Or, to put it another way, demons encourage their followers to never go outside and instead spend all their time in lightless rooms listening to loud music.
Truly heavy metal is the work of the devil!
"FUCK YOU DAD YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND " screamed the Malfean Slayer, "YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME." He slammed his door hard enough to shake the house, Malfeas sat alone in the living room. A single burning tear trickling down his cheek. He had never been more proud.
ALSO DEMONS
Kino, Ten Thousand Gossamer Moments
Messenger Soul of a Requiem for the Impaler Grove
Demon of the Second Circle
One must be careful walking through the inverted forests of Szoreny. Quicksilver flows fast and free, slithering through veins and staining brains. Reflections reach and catch, dragging tainted hearts into toxic trunks. In the depths, where root-branches tangle and conspire to block out the sun there are wires that run from bole to bole, branch to branch, gleaming now and then as bars of Ligier's light filter through the canopy. They shine like garrotes, like razor-edged knives, at his caress. Stretching across paths in trip-wires and snares and invisible nets. These strands are the work of Kino, Messenger Soul of Rokasceru and are to be feared.
These wires do not slice, no, they do not bite cruelly into meat and body. But they do
stick, clinging to the victim with a kiss as soft and cold as frozen petals, bloated veins of mercury spreading at the point of contact. The struggles of the singular unfortunate send quivery vibrations down the line and bring forth Kino. Ten Thousand Gossamer Moments, proof positive for the malevolent imaginations of the Primordials: a whip-thin fusion of spider, centipede, and man. A cluster of arachnid limbs sprouting from the bloodless stump of a man's torso. His nails shaded silver and body dappled in chitinous plate, eyes glistening in a gorget about his throat as a long, leaden centipede's tail lashes behind. Hurrying, scuttling, along the underside of the canopy to claim his prize before they free themselves or some canny scavenger beat him to the punch. Smallest of mercies: he used to be larger. A colossus clinging to the wrist of his greater self like a man might wear a bracelet. But he has diminished since their exile, the psychic pressure of the shifting pantheon forcing a regression. No longer is he the scarred titan, bristling with brawn and
roaring his litany in triumph. No longer does he brave the thick of battle to record and recast the great deeds of demon-kind. Instead he is a young man taking his first, awkward steps into proper adulthood; belly cast concave and ribs pressing against the skin.
He is shyer now, quieter; picky and perpetually half-starved. Instead of hunting he sets his traps and waits, hiding in the silver brush, watching the scurrying lives of a thousand, thousand lesser beings and listening to the screams of the tomescu. Silver, barbed tongues emerging now and then from a hidden mouth to undulate in the air like anemone fronds. These he draws thin and severs with his fangs. Anchoring them to the forests of his progenitor, generating new lengths of muscle as needed. Those he catches he webs. Sealing them in perfect, crystalline cocoons rimed with cold. Trapping them in a singular instant of awareness, transporting his prey back to his hidden den where he feeds from them at his leisure. He sups their Essence; drinks down their memories, their soul, their self, until all that's left is a perfectly preserved husk. These he keeps, idly posing in tableaus, re-enacting and recreating battles from history or simply his own imagination.
Notes and Abilities: He would tell you that he has seen every moment since the Divine Ignition, captured and contained it in his mind's eye. He would tell you that he has dined upon the greatest of gods and feasted upon the choicest of champions. That he worked the loom and cheated Fate and that Heaven's own spiders were crafted in his image. He would, naturally, be a liar and not a particularly convincing one at that. He lacks much of the confidence he once had and, while he cannot bring himself to
deny at attention of others he shuns the spotlight, embarrassed of his diminished form. Still he remains a spy and scout second to few and utterly outclassed by none and takes great pleasure in viewing and recounting the movements and intimate moments of others. Similarly what he does with his prey he may do on a smaller scale: staving off entropy's touch with little nibbles and gentle gauzy veils. Or with a grander scope: encasing entire wings of soldiers and living landscapes in his webs, sealing them beneath cracking ice and slow-swirling quicksilver.
Not all of Ten Thousand Gossamer Moments stories are entirely false. Once, indeed, he did walk the streets of Heaven and once, indeed, he wove small vagaries into Fate; strands of silver only barely distinct from their kin. Outside of the Bureau of Destiny he is one of the few beings with a strong grasp of the Loom's mechanics and, so dearly does he long to return to Heaven's comfort and keeping, that he would part with them for but a taste of Yu-Shan. He may escape of his own accord when men and women direly poison themselves in pursuit of eternal beauty; forever destroying what they sought to preserve. Then he comes, crawling forth from Hell to offer a softer bargain.
