~Tare

At this latest shift of demeanor, Tare had to do a mental double-take to keep from getting thrown for a loop. Was she sympathizing now?

And the way she looked at him. It was suddenly different. It was a relief when she turned away-- to go torment her poor angel prisoner more. This made Tare incredibly uncomfortable. In a flash of insight, he saw himself as the beaten tormented creature hung against a wall, his blood being swallowed by a terrifying demoness. It helped curb the minor leeway Videle had made so far at getting her perfect thighs into his imagination.

“Think about it for a minute. You said two sides were waging a horrific battle nearly beyond your capability to understand. Who do you think belonged to one of those sides . . . and what do you think she was doing there in the first place? She should have been up in the Heavens minding her own business, but instead she was down on the mortal plane, to kill and maim and damn. Does that sound to you like a truly blameless, innocent being?”

This only confused Tare further. ...Who is she TALKING about?? "Up in the Heavens minding her own business"? That couldn't be Melcara. What is going on?

He stared, baffled, at Videle as she walked back over to his one-man prison, her very walk a dance of seduction, and watched disbelieving as she disabled the internal pressure-sensitive booby-traps. It's a trick. He thought, as she released the lock on the iron maiden itself. Don't fall for it. You're still a prisoner. Even if the dumbbell is unlocked, the doors of this room are no doubt sealed tight. She's trying to get you to relax. The trouble was, if that was what she was trying to do, it was working. She even released the shackles on his hands and let them drop to the inside floor of the iron maiden with a freedom-affirming clatter. Tare rubbed at his wrists. They'd not been in the shackles long enough to have started bleeding, but sure well long enough to be sore.

He looked down at himself, taking inventory. A length of shapeless black cloth was wrapped around his waist, vanguarding some measure of modesty from the waist down. From there up, though, nothing now stood between him and Videle's appraising gaze. He might've imagined it, or more likely it was put there specifically for his benefit, but a look of intrigued approval passed across the Succubus' features at his street-muscled figure. It was impossible to suppress a tiny amount of satisfaction, even given the outlandish circumstances.

“I want to help you adjust to your new existence. I know you don’t trust me, not yet, and I want to fix that. I sense that you are . . . special. You’re clearly not interested in me, but I would like us to be friends then, at least.”

Tare did not know how to take this, at first. The idea that the Succubus was going to give up trying to coerce him seemed far-fetched, but some form of mis-guided wishful thinking made him want to believe that she could be telling the truth. The angel's impossible-to-interpret interjection from her station in the corner threw a lot of doubt into that thought, however. Ok, seriously. She's starting to get to me. Knock it off, Tare. You've been in the room with her for 15 minutes and already you're starting to go soft. She's a DEMON. She's EVIL. Cut it OUT.

“So in the spirit of garnering more trust, I am granting you two very precious gifts. The first gift is I am giving you a name. Now, I’m sure you are about to say that you don’t need one, and that you already have one. Well, let me explain! That was your mortal name – and it died with you. Like it or not, dear . . . you’re one of us now. A damned soul!”

When the mirror flashed up, there was an actual, physical bolt of pain that went through his chest as his heart stopped beating for half a second. It made up for lost ground in the seconds following by trying to pound its way out of his chest.

There was his face. But it was his own in resemblance only-- it had been replaced with something from a horrible dream. His eyes had their steely green replaced by rings of orange that glowed like coals burning with inner heat. The whites around them were dyed inky black, but these two things together were possibly the smallest changes to Tare's visage. As though a bolt of fire had glanced off the left side of his face, the outermost layer of skin almost looked like it had been burned away-- but instead of leaving exposed muscle and bleeding flesh behind beneath it, a Demon's face lurked beneath his own. Burgundy-red skin, new and fresh with his re-birth, stretched over angular bones. A healthy, oil-skin sheen caught the ambient light even as he stared, and the beginning nubs of spikey scales pushed from where his cheekbones and his jaw connected. The corner of his mouth was drawn back further than a human's should, and an extra double-row of sharp teeth peeked out from behind where his human molars should have stopped.

Without thinking about it, one shaking hand went up to his face and came away with flakes of his own skin peeled off by barely brushing his fingers along his jawline.

He'd had dreams before where his face crackled and fell off in flakes, revealing a new face underneath. They weren't dreams, they were nightmares.

“It hurts, I know, but I’m afraid it’s true. You are no longer human. You are something else, and unfortunately existence is going to be very hard for you from now on. You’re going to have to take what you want, and fight to keep it – every little thing. Even something as simple as a name.”

The room began to spin-- or maybe it was just his head and the room was standing still. This wasn't a dream. He wouldn't be waking up from this one. It was happening. For real. Tare realized he was bathed in cold sweat.

“Normally until such a time as you are strong enough to choose your own name, you are instead called Ix – victim, slave . . . food. The word has a number of different meanings in our tongue, depending on the inflection. I’m willing to spare you from that, in the interest of our friendship. And so I would like to give you your new, eternal name. Hmm . . . how does Tamerlane sound to you? Yes, I like the sound of that.”

The word had a bizarre effect on Tare. He was Named. He desparately called his "real" name to his mind, but found that the demoness was not exaggerating-- it felt hollow and distant, as though it lacked the power to discribe him anymore. The Hellname, Tamerlane, settled around his shoulders like the weight of a physical cloak. It was a cloak that provided no warmth, no protection. Only weight. Tare's knees started buckling underneath it.

“And now for my second gift, something to help you relax and adjust to your new existence. I imagine you were pretty cramped in there. So I’m willing to give you a nice massage to work out all those tense muscles...”

Her voice turned into an indecipherable succession of meaningless syllables as horror tightened its grip on his chest. His ears were ringing too loud to pay attention to anything else.

It was too much. His mind was reeling trying to process it all. He was DEAD. He had actually, literally DIED. He was trapped in a room with a demon woman who could probably tear him in half (down the middle) and she was trying to solicit sexual favors from (or for?) him. Half of his face was literally falling off, and a fiend was living underneath it. And that fiend was HIM. He didn't even notice how badly he was hyperventilating. He did notice that his stomach was churning on the half-pint of angel blood he'd just been force-fed, and now--

“So what’s it going to be, Tamerlane? Your pleasure . . . or my pain?”

"I-- I don't even know you!!" He finally exploded, spinning to face Videle, fear and desperation making his voice thin and brittle. There was a dangerous kind of crazy in his newly-minted eyes, their orange screaming of mental strain not resolving itself well. "You're insane!! How could you even offer--" But the exertion proved to be a bad idea given his current state. "--offer to... oh, gods..." He was clearly going into shock.

"Woah-- woah. Woah,woahwoah..." Tare murmured weakly as his vision began to tunnel, losing all color and going black in a collapsing circle from the outside in. He stumbled into a wall and, at this point so disoriented as to barely identify it as the wall and not the floor, he slid down it into a dizzy heap where it met the ground. His face (save for the "torn" parts) had gone a decidedly unhealthy shade of clammy green.

"I... want to leave now." He tried, his voice cracking just barely above a whisper.

Tare--or was it Tamerlane?--was not taking this well.