A New Found Sanctuary

After calming down from what Tory had said to him last night, Runi recognized that she was just trying to push him away like she had been doing to everyone all her life. "I didn't have to make it," he replied calmly. "I just care about making a difference when it counts. Happy Birthday." He took the knife out of his pocket and held it out for her.

Tory sensed what was coming and closed her eyes. Whatever he had, she didn't want to see it. But despite her arrogant, bitter personality, Tory was still a child and her inner curiosity that she tried so hard to force down got the better of her. She opened her eyes the tiniest of slits, expecting something extravagent and made of gold or something - some kind of flaunt of Runi being a god. She couldn't quite make out what was in his hand. It sort of looked like a piece of crap...literally. She opened her eyes the whole way. With clearer vision, she could see that it was a thick piece of wood with what looked like a slit on the one side. Brows furrowed, she picked up the wood from Runis hands hesitantly and cautiously. 'I should throw this at him and tell him that he wasting his time,' she thought to herself as she flicked the blade out of the handle, wondering how he had made it. 'I should say that he's not good enough to be aquainted with me. I should...'

"Ummm...." Tory mumbled, trailing off for a few moments. She really wasn't used to this kind of thing. "Uhh...thanks."

Neither was she used to thanking anyone, not even her mother or father. Amilie had told her frequently how she was impolite and disrespectful, but Jan never said anything about it. He probably understood best how she felt.

Runi smiled with true happiness at the fact that he had gotten her to say thank you. "You're welcome," he replied enthusiastically. He knew that he was right getting her something partially handmade instead of whipping something up thoughtlessly. It did look pretty horrible, but it would work for cutting some things and defending herself. He turned the knife over in her hands to reveal four symbols carved into it. There was a half-circle, a bird, an elongated shape, and two blades of grass. "The bird is facing left, so that's the way you read it from," he explained. "T-O-R-Y"

Tory felt a knot tighten in her stomach has she was struck by an almost foregin emotion. What was it? She wasn't nervous, or embarassed. Fright? No...that wasn't it. She became even more puzzled as she felt her face grow warm. Touching her cheek absentmindedly, her eyebrows furrowed once more in concentration. "Thanks," she mumbled quickly after an amazingly long pause.

((Care to iscribble later?))

((Sure, if you weren't going to be on I was going to sadistically kill more poor little Sims on my computer XD))

"No problem, I'm going to go see if my mom needs any help healing," Runi said, still overly happy that she hadn't tried to push him away again. "I'm no good at it, but she can borrow energy from me; lots of people who managed to escape were wounded." He ran off to try and find where the injured people from their village were staying.

"Umm.......'kay," Tory mumbled, turning away from Runi and walking off with her eyes downcast.

((Hmm....me'thinks we need a we bit 'o action.))

"I hate doing this shit," Akaelin mumbled as he stirred the batter for Torys cake. Cooking was supposed to be his dirty little secret, so how the hell had Jan found out?

He got a surprise as someone grabbed the collar of his shirt and shoved him roughly against the wall. Ready to backhand Jan again, Akaelin glanced back over his shoulder, only to have the person slam the side of his face into the wood. He felt another strong hand, big enough to wrap itself around both of his wrists and hold them behind his back. Of course, Akaelin wasn't very big, but hey.

"Easy, easy there," he heard the person say. The voice was laced with an old english accent, and Akaelin was pretty sure he hadn't heard it before. "We're just gonna have a step outside and enjoy ourselves a nice little chit chat."

Akaelin resisted the urge to scoff. There was no way out of Sanctuary through the kitchen. The man would have to take him through the dining area, where Nathifa was probably still waiting. A thought struck him all of a sudden. Where the hell was Jan?

"It's gonna be nice and pleasant, m'kay?" the person continued, before phasing both himself and the wolf through the wall to the outside.

