nWoD: That Savage Coast

Intrusive thoughts are something everyone has to deal with. That feeling as you pass a fire alarm, the white plastic handle all but begging to be pulled. That feeling as you stand on the crosswalk, watching the cars whip past and wondering what it'd be like to just put your hands on Mr. Business Suit's back and give him a shove. That feeling when you're driving home in the dark and something inside you scratches and whispers inside your skull and you think about just closing your eyes and pushing the pedal to the floor. Your world ending a constellation spray of painted aluminum and shattered concrete. Or a meeting of metal as bumpers kiss and chassis deform. Or maybe just nothing at all, darkness giving way to darkness as the steering column cores out your chest.

Slap your boss. Kiss that man. Hop the fence into the tiger pen. Take the knife and stab your waiter.

You know: weird things, unsettling things, things you would never, ever do in a million years because you're a good person right? Because when you get right down to it you couldn't, wouldn't, act on those thoughts. Right?

Sure. Pull on that mask, hide behind that reflection, playing pretend comes as naturally to you as breathing. And it's easy, easy to give people what they want, to give them that oh-so-charming, so heroic version of you. That silvery-bright self that's so easy to want, to laugh with, to love.

Your tail swishes from side to side; fins flexing, semi-rigid spines stretching and straining against the membranes as the bullwhip-tip snaps. Flicking idly from one half of the hallway to the other. The snakes that sprout from your spine endlessly slithering; scales rasping on scales as they writhe over each other, slip between each other. Flashes of pale pink as they open their mouths to hiss. The walls are painted a gentle, uniform grey here in the back-corridors. Somewhere between fresh snowfall and ashen soot, the colors muted, turning the world to shades of shadow and silence and calm. Fluorescent lamps sit in the ceiling: neat sectioned off squares of soft white light, dappling a checkerboard pattern on the floor.

The gentle glow filtering through your hair, gleaming off your horns and spilling down your shoulders. The darker parts, the blacker patches, where the shadows wrap around and it's only your slit-pupiled eyes that shine. You skulk through the halls of your new home, navigating the warren partly through memory and partly through backtracking to double check the signs.

When you first got here, those first few days where you had to be taught how to be something like human again, you thought the Imperator Rex was a citadel. This massive hulk of stone and gilt and glass, a monument to days of long-gone decadence: Prohibition-chic with a touch of Black Tuesday. Glory balanced against a, carefully chosen notes, of raw despair. You thought it was a building with the soul of a mountain, where it felt like countless tons of frozen rock and snow-mantled earth were waiting on the other side of every wall, razor sharp ravines hiding behind every door. The place's gravity, it's sheer mass wrapping around you like a blanket. A fortress built by the Fae, to hide themselves from the monsters without. Turns out that was only half true because you've come to realize Imperator Rex isn't one fortress: it's two.

A network of parallel passageways and corridors that appear on no blueprints. Staircases that descend down past the basement, the sub-basement, boring into the sea-side foundations. Ballrooms and dining halls and conference rooms that don't map to the exterior, that don't fit the circumscribed dimensions. Within: every gate is guarded, every junction warded. The hotel is utterly unassailable for all that you can pass so easily. But just because you're tolerated doesn't mean you aren't being watched. Or, rather, that you can't be seen.

It is, after all, so very exposed on the mountain's face.

A great glittering mirror sits at an intersection. You take a right, your Reflection watching, turning his head to follow you. His hand resting against the glass, his breath misting in the Winter chill. Your pretty-going-on-handsome features tired and drawn even as he smiles weakly. You sketch him a wave, your serpents craning their heads back around to watch him recede from view. Even as he attaches himself to your heels and follows you beneath the polished tiles, a step out of synch. Trailing you through the inverted world under your bare feet. You start to see more obvious signs of more normal life.

Pass a housekeeper pushing a cart, she doesn't stop you but you can feel her attention. The wheels squeaking, her hands spotless for all that the hamper is piled high with dirty laundry and the bottles of colorful cleaning formula are almost empty. Pass a pair of security staff just coming off the clock, clip-on ties stuffed in their pockets and hands in their slacks. Talking about about hockey and starting strings and "so hey did you catch the Sea Wolves game last night"? Their eyes track you. Pass a concierge, her heels click-clacking on the hardwood floor; royal blue scarf done up neatly, stark against her deeply tanned skin. She neatly side-steps your tail, careful to keep from treading on your Reflection; she doesn't even slow, the movements second nature.