Kabito, Rapture's Raptor
Warden Soul of a Requiem for the Impaler Grove
Demon of the Second Circle
The line between tincture and toxin is merely a matter of dosage. Bolster your veins with healthful vigors or see them bursting and send the blood spilling within you. Numb the aching pain within your skull or smother the brain in a narcotic blanket. Clear the slick clots from your lungs or drown on dry land. It's all a matter of degrees, of carefully calibrated scales and drams of colored powder in a pestle. Kabito understands this intimately but, where others might cannily employ such arts in the service of assassination and slaughter, she seeks to craft
pleasures. Virulent venoms and poisoned powders, the lethal and the unstable and the dangerous. These she takes and dilutes and makes...if not safe than at least safely consumable. For what cause? Why for profit of course, that prime mover of Heaven and Hell and all between.
Rapture's Raptor walks on the scaled legs of a predatory hawk. Claws clicking softly upon the ground. A spray of silvery feathers garbs her body, shifting through endless prisms to reflect and refract every color of the rainbow save blue. Her beak is heavy and cruel, ready for racking flesh from bone; twelve wings unfold from her shoulders, glittering, useless things good only for display. Beneath her cowl she is blind. Sockets sealed by spars of skeletal quicksilver, sharp tips jutting through her skull like a gruesome crown. The horror muted by the splendid colors they display, cycling through the known spectrum. Endlessly she travels, wares wrapped up in a towering pack braced over her shoulder. When she finds a promising spot she casts it down and grandly unfurls it. Drawing forth a silver sapling seed from the pockets of her voluminous coat and dropping it upon the earth. Be it the brass bones of Malfeas, the black sand shores of Kimbery, or even the icy flanks of Creation's mountains swiftly it takes root and swiftly it grows. Spreading, blossoming into a comfortable market stall. Bundled roots organize her inventory as she splays her taloned hands atop the counter and awaits her customers.
And surely, inevitably, they come. For Kabito's stock is drugs of every stripe, serums of every sort in a wax-sealed packet or clear glass vial. Cold kings flock to her to know what sorrow is, to crack their hardened hearts with blissful, uncomplicated happiness. Impotent men come to restore their youthful vigor and aging women come to recapture those rarefied wisps of raw desire. A cure for what ails you? An empty house absent children? That keen, cutting edge to make you the champion you used to be? By all means, she has the answer to all these things. The clever and rightfully wary hang back, waiting to see the true price. The hollowed out hearts or the blurred memories, the amputated fingers and scarred skin. But Kabito trades in jade and hearthstones and proper paper scrip and offers special deals for those who bring her rarer reagents. In time these cautious customers think themselves safe. They think they understand the nature of the exchange.
Kabito only smiles and drops another jade bracelet in her cache box.
Notes and Abilities: In the back of her stall Rapture's Raptor has a second store. A special selection available only to a few favored customers, a stockhouse where the walls are lined with row upon row of casks with clear glass cases. Here may be found the true fruits of her labors. Understand this: Kabito is a vampire to rival anything found in the Underworld. The first taste is always free. The second is reasonably priced. But with colorful smiles and easy bargains she whittles you away, bleeds you dry. Your friends buy from her, your enemies too. You have to buy just to keep even. Running furiously just to stay in place, hemorrhaging away everything that matters for the sake of just another taste. Nostalgia is her specialty, the recreation and reclamation of a false past that never was. And for every sliver of it she sells you can trade in a piece of your present. From this she makes monsters. Handcrafted, unique things, each with a spine of mirror bright wood and draughts and drugs pumping, circulating through their veins. Your small, shriveled heart is the final piece to make them whole. By the end giving it away is almost a mercy.
Kabito may escape Malfeas when a once noble family falls into narcotic addled decadence, their house rotting and lands laying fallow as they while away the last of their legacy in a pleasant haze. Dust falling from rotting rafters upon their upturned faces, mingling with the sickly sweet smoke. Then she comes, to tend their land and their people in their stead. To treat the canker and soothe the sickness. Alas, Rapture's Raptor is, in truth, a scavenger rather than a predator. She may not force people to partake and, once all debts are settled, may not pursue. Auditors and the accouterments of taxmen rile her for, while she fiercely defends her honor as a legitimate businesswoman, she is self-evidently something of a miscreant. Properly harried she soon flees, making for laxer regions with looser administrations.
