#senatus.sanguismassa

[elijahsequeira]

A Night to Die For

when: sanguis massa, august 11th where: Flirt trigger warnings: graphic depictions of violence, blood, gore, manipulation

This is a story of sin and temptation, born from a man bound to deprivation. A story like many others, born from envy and greed, the thought of a reward worth its weight in gold pushing aside any of the lingering consciences to be found on demons and monsters alike. Power, the greatest of temptations. Freedom, the dream no demon admits to. 

Sanguis Massa, the answer to a demon’s greatest hopes delivered by the words of the mother of their kind. How to resist the promise of freedom, as restrained as it remains? How to resist the temptation of power that was not theirs in the first place?

Blood, vices and guts spill from eager demons' hands, bloodlust erasing any trace of shame or hesitancy, grasping hands reaching to escape the Inferno that awaits for all of them if they misstep. 

Who could resist such a deal? Spoken from blood red lips, sibilant whispers of the snake that delivered Eve and countless others from the overzealous gods. Who could resist the draw? Even a scant few years in the Inferno is enough to erode at one’s morals, at one’s beliefs and Elijah?

Elijah spent a thousand years having his identity away from him. A thousand years of pain, repaid with over two thousand murders to avoid returning to such a place. He had told Chrysaor that he could not return to the Inferno, not if he wanted to remain himself. That still held true, but it was weighted by the knowledge, deep and overwhelming, that if he left, he would be leaving Chrysaor behind. 

Their story had been one of tragedy, one of unfinished tapestries and white lies meant to protect the other from the truth. Their love had remained a dagger to his chest from the moment his body grew cold on his arms. 

It must be said, Elijah would have killed and slaughtered his way to the promised reward regardless of the status of his love life, but the fact that there was a love life to speak about? With Chrysaor? It added an edge of desperation to his actions, a sharp edge to the words that spilled from his lips to draw brothers to violence alike of that of Cain and Abel, a vicious mania on his eyes as he encouraged human’s to break the sacraments they hold so very dear. 

Eight souls to be sent to the circles, to corrupt with the tools given, to destroy for his own self-satisfaction. 

Eight souls to be killed, to grasp at the drop of freedom given to them by their leaders. A drop of food to a starving man is everything, even if at the end of the day the man still remains starving. 

Eight souls, one for each of the lower circles of the Inferno. 

Let's count down to one.

The Ninth Circle: Treachery.

There is nothing like the retelling of one of the first stories of sin to start the slow ascend from the deepest circles of hell and beyond. Cain and Abel, a story of responsibility unfulfilled and resentment allowed to fester. A treat like no other, and a tale he finds particularly amusing on its most current iteration. There had been nothing as amusing as when Elijah had discovered that there was a witch and familiar pair with the same name, a glee rising to elevated degrees when he had heard rumors of the particular nature of their relationship. Truly a wicked and sinful choice of the familiar to go by such a name, and one he watched with the same delight he got from watching a trainwreck. Alas, he could not provoke betrayal in that particular pair, but he could find himself some brother’s to sit in the place of the original pair of siblings.

It’s almost too easy, even.

“Poor innocent souls,” Elijah coos with amusement as he leans against one of the walls of Flirt. He has enough vantage to see the room around him, enough vantage to tally the progress of many of his compatriots and to ensure that no one deigns to commit treachery upon him. It is a risk, to be amidst the depraved masses as they rejoice in their bloodshed, but after millennia in the Inferno, this unholy mess almost feels like home. 

Eyes lidded and filled with bloodlust, he throws a last glance to the couple of brothers that had the poor misfortune of having chosen that very night to visit the strip club together and grins. He has been whispering in their heads with his telepathy for the last half an hour, bolstering their bitterness, resentment and jealousy against the other, having decided they were the perfect sacrifices for the ninth and fifth circles after he had swiped their phones and found that they were a tragedy prime for the making.

