[X] Ask about the history of Sparker's Bay, you love a good horror story and you know he does too.
[X] Have him pick out someplace near the Mall, it's safe-ish during the day but in the evening all kinds of monsters show up to buy and trade. Leans more on luck of the draw.
[X] Ask about the history of Sparker's Bay, you love a good horror story and you know he does too.
[X] Have him pick out someplace on the edges of the Vampire Ramparts, where the lesser leeches congregate. More numerous but individually weaker for all that that matters.
Great story! I found it through the Pink Flamingo Cabal.
You call and he comes. Stepping free from the hollow spaces of the storm, a soap bubble silhouette. Massive, monstrous talons gingerly, gently settling on your shoulder. Water dripping down those hulking, invisible limbs, following the curves of thickly cabled muscle. Skeins of spiritual mass tensing, flexing, all but straining beneath that slick, sleek skin. The brand burns on your forearm; you wiggle the fingers of your free hand, whispering a gentle "(go)" under your breath. A flash of instruction, of emotion and implication along the cord binding you two. The figure dips its head, tongues of mist curling from an unseen maw in an imitation exhale. It turns away.
Sebastian twitches, half-glancing over his shoulder at the sidewalk. The rain falls on, uninterrupted.
"D'you ever think it's kinda weird how much we like horror when our day to day is such a horror show?" You ask the question idly, almost innocently as you slip your hand from his. Hopping forward on one foot, sweeping your other shoe through a puddle approximately the same size and shape as the Pacific Ocean. Kicking up a white spray of water to splatter along the sidewalk. You're soaked to the skin and it feels fantastic. Your clothes are plastered to you body and all you can think about is how wonderful it'd feel to peel them off. To strip down, feel them suck against the skin as they came free. Shedding it all like a layer of dead, milky scales.
You jump into another with both feet this time, your tail swishing madly back and forth. The geyser splashes whatever dry denim you had left: dousing your calves, pattering your thighs. You laugh, you can't help it. All around you snakes curve up towards the thunder and the storm. Pink mouths bared as they yawn wide, catching a drink from the downpour. Letting the little rivers fork and flow down their backs. Spilling off in countless miniature waterfalls.
It's hard to describe how happy the rain makes you, how much the climate out here suits you. The bruised clouds above, their cool, cobalt blues bleeding away to slate and silver. Boiling, billowing, thunderheads sweeping overhead to crash against the distant mountains. The iron sea roaring as it comes rushing in, the white-capped waves churning. Breakers foaming, dissolving and collapsing as they surge up the sandy shore. You were born in the Gulf and maybe it's just memory lending its shine to everything but you remember the ocean there didn't seem so dark, so deep, so…hungry. Maybe it's the fog that slips in among you: the way the murk and the mist curls through the streets, winding bonelessly around the buildings like the tendrils of some massive squid. Maybe it's the woods all around you: another kind of sea, their green boughs swaying and visibly rippling in the winds. You see the lighthouse in the distance, a beacon barely visible on the edge of the horizon. You see Harper's Ferry nearer and to the right, a constellation of smaller stars clustered along the forested rim, half swallowed by the grey.
What a brutal, lonely place this is. Caged in, lost and adrift on the edge of everything. And it's nothing definite, nothing certain, you're not so far out from Sebastian's place that you can forget how it felt entirely, forget that panic. But there's still a kind of stirring in your chest, a not-entirely unpleasant tugging. Like a violinist plucking and tuning your heartstrings.
Put your dripping wet hands in waterlogged pockets and tilt your head back to look at the Ogre. Your jacket hanging unzipped, slick shirt clinging to the curves of your muscled chest. The white turned translucent over the tight, toned planes of your stomach. Your long, spiky hair is plastered down, locks hanging so low that they're almost in your eyes. Your crown standing stark now, no longer half hidden by your hair. Sebastian just watches you, openly, avidly, his attention palpable. A tangible thing beneath that sleek, angular expanse of purple-blue wax. You can't see it but you just know he's got that goofy smile, that nightmare snarl as he eats up all the eyecandy.
"I mean do you?" you prompt gently.
"H-hm?"
"I asked you if it was weird how much we like horror movies and you just stared at my ass for a solid thirty seconds and drooled."
"Wh- I-," Oh man he's just too fun to tease, the way he draws himself up, shyness forgotten in the flash of raw indignation. "Would never."
You saunter over, sidle right up to him. Uncaring of and indifferent to what small audience you have: the few fishermen that line the concrete rails, lemon yellow slickers fluttering and snapping in the wind, a few hazed out shadows beneath umbrellas, eyes focused forward as they hurry towards Wherever. The lady in the food truck. It doesn't matter, it's not like you'd stop anyway, even if they had their cameras out. Stand up on your tip-toes, bury your nose just below his jaw as you plant a kiss right on his pulse point.
"Yyyyyeeeaah," you murmur, teasing the word out to the point of breaking "you would~."
He hesitates. He huff as he opens up his own umbrella and holds it over the two of you, despite it being entirely too late in your case and completely pointless in his. "(Well it's a nice ass) he mumbles at last. "
"Yeah it is."
"You stop that," Sebastian says, not sounding sincere in the slightest even as you take his hand and tug him along towards the food truck. All but dragging the big guy along like the hungry, horny, idiot you are. He goes with it gamely despite the fact that if he wanted to he could just stand in place and you wouldn't be able to do shit about it. Even slouching he towers above you, stands antler-crowned head and broad shoulders over you. He's only skinny by proportions, what muscle he has sitting strangely on his lanky body. But he's still got more brawn in his weird half-emaciated gut than you probably have in your whole torso. You squeeze those nightmare talons between your dainty, designer claws. After a second he squeezes back.
"So horror," you prod him again, "and this whole nightmare city."
"I mean when you say it with that tone of voice it sounds silly, but I think it makes sense. Horror -well good horror-" oh that's a look but you deserve it for making him watch Wickerman, "is all about catharsis. Experiencing fear in a controlled environment, like visiting a tiger at the zoo. I suppose when you live in a place where tigers roam free it's comforting to be reminded that tigers can still be caged."
"Huh. You've been here awhile haven't you?"
"Well, yes."
"How long?"
"I don't want to say! You'll just make fun of me for being old," tip your free hand in a "fair enough" gesture as the two of you step beneath the dripping awning. He tries to pay for the both of yours but you dig an elbow into his ribs, sliding along a few waterlogged bills across the counter instead. You'll can cover your own costs dammit. The till chimes as the woman behind the counter closes the drawer, you hear the hiss of fryers. Fries and battered fish sizzling in the oil. The noise mixing in with the steady rattle of rain on the metal roof.
"I mean you are old though aren't you? Goddamn cradle-robber."
"That's not fair. How old are you?"
"No idea, probably permanently twenty-something. Give you even odds I die looking like I could play a highschooler on daytime TV."
"Eugh. Well that's...bullshit," he says lamely.
