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Post by glitters on Oct 18, 2009 13:48:26 GMT -5
Jasmine blinked. Her mind was...organized? What in the world was she talking about?
"My mind?" she asked and looked around again, "what do you mean 'closed in'? Where did you even get talking about my..."
She whipped her head back in Annabelle's direction, her eyes wide.
"Wait a minute...are you saying this room we're in is...?"
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Post by annabelle on Oct 18, 2009 13:56:07 GMT -5
"Ahhh, a very smart girl you are," Annabelle answered with a sly smile, waving her arm over herself as she presented the room, "this...is you! A tidy little spiritual box, and look at this stone--such an elegant taste, look at how beautiful you are, granddaughter. And yet, look at how very blind you are. Look at how holed up you are, trapped within yourself--you actually have limits, you are so strict...you poor girl..."
She stepped around the room, edging closer to the pillars and glancing them over. She touched one, feeling the smoothness of the stone. She then slipped around it and disappeared into the darkness, her voice still being able to be heard loud and clear.
"Look at how I can trick you. I can disappear and reappear in your own mind--I could destroy you if I wanted to..."
From the darkness behind Jasmine, Annabelle's staff shot out and took a hard crack at Jasmine's legs, tripping the young girl before Annabelle stepped out again.
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Post by glitters on Oct 18, 2009 14:01:29 GMT -5
Closed in? Blind? Jasmine didn't understand fully, yet at the same time...she felt she could see what Annabelle was getting at. The room was made into a perfect box, and the pillars were positioned in such a way that it was as though these were the only limits they had of freedom in here. It kind of worried Jasmine.
Though not nearly as much as getting suddenly slashed at. It caught Jasmine so off-guard that when she fell she didn't even react in enough time to soften her fall with her hands, she fell face-first into the stone. She let out a painful yelp and instantly sat back up, automatically grabbing at her face. Luckily, there didn't seem to be any blood yet.
"G-grandmother! Why did you do that!? I don't understand any of this!" she cried, looking back up at Annabelle.
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Post by annabelle on Oct 18, 2009 14:08:27 GMT -5
Annabelle gave her staff a twirl as she walked around to Jasmine's front, stabbing her staff down in front of her.
"Of course you don't understand. And you're a lucky girl to have survived as long as you did, you're lucky your mother died, otherwise it would have been you who died instead. With Hala dead, she's been able to protect you from spirits hijacking your body; you are in absolutely no shape to be as devoted of a servant to the Twilight gods as you are."
Annabelle's words were harsh, and her eyes showed not an ounce of softness to them as she gave Jasmine a sharp slap in the side with her staff.
"Get up! We're going to fix this. You're not going to like any of it, you may not even like me when we're done. But damn the lords I can't let someone with this potential lose when they could use this power to better help the world."
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Post by glitters on Oct 18, 2009 14:13:16 GMT -5
Jasmine got back to her feet immediately after Annabelle hit her again, wincing in pain as she did so. She stood and awaited further orders from her grandmother and frowned.
"I...I did this to help my friends, grandmother. I want to better myself, so I'll do what I have to even if it won't be fun in any way. I just want to make sure Andy will be safe..." she answered.
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Post by annabelle on Oct 18, 2009 14:18:00 GMT -5
"You're useless to that boy the way you are," Annabelle snapped, and would further ignore any way that Jasmine responded to that. She gave Jasmine a hard stare.
"Do you know what to do? You need to open your mind. It may seem unfair and mean, having your wee old grandmother picking on you, but it's either this or you'll be placed in the world struggling with the fools trying to take over your mind. You'll never even see them coming because you refuse to see them. You hold the choice in your hands--survive, or die," Annabelle stepped around again and disappeared into the dark, "come find me."
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Post by glitters on Oct 18, 2009 14:26:26 GMT -5
Jasmine's heart sank at her grandmother's words. She was useless to Andy? HOW? She thought her keeping him from dying was more than enough of a reason to be considered useful...
She bit her lip, knowing that Annabelle was getting at the channelling thing again. That was the reason why they were here, afterall.
Watching Annabelle disappear again, Jasmine stood and stared in the direction the woman left. How was she going to find her grandmother in the dark beyond the pillars? Would she be able to see her if she entered the strange void?
The only way Jasmine was going to figure any of this out was to get in there and...find out. And without further hesitation, the blonde girl stepped in immediately after her grandmother.
....And couldn't see a damn thing. She stepped further, further, further into the darkness but nothing was happening.
She looked back. She had to be moving somewhere obviously, as the brightly lit perimeters of the pillared room still sat nearly ten feet away. Jasmine sighed and looked back into the dark.
"How am I supposed to see...?" she asked aloud, more to herself.
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Post by annabelle on Nov 4, 2009 12:12:07 GMT -5
It'd be too late before the girl could react, hearing a 'whiishh' sound not even half a second before Annabelle's staff took another hard crack at Jasmine, this time higher up on her body. She ran off after the attack was given, hiding, waiting for another chance to strike at the girl again.
"Open your mind!" her voice echoed, making it nigh impossible for Jasmine to be able to trace the direction from which it came.
