The Penumbral; Ritual of the Earth

[Trillian]

THE HAND THAT SET down a fossil which held the bones of a small dinosaur, (the Compsognathus, according to the tablet that had heralded information about the fossil which had been \'borrowed\' from the state museum) was almost entirely hidden by the black sleeve of the robe worn. The fellow that wore it was the youngest in the very small group that gathered in the desert for the same purpose, but looked the oldest, for he looked his age. He was fifty-nine years old and had lived a very interesting lifetime and posessed knowledge of a great many things - more than the young fledgling that stood before him, but nowhere near as much as the ancient presence that commanded Ben\'s body. Their gazes locked now; pale blue eyes met dark brown, steady and intelligent, a secret passing between them of the expected outcome of the ritual they were ready to perform.  Both of them had waited a long time for the completion in this, and while Jakra had been sleeping, his followers had forged new members dedicated to the purpose of waiting for the right time, to bring him forth once more - though as the generations came and went and the marking was almost impossible to find, their dedication had wavered for the faith of their newer members faded as time passed, and only the children raised by the devotees themselves held the information close to their chests - ever seeking, always researching, performing the ritual, studying what the riddle had been throughout the centuries and attempting to guess what it could be now.

Samuel was of the true generation; he could trace his family tree back to the last time Jakra had made an appearance in Italy, and even to the time before that, in China.  After over four hundred years he\'d mostly lost the appearance of his chinese ancesters, who\'d married European after European until his blood was of such mixed race it was almost impossible to place him in a particular country - though nobody would consider his heritage Asian, as it truly was.  The only tie he had was his black locks, now gray.  His eyes, though with brown iris, looked more like the Western European men rather than those from the Far East.  Even so, he spoke Mandarin fluently, as he did Spanish, French, Italian, German, Greek and of course English, his mother tongue.
 
His dark eyes moved from those that belonged to Jack (via Ben), and found the profile of Sabrina, the witch that had found him in the basement of a tiny shop, deep in the heart of Chinatown of the city in which they all lived. Of course it wasn\'t a coincidence that they\'d all come together in the same city, what with all the leylines, the hub of paranormal activity that was this place, a haven for the supernaturals and at the latitude and longitude of where many legends pointed. He was surprised she\'d managed to find him though, for he was the last of a long-forgotten sect with nothing written to betray the nature of their secret.  He remembered his mother quoting tales to him, scripture of a kind, telling him of all the rules that must be followed.  After her death due to a difficult medical condition that affected her lungs, he recalled his rather distant father taking up the reins and teaching him almost regimentally, ensuring that neither of them had much time to think about the woman who\'d left their lives earlier than expected.  It was his father who\'d brought him to this city in his teenage years and set up the library (nicknamed the \'Lab\') in the basement of a cluttered Chinese herbal store - a place to buy various teas and natural remedies, that also stocked ingrediants for authentic Chinese recipes.

He hardly met with anyone, spoke to even less - that was his father\'s natural talent, to make connections.  When his father passed away at the not-so-old age of sixty-four (an age not much older than him now, he was  uncomfortably aware) of heart disease, he was horrified to realise that he was the last of the followers.  When he died, without his own children to pass the legends onto, they would die with him.  He\'d felt a failure, yet been unable to form relationships with women, or men for that matter.  He couldn\'t connect with anyone, so he\'d buried himself in his texts, helping out in the shop upstairs for board and food, but not often, for they owed his father something big and were paying him back by keeping his son (Samuel himself) at their store.  He didn\'t know what it was, but he took advantage of it.
 
 The witch had sought him for information.  On one of the rare occassions that he was helping at the counter, and she\'d shown him the mark, drawn insultingly on a bit of what looked like scrap paper.  Anything that wasn\'t framed and revered would\'ve been considered scrap to his eye.  The expression that had found itself on his face upon seeing what she\'d brought him had obviously been enough for her to make a very quick connection, and so she\'d pursued her line of questioning in something he didn\'t want shared with the rest of the shop, so he\'d bundled her downstairs (as quickly as a giantess could be bundled into a tiny staircase and consequently, a tiny room filled with old texts) and had a lengthy conversation with her that had them both excited - her with an impossible grin, and him quivering at the very core to finally be meeting someone with the mark, who also claimed to be Jakra himself.  (The name was unfamiliar though, for he\'d expected a variation of different names, and Jakra hadn\'t been one he\'d considered, for it hadn\'t linked to anything he knew).

