The Barrens

The journalist looked down at her feet. There hadn't been much in her flat. She barely spent any time there. She was always out on the field, looking for dangerous things to poke and film. She listened carefully to the creature, her dark eyes watching him through the sunglasses. As he showed ehr the manacles, she wondered who or what had placed them on him. With barely a thought, she grabbed the key, crouching and placing it into the first lock.
« Where did you get these? » She asked quietly, noticing that they were unlike anything she had ever seen before. The first manacle fell with a dull thud onto the grey sand. She kept thinking about Grey. She had never really been exposed to death, not the death of someone who had tried to help her. The seed of survivor's guilt nestled in her mind. If she hadn't been stupid enough to go back out onto the Barrens, he mightb have been the one releasing the cloak. She was about to out the key into the second lock when a thought hit her. If Grey had had the key all alng, why didn't he help the cloaked creature?

"Grey," massive undertones trailed off, "That's the reason that they had us working together. The chains restrained my power, kept me from running off." The thunderously deep voice had a note of sadness, fondness in it... "The only way that the key could exist is if he willingly gave it up, gave up his life." The hood came up until it was apparently staring at her face. "Grey died to dodge the protocol so that I could make this right," the implication was searching, "There is no way that he could have gotten away with letting me go while he was alive. Even now he runs a great risk in allowing himself to die, even for the life of an innocent. His saving grace will be that I was the one who entrusted you with the key, for they don't trust me to begin with... I'm only sorry that you had to get caught up in this, and I apologize for using you as we have." As the heavy manacles fell loose, an odd thing happened, the cloak distorted, folding in upon itself, compacting and growing smaller, changing texture and hue in a generally unnatural way until there, standing before the young woman, was Charles. In his human voice, without booming accents, he sighed, "That feels better." He stretched his fingers in front of him, stretching his arms out. "Ah, yes," the revelry was evident. Then he turned to her, concerned. "Thank you," greater solemnity could not have possessed him, "I owe you much, and soon, so shall many others." He bowed low, taking her hand and coming just shy of pressing it to his lips. When he rose, it was with a touch of sadness in his eyes. Slowly he turned to face the plateaus off in the distance, obscured by the stormy sand cast all around. He turned back to her, "That man, I must go after him. It will not be safe." A frown curled his features. He wanted to ask her to come, it was written all over his face, but the knowledge he possessed would not allow him to ask her to put herself in harms way, not after she had already done so much even without knowing. "If I do not leave quickly, others will come, and those will go right back on," he nodded towards the heavy chains which lay on the ground, "And all will be for naught." He took a hesitant step away, reluctant to simply leave her. Turning about to face her again, he spoke. "I can open a door for you, to anywhere you wish to go," and interesting proposition considering the fact that she still held the key, but honesty rested in his features, and a sort of earnestness. He felt indebted, that much was obvious, and there was a sort of protectiveness about him, like an old kind of chivalry that you don't see any more warring against propriety.

Iyana was at loss for something to say. The dead wind lifted her scarf slightly, making it billow around her. She didn't know where she wanted to go. Certainly not back to her flat. Where else could she go? Not many places, that was for sure. She drew herself into a more upright stance.
"I'd rather follow you," She said, watching him unblinkingly through the tinted glass. As Iyana had learnt: When in doubt, go do something dangerous and try to live to blog about it. That was the principle she planned to follow.

If it was possible for someone to look as though they had just been made both relieved and worried at the same time, then that was the expression that Charles had on his face. "I really appreciate that," he said kindly, "I'm so used to having... Well, someone around out here... I'd feel lost without companionship. And believe me, that is the last thing you want on the Barren's." He smiled, a strange and wonderful change to his usually void features. "Oh, but if we'll be travelling you will want something warmer than that!" at a glance he took in her apparel. "Hm... I think I've got the perfect thing!" He held his hands out, working them through the air as a mime does across a non-existent wall. His fingers fell into an outline as he traced through the air, what appeared to be the edges and dimensions of a door, and then, quite suddenly, he opened the air, and low and behold, there was a door. And behind that door, lay a wardrobe, full of coats of all shapes and sizes, made from every kind of material. He stepped into the recesses of the room, shuffling through one garment after another, until, after a moment or two of fighting with some unruly fur coat and its mink collar, he produced what appeared to be a sort of voluminous silken sash. "It's what the natives wear," he said by way of explanation, handing her the bolt of cloth, "Makes for good protection against the sand, and it has a veil for your eyes." Her aversion to the light had obviously not been completely wasted upon him.