Runi found his mother sitting at the bedside of one of the civilians that had been injured the most severely. Most of the right side of his body was crushed and a piece of broken glass protruded out of his chest, which had obviously punctured a lung. He also saw Kitai curled up in the fetal position on one of the beds in the room with Jetta sitting dutifully by her side. "Good, you're here," his mother said when she saw him. "This lung looks like it would be tricky, so I'd rather overheal it than underheal it." She placed a hand on his head as she yanked out the piece of glass, soft light immediately using Runi's energy to close up the wound. "There, the rest of this isn't life-threatening. I want to go see Akaelin." Nathifa felt that they had left things off on not quite the wrong foot, and had recently found out that Akaelin was being taunted by the other Elain because of the rumor that she had slept with another person. She wanted to apologize and set things straight. Not sensing him inside of the Sanctuary, Nathifa jumped out of the infirmary window.

Akaelin growed ferally as the unknown figure shoved the wolf away from him. The Elain spun around to face the man, ticked and ready to kick his ass. Akaelin had been expecting a more shadowy figure, rather than the oak brown hair and duel colored brown and green eyes that he got. "And just who the hell are you?" Akaelin huffed, his eyes never leaving his opponent. The smile the man gave him was not taunting or threatening, but merely one of simple amusement mixed with a small amount of joy.

"You know me, actually," he said with that old english accent of his. Akaelin would be surprised if this guy didn't use words like thee, thou and thy. "I could get all mysterious and say that I have many names. El Diablo, Satan, the Devil. But you can just call me Lucifer. And I'm here to offer you a proposition."

((Okies..... Even though I wouldn't classify Luci as a god, the rule still stands. He's just here to offer his bargain and leave.

Not bending the rule for myself. X3))

Nathifa stopped when she heard another man speaking to Akaelin - a man named Lucifer. Christian religion oftenly didn't like those from other Pantheons, so she decided to wait and hear what he had to say. If she showed herself he could either attack her, attack Akaelin, or escape. This way, if he did try to hurt Akaelin, she would be able to hit him before he could get her.

As Akaelin faced the very thing that he had been taught to fear since he had been a child, he wanted nothing more than to rip this guys spine out and beat him with it. "And what kind of proposition," he mumbled under his breath. Lucifers dual colored eyes danced with amusement as he began to lay out his terms. "An alliance of sorts. Obviously, your army is weak, almost nonexistant. While I am aware that you are already allied with Set, it won't be nearly enough to save your arses. I will offer you the services of my own army for the duration of this upcoming war."

"And what do you want out of it?" Akaelin dared to ask.

"Nothing that you don't already want," Lucifer replied. "However, my motivation might be a bit different. I suppose you wish to hear it?"

Akaelin nodded his head.

"Just as well. Basicly, I'm pissed. I wasted a good bit of my time inventing and giving power to the Apocolyptic Riders. Yeah, some texts say that they belong to God, but you can't always listen to 'some texts'. And Hel apparently thinks that she can just swoop in to my realm, take my creation, and use it for herself."

"I knew I should've gotten a fucking patent on those guys," he mumbled under his breath.

"And then there's Set and..." Lucifer shuddered and trailed off. "Never the less, that kind of thing doesn't really matter, now does it."

((Sorry, I was going to get on, but my dad decided to pull a stay-upall-night-playing-halo))

Nathifa heard a familiar laugh come from the woods and realized that she wasn't the only one that had been eavesdropping. "It's hardly a perfect art," Set commented. "So hard to find good water and sand to bring mine back."

((S'okay.))

After Lucifer delievered his proposition, Akaelin relaxed a bit more. However he still wore his common, surly expression and he didn't drop his guard. As a child, he had been forced to memorize a passage of the bible every day. Even now after so many years of burning bibles instead of reading them he could still recite most of the psalms. Most of the ones that included Lucifer depicted him as a sneaky, evil tempter of the weak willed.

"Around how big is your army and who will we be dealing with directly?" Akaelin asked. He wasn't going to accept Lucifers offer only to gain a couple hundered.

