Exalted: Out Of The Eater

TenfoldShields said:

"Long Night of Hunger." A pause. He pats one heavy, taloned hand to the staff of his colossal warscythe. "Final Feast."

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Her tunic is the color of a moonless night, a match for the impossibly wide-brimmed hat she wears at a delicate angle. A curtain of silver beads hanging over her face.

Her back is straight and you cannot imagine she has ever bowed for anyone, begged for anything, in the whole of her life. Certainly nothing so small as mercy. Or forgiveness. When she pauses and smoothly changes direction to approach you, it doesn't even seem anything less than planned and wholly deliberate. She towers over you. You didn't- you didn't quite realize how tall she was for some reason, tall enough to put a hand on Nerius's shoulder without even having to reach.

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TenfoldShields said:

What skills do you hone in this interim. Pick two. Vote by plan.

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TenfoldShields said:

After a minute of walking the Dead pulls his pristine, silvery-white cloak from around his shoulders and offers it to you. You do not ask him to. You do not need it. And while he doesn't quite look at you, the motion brusque and almost indifferent, you can't miss the way he tilts his head just so, just enough to see you out of the corner of his eye. There's something awfully self conscious in it, something so achingly earnest in that face of immobile bone that you don't have it in you to push him away. And you're too tired to explain, as brief as such an explanation would be.

So you accept and are immediately swathed in the rich, heavy fabric. All but drowning in the ocean of cloth, gamely doing your best to keep the trailing hem from dragging on the steps behind you. Chrysaor squeaking softly as he's bundled up against you.

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The woods press in thick on every side. Limbs lacing together in an impenetrable lattice. An echo of a primeval darkness, when all the East was river and water-cut canyon and deepening forest. Trees rise up from the thickets, each as wide as a village square, but still they twist and crawl and climb like lithe vines. Coiling root indistinguishable from forking branch from serpentine trunk. All of it swathed in shadow, all of it dripping that bloody red sap. In the gaps and the arcades and the high-arched hollow spaces you can still see the leaves. All the colors of fire, of an Autumn inferno, their rustling magnified again and again by the sheer multitude of them. The sound they make in the wind like the crash and muted roar of waves breaking against the shore.

The ruined stairs climb up, ever up, disappearing into the shifting shadows and the rusted light. Sometimes they take you through the ruins of a place, a building, part of another causeway, another arch- but here they've all been overtaken by the forest. Claimed by the crawling mass; suspended and jointed and frozen in place, their brutal edifices half-wrenched apart. Small creeks of pitch black water running through them, cascading away into the undergrowth.

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"My name is Harrower," you say at last. For want of anything to say at all.

"Yes," the reply is a sound like stone rumbling against stone, this kind of resonant echo deep in his chest.

You stop, one bare foot on the edge of a cracked stone landing and you just sort of...turn to look at him. You're a few steps ahead so you're at something like eye-level. Chrysaor resting his jaw on your shoulder, flicking his leaf-shaped ears and sniffing as he peers curiously in the same direction. The ghost stops abruptly, ever so slightly flustered, unsure of what he did. You see it in his eyes, the way the flames dim and contract as he squints. You see the brief flaring of yellow and orange and red as he makes the connection. He turns his head away and huffs, a wet, racking sound.

"Long Night of Hunger." A pause. He pats one heavy, taloned hand to the staff of his colossal warscythe. "Final Feast."

"Thank you," you say.

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You...decide in that moment you like him. You like this spirit- this man (and he is a man). You like his armor, the way it's so mismatched and patchwork, painstakingly pieced together from what must be half a dozen sets scavenged from antique ruins and tailored for his physique. Lovingly painted an even pitch, accented on the gauntlets and shin-greaves, the breast and the back with careful blue-daubed designs. Edged in intricate silver patterns of fang and tangling root. You like his scythe and the way he carries the monstrous thing nestled tenderly in the crook of his arm, bearing the weight with an easy, unconscious grace- and it reminds you, somehow, of the elemental dozing, bat-wings draped over your shoulders. A precious pet, spoiled and indulged.

