'Cruor!' Lelilie yawed from a room on the second floor of the house. Cep, who had barely slept last night, tried her best to quickly make her way up the lengthy amount of stairs before Lelilie became impatient. As she ran, she tripped over the long medical-like gown Lelilie had given her. She fell face first onto the ground and cracked her right fang. Before she could even react, from across the hall, Lelilie aggressively opened the door and slammed it against the wall of the room. Cep, tried to get back on her feet but the pain from her cracked fang made her head vibrate from pain.
Lelilie, with her black-haired bun going undone, raged toward Cep and hastily grabbed her by her tangled curls and dragged her to the room. Cep squalled as Lelilie gripped her hair with all her strength and dragged her across the stone floor. 'Lelilie, please,' she begged. 'I was on my way, I swear. I was moving as quick as I could!' Upon hearing that, Lelilie stopped and turned to face her, she let go of Cep's hair and gave her an agitated look. She crouched down and slapped Cep with the front of her hand then the back. Ceps's umber skin slowly shifted to a dark cherry red on her cheeks. Lelilie pulled Cep up by her gown and looked right into her eyes.
'Is this why your leap was so easy to kill?' She questioned. Before Cep could respond, she forcefully pushed her against the wall. 'How dare you move at the pace of a hampered snail when such a pathetic thing as yourself is at my mercy?' She slammed Cep against the wall over, and over and over again until Cep extended her nails and clawed Lelilie's back.
Lelilie wailed in pain and dropped Cep. Cep curled herself up and began crying. Lelilie rubbed her hand against her bleeding back. She turned to Cep whose eyes were glistening Aureate from her tears. Suddenly, upon noticing the change in her eyes, Lelilie gave her a fascinated expression. She lunged towards Cep and grabbed her neck. Lelilie fluttered her fingers, and from the nearby room, she levitated a magnifying glass and dropper into the hallway. She set the items down observed Cep as she cried. A black tear slid against her cheek. Excitedly, Lelilie levitated the dropper and sucked up the tear into it.
Lelilie tightened her grip around Cep's neck and took her into the room. Lelilie shut the sepia coloured door and cast a lock from the table onto its rusting handle. Cep clawed at Lelilie's hand, over and over again. Lelilie drifted a set of chains towards Cep and chained her down to the ground.
Lelilie walked towards a table with jars, surgical tools, boxes and the likes. She opened a tool box. She put on some rubber gloves and set some tools along the table. She walked to one of the walls and set up a chalk board that was laying on the ground. 'Cruor-et-pereo,' she said as she wrote it on the board she set up. 'There aren't many Parduskenes in that forest. I'm lucky to have found a group of leopard-like kind. I'm even luckier to have found such a young kitten like you.'
'Tell me why I killed your leap?' Lelilie asked.
Cep barely formed a sentence as she cried. Lelilie gave her a smug and uncaring smile. She walked back to the table and picked up a blade from the tool box. Lelilie crouched down and began cutting at Cep's robe. 'Stop!' Cep pleaded with all her might. Lelilie levitated anther blade and put it against Cep's throat as a warning.
'Wrong answer,' Lelilie told Cep as she cut away her robe. 'You're a kitten Cruor, only a decade and nine.' She stood up and backed away as the robe fell and left Cep completely exposed. Lelilie took note of the hints of leopard fur on her chest, to her knees, to her crotch to her toes. She tore out a large amount of Cep's fur from her chest. In fear of the blade, all Cep could do was hold her wails in and drag her claws against the lumpy stone floor. Lelilie enthusiastically twirled and levitated the fur into a jar on the table.
'A kitten like you has a lot of time to grow,' she continued as she looked around the table. 'So much time to develop, so much of her ability to toy with the Nox energy forces to grow.'
Cep looked up at Lelilie, her face confused and wary. Cep could barely begin to imagine what Lelilie had planned for her.
One horrid day, meant to be an honourable day for a naming ceremony for her and some others, she saw Lelilie and a group of other Thaumaturgists mercilessly kill her entire leap to harvest Nox energy (night energy) to use. She watched some slightly older Parduskene cubs get burned alive. The elder Parduskenes have their fangs ripped out and crushed for powder. She saw her Aunt get skinned by their favourite river. Her cousin chopped into pieces to carry. Her mother and the brother she would now never have poisoned with all sorts of potions. She saw her leader, her role model, her father, dishonoured and assaulted by Lelilie herself. She watched her leap get destroyed and vanished in almost a blur.
Lelilie kept her locked in a bedroom in the house for several months without a reason. Until this moment.
'I'll utilise you and your magic, my dear cub, Cruor,' Lelilie explained. 'Your energy force will grow to fuel my research and my own energy force. I'll do anything, everything, to harvest what someone as powerful as myself needs. I have a garden of power right in home. Cruor, we haven't even begun. Cruor... we have not began!'
Indeed, was Lelilie just getting started. For the next one-hundred and eighty years Cep would be crippled down and changed for the rest of her long and ruined life. A life where Lelilie would leave her to cruor et pereo (bleed and perish).
ns216.73.216.190da2
and then Add to home screen.