[Content warning: graphic deaths, blood, graphic vampiric feeding, vague mentions of nudity and similar content.]
Locked away in the private, restricted ‘archives’ of the Sensorium, only for the Factol’s Reserved Experiences, is a sensory stone. For whatever myriad reasons – rank, special-permission, so on – you got access to this stone.
Given permission to access it, with the appropriate warnings as to how some of its contents may possibly be, to put it in Sensates' terms, bold and shocking and, most of all, daring, you focus your attention on it. In a few moments, it activates, and plunge into its memories.
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You come into awareness of your body and self first. You feel silks adorning your body. You hear distant conversation and laughter. Still, there are certain incongruences that may strike you, perhaps, as uncanny. Your sense of touch, even at your own body, is a little different, sharper, but less warm. There’s a stillness in you that feels it should not be. You notice, then, that you are not breathing. Not suffocating, not drowning underwater. Your lungs are simply dead. There is no impulse in you to breathe.
Eventually, the scents, sounds and sights of a cloudless, full-moon-bright night greet you. The view overlooks a beautiful forest, sprawling down from the hilltop you find yourself on. A path of well-chiseled stones winds its way down from a gate, far below the balcony you stand on, until the roads disappear into the creaking trees and the songs of night-time creatures within. Just beyond, a little farther on the horizon, you see the beautiful, colorful night-time lights of a city district, which the winding path likely leads to. Even from afar, the artfulness of the winding, organic and low-roofed architecture is impossible to miss.
Your hands touch cold stone, and you look down to see your own exquisitely manicured nails. Your wrist is bedecked with white-gold and rubies. Behind you, echo muffled noises of laughter, conversation, and music. The sounds suddenly heighten in volume and clarity, followed by footsteps.
A hand closes over yours on the stony balcony. Delicate, dark skin decorated with violet-painted nails and golden rings.
"Is all in place?" The husky, silken voice behind you sends shivers down your spine. You feel your feet locked in place and a deep certainty that you'd not dare move even if you wanted to. The urge to respond to her, to respond in the proper manner, wells within you and leaves your lips without a moment's thought.
"Yes, Mistress."
When you turn to face her, you meet a pair of golden eyes staring back at you, framed by braided black hair. In an instant, you feel it: you have a bond with this person, this woman. By herself, she has a beauty, an air, that makes it so hard to refuse the smile in those golden eyes and black-painted lips. This is deeper than mere charm, however. You feel a tug, a pull, a bond that shackles your very limbs. You know there is nothing of the sort happening, no magic, no active attempt to subdue you. The very blood in your veins is bound to her will. What you feel is a mixture of love and utter submission, but more: something deep inside wishes you could surrender and swim in that state forever.
"Good. Perfect, my sweet little spider." There bares a deadly, dark duo of fangs, with a smaller pair on the bottom of the smile she graces you with. "Your sisters will not help you in this - this is your trial, my dearest. They will accompany me below - and we will await Catalyn in my chambers." Your pale hand taken in both of hers, she twines her dark fingers with yours. "And remember: keep her... companion and their old mentor alive. They'll be our entertainment for many evenings~"
"It will be done, Mistress." Acquiescence comes from your lips with the same, utmost ease.
Her stepping away leaves you with a cold, a sudden chill of absence, almost despair. Still, she pauses by the far end of the balcony, overlooking a grey-white stone courtyard. "Ah. It seems there are two complications, down below. You may wish to deal with them, first." She - beautifully garbed in white-and-gold silks - turns to smile affectionately at you, before her body dissolves into afog that wisps upwards in the windless night air.
Below the balcony, two stories down, where but hours before you were receiving guests in lavish carriages, now there is but a single horse-drawn cart. You note its contents are hidden by a brown cloth cover. Behind it, two armored figures.
A pang of irritation, distaste wells within you when you see that, of all things, the cart's wheel has trampled over the bed of roses meticulously laid along a shadowed path leading from the courtyard into a garden.
Suddenly, a sense of displacement grips you. A wild rush of vertigo plunges you downward, as you lose all sensation of your body and limbs, like diving into a frozen lake.
Just as suddenly, the first memory fragment fades into the next.
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Your mind re-focuses, and the first thing you experience is a voiceless cacophony of… urges under your skin. It feels like something has just been let loose. Like a pressure that, at some point, had been building up inside you was finally released, and you feel the urge to howl, to hiss, to laugh, to kill, to dominate. It’s a shimmering, icy hunger that rips through your cold skin. Your every sense is starkly heightened – sights, sounds, scent, even touch.