His gaze moved now to the final man that made this strange little group in the desert, in Utah.  There\'d been a strangely torrid discussion between him and Kerr about which desert was reddest, with Jakra interjecting that the one Kerr chose was the best one.  It had silenced Samuel immediately and he\'d conformed to the decision, attracting an unreadable stare from Kerr.  He found it hard to decide what Kerr thought of him, whether he was welcome with his knowledge - shared and communicated orally for the first time in his life, it had been hard to get started but his entire life story and generational history had poured out of his mouth, how the religious order he followed was all about bringing Jack forth to walk the world once more.  The biggest silence was after he answered the question about what Jack actually was, asked by Kerr.  He\'d waited for Jack to explain, but when all eyes had been turned to him, he\'d answered in the simplest way he knew how.

"He\'s Geb, he\'s Gaia, he\'s Ceres.  He is the Earth itself."

It was fulfilling, to interact with Jack on a personal level, though also confusing for he hadn\'t even known of a situation where he could be interacted with while in another\'s body without the ritual performed.  The mark was revealed to him and he\'d barely contained himself from falling to his knees for his legs went watery and he\'d wanted to sit down but hadn\'t trusted himself to walk.  He had no idea how he\'d remained on his feet.  For so many years he\'d been worshipping from afar - it was surreal to be so close to Jack, though he guessed that he wasn\'t being captured by the power that was supposed to emanate from him, for Jack was trapped in a vampiric body - a dead body.

He was different, Samuel noticed, when he was around Kerr.  He was everything Samuel expected when he wasn\'t around Kerr, but strangely docile and placid when with him.  Demure, even, as though Kerr held some strange power over him.  Jack confessed it was love and poured his heart out to Samuel after the woman (what was her name?) left to go to the circus.  Samuel pointed out that Jack could get someone far prettier, and it was pointed out to him that Jack didn\'t want pretty, he wanted loyal, and she was the best choice.  Samuel was privately irritated with the response he received - how loyal could someone be after a few months of sex and no understanding of what Jack really was?  It was a slap in the face to his blind devotion and faith.

He straightened now, watching as the rest of the pieces were laid out in place by the witch and the vampire, as Jack stood beside him, dressed in a black robe of his own, though unlike Samuel, Jack wore nothing underneath.  He would be reborn into his own body, that would look like Ben\'s.  There was no need for clothes.

[Existentially Odd]

Kerr straightened from his task, glancing at Sabrina\'s placements to ensure that his held the correct position in relation to hers, sitting precisely at all the appropriate points.  He swiped his hands on his jeans nervously, his gaze flicking from the objects to the woman nearby, to the two man standing off to the side.  They were imposing in their black robes, which didn\'t ease his anxiety in the slightest.

Taking a step back to survey the ritual area, Kerr ran through everything in his mind.  There\'d been numerous... well, they weren\'t arguments, exactly, but certainly confused discussions about this place.  About everything, really.  Samuel was the professed expert on everything Jack and it just left the Irishman feeling lost and inadequate.  Resentful, too.  In none of all this was Ben ever talked about or referred to, it was all Jack, Jack, the personification of the earth.

The Earth, for Christ\'s sake.  How was he supposed to assimilate that into his every day operation?  He\'d done a deal and spent a night with the earth.  Not exactly something you advertised, unless ridicule and spontaneous guffaws were your thing.  And Samuel was so serious and reverant with Jack, that Kerr felt like a small child caught with a messy cupcake at a black tie dinner.  The thought of the old man finding out he and Jack were intimate was damn near frightening; he got enough stern and indecipherable looks from the mortal as it was, he could just imagine what sort of expression being caught making out with Jack would get him.

The two of them were surprisingly comfortable, really.  There had been a few phone calls after their night together but nothing too demanding.  Jack had decided to turn up at the Oligarchy Chambers one night without warning, though, and that had been startling to Kerr.  After a few stammered questions about what the point of the visit was - just to see where Kerr worked and what the Oligarchy did, had been the response - the Oligarch had managed to take it all in his stride and give Jack an extensive tour of the building.  He was able to show him through all the important rooms (and even the less important ones, like the kitchen), as well as his office and a few of the suites.

Taking Jack to the room in which his mark had been sliced into Ben\'s back hadn\'t prompted any overt reaction - no jogged memory or sudden resurfacing of Ben\'s consciousness (much to Kerr\'s secret despair) in the fledgling, but it had made Kerr nostalgic and weaker than he\'d thought he would be.  When they\'d gone up to his office afterwards, he\'d even made advances on Jack that had found the two of them kissing and groping on the sofa until sanity prevailed and Kerr delivered Jack back to his place.

There was more of an awareness between them now, a tension he felt he was responsible for that had nothing to do with his actual partner returning to him this night.  He wouldn\'t admit it out loud under pain of hot metal slivers being inserted beneath his fingernails, but there was some chemistry between he and Jack, an attraction that had once been forced but which came far more naturally now.  Too naturally, unfortunately.