You like his body, his anatomy. Is that ghoulish? It feels a little perverse and you can't quite convince yourself it's just innocent fascination. You like watching the way the flayed, exposed skeins of scarlet muscle tense and twist and shift and strain with every little motion. White spurs of bone jutting up from the scarlet, rising along his spine, rocks in the center of so many red, red rivers. White slopes of osseous plate integrated into the bulk of his being, both anchoring and armoring the meat that is his self. White bull skull a many-fanged death mask; flames ringed in shadow sitting nestled in the sockets, flicking back to you now and then. Wondering, you think, why your gaze lingers.

You like the way his strength sits thickly across his back, girdles his waist and stomach with a solid slab. The way his arms and thighs bulge with power. His chest broadened and deepened with brawn. The sound of his hooves is a steady metronome, following you along your twilight path between the worlds of the living and the dead. Somewhere in the distance you can still hear Elegia at his work. From this far away it just sounds like an endless roll of thunder. Or maybe an earthquake, rumbling below your feet.

Long Night of Hunger eventually looks down at himself then over at you. "Is there a problem?" He asks, and it's brusque but you think he's genuinely….curious. Asking if something's wrong. If he did something wrong. You try for a smile, easy and light, the kind of thing you've seen Nerius flash, easy as drawing breath.

"Just wondering about you is all."

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"What's there to wonder?" He asks eventually.

There's a silence as you frown, letting that grimace-grin go with something like relief. Curled knuckles touched to your chin as you think. "Well," you reply, "Hhhhow are you finding Xauma? Unless I'm mistaken, you're a famine ghost. You have that...smell? Taste. About you. And I know what an empty belly feels like. But this is a land of plenty, as far as cereals and meat go. So- you came here from Lookshy too, didn't you?"

"...It is impolite to assume so much about a person," he says, and with the low, shuddering vibration that laces his words it's difficult to tell if he's amused, or closer to annoyed. You wince and adjust and readjust the sit of the borrowed cloak, busying yourself with the motion.

"I apologize then," you say. He grunts in reply. The two of you walk in silence for a time.

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"King Nerius made Xauma," he says. "From forest and rain-soaked ruins. Out of life and death, oaths and compact. Out of the many gods, one court under the She-Who-Eats-The-Light. Out of the many tribes of Old Xauma, one nation once more. One army. One hand, one fist, to strike against Lookshy. He fells trees, sends treasures to Greak Forks. Trades for jade and steel. But his silver buys the service of Strix, buys Scavenger Lords, buys Harvester war-herds. We come for that silver. But we stay for the things he says, the world he promises."

Your gaze is somewhere between curious and avaricious, mismatched eyes drinking it in. You don't even have to ask. The hungry quiet does it for you.

"Food enough for soldiers," he says, voice soft and full of longing, "Food enough for all the slaves we'll free. Xauma will shatter the sevenfold walls and bring Lookshy low. We will take what was always ours. The destiny it denied us. The future it stole. We will be spoken of in the same breath as Sijan, as Nexus, as Great Forks. And The City will be spoken of not at all."

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All you can think is how happy you are that the Sun can't get in.

You know it can't hurt you. Xauma is a shadowland, the ghost of a dead Age haunting the Scavenger Lands. A place where rain drums with frigid, icy fingers on the sides of broken skyscrapers. Where the trees grow thick and dark and the water runs cold, black as ink, black as pitch. Death is in the soil here. Death is in the superconcrete foundations and thrums in the trunks of trees who have never once bloomed with green. Spirits walk here by dusk and twilight- by daylight even, when the skies are leaden and grey. And you? You're made of something far stronger than any shade. You know that.

But you still don't like how it makes you feel.

It's like grease and thick oil running over your skin, matting your hair and clotting your pores. Oven-heat and still, stagnant air. A golden eye, high, high above you, watching you with the detached, vague displeasure of a perennially disappointed father.

Hypocrite.
​

As if Sol Invictus had any right to judge you.