The woman comes back and you get a good look at her this time, tearing your eyes away from the dumbass deer-wolf...thing at the sudden whiff of hot seafood. Dark hair with a few streaks of grey, a scar crooking up the corner of one mouth. Paler keloid against skin as dark as caramel. Dogtags hang around her neck, tucked beneath her shirt and apron. Huh, there's a story there, you think to yourself and if you were less distracted you'd probably pick at it. But then she passes you a pair of paper cones and all thought of it flies out the window: printed newspapers twisted in a cheap plastic holders, cups of tartar sauce cradled on golden slices of salted potato, framed by still steaming fish. The whole mess sprinkled with lemon juice, vinegar and...dill? You don't know, you can't cook. If Winter stopped feeding you you'd probably starve. You and Sebastian thank her and she sketches an indifferent wave, a quiet "have a good day". Her wishes swallowed up by a roll of thunder.
You two walk together. The Bay on your left, the buildings of Arsenal Pier on your right. Blurred shapes just visible through the glass. Eating, doing your best to keep your food dry.
"Sparker's Bay is- enheh, it's old," he begins "The original township was incorporated in 1855, but this place has been continuously inhabited for centuries. Journals from Robert Gray and the officers of the Columbia indicated the presence of extensive, permanent Native American settlements as late as the 1790's; albeit -ah- mostly depopulated by smallpox. And the Blackfish Foundation has uncovered tools, pottery, art and refuse that dates back as far as the mid 15th century."
You can feel the sea beneath your feet, feel the waves curl around the pylons. A shudder, a shiver, just on the edge of sensation. You don't say anything, you just let him talk. Did you miss this? It's a bit better than sitting in class and getting a lecture but there's still something so soothing in just listening to someone roll on about a subject they're confident in, they're informed in. The words, syllables tinged with wet, racking snarls and resonant rasps. His hand dwarfs yours, his thumb working back and forth as he rubs your wrist. That ever present low-key anxiety.
"It's a common perspective actually, to think of the Gentry as only being relevant to the time immediately before you're taken and the years after. Lost spend most of their lives utterly unaware of them, they only become 'real' when they enter our frame of reference. But, by every indication, they're as old as human history. When the earliest men sat around the campfire the True Fae were there, waiting in the dark."
He pauses, his steps slow and his breath tickles your ear as he leans down, hunches down, all concern and worried care and he's so damn sincere about it that you can't even quite bring yourself to wave him off. "I-I'm sorry," he says, "I rehearse these kinds of things in my head. It all sounds so grim and frightening out loud, we can talk about something else if you'd-"
"Fuck no, don't you dare stop."
"Oh! I- ah alright." He clears his throat, rubbing his neck with one set of curved royal-blue claws. Scritching the thicker ruff of fur that sits across his shoulders, clinging to the top of his spine and the base of his skull. He lets his hand fall out in front of him, wiry pelt coating the back of his knuckles, sticking out from his cuffs. The wind teasing it, touseling it. He curls his fingers as if cupping half a globe.
"Our world is thin at the edges, in the shadows, parts and pieces crumbling into other places, other worlds. And you know that we share it, the Secret World, the Fallen World, with others. The dark corners of the Earth are alive, inhabited by half-spirit hybrids and blood drinking corpses and humans who have taken in some cosmic Truth. There is no such thing as a natural equilibrium between us. This isn't an excuse for what we did, what we made. Just...context."
Salt collecting in the creases of your jeans, the downpour coming so heavy and so dense that it feels like you're breathing in as much water as air with every breath. Drops clinging to your lips, racing down your chin, your jaw. You're at the end of the pier now, where the ocean heaves itself up to claw down the land. Where sculpted valleys yawn between foam-crowned mountains. A watery Hell stretching into eternity. There's no one here now, no one this far out. You lean against the barrier and do your best to shield your half-finished meal. Swirling a chunk of buttery whitefish in savory sauce. He joins you, canting his umbrella to protect you from the worst of it. Handle cradled in the crook of his arm as he digs in properly.
"An empire is an ugly thing. They -we- Summer and all the rest built an empire here in the Bay. What couldn't be subjugated was marginalized, made into a satellite. What couldn't be marginalized was eradicated. The Courts picked allies from among the Wolf-tribes as it suited them and killed or drove away the rest. The Vampires were purged not because they were inherently evil or vicious parasites but because their Prince was a rampaging madman who didn't care to keep his spawn on a leash. The treatment of the Witches was especially shameful, and the grounds for much pain today."
He swallows and you have to draw close to hear him over the surf but you can't help but hang off his words.
"That was the city later generations of Lost inherited, fat off the timber and fur trade, whaling, rails and shipping, a place that was ours. That served us, with every facet of its being. And the very worst part? It worked. It worked wonderfully until it- well until it didn't." He grins a little, vicious fangs bared, exposed by that jagged crack in his wax mask. "I think that's why the Courts fractured as badly as they did really. They all blamed each other for the city's fall. I'm biased obviously but I think Winter's got the strongest case."
"And what's that?"
"That it doesn't really matter who fucked up the hardest, if we don't pull together we're going to get dragged under by collective karma," he says dryly. "Of course we say that while hosting Summer mercenaries from San Diego and they're eyeing that empty throne. So insofar as the Iron Spear tells us to shove it up our asses maybe they have a point too."
These are its names: the Iron Spear, the Crimson Court, the Court of Wrath. It is the Nemean Lion in scarlet, the invincible predator with its golden pelt soaked in gore; who in the end, bones broken and heart ruptured still had to be skinned with its own claws. It is the blazing sword that carves open your chest, the broad-shouldered shadow backlit by the setting Summer sun.
Once the courtiers of Summer were the knights of Typhon; the van and the rearguard, the captains of the Militia and the champions of the Lost. Who can number their victories? There are hidden graves beneath the city, silent witnesses to the course of their campaigns. Here lay the unmourned dead: lips scorched shut by leashed fire, treasures looted and pillaged by red-armored soldiers in gold-furred cloaks.
Wars raged within the secret world. The Vampire, the Werewolf, the Witch, the Loyalist, and other, stranger things; all horrors of Sparker's Bay fuel to their flame. But they are fallen now. Broken and mewling, raking their claws through their own flesh as they weep for what they have lost. The world they made will never come again.
She hates them and it burns, like smoking lead rolling down her throat, making a furnace of her stomach. She hates them and it burns, a molten smile hammered onto her face like a muzzle, a mask. Summer sacrificed everything for them, but where are they now? Traitorous Spring and insane Autumn and cowardly Winter? Sobbing that the city is lost, that it's been lost for years, that they were all too stupid to see. Let them flee then, even if there's no one left worth protecting she will stand against the storm.
Not all Changelings are capable of violence; there is no shame to this, no crime in this. It requires a certain deadening, a calculated numbing, to look at another living, thinking thing and hurt it. To take it and break it so badly it will never be whole again. Thus the old exchange: gold for bloodshed, my wealth for your willingness to inflict harm.
A Wyrd-bound mercenary company hosted by a Freehold, the character of Tolltaker Knighthoods varies wildly from city to city with few constants. In some they are roving thugs and legbreakers with the barest pretensions of cooperation and good order. In others they are a well drilled fighting force, a hardened core supporting Summer or augmenting a civilian Militia. Their oath-bound powers require justification, some trespass on the part of the target. But even that is subject to their commander's discretion.