Things were polite, though, and even though there\'d always been some sort of physical contact since they\'d all boarded his plane two nights before (to travel to Utah, rather than Australia, because the reds seemed truer and the distance was far easier to negotiate in terms of daylight avoidance than Australia would be), there was nothing overt.  He couldn\'t afford to be too comfortable with his true love about to be returned to him, anyway, so the tension was good.  Jack around Samuel was not someone Kerr particularly recognised or liked, anyway, so it made it easier to focus on the ritual and what was to come.

Of course, the thought of being reunited with Ben after three months (and so much had happened) left him tingling with trepidation and he felt quite at odds with everything.  He was as excited as he was scared and as confident as he was worried that something would go wrong, that Ben would know what he\'d done with Jack and address that straight up, that Ben would hate him for not freeing him sooner.  \'What if\'s and \'will he know\'s ran through the sire\'s mind constantly, his companion an unreadable mystery that had no answers for him beyond how the ritual would run and what would be required throughout.

Jack had never told him how he thought the process would conclude - had flatly refused to even postulate when asked, in fact - so Kerr had nothing to go on except Digital\'s ranting advice that he should grasp Ben as quickly as he could to stop him from sinking - he didn\'t even really know what that meant, but the belated information that Jakra was the personification of the earth lent itself to the idea of him being absorbed by the sands.  Jack\'s body (or soul) might be absorbed by the earth and Ben\'s should remain as it was... but he was confused about why he should grab at Ben; would they be separated immediately, Jack sinking and Ben remaining upright?  Digital had also told him not to wait once he had Ben... but Kerr couldn\'t feasibly see himself abandoning his little entourage in the desert (least of all Jack).

Whatever came, Kerr was as prepared as he felt he could be, wearing sturdy suede boots, jeans and a plain white T-shirt - simple clothes that would not get in his way should he need to grab and run... or just run.  His was not to know for sure, it seemed.  "Do you think these are alright?" he asked Samuel solemnly, looking to the \'expert\' for positive reinforcement.  At least the mortal was stable; intense but certainly not erratic and fidgetty like he was getting, himself.  He was also the one most likely to have an opinion on the way he and Sabrina had set out the eventually-agreed-upon artefacts.

[Harlequin]

For her part, Sabrina had spent the majority of her time tracking down anything she could on all things Jack. She\'d called in favors, she\'d hit the books harder than she\'d had to in years. What she couldn\'t accomplish from her study, she sought out on the spiritual plane, and what she couldn\'t find there, she (or her proxies) went to the street – until an obscure contact found Samuel, a man who – by all accounts – should not have existed. She\'d thought the sect long dead.

This was only the first place he had succeeded in proving her wrong. The man\'s knowledge on this subject was exhaustive, expansive, very probably ancient, and left hers accordingly in the dust. She was ecstatic – not only for Kerr and Jack, for taking the guesswork out of this undertaking – but also because she was so rarely proved wrong. When the four of them had come together, it had felt to her like revelation.

An incomplete one, however. The fact that none of them seemed to know the exact outcome of this process weighed heavily on her mind, like any problem that lacked a solution. Sabrina had always ben a proponent of the \'wait-and-see\' school, but in this instance – where there was so much on the line – it seemed ludicrous.

With the introduction of Samuel, she became an accessory to the three of them – no longer completely necessary, but wholly invested nonetheless. She had come when they (any of them) asked for her, and she had stayed home when they didn\'t. In the space between, she searched out the solution – hoping for another stroke of luck. Infuriatingly, inevitably, none had come. But Kerr had invited her here tonight, and she had accepted the invitation without hesitation. As she\'d learned quickly from Samuel, the implications of this ritual were huge – both the fact that it had even been conceived of and carried out in the first place, and the fact that they would be the ones to carry it to it\'s completion. Here. Tonight. Even to a magic worker of Sabrina\'s caliber, this was the equivalent of a trip to Disney World. Or Heaven.

Cars and airports did not agree with Sabrina. Not bound by the sun, or the laws of gravity, the witch had taken a broom. The three men, however, would have seen only her tall figure striding gamely toward them from the desert at much the same time they\'d arrived, all smiles and warmth despite the severity of her exquisitely tailored black suit (somehow apparently impervious to the red dust of the desert) and pulled-back hair. She hid her excitement well, and her trepidation better.

Her gaze now, however, was trained on Samuel, also seeking approval as she rose from placing her own final object in it\'s proper place.

[Trillian]

The robes had hoods, though neither man had drawn the hood over their heads.  Samuel had been caught looking at Kerr by the vampire himself, and was asked a question for his trouble.  It was an unnecessary question, one entirely based in affirmations, for if Samuel had not believed the items accurate, he would\'ve pointed out such long before now, at the penultimate moment.  Still, out of respect for Jack\'s feelings towards Kerr, he answered the question put forth.  "I believe they are accurate."