Iyana smiled faintly back at Charles. However, his ability to create a door in thin air found her a little bit confused. The man, if indeed that was his species, obviously had power that she had never sen the likes of. That in itself was enough to make her wary of him, but fill her with the determination to follow him and get a report that was more than she needed to persuade herself.

She took the length of cloth, examining it for a moment to determine the best way of winding it before starting to wrap it around herself, making sure that her sunglasses were hidden behind the veil and that her pistol was still easily accesible. She glanced at Charles without raising her head, wondering what his expression would be like if he thought she wasn't watching him.

His face was blank, an expression that was almost frightening, and he looked off into the distance. he had swung the door closed behind him as he had stepped out into the sandy plain once more, and simply stood, waiting for Iyana to finish. There was something about the way he didn't seem to have any emotion at all that made Charles look almost as if he weren't actually living. Then, a smile crept onto his face again, as he looked back. "You look somewhat ridiculous like that," he jibed, "But the shroud will keep you warm." It was a bit odd that the cold did not seem to effect him, for he stood their in normal attire, even with his sleeves rolled up the elbows, totally unmolested by the cold, or at the very least, he didn't show it, and he hadn't grabbed anything for himself. Then he turned into the storm and began to walk, slowly, allowing her to follow.

Iyana stuck her tongue out at Charles as he made fun of her. She watched the man out of the corner of her eye as they walked, not quite sure if she could really trust him or not. After all, she knew next to nothing about him. As her mother used to tell her, 'Don't talk to strangers'. However, that advice never actually came in handy all the while that she had been a reporter. After all, her job practically consisted of talking to strangers and being up close and personal with them. Her mind started to walk back to Grey, but she managed to catch herself, shaking the thoughts from her mind. She had to forget about him.

As they walked, it was in relative silence. Charles appeared, if anything, thoughtful. What he might be contemplating was anyone's guess. Certainly it couldn't have been the utterly drab landscape. Of course, if one contemplated the landscape themselves, they would have noticed an odd phenomenon. The pair were walking slowly, but every so often, just ever so slightly, their next footfall would not fall where it was supposed to. One might say it appeared like the world at large kind of shimmied a bit, or shook. Whatever it was that was happening, they were moving much faster than a couple of people out for a stroll should have been moving. The only indication were the huge plateaus off on the horizon, which kept growing in an exponential way suddenly, perhaps an unobservant person wouldn't have noticed, but if you looked closely, you could tell. Still, as fast as they moved, never once did they catch a glimpse of the man whom they pursued even now, not a footprint, not a thread from his dark coat, nor any trace of his hellish fire.

It was when the huge land formations became a bit more distinct that Charles broke the quiet, well, that is the barrier of speech, the wind had been howling all the while in its obtrusive way. "Something occurred to me back when you were helping me rid myself of those shackles," he began, still walking straight ahead, not turning or making any effort to speak generally at her, "I might be the villain of this story, or lat least one of them. After all, I didn't save Grey, or dive in the way of the fire myself. I rather quickly dismissed his death and asked you to free me from an apparent bondage. Don't know about you, but that seems pretty ominous to me." Of course, whether his last statement was directed towards his own actions or what appeared to be a temple, like the Petra of old, carved straight into the side of one of the protrusive geological structures that had previously lain so far away. The cliff face in which it stood stretched up, blotting out the sky, and the temple within, massive columns reaching hundreds if not thousands of feet into the air, to support an archway that would have made a giant look similar to a flea in proportion. Carved all about and on and within the entryway were strange, contorted figures, some human and of course otherwise. Inside, the shadows of colossal statues, could be just made out of the gloom. It was somewhere between an architects greatest possible dream and a hellish nightmare of stone.

((I'll try to reply to this over the weekend, I've got writer's block XP))

//Take all the time you need.//

Iyana hadn't really been listening to Charles. Her mind had wandered like it often did. However, her face light up as she caught sight of the temple. She quickened her pace, heading towards the stone building. She ran her fingers lightly over the carvings. Her eyes roamedover the statues from behind her sunglasses. Slowly, she started to make her way inside, curiosity overwhelming.

"Just be careful," Charles's voice called from behind, amplified off of a massive statue near the entrance, "This tomb may be laced with traps or spells." In a lower tone, he talked to himself, "That or the very essence of Death which we happen to be hunting straight into a place rife with his power." The archway at the beginning being as large as it was, it allowed plenty of the grayish white light to wash over the great titans of stone which crouched all about. Charles wandered over to a gigantic lion-like depiction, standing about half the height of its paw, it was one of the smaller statues, his head didn't even make it to the top of the claw. "It causes one to wonder what was the inspiration," he glanced towards the darkness within. A sound like a guttural roar reverberated through the very air, along the rocks below, shaking the entire atmosphere, it seemed. Charles cocked his head, as canines are known to do, with a curious expression on his face. As the noise died, he was already beginning to walk inward, towards what appeared to be the source of the noise. "I think he went this way," his mind was so obviously in a whole 'nother world as he kind of lackadaisically tripped forward.