At the head of every Tollhouse is the Knight Banneret, the captain of these modern day condottieri. They decide what contracts will be undertaken, what aspiring Squires will be inducted, and the pay alloted full members. In Sparker's Bay a rough rank structure has been imposed beneath this level: with Corporals commanding motley-sized lances of Lost and ensorcelled mortals and Lieutenants overseeing multiple lances. The sign of the Tolltakers is a bloody red brand, often on the hands or the heart. Their boon is a fate-twisting curse that clings to their victims.
The need for combat is thrilling, satisfying in an almost sexual way and he's just intact enough to know how messed up that is. But this city...he can't deny that it suits him, with all its monsters, all its madness. He could carve out a name here, carry off a fortune and start his own Company. Or just stay and hack and hew until he's spent. If he even can be spent. Either works.
He's always so self-conscious about it. Doing his best to act casual, act natural, act like he isn't thinking what you know he's thinking, like he isn't imagining what you know he's imagining. Even as you stand in the foyer watching him fidget and try to figure out how to word it all, a sly, shit-eating grin creeping across your face.
There's something satisfying about playing along. He shakes out his umbrella and invites you up all gentleman-like. You make sure to check in with Winter, buying yourself freedom for another hour all responsible-like. Up the stairs together (stay close, stick close, your serpents bristling, it's fine don't think about it it's fine), over the threshold. Like at the Pier he lets you lead, lets you set the pace, happy to follow along. Putting up the most token attempt at staying in control before caving almost instantly. It doesn't take much: black nails digging into his bony hips, your tail coiling around his calf like a manacle chain, that sharp-edged smile as bright and as merciless as broken glass.
By the time his back hits the bed he's all but begging. It's cute.
You make him happy.
You're...good for him, you think.
And in the aftermath you can almost believe this is all you really need. When he's just laying there wheezing, his breath coming in small, winded sips and his pelt damp with sweat. One hand resting on your bare haunch, the other palming your skull. Pressing your cheek to the dense muscle of his breast. You won't lie: he makes a pretty good pillow. So you stay there for awhile; your serpents draped across him, curled up in scaled loops on his shoulders, his thighs; soaking in his heat. Watching him while he dozes. Keeping him safe, if only for a little while.
It's not enough. It's not his fault, it's not a matter of finding the right guy or even enough guys. It's just the way you are, the way you were made.
You can't deny that you exist to hurt people.
Seat of the Carthian State, curving through the core of the city and dividing downtown from the outer districts.
These are the ribs and vertebrae of Sparker's Bay, that vast beached leviathan. Office buildings and concrete piles and apartment towers rising from the fog, shrouded in the rain. Not so tall as the downtown proper no but even, neat, with that kind of unerring order found in nature, in the spirals of nautilus shells and the baleen plates of whales. The streets here are laced together in an asphalt lattice, elevated trains rattling past on storm-slick tracks. Concrete channels drain away the worst of the deluge, emptying thousands of gallons of charcoal colored water into the great rivers that wind through the city.
The Vampire Ramparts are not inhabited; they are overrun, infested. The Kindred flourishing, like parasites multiplying in the bloody guts of a terminal host. Their servants riddle the local government and metropolitan police. Their spawn stalk the streets all but openly, bold and great daring. The great courthouses and public markets here find a second life after sunset as the dead come to socialize, strategize, and agitate. Consider the Ramparts a single state, a single shared citadel; civilization of a kind torn from the throat of the people.
The Vampire Ramparts border Monarch to the West, Ten Suncrow to the North-West, the Reach to the North, Metropole to the East, and Angler's Light to the South.
It spreads over three hills and three valleys, a colossus of concrete, glass, and steel. A great glittering wheel, every spoke a three story corridor lined with shops and stands. Every curved segment a sprawling concourse of major department stores, part of the cinema complex, or one of the food courts. You could walk for hours in here and never see the sun. You could walk for hours here and never hear the rain. The Ramparts curve around it, pressing in on every side, separated only by the tangle of internal avenues and honeycombed parking garages. During the day steel shutters seal off the dead rooms and derelict storefronts. At night the grates are raised and all manner of creatures come to buy and sell under flag of truce.
It's why you're in this elevator isn't it? On the blurry fringe of neutral territory, your reflection watching you from the chrome doors. He shoots you a sidelong look now and then but he hasn't been arguing. He understands why, he knows you need this. Some way to bleed off this tension inside you, this feeling like all your nerves have been replaced by burned out filaments, like caustic acid's been slow-chewing its way through your brain. You've been screaming so long, so loud, in your own head that it's almost become part of the background noise. But you hear it now. You feel it now. That fury surging inside you, unchecked and unrestrained.
The Loyalist dead on the beach. Nathaniel telling you about the vampires they left staked out for the sun. It's fine if they're monsters right?
Well, that's one reason you're here. What's the other?
[ ] Naked greed. It's all about the material comfort really. You used to have beautiful things, things you could use to spoil yourself, flaunt yourself. Now you're reduced to begging scraps off of glorified orderlies. Loot your way back to wealth and privilege, starting here. Tonight.
[ ] Artistic vision. It's all about the immaterial considerations. It's about making an impression, cultivating an emotion. Making sure all the monsters of the Bay know what to feel when they hear your name. When they see what you're capable of. That mix of awe and terror.
Adhoc vote count started by TenfoldShields on Jul 17, 2018 at 1:49 AM, finished with 16 posts and 14 votes.
[x] Artistic vision. It's all about the immaterial considerations. It's about making an impression, cultivating an emotion. Making sure all the monsters of the Bay know what to feel when they hear your name. When they see what you're capable of. That mix of awe and terror.
[X] Naked greed. It's all about the material comfort really. You used to have beautiful things, things you could use to spoil yourself, flaunt yourself. Now you're reduced to begging scraps off of glorified orderlies. Loot your way back to wealth and privilege, starting here. Tonight.
[X] Naked greed. It's all about the material comfort really. You used to have beautiful things, things you could use to spoil yourself, flaunt yourself. Now you're reduced to begging scraps off of glorified orderlies. Loot your way back to wealth and privilege, starting here. Tonight.
If we're gonna sin might as well get payed for it.
[x] Artistic vision. It's all about the immaterial considerations. It's about making an impression, cultivating an emotion. Making sure all the monsters of the Bay know what to feel when they hear your name. When they see what you're capable of. That mix of awe and terror.
[x] Artistic vision. It's all about the immaterial considerations. It's about making an impression, cultivating an emotion. Making sure all the monsters of the Bay know what to feel when they hear your name. When they see what you're capable of. That mix of awe and terror.
[x] Artistic vision. It's all about the immaterial considerations. It's about making an impression, cultivating an emotion. Making sure all the monsters of the Bay know what to feel when they hear your name. When they see what you're capable of. That mix of awe and terror.
Honestly seems more Levi's thing than merry bushels of cash. He's already got the abilities to be one hell of a white collar criminal and con man, to just straight up magic his way into a bank and magic out with a sack of cash...that's not his drug of choice.
He wants the spotlight, he wants eyes on him, he wants people screaming his name (eyyy), that's what scratches this lad's itch. Not anything so mundane as money.