Samuel\'s gaze returned to Sabrina and found the witch already looking his way after the items had been positioned.  After a cursory glance at them (for he\'d watched intently as they\'d been laid down, checking them again was moot) he nodded once, deeply, an acknowledgement to the woman who\'d brought him here.  He liked her; the witch\'s initial deed of finding him and delivering him to the source of his worship had won her a great many favours with Samuel.

Instead of looking at the watch upon his left wrist, Samuel lifted his gaze to the sky, seeking out the moon that was full and round.  After researching the penumbral eclipse that was supposed to take place in February, he\'d known that the best visibility of the eclipse itself was in the red desert sands of Australia - but he\'d told the others they weren\'t here to watch an eclipse, they were here to participate in a ritual and all they had to be sure of was their timing.  Perhaps wearing wristwatches was crude during the ritual, though it was certainly useful and he saw no reason to deny themselves something that would make things easier.

It was fast approaching the time.  Samuel beckoned the other two over even as Jack - out of instinct, perhaps, it was not Samuel\'s place to ask - shrugged the robe off and moved forward into the centre of the huge mark, naked and beautiful to his devotee.  Jealousy that he was unable to control and surprised to feel sparked within him at the knowledge Kerr had been allowed to lay with him, allowed to touch and revere him, to be loved by him.  It had only been sex with women in the past - Kerr was special to have received such an honour, and more, since he\'d given Jack the ability to feel love.  He took a long, deep and quiet breath, held it and released it just as slowly.  He had to have a clear head, to be calm, to not let his emotion interfere with the importance of this ritual.

They stood; the three of them watching the solitary being before them, who\'d turned to face them.  His naked body looked pale against the red sands, and he looked younger because of it.  Samuel was amazed that something so old could be trapped in a body so young.  Nineteen this time, barely a teenager, and already dead.  It was such a strange occurance, it defied all of the legends before it.  Another vampire had passed the mark on, he\'d learned from Kerr, and had caused Ben to be violent and secretive.  Samuel had explained this was the presence of the mark itself, not of the being that travelled within it.  Anything the teenage vampire had done while hosting Jack was not to be blamed on Jack but on the ritual - they desired to pass on the mark, it was how the ritual survived the ages.  Jack had been pleased for Samuel to provide this explanation to Kerr, though he was unsure as to what the siring vampire thought of it.

They waited in silence, it seemed wrong to talk.  The only thing that needed to be said at the right time was Jack\'s name.  Jakra, he went by now.  His name changed, much like the ritual changed, much like he himself changed with each new experience he earned.

Minutes passed that lasted an eternity and very suddenly, it was time.  Samuel didn\'t even have to check his watch, he knew.  He didn\'t have to look up at the night sky to see that the moon had taken on a dark yellow tinge as the southern penumbral took place.  How loud did speaking his name have to be?  He felt, even without speaking yet, that his voice would abandon him.

"Jakra," he said, and as he\'d predicted, it came out as a whisper, but it was also enough.

Jack\'s body twitched violently, leaving him limp even as he stood - a glance down at his feet revealed that he was no longer standing on the earth, but on a column of shadow.  He was raised further up in the air by it, perhaps a couple of feet, before it stopped.  There was a pulsing in the ground upon which the marking was lain, and each item at the arrows sank into the earth - not slowly, but quickly, as though it was snatching them up hungrily to feast upon.  The coloumn of shadow that supported Jack - who looked unconscious the way his head was tipped back and his knees bent, supported by nothing at all - turned to bright white light.  The light was so intense that Samuel was forced to look away and cover his eyes before he peeked back when the intensity faded, leaving behind an after-glow in his sight, preventing him from seeing properly what was happening, though he could still make it out.  A column of light, big enough to house Jack\'s limp body floating inside, was emanating from out of the ground and into the sky.  It would certainly attract attention of anyone who was still miles away.  The light shifted, going red, and then the beacon snapped back down into the ground, causing Jack\'s body to fall on the mark.  Should anyone have tried to take a step towards him, Samuel would\'ve fought them with the tenacity of the zealot he was.

Jack began to sink, and he did so quickly, much like the earth was reclaiming him.  This part was expected, though not shared with the two at Samuel\'s side.  The earth had to reclaim the body he would take over, to unite the soul and body.  Ben would die - for all living things had to breathe, and being buried alive wasn\'t something a mortal lived through (but now things were different, for Ben didn\'t have to breathe and quite possibly would survive the ritual) - and Jack would crawl out of his shallow grave, whole and complete, unhindered by the body he was trapped in, though cloned to it.

[Existentially Odd]

Kerr watched the entire thing with his mouth open, completely agog.  It was safe to say he wasn\'t thinking too much and therefore, when Ben\'s body began to sink into the sand, his reaction was slower than it should\'ve been - it took a few moments for his brain to shift from passive gawker to thinking lover, but what he was seeing did, eventually, trigger something vital in his head.