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Her hair is the color of charcoal, still tinged with a few long locks of raiton black. She is deeply tanned, darker than you ever were, and what lines and creases there are are of frowns and worry and barely held scowls rather than elemental wear. Her long, trailing robes are a blue so deep and perfect that it makes something in your chest ache. Trimmed in furs that curl and billow, a thick and roiling grey like the smoke of a burning city. Her tunic is the color of a moonless night, a match for the impossibly wide-brimmed hat she wears at a delicate angle. A curtain of silver beads hanging over her face.

Her back is straight and you cannot imagine she has ever bowed for anyone, begged for anything, in the whole of her life. Certainly nothing so small as mercy. Or forgiveness. When she pauses and smoothly changes direction to approach you, it doesn't even seem anything less than planned and wholly deliberate. She towers over you. You didn't- you didn't quite realize how tall she was for some reason, tall enough to put a hand on Nerius's shoulder without even having to reach. The woman holds out her hand and you take it hesitantly. Still unsure of what to do. Still reflexively biting back the ingrained urge for deference, trying to stop shy of open defiance, you are not a prisoner here you are a guest and you know enough to know that a guest must behave well. You feel the thick, heavy calluses of her palm, her fingers against your own. You watch as her wickedly curved claws delicately wrap around the whole of your hand. Hiding it utterly.

She smiles and her smile is lined with fangs. She looks down at you and her eyes gleam in the half-light, that same heartaching shade of sapphire.

"I am Suneater Wolf," she says, her voice light and airy for her frame. Words spoken with the smoothness of someone who is not accustomed to being interrupted. She looks at you expectantly.

"I- I'm Harrower. I…(ah)."

"Yes, you're that lovely boy my son met across the River. He was very excited to get to know you." She nods once and relinquishes her grip. Just so.

"I'm- I'm happy to hear that?" You say weakly. "I didn't know Nerius had family at the palace."

She laughs and it is a sharp, barking sound. Her teeth flashing as she tosses her head back, hand raised to her mouth. "Oh young man. All of Xauma are my children and all this city is my palace. Nerius is merely my favorite. As is this place, I suppose. Bold don't you think? To reclaim the instrument of your own attempted murder. But I suppose a Deathknight like you can understand."

Bereft of anything to say, belatedly wondering if you should stand, if you even have room to stand with her so near, you settle for nodding again. Unsure of how to take that, exactly.

"Well, I shan't take any more of your time Knight Harrower, and I'm sure the boy is eager to bother you over one of his games. I don't know how long you'll be staying with us- but please. You're not imposing in the slightest. Truth be told I'm glad. Nerius could use a positive influence."

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Wade Garrett said:

SPEAKING OF NERIUS MUM:

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You're still sitting on the lounge when the door opens again and the man himself rests a hand on the edge, half-leaning into view. Watching the woman, the god -his mother?- leave with a sour expression. Thin pitch black lip twitched up over a long ivory fang. Not a snarl, not exactly. Not even anger you think. Just a kind of sour annoyance. A petty kind of exasperation.

And then his head turns towards you, ears up and those strange, pitch-black and amber eyes tracing a line from the ragged corner of your mouth down to your carefully folded hands and back. He grins, tired but warm, sharp -so impossibly sharp- but not remotely unkind and for a second you wish you'd thought to pull on a more presentable layer of skin.

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It still groans with Nerius's weight as he settles down next to you. One arm along the back, vicious, claw-tipped fingers dangling by your ear.

You are acutely aware that the man is wearing nothing but a blue waistwrap. That his arm might actually be thicker than your entire thigh. And that even sitting you still barely come up to his shoulder.

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For all these reasons you find yourself doing your best to sit up as straight as you can. Hands resting again on the hem of your tunic, as you do your best to stave off the slow-encroaching, slow-circling exhaustion and focus on the elaborate board set up in front of you. It shows a dense forested terrain in impossible miniature, hundreds of trees rendered at a thousandth of the scale in lifelike detail. As you watch a tiny flock of birds, each no bigger than the head of a needle, takes flight from a grove wings its way over a broad, flowing river. They hit the edge of the gameboard and vanish.