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Post by glitters on Nov 4, 2009 12:35:17 GMT -5
Jasmine shrieked as she was shot painfully in the side by Annabelle's staff. It'd caught her so off-guard that she fell instantly to the ground. She put her hands to the sore spot and winced, sitting up and looking around.
"How am I supposed to open my mind?!" she asked, getting back up again and starting off in a new direction. She tried to relax herself, to focus...nothing was getting any easier, it all felt the same.
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Post by annabelle on Nov 4, 2009 12:56:55 GMT -5
And the staff came suddenly again, hitting Jasmine harshly across the face. Annabelle backed off and shook her head.
"You're still not getting it. It's not a matter of taking it slowly, or practice. It's about looking inside yourself, who you are, and honestly telling yourself what keeps you from seeing the world around you. What's keeping you from accepting the world, so much that your mind has chosen to close itself off and pretend to be oblivious?" she said to Jasmine before she, again, turned and walked off further into the darkness.
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Post by glitters on Nov 4, 2009 14:17:17 GMT -5
Jasmine screamed again as she was hit, her hands shooting themselves instantly to her face. Her cheek burned fiercely and her eyes welled with tears.
"I-I...I don't close anything off from the world, Grandmother! I don't know how I'm supposed to. I can't see, Grandmother...I can't see this..."
Jasmine had taken a couple more steps into the darkness before she looked around, seeing the brightly lit pillared area again. Biting her lip, she turned in that direction and headed back to the light. There, she could see, and she felt comfortable there...or comfortable enough that she could deal with something like this.
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Post by annabelle on Nov 4, 2009 14:38:02 GMT -5
"And there you go, you coward. Cowardly granddaughter! You run to things that are familiar and safe, you hide behind everything, everyone! And what do you do when you don't have someone to run and hide behind? You have to face it--right now, you have to face me and not go hiding behind your friends or stupid father!" Annabelle's voice echoed angrily, and as Jasmine made for the lit patch of stone, she ran up and whacked Jasmine in the back with her staff as hard as she could.
Except this time she hovered over the girl, bringing her staff up and swinging it again into Jasmine's side, and after that she swung it into her other side, yelling over the girl and the screams that erupted from her as she reacted to each strike.
"This is exactly what it'll be like! You'll struggle and squirm, and everyone will hear you scream in agony! Some will think you're mad because it'll look like you're screaming to yourself, some will think you're in danger, but in either case there won't be a single damn soul who can save you if you can't do this yourself! Now get up or you'll wish you died here today!"
Annabelle disappeared and waited, watching her granddaughter carefully. She was determined that they were not going to leave until Jasmine could accomplish this task.
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Post by glitters on Nov 4, 2009 19:06:06 GMT -5
Each blow brought shriek after shriek from Jasmine. She wasn't used to taking this much pain, and it was constant. She screamed and writhed, every inch of her body throbbing. When Annabelle suddenly stopped Jasmine continued to lay there, tears streaming down her face and she was almost unsure if she could even move from her spot. She breathed heavily and forced herself up, looking around.
She still couldn't see anything. She had to look inside of herself, find the reason why her mind closed itself up so much like this.
Jasmine shook as she looked back at the pillared room; her grandmother said it, actually. It was a horrible, undeniable truth that Jasmine had. It was what made her human, a flaw as a person.
Familiarity. She clung to those familiar to her, stuck to environments only within her comfort zone. Once things changed, she backed off and ran away. Jasmine then thought of her father, how he came back into her life and how she and him hadn't gotten along too well. She hadn't put in an effort to really, truly understand him even though she knew he was a good person.
Jasmine closed her eyes and lay down where she was, burying her head in the fold of her arm.
'I don't accept change too well. I don't accept the truth in the world--allies who betray, death being cruel as well as necessary to survive, and enemies who turn a new leaf.'
She replayed this all in her head, thinking of everyone she'd met who'd brought along a change or strange truth in the world to her in her life, and how in some way or another she didn't accept it simply because that wasn't how the world worked in her eyes, or she denied it working in such ways.
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Post by annabelle on Nov 4, 2009 19:36:58 GMT -5
Annabelle watched patiently as Jasmine stalled, struggled, and then seemingly gave up and lay down on the spot. If it was one thing Annabelle wouldn't accept aside from incompetence altogether, it was a quitter. And a quitter was what she was seeing in front of her. She growled and tightened the grip on her staff...
And then she walked towards Jasmine, pulling back her staff to give the girl another hard swing into the face.
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Post by glitters on Nov 8, 2009 14:54:10 GMT -5
As Annabelle stepped closer, Jasmine opened one of her eyes slit sized and immediately noticed something had...changed.
Not just something...nearly everything. The pillared room was still in sight as it always had been, but all around it a grand temple with walls that reached high up into what it seemed like the heavens. She could barely see a large figure--two of them, in fact--that was shaped into something like a godly look of a human, towering above the entire scene...
And in front of it was Annabelle Fraus, staff raised high above Jasmine. As Annabelle's staff came down, Jasmine clenched her fist tight and belted the first spell she could think of, which resulted in a wave of energy exploding out from around her, throwing Annabelle backwards. Jasmine shot her eyes open and stared ahead at her grandmother, completely awe stricken.
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