Digital, bending towards the floor in his room, making a scooping motion and hugging his chest as he said, "You have to be quick and snatch Ben away before he sinks too far." Too far... sinks too far.  And then, "Don\'t wait for him.  Once you have Ben, don\'t wait."

Quite suddenly and without too much premeditation, Kerr was sprinting across the sand, the prophet\'s words ringing in his ears.  His lover\'s body had sunk beyond visibility by the time he was even moving, but his age was great and his celerity honed; he moved with the speed of a man who had the devil nipping at his heels, his gaze fixed firmly on the spot where his beloved had sunk from sight.

When he got there, he straddled the bit where he believed Ben\'s body was and pistoned his rod-like arms into the sand, like a rig drilling for oil.  He moved with such force and determination that he fell to his knees in the process, seeing in his mind how his hands would close on some part of Ben\'s body - any part - and drag him up out of the earth, clutching him to his chest as he surged back to his feet and took off in the first direction that presented itself as convenient.  Voices may have been used, he couldn\'t be sure; he paid them no heed, hearing only the words he\'d memorised over the past weeks, directing his actions, telling hm what to do (as that voice had done so successfully - when it came to an absent and heartbroken Ben - once before).

... snatch Ben away before he sinks too far... don\'t wait...
... don\'t wait...

[Trillian]

Samuel had no time to react, and once he did have time he half considered the fact the witch might reach out and stop him from stopping Kerr.  Still, he made the attempt as his brain connected the fact Kerr had seemed to disappear... no, not disappear, but blurred from one spot to the next.  In less than a blink, he\'d gone from standing beside Samuel to being in front of him, his arms deep in the sands that had sucked Ben\'s inert body into the ground, in order to create Jack.

NO! his mind had time to shout, though he wasn\'t quick enough to get it into his voicebox before the true horror of what he was seeing pulsed through his body in much the same way his idol\'s form had twitched - a violent, striking, chilling realisation that the ritual might go awry, and it would be all Kerr\'s fault, this creature that Jack had professed to love.  Could he be so wrong?  Of course he could, he was still learning the ways of the beings that took him for granted.  Kerr was savaging the earth itself, in order to deny the earth\'s very existence upon a plane that it was allowed to wander.  How dare he?  HOW DARE HE?!

While Samuel\'s mind was in the process between realisation and action, Kerr\'s hands had already plunged deep into the sands, his hands finding Ben\'s extended arms, grasping one of his wrists.  It was drowning in sand, in red darkness, and Ben - for this time it was Ben who clutched back invisibly at the one who sought to help him - was frightened.  He remembered nothing of the struggle that had begun this whole mess; no memory of the necklace that had given Jack the chance to take over his body, no memory of the arguments that had transpired between himself and Kerr while Jack\'s ritual worked it\'s primal magic upon his soul, no memory of the evil he\'d performed upon Ichabod or of the betrayals he\'d appropriated to Kerr.  He had no memory of Jack at all, as though the being had never existed within him, as Jack had promised.  The slate was wiped clean, taking everything Jack with it - and more than they\'d bargained for.

As Ben broke through the earth\'s surface, covered in sand and naked otherwise, grasped into Kerr\'s tight hold and clinging to him, the only knowledge he had was this:  He\'d met Kerr at Risk, they\'d talked, Kerr had refused to sire him and so Ben had sought friendship instead, they\'d met twice more, both times bittersweet and fraught with miscommunication, then they\'d been brought before the Oligarchy and Ben had been required to answer for his crimes.  The vampire Oligarch known as Declan had taken him aside and threatened to cut into his back with a blade - and Ben knew no more.  His mind reasoned that he must\'ve passed out, that Kerr had somehow saved him from his punishment, reasoned with the supernatural council somehow, and taken him... what... outside?  Ben coughed, spluttered, drew in deep and shuddering breaths that he didn\'t know he didn\'t need, for Ben remembered only that he was mortal and had thought he was suffocating beneath the desert sands.

The rest was history.

[Harlequin]

Zealot though he was, Samuel was far from stupid. The witch did, in fact, reach out to stop him. The second she sense movement, one hand clasped firmly onto the back of his robe, much in the same way a mother restrains her child in the aisles of a supermarket. If he tried to run, the firm hold would become a yank, and the only reasonable response to being yanked by an eight-foot-tall demonic halfbreed would be to sprawl in the appropriate direction.

She had only stopped the acolyte because her gut had told her to, and because his movement had been toward the vampire, as opposed to away. Running away denoted that something was going fatally awry, running toward indicated an ulterior motive, something they weren\'t meant to know.