A man stands before you. A rugged figure wearing chainmail decorated with the symbol of a longsword and a sun stylized around its hilt.
Your gaze focuses on his eyes, and they look back at you with utter emptiness. An unthinking, unblinking stare. With a simple effort of maintaining concentration. You keep him drawn into you. A feeling of rightness, of dark, satisfied power, draws a soundless laugh from your lips as you hold his will under your absolute authority.
His hand holds a sword, and you know by the way it glints under the stark moonlight that it’s made of silver. It is drenched in blood. You savor what just transpired in your mind: remembrance of a scream, begging him to come back to his senses and stop, of four swings of that sword, sounds of flesh being sickeningly, wetly hacked away and gargling whimpers of sorrowful pain.
At his feet lies a decapitated body of another man, wearing armor identical to his. The resemblance between the two is obvious. His gaze, too, is as lifeless and blank as that of the companion he murdered with his own hands.
Deep inside you something stirs wide awake at the spectacle, a wordless voice, an animal under your skin that salivates at the upcoming feast. You can, quite literally, feel the sharp, lethal fangs in your mouth tingle.
It's at this point, perhaps, that your feelings as the viewer of the sensory stone may begin to conflict. Do you feel disgusted at such delight displayed, felt, at such dark deeds? Do you feel drawn to the temptation of that feeling of utter, absolute dominance?
There's no time to dwell on it, before the scent comes to you. Blood. Your every thought, your every instinct, turns to it. There's nothing in this world that can surpass this aroma, this taste already on your tongue. It is warmth, it is delight, it is pleasure made manifest. You could not turn away from it even if you wished. Its siren call owns you. You feel yourself walking, almost floating, unbidden, closer to the source of that ambrosia scent.
Without a thought, you lean down and run your fingers over the blood dripping from that headless neck. The scent is divine as you near it to your lips. And yet... the taste you feel is but a promise. It is all there: the perfection, the nectar, the ambrosia. It tingles on your tongue. Yet even as you swallow the taste on your fingers, it is fleeting. Even in moments after the man’s death, the blood has already gone too cold, too devoid of life to properly satisfy you.
You turn to your thrall, finding his thoughtless eyes following your every gesture.
"Drop your sword. Get on your knees. Undo your coif."
Almost as an afterthought, you glance down at the discarded sword. "Mmm. Silver. Effective against us, to be sure. Still, it takes an edge so, so poorly, doesn't it? As you just found out."
Your hold over his mind allows you to see, understand, everything happening within him. And, as he kneels and bares his neck to you, you know there is not a shred of protest which his desperate instincts could voice loud enough to keep him from obeying. To keep him from his death.
That gaze remains just as unaware, and just as mindlessly obedient, as you look down at him. You ask questions of him, and answers come without a heartbeat’s hesitation. He gives up everything. The names of the hunters he and his companion came to assist. One ‘Master’ Symon Carrand, a ‘Lord Wylmund’, and the one you are hunting for: a ‘Lady Catalyn’. Your predatory dominance over his mind lets you see the undercurrent of feelings of loyalty to these people, even as his lips give up all their secrets, each one filling you with a sense of satisfied, arrogant power.
By the time there are no more questions asked, he has given up to you every last shred of tricks, secrets, defenses they could have against you – or your sisters.
"One final question, before I release you. Isobel. Is that name familiar to you?"
"Yes. A vampire. We had captured her, months ago. Of the ones we're hunting. We've lost her. She escaped. Killed three of ours." He answers in a dead, thoughtless voice.
"I know. You pathetic, miserable vermin, savages, tortured her! You maimed her in your pointless crusade for your 'goddess', thinking Isobel would ever reveal a word about us all. She still lies dormant, after what you've done."
The edges of your self-control nearly tear apart with the fury rising up your spine.
"... Isobel's torture. Were you involved?"
"Yes. Lord Wylmund, Symon and I interrogated her."
"Ah. You poor, miserable cretin. I had a thought to make your final moments pleasant. But now... now, you'll suffer as she did. In retribution. You understand, yes?"
"Yes. I understand." His last words are not his own, but there's no awareness in him to understand that.
“Look down at your handiwork.”
With a cold, pitiless glee rising inside you, you wait for his dimmed gaze to settle on the decapitated corpse of his friend once more.
Then, and only then, do you release your hold on his volition.