Also I think "Levi going full on ballet of violence look upon my works and go weak in the knees and whisper He's soooo cool" will lead to more hype fight scenes than "Levi pumps the brakes mid carnage so he and Sahugain Stripper Bane can carry the Daeva Primogen's living room set back to his house, spoils of war bitches!"
"D'you ever think it's kinda weird how much we like horror when our day to day is such a horror show?" You ask the question idly, almost innocently as you slip your hand from his.
Levi: "if there were two guys on the moon and one killed the other with a rock would that be fucked up or what"
Hopping forward on one foot, sweeping your other shoe through a puddle approximately the same size and shape as the Pacific Ocean. Kicking up a white spray of water to splatter along the sidewalk. You're soaked to the skin and it feels fantastic. Your clothes are plastered to you body and all you can think about is how wonderful it'd feel to peel them off. To strip down, feel them suck against the skin as they came free. Shedding it all like a layer of dead, milky scales.
You jump into another with both feet this time, your tail swishing madly back and forth. The geyser splashes whatever dry denim you had left: dousing your calves, pattering your thighs. You laugh, you can't help it. All around you snakes curve up towards the thunder and the storm. Pink mouths bared as they yawn wide, catching a drink from the downpour. Letting the little rivers fork and flow down their backs. Spilling off in countless miniature waterfalls.
cute snek playing in the rain, 10/10 would boop on the snoot
okay so maybe Levi himself doesn't have much of a snoot but his sneks come with many snoots for booping
Put your dripping wet hands in waterlogged pockets and tilt your head back to look at the Ogre. Your jacket hanging unzipped, slick shirt clinging to the curves of your muscled chest. The white turned translucent over the tight, toned planes of your stomach. Your long, spiky hair is plastered down, locks hanging so low that they're almost in your eyes. Your crown standing stark now, no longer half hidden by your hair. Sebastian just watches you, openly, avidly, his attention palpable. A tangible thing beneath that sleek, angular expanse of purple-blue wax. You can't see it but you just know he's got that goofy smile, that nightmare snarl as he eats up all the eyecandy.
"I mean do you?" you prompt gently.
"H-hm?"
"I asked you if it was weird how much we like horror movies and you just stared at my ass for a solid thirty seconds and drooled."
"Wh- I-," Oh man he's just too fun to tease, the way he draws himself up, shyness forgotten in the flash of raw indignation. "Would never."
You saunter over, sidle right up to him. Uncaring of and indifferent to what small audience you have: the few fishermen that line the concrete rails, lemon yellow slickers fluttering and snapping in the wind, a few hazed out shadows beneath umbrellas, eyes focused forward as they hurry towards Wherever. The lady in the food truck. It doesn't matter, it's not like you'd stop anyway, even if they had their cameras out. Stand up on your tip-toes, bury your nose just below his jaw as you plant a kiss right on his pulse point.
"Yyyyyeeeaah," you murmur, teasing the word out to the point of breaking "you would~."
He hesitates. He huff as he opens up his own umbrella and holds it over the two of you, despite it being entirely too late in your case and completely pointless in his. "(Well it's a nice ass) he mumbles at last. "
"Yeah it is."
"You stop that," Sebastian says, not sounding sincere in the slightest even as you take his hand and tug him along towards the food truck. All but dragging the big guy along like the hungry, horny, idiot you are.
"I mean when you say it with that tone of voice it sounds silly, but I think it makes sense. Horror -well good horror-" oh that's a look but you deserve it for making him watch Wickerman, "is all about catharsis. Experiencing fear in a controlled environment, like visiting a tiger at the zoo. I suppose when you live in a place where tigers roam free it's comforting to be reminded that tigers can still be caged."
Look Sebastian it doesn't matter if you tell him how old you are or not, he's still just gonna call you Daddy.
"Sparker's Bay is- enheh, it's old," he begins "The original township was incorporated in 1855, but this place has been continuously inhabited for centuries. Journals from Robert Gray and the officers of the Columbia indicated the presence of extensive, permanent Native American settlements as late as the 1790's; albeit -ah- mostly depopulated by smallpox. And the Blackfish Foundation has uncovered tools, pottery, art and refuse that dates back as far as the mid 15th century."
You can feel the sea beneath your feet, feel the waves curl around the pylons. A shudder, a shiver, just on the edge of sensation. You don't say anything, you just let him talk. Did you miss this? It's a bit better than sitting in class and getting a lecture but there's still something so soothing in just listening to someone roll on about a subject they're confident in, they're informed in. The words, syllables tinged with wet, racking snarls and resonant rasps. His hand dwarfs yours, his thumb working back and forth as he rubs your wrist. That ever present low-key anxiety.
"It's a common perspective actually, to think of the Gentry as only being relevant to the time immediately before you're taken and the years after. Lost spend most of their lives utterly unaware of them, they only become 'real' when they enter our frame of reference. But, by every indication, they're as old as human history. When the earliest men sat around the campfire the True Fae were there, waiting in the dark."
He pauses, his steps slow and his breath tickles your ear as he leans down, hunches down, all concern and worried care and he's so damn sincere about it that you can't even quite bring yourself to wave him off. "I-I'm sorry," he says, "I rehearse these kinds of things in my head. It all sounds so grim and frightening out loud, we can talk about something else if you'd-"
"Fuck no, don't you dare stop."
"Oh! I- ah alright." He clears his throat, rubbing his neck with one set of curved royal-blue claws. Scritching the thicker ruff of fur that sits across his shoulders, clinging to the top of his spine and the base of his skull. He lets his hand fall out in front of him, wiry pelt coating the back of his knuckles, sticking out from his cuffs. The wind teasing it, touseling it. He curls his fingers as if cupping half a globe.
"Our world is thin at the edges, in the shadows, parts and pieces crumbling into other places, other worlds. And you know that we share it, the Secret World, the Fallen World, with others. The dark corners of the Earth are alive, inhabited by half-spirit hybrids and blood drinking corpses and humans who have taken in some cosmic Truth. There is no such thing as a natural equilibrium between us. This isn't an excuse for what we did, what we made. Just...context."
Salt collecting in the creases of your jeans, the downpour coming so heavy and so dense that it feels like you're breathing in as much water as air with every breath. Drops clinging to your lips, racing down your chin, your jaw. You're at the end of the pier now, where the ocean heaves itself up to claw down the land. Where sculpted valleys yawn between foam-crowned mountains. A watery Hell stretching into eternity. There's no one here now, no one this far out. You lean against the barrier and do your best to shield your half-finished meal. Swirling a chunk of buttery whitefish in savory sauce. He joins you, canting his umbrella to protect you from the worst of it. Handle cradled in the crook of his arm as he digs in properly.
"An empire is an ugly thing. They -we- Summer and all the rest built an empire here in the Bay. What couldn't be subjugated was marginalized, made into a satellite. What couldn't be marginalized was eradicated. The Courts picked allies from among the Wolf-tribes as it suited them and killed or drove away the rest. The Vampires were purged not because they were inherently evil or vicious parasites but because their Prince was a rampaging madman who didn't care to keep his spawn on a leash. The treatment of the Witches was especially shameful, and the grounds for much pain today."
D'aww, extremely cute cleric beast expositing at very hihg speeds, interwoven with him and Levi being extremely cute together, I love it.
