Interlude DLXXXII: Skins False and True
Skins False and True
Twenty-Ninth Day of the Tenth Month 293 AC
Svitran tasted the night air upon his tongue and the hum of distant minds bustling along the streets of the warmblood city with equal satisfaction. He was content to be away from the Place of Learning. He did not dislike the Fivefold Veiled One, but her thousand questions into the nature of things like a hatchling scraping at the wall of its egg could be wearying after a time. Never content simply being, always wanting to know. The priest ran his hand across the doorway, scales scraping pleasantly against the cool stone. This is what she wanted to build with her magic, stone blocks to carve and reorder however she pleased... walls to keep out even the gods.
Once he would have thought it strange that anyone would put so much effort into hiding from the gods who were everywhere, in the warm sunlight and the swift rain, in the halls of the old ones and the depths of the jungle. However, he had learned much since he had first met the gaze of the Great One in flesh, of the ordering of the worlds and the ways of the younger peoples, not just the warmbloods most common in this realm and whose skins the others chose to wear when they wished to pass unseen, but the Singers with leaf-green eyes, the Silver-Furred ones quick and nimble and the Bull-Men born of the black blood and the red rage yet not ruled by it.
Weaving Deepest Veils Progress: 10/18
When he had first seen the City of the Dragon, the Dreamer had been most surprised by the many coverings its people wore, not to protect their soft flesh as he had first thought, but to show or to hide some part of themselves through the false skins. So it was with the works to cloud the eyes of greedy and hungry gods, but for some changing their skin would be too little. Some came to the city to cut the coils that bound them body and soul, and for that none were more skilled than the World Serpent, for was he not the lord of endings as much as new beginnings?
A pair of Pit Spirits with heads like unto the beasts that guarded the homes of warmbloods stood in the Hall of Coiled Contemplation, awaiting only Svitran to lead them on to the pool.
The trio of blood-winged Furies who led them here looked up at him carefully. "Can you deal with them?" one asked.
"In this place with much more than they," he sent back. "The Timeless One has much use for me and shows me great favor."
Their only answer was a quick nod of the head in understanding and parting both as the priest led the Demons down the coiling paths so familiar to him. The pool was still and quiet, cold, the god still slumbering in its deaths, but this was not the long sleep of one who had devoured much, only the sleep of wisdom and dreams. A prayer thrice twisted around the tongue called Him forth.
The dark ones showed some wisdom in flinching from his rising, and yet more in not fleeing and showing their back to His fangs. "We ask that you break the chains of the Pit, Snake?" one snarled.
"Sssacrifice..." The word was spoken within and without.
At this Svitran took out a small wax-sealed bottle from the pouch at his belt, one holding a spirit of the Hells subtle as it was skilled in slaying and offered it to his God. The great jaws snapped around it, the wind of their passing filled with the scent of old dreams. Thus did the dark ones step forth into the pool, goading each other right until the moment they were wrapped in black and crimson scales.
What emerged from the shifting coils was more pleasing to the eye to be certain, greasy fur replaced with lustrous scales save for a mane upon the shoulders and neck, the eyes had the same red glow to them but the rage had been tempered like steel in the great furnaces. These great fangs would not serve the Great Serpent but the Dragon as agreed for the tithe of blood, but they would carry the legacy of Yss with enough wisdom to be worthy of it.
"Come on," the slightly larger of the pair called to the smaller. "Let's see if the pack has the noses to smell us or if they'll only smell snake and need to be reminded the right way."
"Bloodletting is better done in the Circle of Sand than without," the serpent priest called after them, guessing their meaning. "There is much gold and fame to be found there." He was glad to see the nod, it would be a waste of the life given to the Great One were they to be slain by the Lawmen now.
OOC: To explain why the Demons came out looking so snakey, as these were Demons, beings as much of chaos as evil and unlike Azema not particularly attached to their forms, I rolled a d100 to see how much they would ask to be changed. It came out 93, so here we are. I'll revise the sheets in the morning.
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