return and currently running to her side, into the reticule. She gasps and pulls the gun up. The final hyena jumps at her, claws hungrily sharp flailing directly at her face.

Wh—ip!

A splay of soiled roots, smack the prowler out of the air like a fly to the pond over the ledge. Broken bones skip across the lake of the open hall, whining like mad until it loses momentum and drowns in the far distance. As they were nothing like any earthly animal she knew to her planet, Genevieve cheers. holds her recessive hand up to show Karn what a high five is. "Good toss mate!" Unfortunately, she was left hanging. Voluntarily, she returns it back to her side for Karn's hands something other than his usual battlehammer.

Outstretched in the gentle giants gloves dusted with freshly cleaved dirt and broken roots, a maple blossom tree is presented to her. Already loosing roots and peppering petals about from the sudden uprooting from it's set place in the soil. Cicadas chirp for dear life as they fly off the bark and to the sun. Its in such a warm light, Presented to the siren like a bouquet unlike any she had gifted by men or, frankly, anyone in her past. "I had remembered you mentioning this being a formality of your time." He stammers, looking over the damage from the swings at the pack. "I have a feeling I may be off by a bit, am I doing it right?"

She had hoped to see flowers at a hospital bed when she was rescued from the basement she was kept in, but had never reached outside of the ambulance. And here, a gentle giant presents her more flowers than she would ever need. She is gobsmacked, and blushing.

"Karn, not like. . ." One blink, two. She bursts out of the shell, laughing.

Karn confusedly, almost endearingly replies in stammers to the pleasant guffawing from the girl he just attempted. Her dizzying aura saturates the pigments in the blue of the stone, the pink in the blossoms in his hand and in her hair. The rouge in her cheeks stick to him for the responsibility of making her smile for today, contented with such a fault he would take in his blush back.

"I don't know I'm just a pup!"

The sun falls a bitter auburn as the girl triumphs silently up the stairs above the sun, watching it set, finally surviving the day.

She trained with a giant, was attacked by a pack of dogs, and sent another ally down into the abyss of her heart. Exhaustion was a true mortal pain incurable amid this; an old body would self remedy with caffeine taking forms of powder or froth, but her new one needed clearness that her soul's abstinence cannot stand. She figured to at least shrug the feeling off and head to Muria to learn more spells. Being able to sit and take in the world she nearly missed makes meditation all the more medicinal.

She finds Muria had already begun without her. Sitting on the ground with knees tucked under, her staff aligned at her side. The onlooker joins in, seating herself against the foot of the balcony with elbow leaning on her knee.

"I cannot do what you ask of me if you are as on edge as you remain. Sharpness fits you better."

Genevieve does not slack fully, thinking that the Shaman cannot really tell that she's not in a meditation position. Against Genevieve's expectation, she can. "Sorry, have things on my mind."

"Focus yourself." Muria instructs. Her melodicness induces the attendee's compliance, she closes her eyes. lashes dance with the cold blowing wind after another difficult day. Muria's spirit travels like the hues in the wind, helps the chosen focus on her breaths, her temper. A bit deeper, Muria furrows her brow, seeing her cravings and fears melding into a strange co-dependence. Her wants and fears nestled together as if to make room for something worse than them beneath. She will know better of why with another delve, the layer is thick, darker than the void, getting stuck inside worse than tar. Pulling ever deeper as the darkness consumes. Muria laments silently, it's worse than she thought. ". . ."

"What do you look for?" Gen wonders.

"What am I to see?" Muria interjects, pulling back from the dark aura in the shape of a socially inept female, who caught the moment to catch her words.

"Well. . . not necessarily see." She says awkwardly. "But *achem* what do you experience?"

"I only feel the fires and tears of this Realm. The energies infecting it in its' outskirts. What remains in the Tree of Life. The foreign warmth from the amulet and why it was cast away. Why it has returned it's course, within you."

The girl opens one eye, Muria feels the last sliver of sundown in them, charging the amulet with thousands of days of arid heat already saved inside like a third kingdom thumb drive. . . This girl is too ignorant, for Muria at least. A human never does balance with the questions of their existence with what they say to earn such a right to know. To give the child answers that she seeks are not seen fit to tell her upfront. She will only answer one. ". . . Is he coming back?"

"That rider truly does plague you." The mind seeker comments. "It is not for what you possess anymore, it is only a tool. You however, are a key to his mission. One of the chosen to The Balance."

A nice title, the small one had to admit. At least it removes any sort of hunches of Death's abandonment. The oracle has at least buried that idea, she knows more than her. More than herself, she worries. "You have a life worth saving, believe it or otherwise." For some reason, the girl could not believe cryptography in her spoken tongue. Muria senses Genevieve holding herself, her aura turns gray.

