nWoD: That Savage Coast

Fear squirms in your stomach, your insides slithering like -hah- a nest of angry snakes. Slippery lengths of intestines, pale pink organs, sliding past each other as your guts get all tangled up. Working themselves into this sick, slick, visceral knot that draws tighter with every step you take towards the pond; your reflection's eyes on your back. Stop at the stone border, bare toes inches from the lily pads and green-tinged water. Cerberus watches you from his pillar.

...Is it because of your Keeper? Is that it? This one, Communion, reminds you too much of Him? Like even if you can't remember everything He did something of His touch stuck to you, stained you, like filthy, mud-blackened fingers trailing over your skin. You didn't make this pact on your own, it didn't grow in you like those few scraps of Summer, like your Reflections. He must have given it to you right? Clasped your hands with The Deep's and tattooed the terms on your skin with dirty needles, the ink itching and burning as it bloomed beneath tan flesh and glittering scales.

Close your eyes and you try to imagine them, infected wounds healed badly, swollen shut into ropey, glassy scars that burn with a fever-heat. You're unclean, compromised, contaminated, toxin weeping from your pores; it makes you want to stand over the sink, scrubbing with ivory suds until your palms are red and little cuts spread and split in the webbing between your dripping, steaming, fingers. That's how you've heard other Lost talk about it right? How Bishop Lai said Changelings sometimes feel about them right? It's natural, normal, to hate them. To hate these Contracts, these clauses, these presents from nightmare masters, remnants of stolen or grafted power. Seals stamped into their being, burning and smoking, like a maker's mark, a cattle brand. It's expected that you'd feel subtly sickened just knowing they're there much less using them, it's understandable that you're afraid.

You try to make it ring true, you really do. The emotional equivalent of shoving a few fingers down your throat until the gorge rises. Shifting your weight from foot to foot as you stand there, inches from the waters surface. Making yourself believe that that's it, making yourself believe that's all there is.

But all you hear is that voice, that voice, that fucking voice in the back of your head, acid drool running from a mouth stretched in a wide, delighted grin. Whispering that you're a fucking liar. That you know better. That even if you don't understand you still know. That this, all of this, is embarrassing and shameful, disgusting and disgraceful. Acting like you're everyone else? Trying to be a part of that same, shared struggle, trying to get a piece of that hard fought, well-earned, triumph like you're no different than them. Like you belong with them?.

You slowly open your eyes, clear membranes shuttering across slitted irises as you blink.

Please.

That itch in your skin? It's not really fear, it's not even hate, it's anticipation. A need, a hunger burning inside you and you're just being a coward about it. You don't want to admit how much you crave it, need it, how it makes you feel complete. Your instructors, Bishop Lai, they've all said that they're impressed. How quick you are on the uptake, how fast you reach for the more alien parts of yourself even though it feels like all you really do is fuck up and fumble. How you're progressing in leaps and bounds. Oh they don't say it outright, but you can read between the lines, look at everyone else then look at yourself. You're already learning the rhythm, glutting yourself on Glamour from people you pass on the street, letting it run through your fingers like seawater. Everyone else is still scrabbling, terrified of losing even a scrap, hoarding, harvesting only tentatively. Looking to the side, to their counselors and trainers, as if to check that this is really okay, really really okay. Asking for the umpteenth time.

No this isn't fear. It's half-assed guilt. A meek, weak, little murmur bubbling from from the basement where the Old You lives, saying that everyone else is right. Saying that you shouldn't do this, someone might get angry. You might get caught. This is too dangerous. Wait for someone to show you, let someone else set the pace for you and that, more than anything, is enough to make you shake the feeling off. Your serpents rippling around your shoulders, long lengths of muscle and bone sliding over your ribs, your biceps, the slope of your neck. Reaching out, fanning out to frame you.

You're nobody's doll. You're nobody's. Perfect. Son.

Your reflection sits beside you, absently rubbing the quicksilver blotch that drips down his face and scars his lips. Legs dangling in the water, the pond mirroring back nothing but tree branches and a distant, cloudy sky. Hold your hand over the murky surface and crook your fingers. You start, he watches in silence.