"That was the city later generations of Lost inherited, fat off the timber and fur trade, whaling, rails and shipping, a place that was ours. That served us, with every facet of its being. And the very worst part? It worked. It worked wonderfully until it- well until it didn't." He grins a little, vicious fangs bared, exposed by that jagged crack in his wax mask. "I think that's why the Courts fractured as badly as they did really. They all blamed each other for the city's fall. I'm biased obviously but I think Winter's got the strongest case."
"And what's that?"
"That it doesn't really matter who fucked up the hardest, if we don't pull together we're going to get dragged under by collective karma," he says dryly. "Of course we say that while hosting Summer mercenaries from San Diego and they're eyeing that empty throne. So insofar as the Iron Spear tells us to shove it up our asses maybe they have a point too."
This is pretty much perfectly in-theme to nChangeling as a gameline tbh. The whole 'freedom is what you do with what's been done to you' thing. Sparker's Bay is itself a Changeling really, this horrible broken thing that's been subjected to awful shit and left all the survivors clinging to the driftwood and lashing out at each other. And amid all of that we have our hero Levi, whom is specced for lashing out at people and solving Little Peggy's murder by tirelessly searching for D
He's always so self-conscious about it. Doing his best to act casual, act natural, act like he isn't thinking what you know he's thinking, like he isn't imagining what you know he's imagining. Even as you stand in the foyer watching him fidget and try to figure out how to word it all, a sly, shit-eating grin creeping across your face.
There's something satisfying about playing along. He shakes out his umbrella and invites you up all gentleman-like. You make sure to check in with Winter, buying yourself freedom for another hour all responsible-like. Up the stairs together (stay close, stick close, your serpents bristling, it's fine don't think about it it's fine), over the threshold. Like at the Pier he lets you lead, lets you set the pace, happy to follow along. Putting up the most token attempt at staying in control before caving almost instantly. It doesn't take much: black nails digging into his bony hips, your tail coiling around his calf like a manacle chain, that sharp-edged smile as bright and as merciless as broken glass.
By the time his back hits the bed he's all but begging. It's cute.
You make him happy.
You're...good for him, you think.
And in the aftermath you can almost believe this is all you really need. When he's just laying there wheezing, his breath coming in small, winded sips and his pelt damp with sweat. One hand resting on your bare haunch, the other palming your skull. Pressing your cheek to the dense muscle of his breast. You won't lie: he makes a pretty good pillow. So you stay there for awhile; your serpents draped across him, curled up in scaled loops on his shoulders, his thighs; soaking in his heat. Watching him while he dozes. Keeping him safe, if only for a little while.
It's why you're in this elevator isn't it? On the blurry fringe of neutral territory, your reflection watching you from the chrome doors. He shoots you a sidelong look now and then but he hasn't been arguing. He understands why, he knows you need this. Some way to bleed off this tension inside you, this feeling like all your nerves have been replaced by burned out filaments, like caustic acid's been slow-chewing its way through your brain. You've been screaming so long, so loud, in your own head that it's almost become part of the background noise. But you hear it now. You feel it now. That fury surging inside you, unchecked and unrestrained.
The Loyalist dead on the beach. Nathaniel telling you about the vampires they left staked out for the sun. It's fine if they're monsters right?
Also good lord yes, time to see Levi properly topped up on glamour slaughtering some bloodsuckers
[X] Artistic vision. It's all about the immaterial considerations. It's about making an impression, cultivating an emotion. Making sure all the monsters of the Bay know what to feel when they hear your name. When they see what you're capable of. That mix of awe and terror.
I think this feels a bit more... I won't say 'honest' but in-line with some of the other stuff Levi's expressed in his internal monologue? Right back on the beach when he was viscerally fucking furious that someone else took over, that the rest of the Lost started looking to someone other than him. I think doing a whole YOU OWE ME AAAAAAWE thing would be more like, satisfying for him? Than just looting bullshit.
[X] Naked greed. It's all about the material comfort really. You used to have beautiful things, things you could use to spoil yourself, flaunt yourself. Now you're reduced to begging scraps off of glorified orderlies. Loot your way back to wealth and privilege, starting here. Tonight.
I'm gonna go down an unpopular track here because I think Greed is a much more tangible thing to attach to, off the cuff. Not that the other option isn't concrete in any way, because it is. But I think we all understand greed, deep down. Its part of the human experience, after all.
I'm gonna go down an unpopular track here because I think Greed is a much more tangible thing to attach to, off the cuff. Not that the other option isn't concrete in any way, because it is. But I think we all understand greed, deep down. Its part of the human experience, after all.
[X] Artistic vision. It's all about the immaterial considerations. It's about making an impression, cultivating an emotion. Making sure all the monsters of the Bay know what to feel when they hear your name. When they see what you're capable of. That mix of awe and terror.
"Sparker's Bay is- enheh, it's old," he begins "The original township was incorporated in 1855, but this place has been continuously inhabited for centuries. Journals from Robert Gray and the officers of the Columbia indicated the presence of extensive, permanent Native American settlements as late as the 1790's; albeit -ah- mostly depopulated by smallpox.
[X] Artistic vision. It's all about the immaterial considerations. It's about making an impression, cultivating an emotion. Making sure all the monsters of the Bay know what to feel when they hear your name. When they see what you're capable of. That mix of awe and terror.
This is the worst option because it makes Levi embrace violence for violence's own sake, violence as a way of obtaining acknowledgement, recogniton. It's fucked up in a deeper way than "I needed some cash" - it's a rabbit hole that you won't get out of by just finding another source of income. It's tying your self-worth to murder.
Oof, both of those options give me trouble. Because they're great reminders that he is Not Nice, and Broken as a changeling should be. I may be making a changeling character soon, and I really need to keep that in mind.
Also I love that imagery of him laughing in the rain, snakes all pointed at the sky like some demented candelabra (and now I kinda want a menorah with that design )
Anyway, I like Zerban's logic for the vote, he does seem to care a whole lot about how others see him, and that others pay attention to him.
[X] Artistic vision. It's all about the immaterial considerations. It's about making an impression, cultivating an emotion. Making sure all the monsters of the Bay know what to feel when they hear your name. When they see what you're capable of. That mix of awe and terror.
[X] Artistic vision. It's all about the immaterial considerations. It's about making an impression, cultivating an emotion. Making sure all the monsters of the Bay know what to feel when they hear your name. When they see what you're capable of. That mix of awe and terror.
[X] Artistic vision. It's all about the immaterial considerations. It's about making an impression, cultivating an emotion. Making sure all the monsters of the Bay know what to feel when they hear your name. When they see what you're capable of. That mix of awe and terror.
[X] Naked greed. It's all about the material comfort really. You used to have beautiful things, things you could use to spoil yourself, flaunt yourself. Now you're reduced to begging scraps off of glorified orderlies. Loot your way back to wealth and privilege, starting here. Tonight.
[x] Artistic vision. It's all about the immaterial considerations. It's about making an impression, cultivating an emotion. Making sure all the monsters of the Bay know what to feel when they hear your name. When they see what you're capable of. That mix of awe and terror.