Work your way deeper into the second set of fortifications and feel the temperature steadily drop by degrees. The towering mirrors are more common now, stag-horned figures lovingly etched into the base of the frames. Fractal patterns of frost beneath the silver. You could have cut the journey into seconds if you had anything left to give. If you had power left, real power, instead of this anxious, skittering ache that moves across the underside of your ribs. Something between hunger pangs and an anxious itch. But whatever, it doesn't matter, it's fine, you're here now. Before the modern emergency exit, the kind of industrial thing you'd expect to see backstage at a theater maybe, or lining the sides of a cinema complex. Check the map beside the doorway and press your palm to the metal bar, carefully easing it open. A section of cream colored molding and white wallpaper swinging open on silent hinges.

Their voices wash over you. Ambient noise, the strands of individual conversations meaningless and nearly impossible to separate but warm for all that. Welcoming for all that. The gentle murmur of a dozen different voices, so easy now, so natural, where a few short days ago it was staccato and shy. The lounge is packed even at this hour. Outside: great arched windows that look out over the hillside. Rolling green parkland, thin streamers of fog working around the trunks of the trees as slopes give way to denser, thicker forest. Only a few flakes of unmelting snow along the edge of the panes gives the hint that it's anything but glass. Inside: a crackling wood fire; pale leather couches, with matching armchairs and a few scattered common tables.

Take a step forward, let the door swish soundlessly behind you. Closing with a click, flush with the rest of the wall; seamless and perfect.

There are board games here, stacks of pop fiction novels (is that the new November Unit?), a small row of sleek, futuristic consoles beside the entertainment center. Trays of snacks and fingerfood from the kitchens sit scattered: slices of french bread with rich, creamy cheese, greens and tomatoes beside fried tenders and boxed pizza. Everything with that jumbled together left-over look that you get a few hours into any social thing. Where everyone's mostly full and mostly had their fun and they'll get around to putting everything up soon, sure.

It's a meeting, a mingling, all the new arrivals who didn't feel like the seeing the movie and a handful of Winter courtiers. You see them around, men and women with flesh like leather, bodies laced with brass and silver. Sharp edged, industrial armor peeking above casual shirts and well worn jeans. Their faces flat, featureless, all polished, grey-tinged glass. Deep sea diving suits drawn skin-tight and vacuum sealed. You see more of the silvery-blue pelted sea trolls; their heads like anvils of blank bone, long curving tusks framing their jaws. Backs and limbs and broad chests rippling with enough raw power to pull you apart. Like someone threw a gorilla, a wolf, and a walrus in a blender and mantled the rest in ivory and sapphire. You see that instructor you had the first few days, sweats instead of that smart pantsuit now. Her eyes still as wide and piscine as ever, mouth forced into a perpetual grimace by her too-long, nearly translucent teeth. Fleshy tendrils sprout from her back, pulsing with bioluminescent light; the steady ebb and flow echoed by the twin bulb-tipped tails at his feet.

Dice rattle, sharp teeth rip snacks to shreds, the tv roars with a simulated audience as a Princess Peach played by Gallow beats the shit out of a Kirby played by another crocodile headed, black-maned Ogre. The controllers comically tiny in their massive hands. The atmosphere is fun, festive for all that it's a little chilly. Like a sleep over, a slumber party. You work your way through, you greet people by name, you smile and show those pretty, pearly allwhites. Consciously self-conscious, deliberately a bit shit, a bit out of place, but quick to warm up. Conversation flows, fast and natural; you're so easy to talk to.

Nathaniel's sprawled out on one of the low white lounges, a black tank top that leaves his flayed arms bare, the red and black and oily metal shockingly stark against the thin material. He has an airport paperback open on his stomach, careless of how he splits the spine. He lifts his head up, running a hand through dark hair and darker feathers, giving you a small wave.