“Naughty, naughty souls,” he tuts in mock disappointment as he finalizes the text he had been writing and sends it to the eldest. Nothing like conflict between brothers, he thinks with glee, forwarding the youngest’s plans to steal the eldest’s inheritance, topping the entire betrayal with the pictures  of the youngest’s affair with the eldest’s wife. The phones are then quietly slipped into the respective pockets, and all he has left to do is whisper on the eldest mind, pushing him past the brink he has found himself in and into the abyss. 

There is nothing as perversely amusing as watching an eldest sibling strangle the youngest with his bare hands, nothing as delightful as watching the horror dawn on his eyes as he looks down at his brother’s lifeless eyes. It is quite the spectacle, and one he ends without much flourish, snapping the eldest’s neck so that the last thing he sees before his soul reaches the Ninth Circle is his brother’s lifeless eyes. 

That is how Elijah’s night begins, but it is not how it ends. 

The Eight Circle: Fraud

An accountant walks into a strip club, hoping to let loose for the night before he hits the books in the morning.  Little does he know that the devil that offers him a drink will goad him into stealing the entirety of his company’s assets in the span of a night. Little does he know that as he drinks and becomes intoxicated by the magic of the festivities, Elijah has pushed him to condemn himself in his thievery. Little does he know that when he finally feels fulfilled, when his bank account it’s bursting from the seams from all the riches he has stolen, his night would come to an abrupt end. Little does he know that as a thief that has stolen from another there is no other fate for him than that of the borgia. 

Elijah watches with grim amusement as the accountant bleeds out on the floor beneath him, a drink in hand and a foot against the dying man's throat, cutting the oxygen from his lungs as his guts spill into the floor. He knows where the poor unfortunate soul is going, realizes he has condemned another to suffer as he has, but that does not matter. It is Elijah or him, and he will always choose himself over another, lest the other be Chrysaor.

The Seventh Circle: Violence

The Seventh Circle is amidst the easiest of the bunch, the night turning into a violent revelry the later it becomes. Elijah fulfills this circle’s sacrifice with a few pointed words, pitting a witch and a vampire against each other and convincing the naive little witch that the only way to survive is to resort to blood magic to subdue the awful beast. 

“It’s self-defense,” Elijah whispers in her ear, voice kind and arms on her shoulder in macabre reassurance as greedy eyes watch how the blade comes down and bites the skin of her forearm. The witch’s blood spills first, and then the lycan’s follow, bursting from her vessel as the dear little witch bursts all of his blood’s vessels in a moment of bloody abandon. Elijah doesn’t give her time to realize what she has done, offering her the sweet oblivion of death as he wraps his arms around her ribs and crushes them inward, one of the jagged pieces puncturing her heart. 

The Sixth Circle: Heresy

This is a fun circle, one that requires his best acting skills and the drunkest, most egocentric of the humans doomed to die by the festivities. Elijah finds him in one of the corner’s, a tall priest man away from his flock. A pious and selfish man, willing to use God to condemn those who get in his way and to elevate those who flatter him. An egocentric man, flirting with damnation but not taking the last steps needed to be counted as a heretic. It is rather amusing to make this one fall, planting whispers on his head throughout the night, setting the railway so that his train of thought goes the way he wants it to go. It doesn’t take much to convince the stranger cradling his drink that the Church is wrong, that Father Adrian has failed to understand the true meaning of the Bible. That God is ever forgiving to It’s shepherds and willing to listen to their judgment rather than It’s Own. Soon, the priest has begun to believe that he is one of God’s chosen, merely a few whispered words to the vestiges of his drunk-hazed head, a bit of telekinesis to make his phone float, and it is enough for him to bend his faith in order to fit his own superiority into the mold. Elijah does not kill him immediately, choosing instead to fulfill the sacrifices of other circles before returning to the priest and striking a conversation, prodding and asking about his beliefs until he has confirmed that he has pushed the priest into heresy.

To honor his new belief system, Elijah crucifies the priestagainst the wall using the wooden legs of the stool he had been sitting in, and ends the show by cutting his tongue and allowing him to drown in his own blood. 

Here be prophets.