Lucifer looked up towards the sky for a moment as he thought. "Hmm...I'd have to say around...10,000, give or take. Probably give. And you won't be dealing with me directly. I got shit to do, lives to fuck, you know that sort of thing. You'll be dealing with my four generals."

Okay, the ten thousand would do, but who were these four generals that they would be dealing with? He paused for a moment as he sensed Nathifas aura nearby. There was another one with her, one that was strong, but not quite as familiar.

"Have you decided yet? I don't have much time left. I have a bet with God to see who can cause the most volcanic erruptions and me standing around here while you fiddle about doesn't help my bet," Lucifer commented.

Akaelin growled slightly, but nodded his head, accepting the Devils terms. Lucifer held his hand out and Akaelin shook it reluctantly. Lucifer tightened his grip and Akaelin winced as he felt a stabbing sensation in the middle of his palm. "And this would be?" Akaelin mumbled, clearly displeased.

"Hmm...A little present from me," Lucifer clarified. "My army will be here soon enough," he added before vanishing.

"Why are you here?" Nathifa asked, more than a little annoyed that Set seemed to take every opportunity to be with her when she wasn't with Akaelin.

"Merely to tell you the same thing that Lucifer just told your mate - that my army is here, nearby even." He responded cooly, noticing her ire. "And far from half-dead I might add. If you want to know who you'll be dealing with for my army, you can talk to either me, my rider, or these two."

Nathifa was about to ask who those two were when Set disappeared and two people took his place. She recognized them from the last war; they were Set's two main generals. The jackal and cobra didn't look overly surprised to be here, so they had probably figured that their god would send them here to talk to the Rebellion's alpha.

"Eavesdropping again?" Akaelin asked as he entered the brush where Nathifa was hiding, sliding his hand into his pocket. "Who was with you?" He then noticed Sets two generals, the jackal and cobra and growled slightly. If that bastard laid a single hand on Nathifa, god or not, Akaelin was going to tear out his eyeballs, shove them down his mouth and out his ass.

"I was coming to find you just to talk, but then I heard Lucifer," Nathifa said. "Even if he isn't God, my pantheon and the Christians don't mix too well. And then Set showed up; he didn't touch me, but looked like he wanted too. Anyway, his army is nearby." She gestured to the two generals. "If Lucifer's is 10,000 then that gives us 15,000 plus our own forces, what little we have left."

Just the fact that Set looked like he wanted to touch Nathifa pissed Akaelin off. "Suppose I'll just have to keep a closer eye on you," he said slyly. He thought about Nathifas comment about her pantheon not mixing well with the Christians. "Ah, right. There was that whole, 'let my people go' situation," Akaelin mumbled under his breath. It was the only bible story that he really knew well. He let out a small breath and shook his head. "I'm going back inside. Gotta make sure Jan didn't start burning Sanctuary down. He didn't attempt to phase through the wall, but rather circled around to the front and entered. Sure enough, there was a mix of panic and laughter. Through the open kitchen door, he could see flames shooting up from the iron cast stove. "I swear, all I did was touch it and it caught on fire!" he heard Jan say.

"You two can go," Nathifa said to the jackal and cobra. "We're not making battle plans right at this moment." They nodded and almost immediately disappeared to be replaced with Set again. Nathifa realized that the generals were never there at all and it was just Set disguising himself.

"For saying that, his eye isn't very close," Set commented as he moved toward her, shedding his animal head and dark skin for his true form. Nathifa realized that she was standing against a wall too late as the god pressed her up against it, effectively pinning her. "Your so-called mate doesn't seem to care about you very much. So how about it? I could give you pleasure beyond anything a mere mortal could manage." She didn't say anything right away, trying to think of something that would make her point very clear to him, and saw that he mistook her hesitation as a yes. It was only when he leaned in to try to kiss her that Nathifa got really mad.