[X] Naked greed. It's all about the material comfort really. You used to have beautiful things, things you could use to spoil yourself, flaunt yourself. Now you're reduced to begging scraps off of glorified orderlies. Loot your way back to wealth and privilege, starting here. Tonight.
Your world is a box two steps long by two steps wide. Your world is four mirrored walls and a scuffed linoleum floor the color of a coffee stain. Your world is the hum of an unseen motor, the creak of unseen cables, the rattle and shudder as you pass through unseen concrete caverns emptying of cars. Ascending to the higher floors of the parking garage.
Foaming Fangs hangs beside you, invisible, an ambient atmospheric pressure. A barometric spike in the shape of a person. His anticipation is palpable. His breath, his body heat, coating the silvery surfaces with slick condensation. Water beading, droplets turning fat and swollen as they slowly work and quirk their way down, leaving behind dots and dashes of moisture in their wake: Morse code in precipitation. He's humming to himself, the notes rising and falling like ocean waves. The deep timbre of his voice buzzing in your bones.
He's pleased with himself for all that he did an absolutely awful job. As best you can tell he just… tailed random, suspicious looking people with a stench of the supernatural about them until he overheard something. Then spent twenty minutes trying to talk it up as a hard-won prize. A meeting place, a rough time, an airy estimate light on specifics or generalities. You do have a way of picking the biggest dumbasses don't you?
Drum black nails on your leg, and grimace as you shift your weight and feel dense fabric drag over your thigh. The denim mostly dry to the touch but damp patches linger on your inner thigh, the back of your knees, the hem where it hangs around your ankles. Your jacket smells like iron wool and burning dust from when you tried to dry it out with Summer's touch. You're still sore from earlier, the scratches along your shoulders still stinging and itching. You're still sticky, the last traces of your sweat and his tongue and the mess you made that you didn't quite clean up completely.
On the other side of the elevator a cockroach skitters across the buttons. Freezing, pausing, on the button for Level 4. It's a little one, grey-brown body barely bigger than the first joint on your thumb. You watch it as it tap-tap-taps antennae against the scratched up, scored surface. Trundling towards the grime-choked lines between the tile. Stopping. Turning around. Scuttling up a few inches. Stopping. Turning. You empathize a little, more than you should maybe.
But it's not something you can help. Ever since you've gotten back you've been thinking about how you work. How you-
Don't. Work.
Don't make sense. How nothing about you makes sense.
You're all insane geometry, obscene anatomy. What would they even find if they cut you open, what alien organs would they find, squirming beneath the skin? Or would they just see human meat, human viscera, human nerves with everything true and real evaporated away; leaving behind a snake-riddled shell. Grind the heel of your palm into your forehead, brush back a lock of feathery, spiked up hair. Carefully probe the base of a horn, feeling the gentle tug, like a tooth in a gum, as it pulls at your skull.
You're focusing on the most obvious parts. But it's not really what's on the outside that counts is it? Even that's just packaging, just a pretty wrapper for the shit going on behind your slitted, snake eyes. The inside of your head is like a jumble, jigsaw puzzle dumped back in the box and shaken until even the picture on the front is hardly any help at all. Cardboard cutouts flipped backwards and upside down, shuffled beneath each other. Five hundred pieces of flawed, fractured memory and detached feelings.
It's not fine.
It's fine, you're working on it. You're going to fix this, you're going to feel better, you're going to feel right.
You're going to feel right.
Somehow.
The scarlet LEDs over the doors flicker, the number shifts, you're four levels up and almost there. It's cutting it a little close but it's alright, it's alright, this will just take a second. And you need to make it last as long as you can.
Slowly, slowly, you reach out and press your hand to the twin panels. After a moment your reflection matches you. The half-familiar figure on the other side of the mirror, mimicking your motions behind the fogged up glass. His face, your features, worked into something like resignation, something like anticipation. Hesitation, indecision, fading away as the chrome ripples, as it cracks like a sheet of ice, jagged shards peeling back like petals at you touch. Your hand brushes past his, his closes around the muscle of your forearm. Oil dark nails streaked with silver.
Breathe deep, don't flinch, you've considered this, consulted the pink, still-healing scars inside you, you know the cost and you know what's offered. To ask is your right, to receive is your privilege. The Principality of Reflections has you and it will not let you go, can not let you go. There's something in you that it craves, something in you that's so close to kin, something that understands. And how can a connection, a contract like that ever be taken back? Drifting in the deep blue, your body bleeding from the Thorns, it found you. Carved out a little part of you and grafted a shard of itself in its place. Somewhere between an organ graft and those wasps who lay eggs in soft-bodied caterpillars.
Well...maybe that's not entirely fair.
Whatever it was initially, you've been nurturing it all on your own haven't you? Practicing, honing down the rougher edges. It's not like you didn't have a choice. You always had a choice. You could have just let that power wait, let it wane, let it atrophy; just because it was there didn't mean it had to be used.
Don't act innocent. It doesn't suit you.
His skin bubbles up, blisters, fingers forking like tree-roots, merging with the meat of your body. Your veins bloating as he pours himself into your blood, staining muscle tissue, red running to quicksilver. It creeps up your arm, spreading like a virus; blood vessels swelling, shining, until the limb looks broken pottery glued back together with silver-dusted resin. Cool metal creaks, whispering against itself as it crawls across your chest. As it burrows beneath your bone and slips into your ventricles. A thickened tendril beating a tattoo as pushes its way up along your throat, tenting up the skin. Your Reflection closes his eyes as his outline blurs. Distorts. Dwindles. Collapsing into fog, into nothing, into you.
Your hand comes away empty, you flex your fingers; the edges of your nails shining like straight razors. Your snakes curl around you, inspecting you and you glimpse yourself through their eyes in a melange of impressions. Green eyes stark against ashen skin. Soot stained lips and grey-purple gums. Lick your chops. Your tongue gleams like you just drank mercury.
The elevator grinds to a halt, you put your hands in your pockets and look up, look out, as the doors ding open.
Cross the rubber-tracked threshold, recessed lamps flickering on, guttering above you. You stand in a slice of empty space between cement slabs. A hollow nothing, wreathed by a nest of on-ramps and amber-lit exits and asphalt arteries. The skyline of Sparker's Bay blazes in the distance, dappled blotches of light hazed and blurred by the fine sleet that fills the night. The light is cold, it can't reach you here in cavern, this border-outpost on the bounds of Cascadia. You start walking. Columns as thick around as a family four-door march in rows alongside you, holding the next level aloft even as mildew creeps over the tanned stone. White painted parking spots all but glowing in the gloom, pools of dark water glinting. Collecting in shallow divots and imperfections in the ground. A puddle splashes, disturbed by something dripping from the half visible ceiling.
"-aster we're going to be late."
"C'mon, I'm never late. Whenever I arrive is right-"
Snippets of conversation floating through the air, amplified by the acoustics. There's a small convoy of cars parked maybe a hundred feet away. A pair of black SUV's; tinted windows still rimed with frost, grey slush collected at the base of the wipers. Your serpents weave and slowly sway, you count… eight. Three men, two women in matching suits; close-cropped hair and brawn all but bursting out of the steams, some watching the garage, others pulling attache cases ffrom the hatchbacks in silence. A handsome woman in an open trenchcoat, leaning over the barrier to look down at the sprawling mall as it dims, section by section, shutting down for the night. A beautiful man dressed to the nines, deeply tanned and an honest to God axe resting against a slender shoulder. And then a kid- no a younger man. Early twenties at the oldest, lounging on the hood of the lead car like it's a throne. Fingers laced behind his head, his own suit rumpled and mussed. Like he picked it up off the floor of his dorm room a few hours ago, brushed it off and called it good.