She said nothing, but watched Kerr with a ferocious intensity as he dug in the sand. Brows furrowed, lips pressed tight. She had implicit faith in Digital\'s knowledge (which Kerr had informed her of, in the interim, and which she had conveniently neglected to inform samuel of). Usually Digital\'s predictions were much less literal, and she was glad this one was the exception.

Her grip on the back of Samuel\'s robe tightened perceptibly as the sand-covered form of Ben was pulled, spluttering, from the sand.  Gulping air, but still dead; as if he didn\'t know it. Different, too, she could tell -- but how? And to what extent? Her senses were still reeling from the big hoodoo that had permeated the area -- like a colorful afterimage clouding her third eye, blinding her sixth sense.

[Existentially Odd]

Kerr was frantically helping the man in his arms get free of the sand, registering the fact that he was coughing and spluttering but not paying it too much attention until he had got back on his feet and taken his prize a few steps away from where he\'d dug him up.  Whether it was true or not, the place where Jack had sunk seemed a spot to be avoided now - as if it was a random pool of quicksand - and he instinctively also wanted it between he and Samuel if at all possible.

Once his three large strides were done, however, he deposited the body of his love onto his feet and tried to help him clear his face of sand.  Finding it difficult to dodge the other\'s hands doing the same thing, he then settled for brushing it off any part of his naked body that he could quickly and easily reach.  He spoke the whole time, realising his fledgling wasn\'t quite able to answer him but asking nevertheless, because he needed to know, his gaze rivetted on where the liquid silver eyes would be once they were open.  His flight readiness was a powerful urge, Digital\'s warning to run now the sole instinct imprinted on his brain.  But he had to be sure before he did.

"Ben?  Is it really you?  Ben?  Say something!  Are you you? Ben?"

[Trillian]

Samuel, who\'d attempted to move forward and out of the grip Sabrina had on him, indeed went sprawling backwards as his robe was yanked, losing his footing and pinwheeling his arms even as he went down. He landed fairly hard on his back, winding himself and finding it difficult to breathe as a result.  He wasn\'t the only one.

Ben could feel the sand in his mouth and throat, for he\'d opened his mouth while underneath the surface - maybe to breathe, maybe to scream, it didn\'t matter why.  Once he\'d coughed most of it out, he could focus on Kerr and the fact that he was here with him, that he\'d saved him from what could\'ve been a terrible death.  Buried alive!  Had that been his punishment?  How sadistic the Oligarchy had been!  He hadn\'t expected such a thing.  The last thing he\'d known was being threatened with a knife while indoors.  Perhaps he\'d been injected with something instead to knock him out and they\'d carried him out here - wherever here was, it looked like he was outside the city - in order to bury him.  But how did Kerr get here so fast, and why had they taken his shirt off in order to bury him?

He wasn\'t sure why Kerr was asking if it was him, but perhaps he had a lot more sand on his face than he realised, hiding his features.  Still, didn\'t Kerr have a terrific sense of smell and sight?  Couldn\'t he swipe his mind with a quick read to know it was him?  He answered anyway, for it wasn\'t right to keep his silence, even though talking through the sand in his mouth was unappealing.

"Kerr, it\'s me," he said, his voice a great deal stronger than he\'d expected.  He\'d thought he\'d whispered the affirmation, but it was very clear to his ears.  "What happened?" he asked, figuring Kerr would explain what the Oligarchy had done.

While the pair conversed, Samuel slowly crawled to his feet, moaning that the ritual had been disturbed and cursing Kerr softly, for he hadn\'t the vocal power to do it loudly.  The witch had betrayed him also, stopping him from Kerr\'s foolish actions.

"Ruined, ruined," he said, but still he stared at the mark in the ground, expecting to see it spew Jack forth as though it was birthing him, as had been described as a result from the other rituals.  It had always taken time though, so he had to be patient, and reserve hope, even though now there was trepidation that it might not happen in his lifetime, thanks to Kerr\'s meddling.

[Harlequin]

Sabrina tore her gaze away from the vampires once Ben\'s identity had been confirmed. It felt like voyeurism to watch them beyond that.

Instead, she fixed impassive eyes on the devotee, slipping her hands into her pockets. Once he had left her hands, he had also left her mind – as nothing more than a nagging presence at the periphery of her senses – until Ben spoke. She regretted that she had been forced to resort to such measures, but the regret would have increased tenfold if she had allowed him to interfere with Kerr. She did not apologize, yet.

Ruined? Then why was he still so interested in center of the circle? "How was it meant to happen, then?" she asked him flatly, without malice or accusation.

[Existentially Odd]

Such a powerful wave of relief tore through Kerr in the instant his Ben spoke to him, that tears welled in his eyes and he sobbed loudly. "Oh thank God," he exclaimed, clutching at Ben\'s head and taking only a moment to stare into his bewildered eyes before he leaned in to kiss him feverishly.
 