"I. WILL. NEVER. SLEEP. WITH. YOU!" Nathifa did the only thing she could in the situation and butted her head with his; only she had her power behind the blow. The impact sent him flying backwards until a tree stopped his trajectory, breaking in half. "Perverted bastard," Nathifa mumbled, going back around to a door to go back into the Sanctuary. Her face reddened a little at the thought that the whole Sanctuary probably heard not only the blow that sent Set flying, but also what she yelled at him.

"I. WILL. NEVER. SLEEP. WITH. YOU!"

The call reverberated throughout all of Sanctuary. It was followed up by the sound of a tree splitting in half. "Eliza?" Akaelin breathed, exiting the kitchen after putting out the fire. Alarmed and pissed beyond belief, he started to run outside, only to meet Nathifa at the doorway. Her face seemed to be reddened with both anger and embarassment, and he could already tell what had happened. "Are you okay?" he asked quickly, resting his hands against either side of her face and tilting her head upward. "Did he hurt you? Touch you?" 'I swear I'll kill that bastard,' he growled inwardly. He'd sell his soul and then some to be rid of the nuisance that was Set.

"I think I hurt him a bit more than he did me," Nathifa said, rubbing the slightly throbbing spot on her forehead. "He has a pretty thick skull, that's for sure. But that hopefully got the message across." She also hoped that it had solved the issue of gossip among the Elain.

Akaelin sighed and kissed the spot on Nathifas forhead where she had rubbed it. "May I castrate him the next time he comes within a 20 mile radius of you? Please?" he asked innocently, but the look in his eyes would tell her that he wasn't kidding.

"Sadly, it'll probably be necessary for him to be within that if we actually go up against Hel," Nathifa sighed.

--------------------

Runi had seen the whole thing that happened outside since it occured right underneath the window he was by. It made him more confused than ever. He had seen Akaelin press his mother against a wall like that and she had seemed to like it. But when his father did it, she blasted him through a tree. When he was younger he would ask himself why his mom and dad didn't love each other; well, why his mom didn't love his dad, but he already knew the answer. Many times choosing a mate and having children was simply a duty that gods carried out to fill a place in the Pantheon or to create extra forces for war. For the part of the Rebellion that knows about me, I'm only a weapon to them too.

"Well then when we go against Hel, he's going to lose his balls," Akaelin insisted.

"And this is the part where you swoop her off her feet and bone her all night long."

"Not now Remi!" Akaelin barked, looking back over his shoulder at the bear. Remi held his hands up in surrender and laughed. "Whatevz wolf, whatevz," he chuckled. Of course Remis suggestion wouldn't be too bad.

"Who wants to play bet ball?!" Seff shouted, seemingly jumping out of nowhere.

"What's bet ball?" Runi asked, coming down the stairs.

"Remi's idea doesn't sound too bad," Nathifa commented, hoping that Runi would be enough to occupy Seff's time.

"Well then," Akaelin replied, swooping Nathifa into his arms and carrying her bridal style. "I suppose this is the part where I swoop you off your feet and bone you all night long," he mumbled under his breath, passing Runi on his way up the stairs.

"OooOoo!" Seff squealed, running up to the little kid. "Bet balls a really fun game. I used to play it all the time with my friends back home. Here's what you do. You get a ball, and you get a barrel. You set the barrel really really really super far away, and you have to try and throw the ball into the barrel. But there's a catch. I'll give you an example. Say...I'm about to throw the ball. I turn to everyone playing and say something like, 'If I make this in....Vane has to do the hokey pokey for an hour,' or something like that."

"What's this about Vane doing the hokey pokey for an hour?" the cheetah asked, having heard his name.

"If I don't make the ball in," Seff continued, ignoring Vane. "Then Vane wouldn't have to do his bet. If I did make it in, and he still didn't want to do it, he could take the alternate bet - which is usually worse than the actual bet. But once you decide to take the alternate bet, you can't go back on it."

((This is an actual game we play in drama. ^^))

"It sounds fun," Runi said, perking up a bit. "Tory, Geary! Do you want to play this bet ball game?"

((be back in a while, not sure how long))