The doors rattle shut behind you. The guards are already looking at you, stopping, stilling, like hunting hounds that have just caught the scene.
The woman sniffs and cocks her head and you see now her eyes are a bloody red, burning, like embers dying in the dark. The man, the kid follow her look a second later. You see holsters being unbuttoned, hands drifting to bulges beneath tailored jackets. Your tongue slips past your lips, long and dextrous, as you sample the mood: wariness, curiosity, warning, muted threat displays. Nothing exciting, nothing new, nothing that you want. But then...oh but then you catch the scent from the three and it's different, dangerous and intoxicating. The alcoholic tang and heady, fermented sweetness of dessert wine. Carrion breath and copper stained enamel. And then beneath it something as bitter and as cold as leftover coffee dregs.
Heavy, dangerous looking pistols snap up. Cupped in hands approximately the same size and shape as cinderblocks. You're close enough to smell it on the bodyguards now, the lingering, honeyed traces. That same, cloying taste. It tinges the strong, bold notes of anticipation and apprehension.
You stop, maybe a dozen paces away.
"Are you lost, little fae?" Axe asks pleasantly, not unkindly. "I don't think this is your sort of show."
You lift your chin, looking up at the roof as you consider.
"How do you introduce yourselves," you ask. "To the people that you kill. How do you greet them, knowing you'll end their lives?"
The silence that responds is deafening, so fundamental and profound that you can hear the soft whimper of the wind as it flows around the sharp-edged flanks of the building. The rasp of a thousand, thousand, drops of half-frozen rain as they shatter against stone. Axe's smile is fixed in place, as perfect as a porcelain mask, gloved hands creaking on the dragon-carved haft of his weapon. Trenchcoat's smile is a little more savage, a little more honest, the flesh around her mouth steadily turning translucent, wearing thin as her jaw clicks and shifts. The All American Boy Next Door leans up off the windshield of his car, chin in his palm, frowning over Axe's wavy hair.
"Who the fuck do you think you are?" He asks, less venomous and more… honestly confused, bemused by you. Legitimately asking who the fuck are you and why are you here, in his face, unscheduled and unexpected and unwanted.
"The sum of all your sorrows," you say.
"...Tch, goddamn Fae," he motions leaning back and the bodyguards slowly start advancing, a staggered, ragged line. And you can tell, from the way your snakes recoil and writhe in the air, dripping fangs extending as they snap and curve, that they're dangerous. That they're stronger, faster than they should be. That their touch will snap your limbs and wrench glossy ligaments from ivory anchors. Leave you half-mauled and maimed. "I actually don't mind you when you keep to your fucked up little slices of Sparker's Bay. But tonight's really not the night for this weird shit. I dunno, break an arm or something and dump him on the sidewalk."
Your hand slides free of your pocket, drawn like a blade from a sheath. Axe notes your too-sharp nails, the foreign material worked through your forearm and frowns. Dark eyebrows lowering. Trenchcoat is just watching with avid interest and doesn't see the movement. Or, rather, sees and doesn't process it. All American is rolling his wrist, not even looking at you.
This secret rendered unto you:
Mercury is the Prime Matter, the chaos from which all metals can be drawn and in which all metals are dissolved; birth and death and the devouring.
This secret rendered unto you:
A reflection is the keenest edge, so sharp that it can skin a second world from this Fallen place; it is the fulcrum and the razor and the parasite mouth.
The bouquet of blades blossoms from your palm with the rasp and shriek of torqued steel. You shed them, send them slicing through the space between you and the cars in the instant of their creation. They cut through the ghouls like shrapnel spray. Like a shotgun blast. Leaving in their wake ruin of ribs and spiked torsos. A crimson splatter over an automotive finish. A woman's knees hit the ground, her head gone. A man is pinned to a door, a slender blade bisecting his heart.
Drink down their fear, their dying fury. Don't let a drop go to waste.
Muzzles flash and bullets ping off the half-translucent shield in front of you. A massive wall of corrugated metal torn from the wreck of a sunken warship, rust-brown and scarred by the Deep; Borne in one arm and braced in another. Foaming Fangs materializing around you, a fortress of slick muscle and tightly-wound sinew. Rubbery ropes straining over that chest as brawn knots and tenses. He bellows, eyes blazing within his mask, and the fog around him collapses. Solidifying into a slab of metal almost as long as you're tall, the sword's sharpened edge almost an afterthought.
You watch as lead slugs spark and deform. Axe is throwing himself between you and All American and you can see the metal he has beneath his hiked up sleeves now, brass and burnished alloy and complex clockworks. His left hand splitting, dividing up to the elbow and shredding his dress shirt, hypodermics punching through his ruined glove. Trenchcoat is leaping towards you, mouth fusing, crunching as chitinous spikes punch through the skin. A serrated proboscis sculpted from her tongue. Her limbs too long now, almost coiling back, bending back on themse- oh.
Hah you get it. She's a flea.
Foaming Fangs slams his shield into her and it's like watching a car crash inches from your face, her body bows. She hits a column hard enough to send chips and flakes spraying, the hem of your jacket billowing out in the backblast. Spread your arms wide now, an arsenal slipping into reality through the wounds in your body.
"My name is Levi Alza," you say and the name is tender, almost loving on your tongue. "I suppose I can tell you that. You're going to die so it's not as if it'll make a difference. But...do us all a favor and don't run. You couldn't face the sun, at least find it within yourself to face me. Even low creatures like yourself can earn a lovely ending."
All American is staring at you, eyes boring into you, he speaks and for all that his voice cracks his words are rich, his tone regal and imperious. Confident, the voice of command. "Stop."
You feel it try to crawl through your ears, burrow in your brain. It scratches the surface and is promptly annihilated by an ocean of acid. A second swarm of blades screams through the air. Popping tires, puncturing aluminum, painting the ground red.
"If you don't have the strength to stop me on your own, begging isn't really going to help. But here, let me show you."
And this time the air itself ripples, a dome of force racing out in every direction. Hurricane winds hit them like a blast wave, hallucinatory terrain hemorrhaging into the waking world. It's not real, it's not happening, it's still enough to make the SUV's rock on their suspension. Outside sleet and nascent snow boil away, steaming into a green-tinged storm. Inside coal black clouds twist and writhe from the ceiling. Wormlike parasites hatching from a concrete carcass, swelling in size even as they rip themselves free. Weaving themselves into a cloak around you.
Rain falls, whispering, hissing, isolated puddles merging together as the downpour fills the depressions and floods the lot. The water level rising until it spills down the central shaft in an ashen cataract. The ground beneath your feet is gone, worn glassy smooth: the surface of an iron-grey sea at rest. The deluge pitting and shattering the tension in countless places only for the skin to flow back, flawless as before. Shadows shift in the depths: tentacular coils bonelessly curling, something as big as a subway train moving through the murk. Reaching up to gently, delicately, brush the soles of your shoes. To fan out around your feet.