Genevieve keeps her mouth closed, looks down, ashamed to show it moving "So many were lost and I just happened to show up here? Just a random callgirl." There was a silence between them, but it was a feeling of growth that Muria felt far and few between millennia. "There were people worth saving out there. . . why me?" A feeling of change, to adapt to a dissimilar world. When flowers warp to grow into the sun or rot in the shade. Slow and steady like the vines sprawling around them. Moving ever so slowly away from the human's aura. "I've been having these weird dreams. Ones I can't remember. . . "

"I am aware."

"Can you get rid of them?"

Muria laments to the setting sun. "That cannot be done . . ."

" Please. ." The flower hopes. "You seem to have a better idea of why more than anyone. Don't make me have to return there to find out myself. If I see it again," To fuck it with careful, says how she feels, "I feel like it will kill me if I do."

". . . Some things cannot be left in the darkness as you wish it."

"That still doesn't help me!" Genevieve raises her voice to stir an outcome. Muria thinks of her choices. "You could at least try to explain to me what you feel, what's going on?"

"We are done." Would she warp?

Or would she rot? "What's happening to me at night!?"

"We are done!" Muria says again more emphasis without the need of anymore force. "Head home, that is something you handle yourself. My charms cannot heal what ails within you." Genevieve, feels her waterline hurt, a bitter taste in her mouth that Muria would know the explanation for. but furrow tightly as she growls tightlidded and decends down the stairs at breakneck speed, one of the few orders she has followed.

The girl must choose. "Just know that you are powerful enough to deal with these inner demons yourself."

Nightfall is young and blind. A murder takes flight en masse like black stars. It's only light is the amulet below. The aura glowing to guide its master home amid darkness. It's getting dimmer as she hurries steadily along the path to the outskirts of the forge. Sleep would probably be the next best option to deal with a strange feeling going by. Probably, Genevieve thought, rummaging in the middle of her corset, a cigarette as well.

A light goes to add another star for her walk home, to add another flame at Genevieve's fingertip but she cannot focus the spark. Seeing the sakuras on the walkpath pull her head down and hands away. Familiarizing the leaves with the tree she was gifted from her hammer-headed comrade. Having set deep into the ground in her absence; the leaves familiarizing themselves with the new terrain. The shape of it seeking assistance from the window panes she has looked through every morning. Assisting it into a willowing curve, trickling delicately from what the young tree has been dealt in travel. She steps through the door, already trickling into the room and like curtains, it shields the outside in like slumbery plum shades. If there were a way to get a high enough leverage to absolutely glomp the giant gremsman, the uplifted femme would do it. If he can go the same shade as the tree for something so endearingly wistful. Climbing would prove a difficult out, the pup being double past a horse's height. Perhaps a horse would fit the position for trajectory's sake! She chuckles to herself, a horse of her own. As if there could be any left.

It takes her a bit of trial and error, but she manages to undress out of her complicated exterior and crawls into bed in a peasantdress. She tucks in, soft face to the crumbling ceiling. Night appears in blue as her eyes fix to the darkness, she feels her dreams may be darker, but she cannot afford staying awake in insomnia. There is a twisted desire as to what awaits her in the dreams she cannot remember.

Exhaustion, the sore weight of her world pulls her down. Watching the leaves filter into rotten colors, floating above the surface tension, too light to follow her to darkness. The mortal dreams now; feeling the dip of unconsciousness, but feels her head at another line of even thicker black breaching around her, pushing and pulling. Enveloping her from behind with tar she vaguely feels aside the feeling of heaviness, of wanting to sink. The voices give hands under her skin and tell her to relax into the liquid, to let the seepage wrap around her like a gift to corruption. A long pull in all coaxes her to vanish into the deep, promising that she would enjoy it.

Bending through the void, time warping physics. The walls now the ground. The ground guiding her feet to flatland. She opens her eyes. Before stalactites of corruption, a figure standing before them, looming in the dark room.

Subconsciously, Genevieve knows the shape, the tattoos and scars. The gap between chest and bicep. The green lights along them like absinthe in her eyes omitting a contact high, hazing about the dark. Making his voice reverberate, as if he were already at her ear.

"Aren't you going to greet a friend, Genevieve?"

It feels like the dial tone of an unhooked phone, a disturbed failure to answer. The distanced mortal cannot bring herself to be anything else for the cindering red that she has come to know of this figure is absent. Neither are the wafts of ghosts in his amulet. Knowing in her heart for even in the darkness, even Death held light.