The Fifth Circle: Wrath

There is a scrawny man sitting on the corner, dressed to the nines and standing in such a way that screams desperation to be noticed. He catches Elijah’s attention when the demon notices him staring at those being slaughtered by Mazikeen and Sybella with envy, looking at the men Lilith is playing with and clenching his fists. They are small signs that hint to discontentment, and Elijah takes full advantage of them, sliding next to him and striking a conversation. Envy comes easily to Elijah, and he only has to speak of what he envies, of the anger he feels on his chest when he sees something he covets and cannot have, to see the same anger reflected on the man’s eyes. A little more pushing to turn that anger into wrath, a little more to keep him at the edge of the cliff, wrathful about being ignored by the women in the strip club, wrathful for being unseen despite believing that he deserves to shine. The stranger stands on the precipice of wrath, and Elijah chooses to push with a pointed comment, wondering why he would ever think someone would pay attention to him. 

The chair that the stranger tries to shatter over his head brings a cackle from his lips as he evades, again and again, forcing the stranger to keep swinging, not caring of the bystanders he hits in the process, until he smashes the chair against the bar and it shatters, pieces of wood bursting and knocking countless bottles of glass over. 

Whoops, he will have to pay Amico back for that, he thinks, before reaching out, snapping the scrawny man’s neck with his telekinesis.

The Fourth Circle: Greed

Finding a dhampir amidst the party goers was a stroke of luck that he did not want to ignore. Not when he had brought with him a vial of faiman’s blood just in case, and he knew just what to do. There is almost a sense of guilt to his actions, the idea of forcing Kay’s plight on another not quite settling well on him, but that is quickly ignored, high as Elijah is on bloodlust and thirst. It is likely the guilt will return at a later date, but for now he focuses on forcing the vial of faiman’s blood down the dhampir’s throat, offering his wrist and his own blood after to give the dhampir a taste of demon blood. What follows is a haze of indulgence and greed, as Elijah whispers in the dhampir’s ear about how drinking more supernatural blood will make him powerful beyond belief, about how this is the time to be greedy and to drink more and more and more. What follows is a massacre, as the dhampir loses himself in his greed for power and attacks witches and demons alike, draining them dry to become stronger. 

Elijah follows the frenzied dhampir languidly, eyeing his victims with grim amusement but not moving to interrupt until he considers that he has been greedy enough. Once that is set and done, he approaches the dhampir, an amicable smile on his face as he congratulates him for his excellent work before slamming a clawed hand against his chest and ripping the still beating heart from his chest and squeezing it until it pops. 

The Third Circle: Gluttony

Nothing like bars to encourage indulgence without abandon. Nothing like a strip club to prey on wannabe frat boys insecurities about not being manly enough. Nothing like regenerative healing to emasculate them. All he had to do was to take three tequila shots in a row, and then challenge the group of frat boys for a drinking contest. Seven shots later, and the smarter of the bunch had begun to hesitate, but even then, none of them stopped.  Elijah had gone out of his way to brag about how much he could drink without trouble, and if any of them stopped now they would be seen as inferior than the weird frat boy they had encountered on their trip to Rome and they couldn’t have that. Shot of tequila after shot of tequila, they kept drinking, the world fading away due to a mix of the alcohol and the magic that had drawn everyone into Flirt. Nine shots, the first frat boy dropped. Eleven, the second threw up. Fourteen, and the last one was going strong. 

He was Elijah’s choice. 

Quick hands snap out and the incubi grabs the remaining frat boy by the throat, pulling a bottle of vodka closer with his telekinesis and opening the cap with a flick of his thumb. Too drunk to struggle, his victim could only watch through glazy eyes as Elijah poured the bottle down his throat, emptying the entire liter before dropping the frat boy to the floor, smashing that bottle on his face as he went down. 

Alcohol poisoning set in quickly after that, and Elijah watched as the stranger’s bright future went up in flames as his heart stopped.