Horror pours from his mouth in a soul-chilling scream. As more of his awareness returns before your eyes, the scream turns into a broken, choked wail as he recognizes the mangled body before him. His eyes wide, bloodshot, flowing with tears, you know exactly when to bite.
Panic holds him tightly in its grasp. There is no time for him to react beyond a jolt and a hoarse cry, as your hands grip his shoulder and the side of his head, your nails cutting his skin open. You plunge with a bestial hiss. Time fades from your awareness when you feel the darkly perfect, profanely unique sensation of warn skin torn between your fangs. You tighten your jaw, twisting your bite and piercing his neck with your lower set of fangs also. Hoarse sounds of agony erupt from his lips, silenced then by your hand.
There is nothing human, nothing natural, about the thoughts that race through your mind, the urges ripping through your skin - the cold hunger of a predator, the addictive sense of dominance, the obscene satisfaction of feeding.
Finally, the ambrosia you so crave finally reaches your tongue.
The warmth flooding into your mouth is the singular, most profound taste you’ve felt in your life. At least, in the skin of the one who recorded this sensory stone, it feels blissful beyond understanding. It fills your mouth with too many myriad sensations of pure ecstasy to comprehend. There is no reluctance, no hesitation, no disgust. Merely the need for more. All at once, it is hot and filling, sweeter than the sweetest fruit. It tastes like a perfect, most sinful lover's lips. It intoxicates like the deepest, richest vintage of fine wine.
Each swallow sends a balmy warmth which you feel sliding down your throat, and suffusing every inch of you with a pleasant, unmistakably erotic, bliss.
Even then, it is still the beginnings of a crescendo of ecstasy and taste. Each long, slow swallow magnifies the sensations. Each, too, brings a more agonized cry from your victim’s lips against your hand. And you are so, so unhurried in your predation. As you feed, you peel through layers of infinite nuance in his blood. You find that his emotions have physical, indelible flavors. Fear comes with an almost citric and sour taste, and teases your body with a momentary, melancholic numbness that feels oddly pleasant. Impotent anger burns smoothly on your tongue like the most savory spices, and fills you with a sense of derisive mockery and amusement at its source. Sorrow is a final, perfect aftertaste of sweet, almost creamy, chill and drowns you in a sense of morbid satisfaction.
There's one last taste to savor. The crescendo does not stop after the layers of emotion have all been unraveled. You continue to feed. The man’s body in your grasp begins to grow limp. The pulse of his heart slows down in a deathly spiral. You will feed on him to his death, and your mind races with anticipatory delight. Your body shudders with glee at the coming of a sensation you know you've so rarely treated yourself with.
His heart is so close to dying. The last mouthfuls of his blood are more intense than your mind can comprehend. Every taste, every sensation and flavor, all come at once, magnified a thousandfold. Your whole body alights with flame, with warmth, with profane vitae. A pressure builds in your breast, and then spreads under your skin to every end of your body. You lose awareness of your own limbs, your own self, of anything beyond your act of feeding.
When you feel the last drops of his life pouring into your lips, you find yourself moaning uncontrollably, groaning in loudest, sweetest delight, as if approaching a climax of erotic bliss. You're like a puppet held aloft by the strings of the bliss you feel, riding an endless sea of it. Timeless, until the last drop of crimson life passes over your tongue, and you're then sucking on a dry, dead artery.
Still feeling warm blood staining your lips, cries of near-sexual bliss erupt from your throat, as you rip your fangs out of that dead neck, and unceremoniously drop the dead man’s body to the floor with a final, echoing thud.
Your eyes flutter open, turned to the clear night-sky above. You see every star burn so much brighter than it should. Hear every subtlest sound from far around you. Your vision rolls shut again, and you seal yourself in that warm cocoon of your dread feeding's afterglow. You sink into it, as you clean the excess from your lips with your fingers.
You sink into a contented delight, a perfect peace, a sea of stillness, all beyond anything you'd ever felt when your heart was still alive. Yet there is also a mist of tantalizing pleasure that cannot be fully understood, perhaps cannot be fully experienced in a way words, concepts, can encapsulate.
You know, that for the first time in many nights, you are full. You are sated. You are whole.
It is that feeling you descend to, as the shard of memory briefly fades and recomposes itself.