"That isn't something that I would call you, Death." Genevieve raises a hand to her own empty space. The amulet, her weapon is absent of as well. It feels surreal, a dream arranged with a silent invitation, an agreement to come unarmed. "Why are you here?"

The Nephilim's laugh is venomous at the tough attempt at inquiry from such a soft girl. The doe brings her arms to clasp eachother at her sternum. The figure chuckles so credibly to the real thing, the mannerisms of a shaking head even fall in place to memory.

"Do you truly believe that I can be in such a place?" Genevieve dislikes that answer, the corruption glowing overcasts the cold vacancy in the mask. Uncomfortably attempts cover even though his looming shadows do just that, getting larger as he grows closer to her. This figure comes to her like an unfinished puzzle. The subconscience still manages to put together the some of the pieces. "Definitely not as your precious horseman. Not in your dreams." She lets go of herself, wincing at the truth of the illusion. A refraction of a small want in her soul. Drawing closer to what cannot be real. "But, if you were aware of it's irrelevance," He lets out his hand open clawed, beckoning her. "Why not ride it to the very end?"

Somehow, she brings herself to place her hand, passes her eyes down to where his left hand ventures while the right one that's held ascends, back up to the nails dragging in grace along her cheek. The finger pads course as the palms, she fills it with her fresh cut hair when she leans into it in grim familiarity. Like the mismatched tenderness of a broken home, she rests in it. Her eyes recenter beseechingly to attention by a thumb resting on her lip. It cranes her neck back to lock eyes with the towering, dark stare behind the duplicate's mask. "Here," he orders simply. The black, sharp claw strokes the lower half of the soft muscle. Welcoming it inside better than second nature.

A feeling so lifeless while her blood pumps to live, the feeling they shared together, when the siren's pain and Nephilim's regrets became one, romanticizing a despicable, simple motion. Much like the slicked charade in between her teeth. The jagged claws cold, just shy of cutting her behind molars.

This nature is of her own breed. Her mortality so easy to comprehend as humans were. A need to consume themselves, creating more generations of mortality as if the insult to injury preserves their own. If this is all it was; a mere simulation of it, why does it matter of who she is to him? What she is now, what she wants.

For the heat to die down, to rock his fingers more. He obliges with a heavy "tsk," and drives them deeper.

Genevieve slacks her tongue beneath the strength of his palm, salivating; reciprocating. A scrape at her uvula triggers déjà vu, passing thoughts of crashing against walls with him inside her until her eyes fluttered a numbly white. Feeling such releases that ran scarce in her physical time, imprisoning her every night, with each curl of Death's thick, heavy hand.

He pulls such extremity away slowly. Tracing a draped silk path of saliva from her lower lip to his hand. Their only visible connection; besides the words he shares. "Do you know who I am?"

Air rushes back through the freedom of her mouth in haughty breaths. "What. . ?" The fraudulent mask sighs disappointedly, wiping the hand, it warrants the girl's face to twist. She is stark naked in front of him, what else would a subconscious projection of intimacy need? No matter, she would rather toss away missing pieces already too complicated for a fever dream, to play with an incomplete puppet for yet another. Her falsehooded rider choreographed to give all that the wants she could quench.

It feels desperate, sinking into Death's projection solid in dreamstate, but missing reasoning that were meant for answers of why. Even then, she would rather take the hand back in, hold him in the dark. Wanting to try once over, but the pleasure sours bitter with the duplicate's clench on her chin. Knowing only firmness, getting tighter. The frozen absence in the eyes of the mask nor lights or movement cuts her breaths to shivers. Takes the hands in his to get them moving again. She then tries to push until her hands shake, and staying shunt until he shoves as quickly as he was still. Remembering how much bigger he is than her. Influencing his hands, how much bigger they are than her face as he wraps the fingers around her skull in a taught fist.

Her free eyes between the fingers widely take in the emerging blue glow peering back in a look unbeknownst in Death. Muffled screams and heat absorb into the blood stenched hand, lifting her feet roughly and egregiously off the ground. Small, bare arms slam to a wraparound of his. They only avail just enough to make her glide along the veins loosely grounded in the corrupted room. A once soft voice airless shrills muffle all the way to the wall. The collision cracks a shock of pain to conduct more attached memories of dreams previous. The familiar smell of blood in the tips. Crushing her tight to the walls much like this. How these dreams would end. Whether it ended with her breathing ragged against the mask, or amid screams and in scratches that could not produce blood.

