Grey Area [firejay & Jorick]

Jorick

Magnificent Bastard
Original poster
LURKER MEMBER
FOLKLORE MEMBER
Invitation Status
Posting Speed
  1. One post per week
  2. Slow As Molasses
Writing Levels
  1. Adept
  2. Advanced
  3. Prestige
  4. Douche
  5. Adaptable
Preferred Character Gender
  1. Male
  2. Female
Genres
Fantasy is my #1; I will give almost anything a chance if it has strong fantasy elements. Post apocalyptic, superhero, alternate history, science fantasy, some supernatural, romance, and a few fandoms (especially Game of Thrones) are also likely to catch my eye.
As the horrifying state of absolute nothingness wrapped around Oriphiel, she momentarily felt she'd made a terrible mistake. It was impossible to tell how long the lack of external sensation lasted, and her own mind contradicted itself by being certain it was both a span of dozens of years and just a few seconds. Her relief when sensation returned was short lived, because it came in the form of an immense pressure bearing down on her from all sides. Amorphous shapes of indeterminate color flashed by, and she could not be sure if she was hurtling past them at a tremendous speed of it she was locked in place and those unknown things were rocketing by her instead. When she tried to move her arms she found that they wouldn't respond. Nor would her head, for that matter. Or her eyes. As best she could tell, she was frozen like she'd been made into a statue, but part of her suspected that it might be a more disturbing phenomenon entirely: perhaps she'd been ripped from her body entirely and had been sent formless to become a restless and wandering spirit in the midlands for having the temerity to demand the Gatekeeper do her bidding.

And suddenly, before she had time to come to any conclusion on her situation, Oriphiel's senses were assaulted. Where before she'd been engulfed by nothingness, this time it felt like everything hit her at once. Light seared painfully into her eyes, a breeze along her skin felt like clawing fingers, and she struggled to maintain her balance on legs that felt like jelly. She stabbed the blunt end of her spear into the ground to give herself some support as she stood there squinting at her surroundings, and she was grateful to find that she was indeed standing on something soft enough for the silver metal to sink into. The light slowly grew more tolerable, and the unsteadiness in her legs, an oddity that sounded like what some human souls she'd conversed with said about moving between aquatic vehicles and dry land, faded away more slowly still. Oriphiel despised that temporary feeling of being defenseless, but there was nothing to be done but wait for it to pass. Whatever the Gatekeeper had done, it certainly had not been a pleasant method of transportation.

When her vision cleared enough to take a look around, she was less than pleased by what she found. There was no shambling, soul-devouring beast in sight. There was not much of anything, truly. Everything looked sort of blandly grey, rolling hills of grey with grey bits of plant life that looked crooked and wilted enough to possibly be dead, a flatly grey sky, and flakes of what might have been ash falling from the sky every now and then. Whatever Oriphiel was standing on appeared to be a thick layer of whatever was drifting lazily from the sky, and with her spear sunk a couple inches into it with more soft material underneath there was no telling how deep it went. There was also no telling if she had been thrown into a completely lifeless realm, seeing as this was almost exactly what she had imagined would be left behind by some monstrous devouring creature, or if this place was just naturally lacking in color.

No answers were forthcoming, so Oriphiel shoved the questions and uncertainty away and turned in a slow circle, mostly just to give herself something to do to test her legs that wouldn't result in falling over if her legs were still too unsteady to walk properly. It was all the same bland landscape all around, with nary a hint of monsters to be found. That was damned irritating, but there was nothing to be done about it until she felt steady enough to walk or fly and investigate the place. While she waited for her body to recover from the unpleasant journey, she settled on standing in place and glaring at the horizon, hoping to catch at least a glimmer of movement to let her know she wasn't entirely alone in this lifeless wasteland.
 
Aumrienok had decided he didn't much like traveling from Hell to one of the mid-realms. The man his father had referred him to, a strange stone man on the very edges of Hell far past even where his mother's old village lay, had attempted to have a rather serious discussion about why exactly he was trying to leave Hell. Ri didn't do serious if he could help it, so he'd told the man with a grin that his father had told him he could get out this way, and why wouldn't he want to leave Hell. It was Hell. Wasn't that self-explanatory? Much to his surprise, the Gatekeeper had seemed... almost bored perhaps, as if it had been expecting this, and he hadn't even had a chance to question that before it had snapped its fingers and sent him on this rather psychedelic trip. This was most definitely not his idea of pleasant, though he noted this with the sort of curious indifference of one observing something painful being done to someone else, as if the body going through the jarring sensation of nothingness was not quite his.