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You open the door into the estate. The golden candle and firelight which bathes you, joined by the sounds of laughter and mirth, conversation and music, somehow feels warm on your skin. You know this to be from the bloody feast you just partook in. Every sense feels impossibly sharper, a thousand times more sensitive. Yet nothing calls to you louder than the scent of the crimson delicacy flowing in all the endless guests parading around the opulent halls, no sound overpowers the subtle, background beating of all their hearts, inescapable to your ears.
It is easy to find your way through them. Smiles and bows and polite clamors for the host’s attention - your attention – open your way through the foyer as you reach a set of wide stairs, atop of which your eyes find what you seek.
Three figures stand there, in idle, disinterested chatter with some faceless guests. An old, white-bearded warhound of a man, face littered with scars. A ruggedly, unequivocally handsome man in his thirties, with dark-olive skin and brown, smooth hair. And the one you know for a fact is Lady Catalyn – the fair, freckled skin, the emerald eyes, the lush, blonde hair and the regal hints of half-elven heritage.
Even from afar, your preternatural eyes see in detail the silver, holy pendant around her neck – another symbol of a longsword with a stylized sun. With all their secrets in your mind, now, you know that, should you touch her while she wears it, it’ll harm you and blaze brightly, warning all of your true nature. The ingenious, clever obstacle brings excitement to your mind as you first begin thinking of how to be rid of it.
It is at this exact moment, with your gaze held and admiring every facet of the woman’s beauty, that the memory ends.
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And yet, something else comes as you begin to feel the pull of your own real, awareness, draw you from the sensory memories.
Perhaps it was intended on the creator’s part, or perhaps it was a flaw, a lack of fine control over subsequent memories that spilled over to the ones you just immersed yourself in. Instead of immediately bringing you back to awareness, other memories spill forth.
You sit on a lavish and sinfully comfortable divan – violet velvet on a gold-embroidered wood frame, in a high-ceiling room. The estate around you is utterly silent - it is impossible to tell whether this is even the same night as that of the ball.
On the wall opposite you, floor-to-ceiling windows and thick drapes give way to a wide balcony. The bed to your right is almost excessively large, and you see - that the silken sheets are turned, messy, damp and even ripped. Just in front of you, basking in the golden light of a fireplace, the Lady Catalyn crawls toward you on hands and knees.
Her body, as naked and drenched in sweat as yours is warm and tingling with afterglow. Her face a mask of satisfied desire beneath a layer of sweat, hair and stained make-up. Her eyes alight with excitement, with lust, with awareness, the utter opposite of what was seen in the previous memory of the man under your complete, mental domination. You see it in her eyes, she knows you, now. Know what you are, as she crawls on the tufted floor between your soft, pale thighs. Slowly, you hold out your arm to her. Blood drips from two pinpricks on your wrist. Her eyes flutter to you as she kisses your palm, and seals her lips on your crimson-stained wrists with a moan.
More memories rush forward. You're left with no sense of how much time passed between the sensory stone's principal memory, and the previous one. Even less so between it, and what comes next.
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You're underground. More, you have a dizzying feeling you cannot at first comprehend. You're on the ceiling of an old tunnel but you're floating? Flying? No. You're discorporate! You do not feel or see your body. Where your hands should be, thin white mist languidly floats. Instead, you feel as if underwater. You can see clearly in the dark, however, and a noise attracts your attention far downwards. Below, you see them: two men - the grey old warhound and the handsome hunter - stalking smoothly through the darkness, skilled, stealthy, so confident, followed by a dozen more clumsy soldiers. With a push of your will, you rush through the air, splitting apart in a whirl of vertigo as you fade through small holes and endless cracks on the walls of these catacombs. Downwards and forwards, you spill into a large, domed chamber. Thick fog fills every inch of it, moving as unnaturally as you do in this shapeless form. You know why. The trap is set. At the center, you see the bait: Catalyn, whimpering and moaning sweetly as she writhes and locks lips with the golden-eyed, dark-skinned woman you call 'Mistress'.
All around you then fades into shapeless mist.
And then it's over.
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Once more, you're back in the sensorium. And you're left...
... in what state? How do you feel? What do you feel? Revulsion? Disgust? Craving? Curiosity? What insights into existence does it give you, to have spent a memory in the skin of a monster? How does your perception change regarding the nature of emotions, when you've quite literally tasted them? How does it feel to be alive (if you are), now that you know what it feels to be among one of the living dead? Do you find you learn something knew about yourself, perhaps that you may be capable of things you’d never admitted before?
Blood and Dominance - Lilaitha Yvrinna's Namer donation - filed to restricted Sensorium archives