"Ah! Levi! I've been- what happened to your cheek?" And then Glass is just there, interposing himself between you and the Darkling. All compact athleticism in the Mask, grand halo-collared sea serpent thing in the Mien. Gesturing, motioning with both hands as he talks. All but radiating that chugging-caffeine insane Type-A energy. His skin looks better, the azure and purple more like swirled oils than an aged bruise now. The fused suit of living plate shining like it's been toothbrush scrubbed. You don't know what he says to you, truth be told you're barely paying attention. You don't even know what you say in response. You just open your mouth and to you it could be static that comes out, white noise and easy, amiable nothings that squirm through one ear and out the other and it's reflex, it's all just reflex. But it seems to calm him down, make him relax and he ends up thanking you, promising to catch up more tomorrow. You pat his shoulder and move on. Sketching a salute as you make your way through and out into the hall.

In the background there's a chorus of cheers and boos as Gallow rings out the pink marshmallow and nearly spikes her controller into the floor. "Eat shit Em!"

And then that door closes behind you too. The sound muted, muffled. You turn and keep walking, claws trailing over the wallpaper.

The lamps are brighter here and most of the rooms stand propped open. You grab your toiletry kit from the shared dorm, everyone's sleeping bags lined up in neat parallel rows. Layered over with scavenged blankets and slightly rumpled sheets. Duck into the locker rooms attached to the nearby gym. The porcelain here is polished a gleaming white, shining like exposed bone, like teeth with that fluoride finish; not a scrap of mildew or mold to be found. Every bathroom stall surgical scrub clean.

The room is crowded in the mornings, in the afternoons, before breakfast and morning therapy and after the evening trip to the gym, to the pool. But now it's empty and empty it is...cavernous. Chill, damp air stretching around you in every direction, a gulf of nothing on every side. Somewhere water drips, somewhere a buried pipe gurgles, and the sound is magnified, distorted by the acoustics. Bouncing from surface to surface before fading away, seeming to subside into the gloom. Swallowed up by the half-seen corners of the locker room. You stand there in nothing but your skin and your cheap foam flip flops, scarlet stains on the insides of your forearms. Crimson clots beneath your black nails. Dried sweat and trace salt and everything that the sea couldn't scour away. And for the first time tonight you feel naked, exposed.

Lights quietly buzz overhead.

Snakes sample the atmosphere with flickering tongues. A blurry sphere of sensation surrounding you. Peripheral vision pushing out, a halo of dim awareness feeding back into your brain. You reach out, crank the shower up high. Flinch, hiss, as it splashes against you, icy cold at first but it warms up. Rising and rising until it's something like scalding, until every errant twitch of your tail sends little eddies of steam curling across the slippery floor, until a red flush rises beneath the deep tan of your skin. You take a deep breath, you grab your bath sponge and a bottle of body wash and get to work.

Wincing with every clumsy motion that catches an errant scale, too-sensitive nerves firing off in panic. Pausing, now and then, to let the deluge rinse the lather off the hard lines of your body, your hair all but hanging over your eyes. Washing until the drain swirls clear and it's only cotton candy colored suds that drift past your feet. Your snakes twisting themselves, mouths open to let the water fill their jaws and come spilling out. Seemingly unbothered by the heat. Hang your sponge from the faucet handle, take a rougher cloth from your bag and tend to them, to your tail. Swearing in frustration as one gets distracted and slips from your grasp to wetly smack against the tiled wall, as you unconsciously twitch a muscle and a foot of sinew and fins slithers through your hand.

In the end you're clean; as clean as you can be, as someone, something like you can ever be. You stand there, the tines of your crown clicking against the ceramic as you bow your head and lean forward. Letting the water flow down your back, down the saurian strip of flesh that runs the length your spine. Cascading between the bunched, sculpted sinews of your shoulders. Thin rivulets quirking and -hah- snaking down your thighs. Slowly leeching away the last, lingering traces of adrenaline and shock and that choking, chemical fury.

...What kind of person are you, that you could do something like that? That you could enjoy it, appreciate it, savor the reactions and complicated expressions of your adoring audience. You'd have to be some kind of monster right? Is that what Gregory saw when he hurled that burst of fire through the SUV, is that what Carmen saw as she knelt there staring up at the twice-dead man she used to know?

Was it just a monster?

You wait for the shame, for the guilt, for the visceral disgust that you know you should feel. The long-delayed horror that you're due. That you know by now isn't coming but you wait anyway out of habit, out of obligation. Give it a second, give it thirty; give it a minute, give it five. You reach out and gently turn the handle, killing the stream; standing there in the sudden hush, dripping wet.