The Second Circle: Lust

It almost feels like cheating, how easy his chosen sacrifice for the second circle falls for it. It almost feels like cheating, because at the end of the day, it is. Seducing a married man had been far too easy, merely sitting around whole flexing obviously and pretending to be naive. A subtle praise of “Oh, your kids are so cute! And if they grow up to be like you, I am sure they will be super handsome.”. Seduction is an art, one he has mastered, but he doesn’t need to pull his best moves for a drunk idiot, feeble enough to fall for big brown eyes and idiotic enough to find himself alone in a strip club after work. As soon as his lips had touched Elijah’s, he had known his soul was forfeit, and it had been easy from there, encouraging him more and more until he had grown desperate to be fulfilled.

Funny, how the cheating husband had died unfulfilled. Pants down, dick hard and free, a photo of evidence sent to his wife, and a throat ripped open by Elijah’s teeth when he had leaned down to give him a hickey. 

Funny, how things go.

The First Circle: Limbo

There is no story for the limbo, for there is no demon ruling it, no being that demands a sacrifice.

Lucky that Elijah is, for if a sacrifice for the Limbo were to be required, he would not have completed his task, swept away as he was to Silanus’ funeral.

[ivysmazikeen]

The Familiar is repping her spider form with real diamonds and pearls. Each and every piece of her clothing is designer but she has no qualms about getting down and dirty tonight.

[elijahsequeira]

Cocaine and drinking with your friends You live in the dark, boy, I cannot pretend I'm not fazed, only here to sin If Eve ain't in your garden, you know that you can Call me when you want, call me when you need Call me in the morning, I'll be on the way Call me when you want, call me when you need Call me out by your name, I'll be on the way like Mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm Mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm Ayy, ayy I wanna sell what you're buying I wanna feel on your ass in Hawaii I want that jet lag from fucking and flying Shoot a child in your mouth while I'm riding Oh, oh, oh, why me?

[ivysmazikeen]

SANGUIS MASSA SACRIFICES

In order of completion.

Reward: Familiars that succeed will never weaken no matter how far they are from the witch, fey, or druid that holds their contract. Recieved: Plot Drop, Sanguis Massa

Heresy

Mazikeen figured she'd like someone to help her out that night, someone easily used. This one took a while and it was frustrating at first but worth it in the end. She found someone that was emanating hopelessness in their emotions and made sure to chat them up to find out a little about their faith and their problems. Eventually, she told them that God could not help them. If they wanted to get out of their financial difficulties they needed to turn their faith and love to Satan. It was a matter of subtle shows of her power and a very convincing story about how Satan saved her. She showed him her wealth and "confided" in him about the deal she had made with the devil. To her luck, he eventually found everything she said to be convincing, desirable and worth the sacrifice of his soul in "40 years." She led him to a room alone and made him take part in a fake ritual. As her eyes turned black, Maz spoke in a demonic voice as though possessed and pretended as though Satan was speaking through her. She, as Satan, told him to obey his loyal servant for one night and he would have everything he ever desired. He agreed. He praised Satan and the fake ritual was over. Mazikeen welcomed him to the brotherhood and sent 10 thousand dollars into his bank account to make it all the more convincing that he'd made the right choice. She explained she was on a quest for the Dark Lord that night and he could be of great assistance. (Eventually, this man would meet his death after the Violence sacrifice.)

Fraud

Mazikeen spent some time looking for a very rich business man, even recruiting her Heresy victim to look for one too. Eventually, she found out and managed to get some time alone with a bit of seduction and flirtation, asking him about his money ventures and acting incredibly curious. Eventually, she got him explaining how he made his investments and acted interested in joining him in his ventures. She proposed giving him a certain amount of money to invest for her, knowing full well that he would take the money for himself. It didn't take him long to get interested in her proposition and she sent him 6 thousand dollars. As soon as she did, she asked him some pointed question to get a sense of whether or not he had the intention of running off with the money. When she suspected that he did and read through his emotions, she finally killed him.

Gluttony

Mazikeen found one of her best drug customers who frequents the locale and talks him up before spiking his drink. It’s a poison she created in her life as a witch which she perfected over the years. With every minute that passed, the man would get more and more famished until he was so nonsensical with hunger that Mazikeen tied him up. She decided to wait until the poison was as it’s worst and let him dine on some dead victims throughout the night. (He is killed near the end after the Lust sacrifice.) During the moments that she needs him to not be visible as she manipulate another, she has her Heresy victim take care of him in a room.