The words are guttural, harsh, the syllables all sharp-edged things that catch and tear at the insides of your throat. Your mouth and tongue not quite right for the sounds you're making, your body wearing, tearing to suit the language instead. You don't know what you're saying, you don't know what it means, but you don't have to. Your Contract guides you, and this? It's all rote memorization anyway. Because He taught you how to do it, don't you remember?

You do don't you?


There's no welling of Glamour, no steady drain. But you feel it, feel the sudden tension, the cramp in your arm as muscle bulges and rolls in a wave. A visible ripple from left to right. You hiss through gritted teeth, your serpents taking up the soft cry. It doesn't matter, the pain ebbs away a second later. Somewhere, in a place where the light doesn't reach and the shore is just a distant dream, The Deep adds another tally to its ledger.

You step back as the pool begins to boil, roiling and foaming, glittering, glistening fractures forming beneath the surface. Pulsing, organic and visceral as they stitch themselves together. As something within twists and throbs, swelling larger with cardiac shudders as raw power begins to ooze through. A spine twists, limbs reach and flex, becoming more solid, more defined, more real with every passing second.

You could have asked for anything, any kind of servant. Pack-hunters, stalwart men at arms, but you? You really are so bad at denying yourself. The idea that anyone else could show up with something better (despite that being fucking stupid), the idea that everyone will look at you for having something better (despite that being fucking vain) is just too much. It's almost a reflexive thing for you, reaching for every last scrap you can get because you're greedy, you're needy even if you'd never admit it, and you love lovely things.

And he is lovely.

The caul ruptures, lilypads bobbing as the water surges and is sucked down; the contents of the pond sloshing, slapping against the sides. A single arm reaches out and plants itself on the edge. Claws of rusting, corrugated steel, each longer than your whole hand. A palm that could cover half your chest, a whole shoulder, that could squeeze until bone ground against bone. The muscle is exaggerated, accentuated, saved from being overdeveloped and obscene only by the proportions. Fat, flayed cords of emerald green sinew, frothing and so murky as to be opaque. A jagged spike, a spur, erupting from the eblow. Another hand settles on the wall. A third. A fourth. Vast shoulders, slabs of watery brawn working as the beast hauls itself up, tearing the last of its sac from its face. Skeins of spiritual matter sparkling as they dissolve into so much mist and fog.

Even standing waist deep in the pool it -he- comes up nearly to your sternum. His face is metal, a mask, a sculpted serpentine maw fused to the sleek scalp. Fangs like tusks, eyes the color of raw jade (too many, three on each side and too intense) glowing through carefully punched holes. His spine is metal, a visible silhouette in the torso. A long tail swishing just above the surface, half of it submerged but still enough to see that its segmented with overlapping plates that look like they were ripped from a ship's hull. Spikes so long they're almost porcupine spines bristle from his back, longer across the shoulders, thinning and shrinking as they descend down the length of his body.

A collar of some sleek, organic material wraps around his throat. Squid flesh, octopus skin: it splits off in heavy strands, running down the chest, down the back, weaving between the jagged protrusions. Framing the brawn, deepening the definition in a simulacra of scales.

Your reflection wolf whistles as the spirit huffs, snarling, clearing his throat with a cloud of steam. He looks up at you, he takes a half step back as he bows his head, muscle groups you didn't even know existed visibly bunching, bulging.

"My lord," it -he- whispers, voice gentle, a muted, distorted sizzle and spit. Industrial solvents wearing away grime and the ceramic beneath, the surf rolling in, a thin sheet of seawater rushing over the sand, "I am Foaming Fangs that Chew the Coast. I serve you, trustee and steward of The Deep. Grant me battle and bloodshed so that I might prove myself in the eyes of my god, grant me your favor and your kindness so that I may bring you glory. I am your honorable servant."

"(Oh my God)," your other self whispers, good eye slowly widening as an incredulous smile creeps across his face, "(oohhh my God you summoned a spirit and it showed up in bondage gear you weird man-)"

You idly whap him with your tail, he yelps. Foaming Fangs grunts, head swaying, arms coming back as you casually, casually place your foot between your reflection's shoulder blades. The other you looking up plaintively, trying for a puppy dog expression and mostly just landing a sneer.

"Is this- you. Troubling...you? My lord."

"Nah," you reply as you push your him back into the pool with a splash, whatever strange mood you had earlier melting away like wax in front of a fucking blast furnace. "He was just leaving."