Beautifully painted figurines line the edge of the table in a loose, disorganized mess. You see hulking wolf-folk with polearms braced on their broad shoulders. Skirmishers in lupine pelts and thaumaturges in silver-stitched robes and cowled cloaks. Cult devotees in patchwork armor and Scavenger Lords in Shogunate salvage. There's more, for all the clear if casual division of the little models there's always something else, something new that jumps out at you. All of it reeks of sorcery and you cannot even begin to fathom how long the mundane parts must have taken.

"When I was…studying with my shahan-ya, Gateway was one of the better ways to pass the time," he says, voice wry, "Even if Ranotis was the only one who was ever interested in playing. Quite a lot of serious people in that jungle, and I suppose board games were a waste of time when they could have been- I don't know. Brooding in dark corners, crushing their balls between boulders as serious people do. Which is a shame really! I find Gateway wonderfully useful as a teaching tool."

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"I...can't say I ever learned how to play," you reply. Fairly diplomatically you think. But he just flicks his wrist in a dismissive wave, fingers splayed. This close you can see the pattern of pads on the inside of his palm, separated along the digit joints. This close you can feel the heat that rolls off his body, feel the warmth on his breath as he speaks. Like the cold, the chill, it's just an abstracted sensation. Decoupled from any discomfort. But you...find yourself appreciating it. Even if it's steadily eroding your ability to keep that straight-backed posture in your seat. Even if you feel the bitter bite of your injuries from the camp keenly still, beneath it all.

He tilts his head. Eyes flicking to your shoulder as he tweaks the collar of your shirt, inspecting the shape of the slow-healing wound. He makes a small "hm" noise under his breath.

It takes you a solid second delay to realize you didn't quite flinch.

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"...Apologies again," he says, "Renartus's report didn't mention your injuries being more than superficial. I wouldn't have kept you away from your bed if I had known. I'll have to have a word with them when they return. But you know...they did have a lot of positive things to say about your performance. You should be proud of that, they're very hard to impress."

Another flash of teeth. The dumb, echoing response of "I didn't know you were watching me" collides with a half-mumbled "Thank you" somewhere in your throat. The noise you make is equal parts ambiguous and exhausted.

"All told I can really get behind a man with that streak of suicidal boldness. Still, glad that they didn't have to pull you out by your ankles. Would you like to go back to your room?" He asks suddenly, a note of concern in his voice, sincere and genuine, "It's really no trouble. You don't need to feel obligated, I just thought it would be a nice...Welcome Back, You Really Had Them For A Bit present. If you follow."

You don't, not really, but the steady rise and fall of his voice, the low concerned tones are their own kind of comforting. And besides- the thought of getting up now, now that you've finally reached the terminal point of the last night, the last day, is increasingly seeming like it's own kind of heroic effort.

But you don't have real way to voice any of that, even with all your wits sharp and keen. So you just shake your head and mumble something about it being fine.

"Hm. Well. I'll try not to linger too much on the finer points of the rules then. Besides, I think the real strength of Gateway is in the abstractions. The way it teaches you to think about the battlefield as a holistic thing. The interplay of moving parts. It seems the kind of thing that'd speak to you, you have that grand, theatrical bent- don't you Harrower?"

You want to say that's very kind of him, but again the words seem like entirely too much effort. So you just nod your head and mumble something about it making sense.

You're not sure, in the end, when you do fall asleep. If you ever completely drift off. You know that you stay coherent and cognizant enough for Nerius to roll through the explanations of the different troops, his neatly organized army of model soldiers. For him to show you the kinds of things his board can show, the landscapes it can make, the little impossible worlds it can create. You know that despite your swiftly fading consciousness he never lets an ounce of annoyance creep into his voice. Just that eventually he nudges you once and then falls silent. The sound of him opening a leather bound folder from the table filtering through, the careful rasp of gutting claws sliding between thin papers.

And you know that even though he surely has things he needs to do, a schedule to keep as Hunger said, he doesn't disturb as you gradually list and slump against his chest. Your cheek to the heavy muscle and dense, soft fur.

For the first time in a long, long time you rest soundly, and all the nightmares that haunt the shadows of your mind are, for once, quiet.

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