Greed 

Enticed a human man with a little game after chatting him up and learning about his family. She let him win more and more money each time he did something a little more difficult for her: from making her a specific drink to stealing something from someone in the establishment. Finally, she asked him if he wanted to double the money he won, never play with her again and send all the money back it to his family in his home country, all whom were in danger of losing their home. Or he could keep what he won and have the opportunity to play with her again next year. He chose the latter. She knocked him out and called his wife over to the bar. (He meets his death during the Wrath sacrifice.)

Wrath

The man’s wife came and saw her husband all tied up and Mazikeen taunted her, making her try to do humiliating things to get her to let him go. Finally, she told the woman she changed her mind and killed her husband in front of her and then told her that her kids were next. The human woman was full of rage by now and tried to kill her. Eventually, she would have with a nicely placed stab with a knife if the demon didn’t have regenerative healing. Mazikeen killed her right after with the same knife. 

Lust

Mazikeen finds an engaged woman and quickly befriends her. She convinces her to invite a work friend who is married but has been trying to seduce her, lying and saying that Mazikeen will convince him to stop. Instead, she gets them both drunk, drugged and seduces them. They get into it and start making out as Mazikeen finds someone else. Now it’s four people getting very heated with lust. Two more see what’s going on and join in. She has her pick of who to kill once the orgy begins and the watches on from the sidelines, eventually choosing to kill the married man by having her Gluttony victim eat him. She then also finally killed her Gluttony victim.

Treachery

She found a couple, clearly one of the more violent-inclined and criminal of humans. At first Mazikeen simply enjoyed just destroying a room with them and engaging in a bit of carnal desires. But when that was done, she locked them in the very same room and decided to show her true form. She trapped the two and hurt them immensely before offering them a deal. The one that manages to kill the other one will survive and leave unscathed. At first, both refuse to kill the other but it didn't take long for the woman to eventually make the move to kill her boyfriend and succeeding. Mazikeen then sent her to hell with him.

Violence

Finally, Mazikeen was eager to complete her sacrifices. She calls on her Heresy victim who, during all this time, had managed to convince three more people about the glory of Satan... or rather, two. Mazikeen could sense that the sister of one of the three did not truly believe in what was happening and just wanted to stay close to her brother to keep him safe and hopefully convince him away. Mazikeen zeroed in on the sister as she invited the three new recruits and her Heresy victim into a room where they would all conduct a grand final ritual for the night. They all go out into the streets and start looting and stealing. Even the sister eventually begins to enjoy herself and Mazikeen waits until it looks like she's completely invested in the destruction they're all going through. At the end the 5 return to Flirt and decide to burn the items they stole with drops of blood for Satan. 3 do, but the sister doesn't want to. Mazikeen says that she hoped she would say that and murders her, as well as all the other ones there. 3 victims for heresy and 1 for violence.

...

Mazikeen was in the process of poisoning an extra victim for another Gluttony sacrifice and a bit of fun when she is forced to the Midsommer Night Masquerade.

[elijahsequeira]

who? @sybellax where? sanguis massa

“It’s self-defense,” Elijah whispers in her ear, voice kind and arms on her shoulder in macabre reassurance as greedy eyes watch how the blade comes down and bites the skin of her forearm. The witch’s blood spills first, and then the lycan’s follow, bursting from her vessel as the dear little witch bursts all of his blood’s vessels in a moment of bloody abandon. Elijah doesn’t give her time to realize what she has done, offering her the sweet oblivion of death as he wraps his arms around her ribs and crushes them inward, one of the jagged pieces puncturing her heart.

Lifting his arms, he releases the corpse from the hug and steps over the corpse, stepping on the former witch's back as he moves towards the bar and the familiar he sees there. Flagging the bartender for a drink, he turns to other and nods in acknowledgment.

"How far into the offerings are you?" He asks, expression mild and polite. Better to leave a good impression to avoid being targeted later on, after all. "I have just completed the Seventh Circle."