He maintained this feeling as he suddenly found himself back in the world of sensation, slamming back-first into something soft in places and hard in places. Before he had any real chance to take stock of his surroundings, he had flipped over the whatever-it-was, and was fairly swimming in a sea of what looked a bit like ash, strange soft grey stuff sticking to him all over. Pushing himself shakily into a lazy, cross-legged position, he stared around himself as the blank grey landscape. This was not really how he'd envisioned the mid-realms. But then, there was the angel he'd run over, so maybe it wasn't one of the mid-realms at all. Ri grinned at her with his uncomfortably wide mouth and joked. "Well, I guess I've died and gone to Heaven. Strange, I always thought demon souls only got recycled back into demons. Mother would be so disappointed."
 
Something slammed into Oriphiel out of nowhere, sending her stumbling and staggering away, but she managed to keep her balance enough to stay upright. She whirled around and pulled her spear into a fighting stance, expecting to see some kind of monster or feral creature tensing and ready for another attack, but she found something infinitely worse than that. As the demon babbled, she grabbed her spear in both hands and held it steadily pointed toward his throat, ready to stab at even the slightest hint of a threat or untoward movement.

"Odd, I was just thinking I'd perhaps gone to Hell." Oriphiel's voice was as melodic as any angel's, but with her severe tone it was more the melody for a dirge than a joyous hymn. The comment wasn't quite true, but it was close enough to not be a lie. "Unless I was misled, this should be one of the middle realms. State your business, demon, before I give you firsthand experience in what happens to a demon's soul when they die."
 
Ri raised both of his hands in an "I surrender" gesture, but they were barely raised to head height, and he had a fire spell waiting at his fingertips for if he actually felt threatened. "Oh no." He said in a mocking baby voice that got worst as he kept talking, "Help. Help. Oooh~ I don't know nothing, Mrs. Angel, Sir. I'm just a poor, lost demon. Take pwity on the poh, lost demon." He made his dark eyes widen in an attempt at a puppy-like expression, but they flashed red for a second, and his face wasn't exactly meant to look endearing.

"Hey." He said, reverting to his normal voice and dropping his hands to his sides. "My name is Ri. What about you, angel? Watch you doing in these fair lands of of the middle realms? Oh wait, don't tell me. I just remembered. I don't want to know. Let's travel together." He was still feeling a bit shaky from having been thrown into this world, so he stayed seated, but he grinned up at her, still.
 
The mocking and childish tone of the demon's voice grated on Oriphiel's ears to the point that she strongly considered a little light stabbing to make it stop. His utterly failing attempt to look harmless was just shy of enough to make her take that plunge and stab the irritating man, because he clearly had all the innocence of an adder and could not be trusted for a moment, but luckily for him he ceased his nonsense in time for the angel to grumpily decide he didn't need a new hole in his throat. His babbling seemed to flit from one thought to the next without any processing happening between them, and she was left glaring down at him with her eyes narrowed into slits.

"My name is Oriphiel. My reasons for being here are none of your concern, demon, and I have no interest in further associating with one of your ilk. I suggest you go back to whatever awful place you came from before you get yourself killed." Her tone left no doubt as to how exactly she was envisioning the annoying man ending up dead. With that threat delivered, Oriphiel finally pulled her spear away from Ri's throat and walked on past him without another glance, determined to march away with all the haughty grace she could muster. Unfortunately, her lets were still rather wobbly from being transported so abruptly to this plane of existence, and she could only grit her teeth and press onward as she shakily walked away and hoped the demon couldn't see how unsteady she was.
 
Ri's grin grew wider and wider the longer she talked, until it almost seemed to be splitting his face in half. This angel Oriphiel was quite the prickly one, eh? She seemed quite easy to irritate. Here he was, thinking he would have to wander about the middle realms all by his lonesome, no one to bother or play pranks on, taking on the serious duty his venerable father had left for him to take care of. Oh, so lonely a fate. Oh, so horribly responsible. Instead, fate had given him this lovely little piece of angry nerves to bother the entire way. Lovely.

He attempted to bounce upright out of the piles of grey ash-like things, and instead his trembling body made a horrible little somersault, and he landed face-first in the grey stuff, kicking a huge portion of it into the air. But it had served his purpose, to an extent. He was close enough to grab the angel's leg with both his hands. "Oh no. Don't leave me." He whined in his most grating voice, face still down on the ground.

Before she could jam that shiny spear into his head to get him off her, he had managed to hop all the way up so he was crouched on her back, feet and hands on her shoulders like the world's most awkward monkey. "Okay, I've decided! Let's go together!" He announced shamelessly, as if he had not just made a massive nuisance of himself.