"Do you KNOW who I am?" He rattles her by the neck like game he hunted days for. The voice as even as if only tested for moments. Genevieve can barely change her airflow enough to whimper. Her eyes loosen, the grips around the feigned rider's massive arms fall slack from the stance. The passion gone the new feeling of hopeless compliance vultures her as if to not waste. To which becomes all that she can see in the corneas before her and there, she knows his name. The dealmaker's only translucence in his disguise as Death. The shape shifted demon at her earthly deathbed with the eyes of electric blue. "I was the first demon to cross to your world." Erasule begins, "The first hand on humanity. The first step to the end. I started with the smallest, weakest one. A forlorn spec of the disease. So eagre to take my hand, to tear out your own soul. . . Weak!" He could paint the walls with her back in the poisonous grasp. Coughing and sputtering onto the veins of what felt to be plastic as to keep from the face of the false lover;the sheen of where the shadow continues to loom over. "Do you not see how this has affected you?" She brings her vision to acute with the corrupted light, an evil space with a demon bending her mind she would have called initial savior but now. . . What is he? For she does not know. She never wanted to know. But now the lich made a place in her dreams. He had settled in like he never left, like he was always there.

Even in the basement.

Even inside her soul.

And apparently, for months, inside her body.

"Although," The demon gets lower, slides the crackled ivory down the nape of her neck, fighting his way into the crevice against Genevieves vocal chords. A frozen, unfeeling barrier to how they retract en roar through grit teeth when her leg is grasped. Filling palms with her thighs, holding a tight sling around their sunken hips. "I must thank you for willingly giving away half of your soul. The chasm Vulgrim left behind made plenty of room for me to fit into that lovely vessel. It's made you filthy." He motions to the rock, eyes thin against the girl's dripping saucers collapsing with the other leg, breathing hard through the small space between crushes to nothing. "That accursed little rock in your heart has allowed me into your room. Your mind. your insides. Making you writhe. Making you come. Every single sleep. To remind you of what you are."

Lips quiver, swallowing back the stab into her soul of the lashivous reason she was brought into this world. At the readjustment to strattle him, to poison her view of the rider forever. It was impossible, she wanted her Death more than the demon would know. And the demon's sorry excuse for a duplicate would never suffice. She knocks back her tears in hateful eyes boring into the horrific false prophet. "You act like you're so sure."

"It will stick," Ghoulish confidence. A trait she always hated, she expected more from demons. "With enough times that I remind you. By the time it's over, you always do."

The siren, pinned with the straddle against the wall, her nightshirt raised to her stomach. She had no claws in her dreams, no amulet, no gun. She could not allow such vulnerabilities in her way. She remembers Karn, her real Death. The weapon she always had all along. Before the Apocalypse, before her death being her initial end. When her voice brought the attention in clubs. When the missing posters moved a little too slow for so many prayers. When it was snuffed out by the hand of fellow man. The one who tore out of her neck all those years ago. Another hand ready to do it all over again every night in her dreams, she grew colder, angrier. Not again, demon forgets what realm he's lasciviously meddled for it was never his.

To try and control her in her own mind? To make her want to die? When she the true reaper waited in the physical world to take her from it? He wants to sour her view of him with a mark unhealable. And unlike the others, this dream is the last. She can finally make it so by destroying him here in a land of make believe.

So she breathes, and she exhales her language soft and shaking, beginning to her unnatural spell tethered in.

"Can we just be. . ." She stops squirming, even with hearing belts below unclasp, she refocuses her breaths. "honest. . . "

He growls along the lines of, "Silence." at the sighing voice, Ignoring the harmless hand that raises to the demon's exposed neck, follicles stand to attention.

"These are the. . ." The press at her skin she queasily shudders, holding back tears, her voice continues remarkably amid the tight hold around her waist. Shaking hands graze underneath . " Require—ments. . ."

She thought of what made her happy. Her shows, practicing in her studios she rented out of pocket. The acceptance into her prestigious dream schools.. Feeling a weightless strength to dig into his chest. Nails breaking the disguised skin, the subconcience undiscouraged.

She continues slowly, dissociatingly. Telling her somber tale of beauty during an act of betrayal, even with teeth bared tight.

"If you think you can be my one and only true love . . . "

It annoys him, the demon disguised pulls his head, as if to watch the face she makes as he attempts to let himself inside. But her nails finally sink in around his neck pull him from realignment. Squeezing with her fingertips sinking, painfully crushing him. He staggers, grabbing them back without avail. Genevieve gains footing when the fake Nephilim falters the lead of the role. He pins himself against the opposite wall of her mental prison. His hateful, pained eyes mirror in Genevieve's furious tears falling from her cold, tentative stare. Not even breaking note let alone to blink. She places a hand on the ivory mask. Crushes it like aluminum. Muffled curses amid her song. Only then does she grant welcome to her

"You must promise to. . . Love me."

