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renegadesrpg · 3 years

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Dark Angels: Creation, Part 12 - Grace. Zav and Bryn

Zav: --Giving the area a last look around, I step into the old church and stand behind her. –

Damn, woman, you brought the whole thing. That expended a lot of energy. You know, you could have just brought the important tools and materialized the furniture and raw materials from closer by. It wouldn’t have taken as much out of you. Bryn: “I wanted my own things. I know the herbs were cut at the right time of the moon and a consecrated athame was used. I know the crystals have already been purified.”

And I wanted to keep the last connection to the one who’d helped me furnish the cavern, made the tables and cabinets and taught me so much. But I wasn’t about to say that out loud.

“Besides, it all comes from somewhere. We don’t just “make it” out of thin air. Sin might be powerful enough to do it, but when we do, it comes from somewhere.” Zav: --with a shrug, I look the place over and pick out a corner near the front with good natural light— That may be, but I figure with the risks we take, we earn it. When I materialize stuff, I picture it from a catalogue or someplace I’ve seen it on sale and get it from there. --That I generally find a way to compensate wherever I got it from goes without saying. Unlike the Horseman, Sin recruited honorable souls. Or in my case angels. Walking to the corner I’d scoped out…— This is good. It’s got good light. It’s open to your work area so I can be near if you need me, and vice versa, and I can see the door. We’ll ward the rest of the place against anyone, reaper, demon, angel or any other creature except through that door. --The shop… damn, I’m going to have to let some of my local people know I survived after this is all over. Dragon for one. And what if it made national news? What if Truely saw it? Panic spurts through my brain. What if she thinks I’m dead? What if she turns to someone else before I can get there…? No, no, no….I’m going to find her number and call her just as soon as I get this set up.— I think the chair right hear near the 10 foot tall leaded glass windows. And there are outlets in the wall along the back…. – When Sin had renovated he’d had this place wired for electricity and had installed generators too. After all, drug lords needed electricity to process product and they wouldn’t want the amount of energy used to alert any Polícia Federal. And I’m sure the local police were getting regular bribes from him as well. It would be expected. Sin made it a policy when dealing with humans to /always/ do the expected. Well, meeting those expectations worked for us too. Bryn was used to conjuring her own light in that cave she’d worked in, but I’d needed electric power to run my shop and I’d need it here too. Thinking back to a catalog I’d looked through a couple of weeks ago, I materialize a set I’d looked at. Tattoo chair with an adjustable head rest and arms and hydraulic control to raise and lower it, an artist chair, and a rolling tray. I look at the back wall and materialize a counter I’d seen there and then extra ink, pots, an autoclave and gauze and wrap from the same catalog the chair had come from on top of it. Later, I’d tally up the totals and move some money into the company accounts. Dropping my backpack on the counter, I turn to Bryn...— Ok, let’s get this show on the road. Where do you want me? Bryn: While Zav had been building his workspace I’d done basic anti-demon warding. He’d have to show me the symbols and spell for keeping out angels and reapers later, but for now we were safe. “Why don’t you lay down on your new handy dandy reclining tattoo chair?” While he moved to it, I unwrapped my ritual athame from it’s soft leather bindings and examined the edge. Sharper was better for skin. Less painful. The edge gleamed in the sunlight and drew blood as I ran my thumb along it lightly. “Perfect.” Zav: --eyeing her with the knife—You know what you’re doing with that thing? How to cut me to get enough without bleeding me dry? Bryn: Laughing, “Don’t be a sissy. You’re not the first ‘blood’ donor I’ve worked with, although you are the first grace donor. But it has to work the same and you’ll heal faster than humans. I’m going to slice along your arm and hold it pointing to the ground while your grace drains into a bowl. You’ve explained the magick of making a grace stone and once we’ve done this I’ll do a small one as a test. I won’t take more than I need.” Zav: Take /more/ than you think you’ll need. I’ll recover faster than if you have to cut me twice. And if you have extra make grace stones for you, Sean and Adrian, too. You won’t be able to handle as much as Sin, but a little in a stone will make you faster and sharpen your senses. –shrugging— It can’t hurt. If we had the time I’d ask you to put some in the protection bracelet you’re making for the fighters, but we don’t. So instead I’m going to add a few drops to the ink when I do the protection tats. Bryn: Frowning down at him as I stretch his arm out on the chair’s armrest. “Just don’t be a hero, ok? Your grace will regenerate but we don’t need you down for days. Let me know when to stop.” He nods in agreement, but I’ve known this guy too long. I’ll have to watch the cues. Taking the athame in hand, I draw it vertically along his arm, laying open the radial artery. I’d never take this risk with a human, no matter how powerful. They’d bleed out too fast. I’d have gone for the cephalic vein. Slower flowing and quicker clotting. But I was counting on reaper healing to make sure that didn’t happen to Zav. Shimmering blue liquid began to flow and I quickly move his arm off the chair’s armrest and squat on the floor holding it over a deep bowl. It runs down his arm and over his fingers in a stream. “You doing all right up there Romeo?” Zav: --I grunted as she made a long deep slice in my forearm. It’s funny how that same injury in the heat of battle is numb but sitting here, knowing what she’s going to do, it hurts like a bitch. – I’m fine. Let it flow little witch. You’re just sad because it isn’t real blood. Bryn: “Ok, I take that as an insult. And it’s never a good idea to insult the lady with the knife.” The truth is, I /have/ done blood magick before. It’s ancient and powerful and the more powerful the subject, the stronger the magick and the less you needed. Which is why I usually used my own, but there had been times when I’d needed volunteer donors. And I always used volunteers only. Anybody that has to kill somebody to get enough blood for the