Iyana barely registered Charles' voice once more, or at least until she saw him moving forwards, deeper into the temple. She walked quickly after him, running her fingers along the stone carvings. She heard something to the side, ducking in time to avoid being skewered by a bolt before it shattered against the wall. She shrugged to herself, trapiezing after Charles.

"She's waking up!" Charles yelled back just in time to get all the words out before one of the massive statues, like a boar's head with dog teeth stuck onto the body of a great cat mixed with a rhinoceros, came colliding into him and bowling him off to the side in the grasp of its sharp tusks. His body should have been shattered and bloody, but instead, it burst apart into a thousand shreds, like so much cloth. What was left, was darkness furled into a cloak. The great steel limbs which reached out from underneath the shadowy interior grasped a hold of the tusks and through the beast back. "Take cover!" a deeper than life voice which now associated itself with Charles blasted out through the incredible ceiling space. Thunderous shattering sounds that rocked the hall like an avalanche split through the very air itself. More statues had come to life. Cover was becoming scarce.

Iyana was thrown back by one of the statues who obviously thought that Charles was more of a threat than she was. However, the reporter wasn't going to run for cover just because a few stone statues had decided to come to life. She scaled one of the pillars, her fingertips screaming in protest as she forced them to cling to the shallow handholds. Behind the tinted glass, she narrowed her eyes, focusing on her target. One of the more humanoid statues. She leapt from the pillar, scrambling to land on its shoulder, pulling out her gun and shooting it in the temple from point blank range.

The stone exploded back at her, chunks flying and powder cascading all about. An unearthly screech rent the air which had become suddenly astir with a foul wind, as if trying to rip her from her grasp. The statue stumbled to the side, staggering as if it might fall, but instead began to flail its limbs in attempt to dislodge its assailant. It's motions attracted the attention of some of the other creatures, who stopped for a moment, seemingly confused. It didn't take more than that for them to make a decision. They rushed, five or so, to leap upon the woman who dared disturb their sacred charge. The sound of metal scoring hard rock could be heard, a feral, ear bending scream. In a moments space, the cloak was by her side, prying her from the statue which meant to demolish her and forcing it to the ground with a blow that broke it into several rather large and rather useless chunks of so much rubble. As it attempted to make its skidding landing, not a very comfortable one when grasped by the harsh metallic arm to the tattered material of the Cloak, one of the statues came down hard on its trailing fragments, jerking it to a hard stop before bringing down a hammer fist of rather hard granite.

As if they merely materialized from his back as lightning does from a cloud, a huge pair of bladed arms, like wings formed themselves a shield above the unguarded heads of the two invaders. Nearly buckling under the force of the blow, the cloak came very close to dropping Iyana before slowly lowering her to the ground. "I'm terribly sorry about the roughness," the booming voice managed to sound pathetically apologetic. A series of heavy, resounding smashes at the wings rocked him back and forth for a moment. "You need to get a bigger gun," one would not really have imagined a chuckle as warm and jovial coming from under that hood as did, but the laugh came nonetheless. With a mighty heave, his massive wings reared up, throwing back three or five attackers, two more remained within range so that a sweep of one wing shredded it down to seven different segments and a cloud of powder. The other leaped upon the back of the cloak, turned as it was, and brought the dark creature down to the ground hard.

Iyana had her eyes squeezed shut for a moment as she fell herself falling with Charles. Once the cloak had put her down, she rubbed her eyes.
"I can't believe this. They're stone!" She said, but the reporter also had to laugh at the comment about her gun.
"Believe me, it's on my to fo list." She answered. Iyana jumped and rolled out of the way of a block of stone that came careening towards her.
"Charles!" She yelled, seeing one of the statues start to attack the cloak. Raising ehr gun and taking carefum aim, she fired several rounds into the nexk of the stone attacker.

Three shallow bullet holes marked where the projectiles had ricocheted off of the hard stone, but the stings were enough to distract the beast, which turned to look at her, shifting its weight ever so slightly. Within the breadth of that single moment the cloak, which lay face down beneath the monster, inverted upon itself, so that it was suddenly facing upward, although it hadn't moved in the least. Great mechanical arms snapped up, unbalancing the rocky golem and attaching themselves to its side. With a sound of straining metal and a horrible pressure of rock separating from itself, the statue began to split and then finally was rent into two halves with a sound like thunder.