Ignore his "oh come on!" as he slips below the settling skin, dissolving in a mercury swirl and reforming a moment later on the other side. A distorted smear, more shivering, glistening shape than a true counterpart, still defined enough to make a rude gesture from within. Foaming Fangs lifts a hand and stares at it with obvious bemusement before reaching down, dragging razor sharp talons through the water. Disrupting your already blurry image with eddies and ripples. He gives the spirit a rude gesture too and the monster huffs again, more perplexed than angry. You think.

It -he- looks up at you and you step back, beckoning it -him- up. He rises, the pond dropping back down from "nearly overflowing" to more manageable, mundane levels. Settling all sixes in a vaguely simian posture, the ground vibrating beneath your feet with the impacts. Claws curled back like sickles. Even in a comfortable, casual, crouch he towers over you. A long loincloth preserves some scraps of modesty, front and back, nothing over the hips and if you don't look too close you can pretend the cephalopod lashes don't vanish beneath the strap holding the garment in place. Snag your robe from the bench, slip it over your shoulders. The spirit watches, lifting its head to scent the air.

"So..." you say eventually, trailing off into a pleasant, happy little hum in the back of your throat. "You're a fighter aren't you?"

"Yes," he rumbles, raw and wet.

"And you want to kill?"

"I want to prove myself."

"So you're strong but not that important yet huh?"

A teakettle hiss, a wet, racking rumble; the guy sounds a touch aggrieved. You guess even spirits have raw nerves. "Not yet."

"Wwweeell how about this. You play bodyguard for a bit and tomorrow I promise we'll go blow off some steam okay?"

Silence. He cocks his head and bobs it once. "Yes."

"Now make yourself scarce. Need to pretend I didn't pull a snake-tank out of wherever the Hell you came from."

"The Shadow."

"Sure," you make a flapping motion with your wrist as you draw your collar up and roll up your sleeves. When you glance back Foaming Fangs has already vanish in a wave of salty, briny, sea-air. Lingering only as a vague pressure, a hint of movement out of the corner of your eye. Phantom rain falls in your wake, the echoes of an unseen hurricane ruffling the grass. Slate grey waters rise, flooding the lawn, pooling around your ankles, your Mantle flickering in your wake as you walk back inside.

You play Mario Kart with Gallow and Glass in the lounge and the weird seal-bear lady with the rubbery, sleek skin and arms about as thick around as your waist brings everyone cookies. You're on the last lap before you get blue-shelled and nearly throw the controller through the screen.

All in all it's an alright night.





The morning finds you outside Sebastian's apartment at the first opportunity, the second Lai dismisses you from the session, dryly complimenting your ability to maintain a mostly decent wardrobe. Hah, joke's on them, there's nothing decent about you.

Or lucky, apparently, because Sebastian's door's locked and he hasn't gotten around to giving you a key yet. You shoot him another text and lean against the wall, idly eyeing the flickering light at the end of the hall. You want- this isn't an atonement exactly, this isn't a pre-emptive penance. You'd be lying to yourself if you said you felt guilty about your plans for tonight. But Cook was right, the holidays are hard on everyone and the big guy needs some attention y'know? He needs to know that you care.

Because you do, and it's not even a question you just...do. You care about this sad, shy, dumbass who's not quite old enough to be your dad but boy is it edging up to the danger zone.

If nothing else at least this gives you time to think. You don't have much money exactly which complicates your plans a bit but hey, you've got ideas and that's almost as good.

[ ] Spend the day at Arsenal Pier, it's creepy and mostly closed down in the offseason but it's free. And nice and rainy. And with so few people around it means there's nobody there to watch you be disgustingly affectionate in public.
[ ] Awkwardly ask Sebastian if he wants to go to the movies, you've bummed enough of an allowance from Winter at this point that you can probably make a matinee. Be nice to see something still in theaters for a change.
[ ] The city's got a few museums, a zoo, and an aquarium, and admittance is basically a pittance during the middle of the week. Pick one, hell pick two, and just kill all the time from morning to afternoon feeling all cultured and shit.
[ ] You're poor but God are you good looking and you're perfectly pleasant company when you want to be. Just drag Sebastian in bed and spoil him. And hey, at the very least it'll be warm and you won't have to do much walking.