spell is either an amature or not using powerful enough blood. Shifter’s were good, as were vampires, other mages, fae and phoenix. All those beings’ blood had earth magick that blended nicely with my own. Zav’s grace, though, is a different story. Grace is empyreal, coming from the Creator of both the divine and the earth. He’d made empyreal magick and earth magick each unique in their powers, and they weren’t made to mesh. That’s why the white god had gone apeshit when the Gregori had fallen in love with humans and chosen to have children with them. The children had grace, yes, but they also had a soul and the soul is at the essence of earth magick. If one of those chosen by the Grigori had been a being of power, their children would have been a threat to the white god’s view of himself as top of the heap. So he’d had them killed. All of them. Grigori, their human mates, children, infants, babes in the womb...it hadn’t mattered so long as it was bloody and violent and sent the message to other angels what happened when you broke the white god’s rules. Not that I’d been around to see this, mind you. But Sin had, and he’d shown it to us when he formed our cadre so we would understand how dangerous an enemy the white god was. And –frowning at this thought,- once I completed the grace stone Sin was going to use it combined with his own human soul and reaper magick to bring down the Horseman. It was going to make him very, very powerful. I’ve got to wonder if that isn’t going to draw some unwelcome attention, but –mentally sighing- one disaster at a time. Zav: --snorting a laugh – You’d never hurt me. You love me and you know it. --As the iridescent blue fluid begins to flow my I turn my mind back to Truely, trying to ignore the sensation of my grace flowing down my arm. It isn’t the same as a mortal’s perception of blood flowing on their skin would be. Blood is warm and sticky, but grace is cool and slick. Everywhere it touches it tingles like sparks flaring. It was the raw magick in it, the power, the essence of life. And I can feel that essence seeping out of me. It’s like I’m falling backwards into a black velvet night. Fighting against the darkness, I twist my head to look down at her and force a cocky note in my voice— We about done here? I got a woman I need to call. Bryn: The deep bowl is nearly half full, with what I estimate is at least 2 pints. In a human I’d have stopped well before this, but I needed everything Zav could give for this to work. Glancing up at his question, I start to pop off a smartass response, but I pause. The skin under his tan is pale and he has sweat beading on his upper lip. He should have said something, dammit. His body is smarter than he is, though. The slice on his arm is already closing up on the ends, the flow of grace slowing naturally. “I think we’re done here, Romeo.” Standing, I reach my hand out and call the gauze from his counter to me. Lifting his arm, I lay it on the chair armrest and bind the wound to stop the ooze. “Gotta love reaper physiology. In a few hours that will be healed and, so long as you don’t head to the coast for an ocean dip, you won’t even have a scar.” Zav: --Swinging my legs over the edge of the reclined chair, I sit up. And almost immediately grab the edges of it as the world sways.— Bryn: “Hey, watch it big guy!” Grabbing his arm to steady him... “I really don’t think you want me to tell Sean and Adrian that you broke your nose falling on your face after losing a little grace. They’d never let you live it down. C’mon, lay back down in the chair for a while.” Carefully easing him back down on the reclined tattoo chair. Zav: --muttering as I ease back onto the chair— Fuck it. Hand my the phone in my backpack, will you? Bryn: Sighing, I grab his backpack from the floor beside his counter and rummage through the pockets until I find his cellphone. Turning back to him, I hold it up in the air. “You get this on one condition. You don’t try to leave that chair for the next two hours and if you need anything, you don’t try to materialize it yourself. You ask. I need you to be up and alert when I start on the grace stone. You taught me the magick, but I want you there if I need back up. And don’t worry, it doesn’t hold anything up. I’ll do the wards and start on the bracelets to the protect our forces from the trap. I just need you to send me the warding against angels and reapers. Demons are done already.” Zav: --raising my head in a mock glare — Tyrant. Give a person a little power and next thing you know they’re telling you what to do. -- with a sigh, I rest my head back on the padded head rest. The truth is, I probably couldn’t walk six feet right now, let alone swing a sword, so her plan’s good. Mentally I open to here and visualize the symbols in the order she’ll need them.-- Everywhere but the main doorway. I noticed there’s a place for a bar on the inside of the double doors that can be used to barricade the doors. The church must have initially served as a last ditch sanctuary against indigenous peoples when the land was being colonized and the brackets were left when the church was turned into a ballroom. Find the bar and put them on it. That way we can bar the door while we’re working and not have to be on high alert all the time. Now give me the damned phone. Bryn: Leave it to Zav to come up with that. After he’d become a reaper, the only way he’d really used his angel’s magick was to protect. He’d become an expert in defensive protocols using empyreal magicks and he’d studied strategy. Definitely our cadre’s go-to guy for this. The images he sends to me mentally are slender, and some are intricately drawn, but I’ve got an ediectic memory so I’m good to go. “Got it.” Zav: Leave no more than an arm’s span between them and repeat them in a line around the walls, on the ceiling and on the floor. And Bryn?” -- Lifting my head to look at her with a grin, because I’m about to get some of my own back.— It needs to be in blood. --laughing as she gives me a death stare and easily catching the phone she throws at my head.— Bryn: “FINE!” Zav: --Smirking as she walks off to take care of it, I settle back on the chair and Google “Truly Good Sweet Treats” in Pascoe on my phone, only to have it correct me on the spelling. Even though Sin’s pretty dismissive of technology, I’m grateful to it at the moment. The correct spelling of her name, Truely Goode, would have taken me a few minutes to puzzle out. Google had a website for Truely Goode Sweet Treats, and hallelujah, the website had a phone number! I punch it in and take a deep breath as it rings.— Hello? Can I speak to Truely, please?