Launching up out of its prone position, the cloak collided with another of the beasts which had recovered from being thrown off of the wings. They tumbled for a moment, rolling across the ground. Before they came to a halt, however, the cloak spun out of the hold, his metallic wings coiling after him like a snake, leaving the decimated remains of yet another opponent in his wake. Three more of the things were visible. This time, the cloak got the jump on one of them, leaping and grasping a hold of its colossal humanoid neck. He swung around leaving deeply riven channels in the beautiful artwork. One of the cold, steel fists landed hard on the statue's arm, but it didn't instantly break. It shattered, albeit, but only slightly. The two locked then in a struggle, as they battered back and forth, with the cloak sent spinning off into the shadows at one point. The guardian followed. That left two more, something like a human approximation, although significantly larger and thus more brawny than any human could ever hope to be, and a lizard-like creature with far too many legs and what looked like three tails, all with spiked ridges along them. Both homed in on Iyana, taking advantage of their superior numbers and the fact that she was simply a human and they were giant animate statues made of impossibly hard materials.

But just as the man-like thing was about to hit her, he suddenly collapsed without any real explanation. The lizard began to whip around and see what this new threat might be, and midway through its turn, it burst into great pieces which flew straight for the young woman. Right before they could hit her though, the flying rubble was suddenly engulfed in a violet indigo flame and consumed just before her face. The fire pealed back and away from her, resting instead on the other statue's prone form, incinerating the stone with its cold fury. Standing there, directing the flames, was the darkly clad individual from the Barren plain, Grey's killer. His eyes cast up at Iyana for a moment, before he retreated back into the shadowy depths, his infernal fires extinguished as his silhouette quickly vanished.

Iyana had tried to move backwards as the stone creatures rounded on her. Tripping over a piece of stone, she fell back with a yell of surprise and pain, her gun spinning off. She brought her arm up in an attempt to defend herself against the impossible large statues.

As one of the humanoid statues simple collapsed, she peeked out from behind her arms, unfortunately to see blocks of stone hurtling towards her, at least until they were engulfed by the violet flame. Iyana's eyes searched for the source. Seeing the creature that had killed Grey, she felt her anger well up inside her. As it fled, she glanced over at Charles. He was occupied with the statues. The reporter picked herself up, grabbing her gun and running after the creature that had just saved her life.

Around, the rock closed in, narrowing down into a much more human set of dimensions, or at the least an architecture that was more likely conceived and created by mankind. There were hallways and passages that lay all in darkness, but an eerie purple under lighting always indicated the direction taken by the man who was not too terribly far ahead, and violet flames lingered along the granite walls walking up and down them reverently, like monks in a monastery. Quick, deliberate steps took him further and further in to the crypt, sharp echoes wrapping out a steadily retreating beat. He wasn't running, but he was abominably fast. There hadn't been any doors in any of the doorways which might have accommodated them, only dark holes in the walls which had led into shadows, but then, suddenly, the unreal flames led into a dead end, marked by a large wooden door. It looked aged, but not in the way it should have for a place so dark and terrible as this. The shadows seemed to be overbearing and fiercely powerful as if they were alive, but they shied away from that spot. Underneath the purple light, another could be seen, soft and shining with a beautiful intensity. The door was just a crack open enough for the aura to seep out and into the hallway. No sound came from within, and the sounds of battle had long since faded into the distant recesses of the darkness. Then the softest whisper lilted through the space from the doorway. It was filled with such longing and desire that it might have been what one imagined the sound of tears would be like if they had voices. The words were not distinct but they hardly needed to be. Intent was evident in the tone. Someone was begging, pleading, imploring another with everything within them.

Iyana kept both her hands on her pistol, the muzzle pointed at the stone floor. For a moment, the young woman hesitated, one hand on her glasses. She ripped them off, stuffing them into a pocket. Her eyes burned slightly in the violet light, but she attempted to ignore it. It was too dark in the passageway to wear the tinted glasses.

The reporter came up to the wooden door, glueing her ear to the surface before nudging it open, keeping her gun in front of her, ready to aim and shoot within a moment's notice.

A radiant white glow met her delicate eyes. It illuminated a garden, inexplicably growing here in the depths of the ground. Beautiful flowers of every color and hue were arrayed around and about. Water flowed and cascaded from channels in the walls. It was no large chamber, but the garden could have swallowed you up like an eternity. All was arrayed about a single feature of the room, a platform raised up from the floor upon which a young woman lay, garbed in white. She lay askance and from one arm which hung down off of the funeral slab was a red trail which ran down the sides of the alter upon which her body had been put to its final rest. And yet, the look on her face was one of peace, despite the intrinsically violent nature of the scene. The radiance came from her direction where, hauntingly, the image of that very same woman sat beside her own body. The image was indistinct at best, ethereal and ghost-like. She was possessed of a single color, white, and had a flickering light which seemed to define her, as a projector forms an image on a screen, which came from within the very lines of which were her body. She was speaking, it seemed, and staring pleadingly at the other figure which inhabited the room already.