Erasule sounds muffled under the pressure. The naphilim disguise cracks at the skin and the demon bleeds along the streaks where Genevieve's have dried, dragging ever downward on her skin. Rolling with the true smoke of puffing the demons disguise, Erasule's true self releasing from the openings.

"And damn it, if you f—fuck me . . ." The demons true form pops out from the seams with tar, gushing, flailing, cursing, doing nothing but muck up Genevieve's soul grip. Only oozing more and more into the black polymer. He looses muscle; the whiteness of false skin returns to zombified black and grey. His eyes roll back to the point of where pain becomes numbness. The fire in the girl burning only brighter. "—Over I will rip your fucking face. . !" She pulls, a full swing, tearing the mask in rivets off his face. Knocking the demon back to scream in egregious pain in his own spread open to her in black blood.

He turns to his true form damaged to badly sunken visceral divots of where the girls hands sank. His face incomprehensible than when it was masked with his own when they met. It was his turn to fade away. he melts into himself before thickly becoming nothing more than dissipation into the confines of Genevieve's memory. The proud owner of it standing tall from the ground. Watching the presence leave her. Eyes finally sharpen with the darkness of the room. Remembering the basement. His name in her heart.

She says the last word of the song. Like the last word to a protection spell. A familiar caw of a raven from beyond remind her its time to go home to the living.

. . Apart."

She rises from the waters, through the sands of time. Returning to the awoken shore of pelts over her. The petals of the foreign tree spread along her and the sillside of her sheets. Raindrops follow to her neck and face. Her eyes then creak open. Rising her head, she sees the crow again.

She wonders how many times it's happened. How many times had Erasule had snaked inside the body in her mind. Last night was final, she figured such vermin would not try and make themselves vulnerable the same way again. She knew that all was left to continue. Through a storm already dropping into her room. She wanted to cry with the cold rain, her waterline feels iced over, unable to produce anymore tears.

The girl goes numb, cold. Reaches up to lock the cold outside, perhaps the weather would allow her to rest off the day. She deserved it amid it all, did she not?

No, a startling bark through an onyx beak contests the mortals beseechment, jumping at her for the handle. Human hands dodge in time, currently thankful that Dust had not reduced to pecking with such a sharp beak. She hums bewilderingly at the crow's behavior, alerted by his feathers spiking in all directions. Some to the brewing storm, others to the rumble down in the horizon. Genevieve only recalled this temperament when she asked her rider about his past, when she pulled a gun on him in the Dead Kingdom. Not until now, not until the thunder turned into galloping strides.

Her pupils contract so small her eyes are solid hazel. Dust breaking from her side and flying hurriedly into the horizon makes her heart sink to prove her twisting guts right. She climbs across her bed and through the high frame and to follow for the bird on foot. They stop to a teetering stance on the stone ledge as all she has to do is follow the clouds. Where gray skies glowed celadon at the end of the sphere line That Despair treads. Sputtering as he crosses the bridge to the Forge. Where The Tree of Life rumbled with him as the pale mask held rein. Fire burns handprints in the Karn's birch when she see's the true embers within the bone. Unlocking the fire free from her core, corruption nestled within. Genevieve's routine she knew is slain with one gaze out beyond, Tri—Stone suddenly did not feel like home anymore.

Hi there!

I want to thank you for leaving little notes and thoughts for my work in passing! I was surprised to find them a few months ago and thought I would type this out here and there over my winter vacation. My new semester just started for my second degree after 2 years away. Technically an adult thing. I've worked some interesting jobs at adult places and I'm around lot of people in my life that tell me that I'm better off leaving immature things behind. . . so uh I didn't do that.

I love writing this fic! I really wanted to fit every single Maker as canonically as I could in one big go.

About the end chapter, No. That is not how Genevieve's powers work. It works as a lullaby, for some and not really much else. . This dreamstate's case however, it's more symbolical. .

I'm writing this fic as a survivor. BUT LETS JUST SAY ITS FOR THE ARTBLOCK HAHAHA

but I have been busy! Between my commissions, schoolwork and the regular type. It's been a great help for improving me, pushing and the like. . . probably re edit with updated commentary.

I don't want to seem like I'm this constant revisionist.

Please read my comment guidelines on my profile if you wanna check them, it has my art/ask blog!

Here's the songfic key!

1."Late Night" by The Mortal Coil, I like to think Genevieve sounds closest to Elizabeth Frasier. What were you expecting honestly if you're even in this far? lol

2."Highschool Sweethearts" By Melaine Martinez, more specifically the first like, 50 seconds. it's so acoustic when you hear and read the lyrics it really sets the dread in but yall could contest me on that :3