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iambenjiijackson · 5 years

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The Groove Guide - Lenzig Leal (Cephalic Carnage)

"Alcohol makes you do some crazy things. One time in Austria we played a show and this guy was all drink, laid on the ground and twelve of us poured alcohol in his mouth at once. Asian guy - we called him Kim Jun Drunk. Cool Drunk." The laid-back drawl of Cephalic Carnage's Lenzig Leal indicates that during the band's seventeen-year history they've done some heavy things. "I tagged out passed out people once on a train. One side looked like Gene Simmons, the other was normal. I drew pupils on their eyelids - morbid." As a throng of laughter occurs in the background of the phone call.

Dropping into the conversation about getting voice-mail messages a few times from Mastodon's Brent Hinds and both sharing incredible critical praise for their style of music, Cephalic Carnage's lyrical content about smoking weed in their earlier works would instantly draw comparisons to the work's of Phil Anselmo's 'Down'." Too many people make comparisons like that man," Lenzig declaring that the band were more close to the works of "Bongzilla - back when they were doing stuff they'd book out tours for us and get super weeds for free..."

Cephalic Carnage make no qualms about their substance use - the group dubbed themselves "Hydrogrind", an amalgamation of grindcore with marijuana themes, and during the interview Lenzig discusses if we were to meet up when they play Auckland we should "smoke a bowl and talk about the roots of metal man - UFO, Jefferson Airplane." "The original intention back then was, like, jazz parts and weird things like that. We had to be clever and call it 'Rocky Mountain Hydrogrind.' Smoking the best hydro weed and playing grind with death elements seems to be opened mindedness, super and represent the area it was from and it works. Some days we're happy and healthy to smoke a bowl, I prefer a smoke over getting drunk. We all smoke, but not as much as others - we didn't want to get gimmicky"

Though marijuana is a large theme within the music of the group the group's latest effort, 'Xenosapien', verges on the themes of extra-terrestrial life, in particular 'Grays' which were alleged to have crashed in Roswell. When posed with the question if he there was a general belief in the band of other life forms, Lenzig paused, then finally admitted "I dunno. I think you got to be ignorant if you think we're the only thing in existence. A lot of science and scary stories that brew up in my mind, and I feel that it's a little much more than that, y'know?" In regards to some of the lyrics, which he described for one moment a set involving "Cooler aliens raping, part of what they are is that", Lenzig reflects on how the scene takes itself too seriously. "End of the day, you got to smile, entertain and do what you gotta do to entertain. We're never of the idea of being better than anyone else and are above that. I don't see the logic in that"

With the metal scene over in New Zealand and the United Kingdom under siege, one has to wonder what it's like in the United States for the once 'hip' genre. "Everyday in American, you can get up and watch metal on TV, just really killer programmes for every style of metal and rock man. I think metal is more popular in America than anywhere else in the world. Fans who were into Slipknot helped it get re-popular in the US and it doesn't seem to be slowing down.”

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