You dry off and get dressed. There's nobody waiting for you outside, no sudden Bishop Lai to gently guide you away from the others, no Winter King with his leaden crown and armed escort: just an empty length of hotel hallway. You wordlessly drop your salt soaked clothes in the mesh bag with the towel and the rest of your dirty laundry and leave it beside your bedroll. Tying the drawstring of your pajama bottoms as you walk; the Imperator Rex issued robe hanging open over your chest, unbelted and swishing with every step. Look at you: taking care of yourself without prompting, cleaning up and everything. What a well adjusted murderer you are!

The corner of your mouth quirks down into a frown. The fluttery, skittish feeling from before is back and sharper this time without anything to distract you. Less intense than that spasm, that tendon wrenching cramp on the beach. No it's a different sort of pain, a distinct kind of discomfort: like a caffeine crash married to that nauseous am-I-starving-or-am-I-just-sick sensation. But you know what it is by now, learned it in your lessons and felt the first feathery touches on your trips to and from Sebastian's apartment. You've burned too much, too fast, and now you're low on Glamour.

Topping off shouldn't be too hard. You'll have to go looking for someone to flirt with or fight with or just loom up behind in a vaguely sinister kind of way and give them a bit of a scare. And then you can apologize for being an asshole, maybe have a laugh, and then fuck off back to bed. Perfect. Except for the fact that you're a few hours off from midnight and most of the staff have gone home so really it's just the graveyard shift and they're all busy.

Stare at the ceiling and sigh. Slip your hands into your pockets and start drifting towards the kitchens because hey, there should at least be someone there, someone doing the dishes or slinging out the snacks you saw. But let's be honest, even that's a half-hearted hope at this point and part of you is already resigned to a miserable night and an absolutely godawful therapy session in the morning.

Frustration creeps back in, that old, familiar friend. You feel your mood darken, feel it blacken, even as the rest of your body blissfully seems to miss the memo. The back of your bathrobe boiling as venomous snakes eagerly push out against the soft material. Wrapping themselves up in it, fighting over it like it's a blanket that they all have to share. One curves up by the bottom, hem draped over his head like a cowl or a cloak, mouth hanging open and fangs sliding free as he happily squirms back and forth. You hiss at them to stop it for all the utterly ineffectual good it does and round a corner. Abruptly realizing that actually you have no idea where you are and that's sort of your fault too because you've spent every second away from here you can scavenge, every fucking moment you can manage so no. Of course you don't really know where you're going and-

"U-uh hey?"

"What?"

The silence that settles across the corridor is absolute.

There's a long, long pause as the gears turn in your head. You slowly, slowly turn, dainty claws still at your throat where you were scratching, worrying at the tendons and tanned skin. A kid stares back at you; half-frozen in a flinch, his eyes wide. One foot back, a white topped tupperware container raised to his chest like a shield. Hunching down like he's trying to hide which is, honestly, a little hilarious because he couldn't be older than sixteen and he's maybe an inch or two shorter than you. Latino, hair shorn almost to the scalp in a military cut; he looks either like a highschool all-star or like he just walked off an advertisement for ROTC.

Beneath the Mask a long-limbed thing with a stag-skull head crouches where he stands. Lanky body all shadow shot through with steel. Eyes the color of lemons and lantern flames, perfect circles without pupils or sclera. He holds the plastic container with razor sharp talons shaped from scrap metal.

You smile weakly.

"Sorry," you say. He nods shakily, one, twice. And you can see whatever speech he had rehearsed choked up in his throat. For a second you consider just walking into the nearest reflective surface to escape the situation before you remember that you're bone dry.

"So..." you say.

Oh God fix this.
[ ] Apologize again, say it's been a stressful day, make up a story about where you've been. Lie ridiculously. You have no idea what he already knows about you.
[ ] Distract and divert, pull in Foaming Fangs to cover for the awkwardness; a heavily armed non sequitur. Winter probably knows you have him right?
[ ] Lean on your latent abilities, sure you might be able to instinctively only tell what would hurt him most but you could...read him and do the opposite of that?

Done by the wonderful @TheOneMoiderah
Art Thread: Moid's Art Thread. - Drawing
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