He continued to thank the deities as he grasped and stroked Ben\'s jaw and cheeks, brushing sand away as much as allowing his fingers the pleasure of feeling skin he was supposed to touch, incredibly grateful to finally be holding the one he wanted in his arms. He hugged, he kissed, he whispered messages of thanks for a few moments before he managed to get himself under control enough to allow a few millimetres of space between their noses so he could answer the question Ben had asked - which was trivial, now, but he understood his fledgling would want to know.
 
In the back of Kerr\'s mind, he was prepared for Ben to look confused about anything to do with Jack, because he\'d never been certain that the youth had been aware while he\'d been buried inside the other. Jack had explained that he never really was, so the Irishman believed it would be the same for his lover. With that thought most prominent in his mind (slightly ahead of Digital\'s voice urging him on and not to wait), he explained a little more than was necessary, as rapidly as he could.
 
"God, I\'ve missed you. I love you.  Basically, you and the... well, we believed he was a demon inside you... eh, anyway, the two of you swapped places when you put the necklace on - remember that? - and he\'s been in control of your body for the past three months. Tonight, we performed the ritual that would separate the two of you, beneath the lunar eclipse," he enunciated with dogged precision, wanting to spill everything out as quickly as he was able but afraid of overwhelming Ben. He pointed skyward at the eerie blackness over them for reinforcement as he spoke.
 
"I know you probably don\'t remember all of it and I\'d really like to explain now, but we have to go. I\'m not sure why, but I was told by Digital - er... a clairvoyant - that once I had you, I wasn\'t to wait. I think we need to... just," he looked around himself hastily, head turning sharply as he took in the positioning of Samuel and Sabrina before looking down at the place where he\'d pulled Ben out of the sand and then off to the side that showed nothing but open desert for them to head into. Their hire car was in that direction, with Ben\'s clothes inside, but he wasn\'t sure he should go to it or leave it for Samuel and... Jakra, when he finally appeared.
 
Digital had never qualified how long or how far he shouldn\'t wait, and a ball of anxiety the size of a watermelon felt like it was currently lodged in Kerr\'s solar plexus.
 
"Um... we just need to go. For a bit, I think, maybe not far, maybe just away while you adjust, maybe all the way back to the hotel, I\'m not sure," he told Ben uncertainly as he looked back down at him. He was gripping both of his upper arms in his hands, trying not to squeeze his love to death but wanting to direct him, to push him or pull him, to get him the Hell out of there before Jack showed up and Ben got really confused. He could only imagine how a doppelganger of his naked self would throw this entire mess from a confusing state of affairs to a complete fiasco.
 
"Can you walk okay?" Kerr didn\'t know of a logical or physical reason as to why Ben wouldn\'t be able to, but the longer he stood there and talked, the more it seemed he was holding the other on his feet. Trauma could do that, he supposed; finding out that the parasite he\'d only postulated about was real and had had control of his body for the past few months would not be something easily processed. If Ben indicated that he wasn\'t confident he could walk, Kerr would simply pick him up and run.

[Trillian]

"Don\'t you get it?" Samuel hissed at the witch, turning his angry stare her way because he couldn\'t direct it properly at Kerr.  "The boy was supposed to be a sacrifice!  What sort of sacrifice is he if he\'s been reclaimed?  Now the earth doesn\'t have anything offered to it other than a couple of knick-knacks and a few lines scratched out on the surface."  He was getting more upset the more he thought about it, his breathing fast and uneven - almost panting.

In the meantime, Ben was struggling to understand Kerr.

He... loves me?

Such a thing seemed sudden.  They\'d only known each other for six nights, right?  He didn\'t know that he loved Kerr, though he certainly lusted after him - as had been evidenced by his embarrassing moment when in bed together, a couple of nights ago.  Oh God, he still inwardly groaned at the thought of it, of touching someone who hadn\'t expected to be touched, or had even wanted it (despite the kiss, afterward).

A demon inside me?

That had been an interesting statement, and very left field.  What did Kerr mean by a demon inside of him?  He was still turning that one over in his mind that he\'d missed the next few words (and wouldn\'t have understood them anyway, something about him getting a necklace three months ago - something he didn\'t remember - surely he would\'ve remembered receiving jewellery.  Was Kerr confusing him with Mandy?) and only really had a clue what Kerr was talking about when he was urging the pair of them to leave this place (wherever this place was).

When Kerr looked around, Ben looked down at himself, expecting to see the jeans he\'d put on that morning, and horrified to see his exposed body.  Holy shit, he was naked!  What the hell was he doing naked?  Why was he naked outside, with Kerr, with those two other people he heard talking and who Kerr was blocking his vision of right now?  He hastily covered his genitals with his hands, wide eyed and shocked that he\'d been revealed all this time.  The normally body-shy youth had trouble being naked with men he was about to have sex with, for crying out loud, why the hell was he naked now?  Had the Oligarchy stripped him and buried him?  Had they left him for dead?  How had Kerr found him so quickly?  How had he survived for so long underground?  Where those other two people the people who had buried him?  He\'d thought his back was going to be cut, but he couldn\'t remember that either.  What.  The.  Fuck.

