It was neither gradual nor gentle, being as if her foot had been placed over a land mine and then abruptly torn from it. The walls of her skull shook and trembled as an essence of the Queen rushed into her empty shell, tearing apart the seams that had held it apart. Raena found herself lying on the floor, staring at a bleak ceiling with its glaring lights. She must've fallen in her abrupt session of remembering. The High Queen did not squint against the light, why would she when it was so... Beneath her. She did, however, narrow her gaze at the dark haired man nearby. She grunted,
bloody hell. "Well, get on with it. State your name and... Whatever you are," she said with a frown, her head still pressed against the floor, her hair a ripple of white like a halo surrounding her head. "A wingless, two legged creature with a strange head," she mumbled. "It is neither a unicorn nor a Fey. A tortoise?" The turtles of the Faerie Realms walked on two legs and had a head - that was close enough. Right?
"My name is Azriel," he said.
"Azriel," she said his name slowly, as if forming human words was still a mystery to her. "Azriel," she repeated in her soft, sugared voice. "Hmph. Pretty," she said curtly.
Raena stood gingerly, although rising with an unnatural grace as she pressed her fingers to her temples. In the name of herself, this place was disorientating. Raena leaned against the kitchen counter, pursing her lips in distaste as she began at the man's crown, her eyes slowly drifting to his toes and rising once again to meet his eyes. "Immortal, wingless, but not a unicorn. A rock?" she mused, pushing away from the counter and gliding towards his cabinets. She pulled open a door, pulling out a mug and hanging it on the tip of her little finger. "Your goblets lack intricacy." Her finger traced the rim of the mug and a soft, observant, "Mmmm," hummed through her throat as she placed the mug by the sink.
"So tell me about this person you wish to find, he seems very important to you," Azriel said.
Raena was captivated by what he was doing with the equipment in the kitchen. He seemed to be cooking some strange things that smelled... Weird. He was gliding and spinning around her as if they were in a ballroom, but they were not, were they? Perhaps this was merely a freakishly small ballroom. Raena blinked up at him, captivated by the way his muscles rippled beneath his shirt as he moved with a quiet elegance. "I don't know," she said in reply. "He has skin like... Shadows," she began, holding her hand in front of her and stretching out her fingers as if fascinated by her own hand. "Eyes like stars. Perfect, but hideous in a way that made hideousness beautiful," she said quietly. "Mine."
"Press the button on the right if you don't like the song." Raena blinked the scattered thoughts away, looking at the small rectangular cube he was pointing to. She looked at it in puzzlement, shrinking at the sound that had filled the kitchen.
"We are never, ever, ever, getting back together!" Raena frowned - how could they know? Were they Seers, able to see the future? She gingerly pressed the right button, jumping slightly as the music changed.
"Before you came into my life, I missed you so bad," the speakers sang.
What?"I want you to shake my booty, I want you to shake my booty!"
Next."There's a piece of lead where my heart should beat
Doctor said "Too dangerous to reap
You'd better just leave it be"
Body grew back around it, a miracle, praise be
Now, if only I could get through airport security"
Raena stood still, her finger lingering over the next button as she stared at Azriel's laptop. The voice, it was... Familiar. Liquid crystals spilled from the skies, mingling with obsidian rivers and shattering into a voice -
his voice. "Who is this?" she asked.
"You cared for me," she said curtly after a pause, as way of thanks. Raena paused, lifting her shirt to her lips and biting into the cloth. It wasn't edible. "Hmph," she huffed, dropping the shirt and curling her hand around the handle of the door. "I am removing the wall," she announced as she twisted the knob and pulled the door open. Raena sashayed down a hallway but stilled as she spotted a
ravishing gown on a not so ravishing creature. "Female," she called, ushering the woman toward her. The stranger looked at Raena with utter confusion, looking over her shoulder before reluctantly walking towards the half-clad Queen of Order. "Who is your tailor?" Raena asked, eyeing the dress as if she were considering ripping it off the girl's body.
"Umm... What?" the woman mumbled, her eyes darting left and right.
"Who fashions your garments?" Raena rephrased.
"Uh... Forever 21...?"
"Brilliant. You are dismissed," Raena said with a wave of her hand and a toss of her silky white hair. The High Queen lifted her chin and sashayed down the hallway, pressing the elevator button as if she were performing a holy ritual. "This is an elevator," she told Azriel. "It goes up and down."
