Welcome to Gaia! ::

Aeron's gaze remained glued to the famine horseman, though he wasn't fond of her...kind. torture at best was the crudest form of harvest fear. A nesscary form of course, but crude none the less.

He wished nothing more of the woman but to actually cease her crying. Pitiful. Couldn't even handle her jaw being broken, weak. Humans were weak.

"I also agree at the small one." Aeron's gaze landed on the child. "They would generate a quick amount of fear but children of this world are so..." He moved to the table, "Unaware of the pain. Deafened to it."

The pleasant, wafting fear was difficult to ignore, and Xala had followed her senses to the attentive circle of Horsemen. She had brought a floaty, feathered quill and parchment to take notes. When it came to something as important as preparing ingredients, she didn't want to miss or forget anything.

PREP WORK was written at the top of the page in swirly text, and on another line,

HANDY TIPS

She'd added Alva's note, extremities, and also examples and keep them aware. It had been so long. Real people. It was like she'd been existing on second-hand manufactured crud instead of the fresh stuff.

She watched the demise of the first one, sampling the very final burst of Fear. What wasn't there to like about the last twist of despair, always powerful, always unique? But there was something to be said too about the freshness of the energy wrung out of the remaining three. The difference was distinct.

The others eyed up the most vulnerable one, who would make a really darling meal, curls all done up with blood and chopped up into little quivering parts.

"She's cute," Xala enthused, scribbling furiously. "Are they defensive of their little ones, like us? On the hope ingredient thing. Um," She raised her feather, "What if we let one of them live. But only if they do what we say. I mean, if you could make them do all kinds of things, to each other- maybe...? Is that good, would the Fear have a better quality?"

Khaliq watched, dispassionately curious, as the first human was killed--too quickly, too quickly. The burst of Fear that came from it was raw and sweet, overwhelming in its intensity and yet sorely missed as it was taken away. How wasteful. Trust War, of course, not to make the most of what it had, to devour it in one bite instead of savor it.

"Why not," he suggested, "drag it out? Leave them in the dark, let their senses wander and wonder and tremble in anticipation of pain yet to come? Let them hear each others' screams and know that they will suffer the same fate."

Xala continued to cheerily scribble down notes.

"Hmmm. Not protective. Got it."

She sheathed the quill in favor of a long, wicked needle. Flavor. Fear. Anticipation, all this prep work stuff was so complicated. She wasn't a heart/mind reader, how was she supposed to know which parts they'd want to guard?

"Ohhh, hold still, dear," she chastised, "or this won't come out right."

Xala took the woman's chin, resting a slender gauzy knee between her legs. She teased at first, drawing the tip over her lips and nose but not breaking any skin or doing anything but tickling. She hesitated over the woman's ear, and eye.

When she finally bore down, it was on the cheek.

With care, Xala drew a particularly humiliating (and blush-worthy) rune on it. Wouldn't she be embarrassed!

Nereza had spent most of the class scribbling down notes and then drawing detail faces in the margins, mostly of the look and expressions that the prisoners made as the war horsewoman as they realized their price of so called freedom. It didn’t take long for them to betray one another and toss anything out in order to find a way to make their escape back to their normal world. There was no doubt in her mind that human’s were rather weak creatures, easy to backstab and never being able to trust one another. The smaller one seemed to spend most of its time sobbing, its voice breaking as it tried to gasp in breaths of air between the little noises it made. Sure horseman cried but it was never like this, or at least not what Nereza had seen, maybe she was just more so oblivious to the idea of crying in fear. The male seemed to turn silent the wet tears still streaming down his face as snot poured from his nose, no matter how much she tried to draw it she couldn’t make the liquid look wet enough on paper.

Lastly was the woman, the one who quickly threw out the other so desperate for her pathetic life. Nereza watched as another horseman walked up to her teasing her before jabbing the needle into her cheek. Following her was Lan, or at least that was the name Nereza had jotted down in her book from previous meeting. Setting her notebook down the death priestess walked to the box and picked up a needle; the metal felt cool to the touch but slowly grew warmer as she grew closer to the human. Tears and blood ran down her cheeks as Nereza stared down at her the bright blue eyes studying every feature of the prey. Every little twitch of woman’s muscles as the needle lingered above her head. Grasping the woman’s chin firmly and letting her face show an expression of a deadfish stare Nereza dug the needle into the woman’s forehead and carved something that looked like the word shame in some language. When she was satisfied Nereza turned and headed back to her book, the odd taste of despair lingering heavier in the air.

Thera waited for them to finish before she bent down, grabbing the sobbing begging woman by the chin. "You're ready aren't you? To be free?" She just whimpered, clearly beyond listening. "Hush now cow, we have picked a nice place for you. It's really lovely. You will be happy there..." She cooed as the assistant let her go and began to open a portal. The Woman didn't try to move, try to run, she just remained as she'd been, sobbing.

As the portal opened, many horsemen would know the smell and humid breeze as the human's world's Amazon forest. "Come now, look at how pretty your freedom is." Thera smiled and cooed more, urging the woman to look up at the portal. As soon as she did, the woman was sprinting into the jungle, dangers forgotten in her haste. Her form vanished and as it did, so the portal closed. "She will die." Thera said blankly. "She will become lost, hallucinate, question her own wounds, her sanity, and if the beasts do not kill her, her own mind will. Yet she carried OUR marks. Her FEAR will be ours. Hope. It drives humans into madness."

She looked to the last two, the man and child. "You give them what they want and they will FEAR. You take it away the will FEAR. Hope is to give and take. There is no one method, but it will give you more than what you might be willing to take." A pointed look to Uttam. "Humans never know what they really want unfortunately. Fickle ignorant things. So we must guess. With practice you can read them better, understand them better. Kill them and harvest from them better. They will go so far for one thing, what of another?" She went to the man.
"Will you kill the boy? Will you kill yourself?" She tossed a dagger into his cage along with the child.


The reaction was swift, the child's throat slashed before the man repeated the motion to himself.

Thera just paused.
"...Unpredictable." She waved the assistants to remove the cage. "Humans present complex minds, and even when you anticipate one thing, they can surprise you... as was just demonstrated." Shaking her head, Thera moved to the table. "I had hoped to gift you will vials of some blood infused FEAR from our next activity but it seems we have lost that chance. I apologize. However, while this demonstration and class has ended, please feel free to take any object from the table to use on your next captive. Consider it a gift." She nodded to them.
"Dismissed."