He stood there, as cold and hard as death. His face was contorted into a visage of unimaginable pain as he listened to the words of the phantom, an indistinct if not beautiful language. His head shook from side to side, slowly, heavily. "I can't," he whispered over and over to her, tears staining his voice. The other voice grew louder, more fierce and almost demanding. The woman stood, approaching the dark individual, an interesting contrast chromatically, but he just stood there, still with the same horror and hurt in his every expression, still with those words on his lips.

Iyana withdrew her head quickly, her eyes squeezed shut, fumbling for her sunglasses. Sliding them up her nose, she shook her head a little. There was a headache starting to set up residence in the back of her head.
Great, She thought to herself. But curiosity overwhelmed her. She crept into the room, trying to stick to the shadows of the vegetation. However, she froze as she watched the two people interacting. Her grip on her gun relaxed slightly as her eyes widened.
What's going on? She asked herself.

"Please, you have to! I know you can, and once you have resurrected the immortal soul, then we may be together forever. All eternity is ours to grasp if you will but give me your hand now!" it was that beautiful voice, almost like a song, but so painfully sad to hear. Only poignant sobs met her strange pleas as the man cried. Her ghostly form moved to his, as if to wipe the tears away, but her hand could no more touch his face than her feet did the floor. "I have come all this way," such seductive tones poured from her that it was remarkable that the man had not at least made some kind of motion, "For you, for us! All I ask is your hand and your heart. You know that you have mine already!" He shook his head, looking as though all he wanted himself was to die. "We can't," his voice was hoarse, breathless, powerless, "Not this way." The look that passed across her visage was horrifying, it was a twitch that alternated between her pleading serenity and abject despair and, perhaps, anger. At once, one might have thought that she could have embraced him in love and desire and at the same moment torn him to tiny pieces.

It was in that moment that the darkly dressed man who possessed the flames of violet turned. It was as if he were looking at Iyana. "Please, help me," was all that he could manage. It was then that the Cloak stepped out from behind the photosensitive young woman. How long it had been there, how it had come to be there, these were questions that apparently did not want for answers so it offered none. Instead it merely strode forward with a slow and deliberate pace. The phantasmal woman retreated a few steps, stumbling backwards towards the altar, nearly falling, but strangely catching herself on the stone. "No, please, I beg you," all the smoothness and manipulation had left her voice to be replaced by terror of the thing coming towards her, "We just want to be together, surely you can understand that. Please, you can't send me back. I need him!" She was crying now, forcefully. A scream escaped her with a pitch and roll that could have curdled blood.

"If I do this," the Cloak had an abysmal gravity about it but did not betray any emotion, "You cannot follow." The hood of the Cloak turned to stare at the deathly figure of the man. Pale and dejected as he was, he only nodded. Needing no more conformation, the bleak, dark form of the Charles' strange alter ego seemed almost to float forward across the space until it grasped in its steely talons the ghostly woman's arms. It was then as if the hood had opened into a terrible maw, and like the jaws of some great sea beast, it dove down upon her. The sight was anything but pleasant. And with a final scream of terror, she vanished. As she did so, the strength seemed to go all out of the man who feel to his knees before collapsing. Holding himself, he sobbed quietly upon the stone floor. The flowers where he landed began to die away. Beautiful colors grayed as they wilted far faster than nature would allow. The Cloak had been, for a moment, consumed by its own consumption. Being enveloped over again by itself, it had vanished. Yet now it ascended again out from the altar's base, as though surmounting a staircase. "It is done," the deepness of his voice which had before been so without emotion now possessed something to it. Perhaps it was sadness. "Come, let us leave him in peace," it extended one of its long arms to lead Iyana out into the dark halls.

Iyana had paled significantly since entering the room. She switched off her cameras. She couldn't record this. The woman's pleading and the man's sobs would already be engraved in her memory. That was enough. She didn't even jump as Charles stepped out from behind her.

She couldn't move to cover her ears as the woman's scream of terror echoed around the trees. The reporter was standing as still as a statue, barely breathing. Never, in all her, rather short, journalistic career had she seen something so scarring. She didn't even notice Charles coming towards her. If she heard his words, she made no move to acknowledge them.