"I summon this Earthling, Forever 21," she announced as she stepped out of the elevator after staring at the crack that separated the elevator from the floor on the other for several long moments. "He will fashion me a gown. This garment of yours is not very warm," she told the Vampire as if he alone was responsible for the warmth of clothing. The Queen's first step outside of the building was much worse than a shock. She stilled, narrowing her gaze at the blanket of white that coated the world. The first thing she noticed, however, was not that she was
bloody freezing, but that their horses were flat or fat, or both, and metallic? The second thing she noticed was how... Colourless everything was. Their ground were made with a strange, grey brick and their skies had no rivers, their trees, no eyes.
A whistle was blown, causing the Queen to jump back in surprise. "Hey, hey, babe! You are one fine motherfucker!" called a man as his other male comrades slapped him on the back as they barked unusual sounds. Why had they slapped him? Were they not friends? And what was -
"A motherfooka?" she repeated in puzzlement, looking at Azriel incredulously. "Your people are quite eccentric. What is a 'motherfooka?' Strange, very strange," she mumbled, continuing on her merry way, despite having no clue where she was going. She was the Queen, the world and its inhabitants would shift for her. Although the structures here seemed quite rude, she had to take a step away from straight just to avoid an uneducated pole with three circles and changing colours. She'd gotten a few more uncalled for, "Hey babeh washyouh naym"'s which she did not get at all. But what was the weirdest of all was the one man who'd said, "Yo baby, you be my Dairy Queen, I'll be your Burger King. You treat me right and I'll do it your way right away."
"Is he the king of this foreign world?" she'd asked Azriel. "King Burger? But what is dairy and why did he call me his child? Is he my father?"
Raena stopped in her tracks, glaring at a building for not moving out of her way before tilting her head to the side and blinking her large powder blue eyes. "Forever 21 has yet to arrive."
Kiser sniffed Zahn out long before she'd come close to him but he decided not to react. What was the point?
"Hey," she whispered in his ear. He sighed as she swung her brass knuckle covered fist back and winced as it connected with his chin and smacked his head aside.
Ouch. That surprisingly hurt. "Don't you EVER leave a soldier behind again!" "Not bad for a girl punch," he joked, rubbing his bloody chin and split lip. Kiser grinned, holding up both hands in a gesture of peace. "Okay, okay. I deserved that." Zahn went on to threaten him, a threat he didn't pay much attention to as he'd already turned his body to the Fey before him. The brutal wounds on his face inflicted by the sulking, serious, brooding Dunkelzahn was already healing, becoming a mere bruise on his face. He didn't care about the soldiers of IPAF. They did what they had to and knew full well the consequences and dangers they were enlisting for, years of work on the field when he'd been with the military had hardened him, desensitised him to the prospect of death. Jenson only reminded him of it. He'd been a Commander and so, so many of his soldiers had died, there was no longer any point in caring or even learning to know their names. He'd been rather fond of Jenson, though, and he'd never admit it but he found that their nickname for him - Yeti - had grown on him.
"In the name of the Queen, where have you been?" Tiggy gushed. Orpheus pressed a pianist worthy finger over her lips, closing his eyes and cocking his head as if listening to the wind, although, that was all just for dramatic effect.
"Shh," he whispered. "Do not use the Queen's name in vain." Orpheus opened his eyes, a grin lighting his flawless features. "Nice to see you, too, Tiggy Stardust."
"Where have you been?" the Summer Fey continued. Orpheus arched a brow - a gesture almost no other Fey used due to how beneath them it was, but Orpheus quite liked these human expressions. They were rather... Expressive. The Oracle of Darkness gestured toward a billboard with his perfect face upon it, his intense pools of azure staring through the camera at all who laid eyes on his photograph. God, he was sexy. 'Sacrilegious' was written by his name, it was the name of the band he'd somehow joined without remembering doing so. They were famous now, apparently, and he was their lead singer and guitarist. Well, as long as it paid for his drinks and
ravishing mansion.
"Looks like you haven't been keeping up with the tabloids and Earthling music, little one," he mused. As if to prove his point, a crowd of teenage girls raced towards him; Orpheus beamed, gracing them with his heart-shattering smile. The girls seemed to melt in the steps as they surrounded him, shoving Tiggy aside as they did. "Girls, girls. I am quite busy," he teased, reaching through them and grabbing Tiggy's wrist, pulling her to his side and lazily hanging an arm around her shoulders. "Although, I'm absolutely free tonight," he said with a wink. The girls giggled - predictable - as he quickly signed whatever objects they handed him. After much convincing - or not, since he was fantastic at making people do as he wished - they finally went away. Orpheus chuckled, before his face fell abruptly into a frown.
"As we were saying, where did you see this maybe-Rae? Did you see where she went? And why are you referring to yourself in third person? Where is the blue-skinned killer? What's his name? Praxis."