"Um..." he said shakily, when Kerr asked him if he could walk (after saying a bunch of stuff about a hotel that Ben didn\'t understand in the slightest - what hotel?) "No."  He didn\'t trust his legs.  Everything felt weak.  He realised that this would likely mean Kerr was going to carry him and wondered how that would happen - in his arms like a bride or over his shoulder like a fireman\'s rescue?  "Do you have anything for me to wear?" he pleaded.

[Existentially Odd]

Something about the way Ben covered himself coyly made Kerr\'s heart swell with indulgent love; it was like hearing a song you had once adored played again.  The warmth and comfort of having his shy lover back was, in just that one simple action, a glow that suffused him and made him smile as he scooped Ben up in his arms like a bride.

"I\'m so glad you\'re back," he murmured, nuzzling his face lovingly in against Ben\'s neck as he began running towards the four-wheel drive vehicle all the men had driven out to the desert in (Sabrina had insisted on making her own way).  "You have clothes - well, Jack left clothes - in the car.  I don\'t want to go back for the robe.  I\'m not sure how long we\'re supposed to stay away.  I think just until you\'re settled, then we\'ll come back for Jack and Samuel," he thought aloud, nodding to himself as he jogged.

They were at the car in a few mortal heartbeats and Kerr set Ben down so that he could fish the keys out of his pocket.  It beeped as he pressed the alarm off, then he opened the back door and reached in to grab the clothes Jack had shimmied carelessly out of and left behind, in order to wear his ceremonial robe.  The sire then held them out to his fledgling with an adoring smile, his gaze ravenous and unwilling to leave his love for even a second - almost as if he actually hadn\'t seen his face or body for all the months he\'d been suppressed.

[Harlequin]

A sacrfice? Well, that would certainly explain the communication shutdown on their end. Kerr never would have allowed the ritual to happen had he known it meant definitively losing his Ben.
 
But they had inside info, too.
 
Don\'t wait for him, Digital had said. The words themselves only implied that there was something to wait for, she assumed, now, that that something ws some incarnation of Jakra. But why not?  Was it folly simply for the vampire, or for anyone involved?According to Kerr, the Malksvian\'s clarity had cut out there. But t She couldn\'t simply leave the human out here in the desert, especially in the state he was. She also felt fairly certain that Digital would have informed her if he\'d forseen her death.
 
Samuel wasn\'t doing himself any favors, though, in his fervor. she turned, and placed her hands firmly on his shoulders, hoping to still him for just a moment,  "Calm down," she commanded in a voice that was only half hers, and all the more terrifying for it. The Treacle rebelled against the Magic still in the air; suffocating, seperating magicks. The light had burned, and it wanted gone. "Have faith, Samuel," she told him, not unkindly, "Wait."

[Trillian]

Samuel did calm down, her words sliced into his consciousness much like his father\'s had used to - the discipline in which he\'d been raised returned to him now at her words of wisdom.

"Yes, yes," he affirmed, now embarrassed to have lost his stoicism during a time when the ritual needed him to be level-headed.  Have faith, of course, have faith.  Still, the fact the sacrifice had been taken back, an indian-gift of a kind, and this ate at him.  "Did you know?" he asked the witch, regaining his composure finally.

When Jack was born from the earth, Samuel would inform him of the betrayal wrought him by Kerr.

During the run - short as it was - to the car, Ben had sacrificed hiding himself in order to place his arms around Kerr\'s shoulders, but once he was back on his feet, they moved back in place.  He eyed the car off, wondering where Kerr\'s regular car was, and taking the time to look around himself, realising he wasn\'t just on the city\'s outskirts, but far away from... well, everything.

"Where are we?" he asked, but had more questions before Kerr could answer that one, for as he\'d looked around himself, he\'d also listened to Kerr speak and accepted the clothes given him with one hand.  "Was Jack the man we were speaking to at the trial?  Who\'s Samuel?"  he looked down at the clothes and thought they weren\'t much his style, but turned around in order to have his back to Kerr so he could dress and remain mostly modest.  "Was being buried alive my punishment?  What happened to that Declan guy?" he asked, even as he pulled up some black denim jeans that felt very tight on his hips and across his backside.

He really needed a glass of water to get that sandy feeling out of his mouth and throat, but didn\'t want to ask Kerr for that yet when there were those other questions to be answered first.  He was thoroughly confused, and didn\'t know what Kerr was talking about.