This is your Mantle. This is You. It's not a disguise; a disguise is supposed to conceal who you really are, to hide the truth. But that's the joke isn't it? You lie all the time, so fundamentally, so completely, that the truth is just another mask. That you can bare the purest expression of your self, your soul, and nobody who sees it will understand that it is you. Isn't it funny? You're laughing on the inside, honest. Just look at that good and wholesome smile. That Cheshire slash in the dark.
Verdant witchfire flashes, dancing, thunder booming as you stalk towards them. Foaming Fangs breaks away, eyes locked on the survivors, on the half-stunned Trenchcoat shaking her head clear; leaving the leader to you. Trail your hand on the side of one of the SUV's as he and Axe back away, back away, like that will save them. Your fingers flickering, smouldering with Summer's heat, leaving parallel streaks of char as they drag along the finish. Hitting the tinted window. You draw a sword as Axe lunges, catching the namesake on the edge, smiling that shit-eating-
He twists. It was a feint. You jerk your head back, eyes wide with panic, one of your snakes is too slow and you feel the crunch of bone chain up your spine. The pain that grips you is gutwatering, vomit inducing, and you can't help but reel as he folds his arm and steps in. And now, now you see the nested maneuver for what it was. A fraction of a second before he smashes the haft into your jaw.
Hurt is too small a word for what you feel. Too small to encompass the sheer enormity of it. You cry out and then Foaming Fangs is there, he's back, intercepting that elaborately engraved left arm, split into a nightmare surgical spider, and slamming Axe into side of the car. All but crumpling the chassis. He pulls back, Axe stumbles and you, half blind and snarling, hew him down. The sword itself shattering in the strike. Foaming Fangs finishes him for you, turning to cover you as you stumble away, gagging, choked sobs escaping your throat as your back arches. Your shoulders knot. As the headless serpentine body tears itself in two with a wet, rending sound and both halves begin bubbling, reforming. Your breathing gradually slows, quieting as the shield covers your indignity. As blind panic gives way to something like relief.
You're fine. You're fine. You'll do better next time. Composure returns by degrees. You dig your fingers into fresh-forming bruise to help it along.
"...Ready," you murmur at last as you hear footsteps starting to recede. All American and the handful left making a break for it. The rest of the fight goes fast, you don't even bother drawing Ophidia. There's no point.
None of them here deserve it.
Sweat soaks your shirt, glues it to your back where two newly exhausted serpents limply drape themselves around your waist. Blood soaks your arms up to the elbow, drying brown-black on your skin. You're dimly aware that you're dangerously pressing up against your check-in limit. You're dimly aware that you've stayed out far too late as it is, well past your soft-curfew after a whole day out of the hotel. You're dimly aware that someone from Winter is going to come looking for you eventually and judging by your Reflection's expression it would probably be bad, yeah bad if they saw…
You. This. The fruits of your labor.
Intellectually you know this is wrong. Rationally you know this is not normal. But you had to and it's hard, so hard to articulate why. Maybe that's the reason you did it, because it's an explanation, a justification, in and of itself. Or maybe it's just because once you see how all the disparate pieces fit back together, how you fit back together, it feels so unsatisfying to leave them as they are. Or maybe it's just your essential nature, after all: painting is the very least of what you can do now.
You turn away, still cradling the purple-black, blotchy half of your face with a sunwarmed palm. Letting the heat soak into you, ease away the hurt. Looking at the thing you've made. Foaming Fangs leaning idly against a carved in SUV, studying your work with avid interest.
"This is pretty messed up isn't it?" You concede, mostly to yourself.
Foaming Fangs shrugs a little, huffing in amusement. "I appreciate your aesthetic, my lord."
You glance down at the ankle clutched in your free hand, dress sock drawn over a hairy calf. Gaze shifting to the bodyguard's carcass attached to it and the slick, scarlet trail stretching out behind you. You drop their leg with a small, self-conscious shrug. You probably have enough anyway. Alright, alright it's- call it a little deal you make with yourself, you'll finally (finally) rifle through the trunks of the cars for something good, you guess, and then, after that, you'll look at your -ah- installation piece with fresh eyes. And see how you feel.
Some of the attache cases are open, forgotten where they fell. You drift over, nudge one with your foot as Foaming Fangs rests a palm on the roof, hunching down to peer over your shoulder at the mess.
"Hm," he says, "Some of these are not without power. I-"
The elevator starts. The car descending down, down, back into the bowels of parking garage. You blink and lean around the SUV. Foaming Fangs peers over one brawny, bare shoulder, the two of you just staring. Long seconds passing as you process. Why is-
Oh.
Oh someone's coming and you're-
You look down at yourself. You slowly, slowly turn around and stare at the nightmare you made, the lovely, fluffy feeling of unreality vanishing as the last traces of the comfortable haze bleed away. Leaving you here, just a man cold and alone in a parking garage. With your art.
"Oh," you mumble.
You should run. But there's so many things here that you completely missed, that the vampires brought to be sold and bartered, and you can't just leave them...Pick any number to take. Vote by plan.
[ ] A thick, plastic employee ID on a cheap lanyard. It has the logo of a crescent arc with a long, tapered needle drawn through, a little like a bow and arrow. The bottom is stained rust-red.
[ ] A saber-toothed tiger skull (it comes with a placard) that's been plated with metal and etched with complex circuitry. Apparently recover from a ruined "outpost" on Vancouver Island.
[ ] A medical injector and a small vial with a half-translucent…thing sleeping inside. Like someone crossbred a squid with a shell-less scorpion. It glows with a ghostly blue-green light.
[ ] A leatherbound journal written in runic script. You can't translate it, obviously, but you can definitely admire the almost Renaissance style anatomical drawings of animal-men hybrids.
Adhoc vote count started by TenfoldShields on Sep 3, 2018 at 2:24 PM, finished with 19 posts and 16 votes.
[X] A saber-toothed tiger skull (it comes with a placard) that's been plated with metal and etched with complex circuitry. Apparently recover from a ruined "outpost" on Vancouver Island.
[X] A medical injector and a small vial with a half-translucent…thing sleeping inside. Like someone crossbred a squid with a shell-less scorpion. It glows with a ghostly blue-green light.
[X] A leatherbound journal written in runic script. You can't translate it, obviously, but you can definitely admire the almost Renaissance style anatomical drawings of animal-men hybrids.
[X] A thick, plastic employee ID on a cheap lanyard. It has the logo of a crescent arc with a long, tapered needle drawn through, a little like a bow and arrow. The bottom is stained rust-red.
[X] A saber-toothed tiger skull (it comes with a placard) that's been plated with metal and etched with complex circuitry. Apparently recover from a ruined "outpost" on Vancouver Island.
[X] A leatherbound journal written in runic script. You can't translate it, obviously, but you can definitely admire the almost Renaissance style anatomical drawings of animal-men hybrids.
[X] A medical injector and a small vial with a half-translucent…thing sleeping inside. Like someone crossbred a squid with a shell-less scorpion. It glows with a ghostly blue-green light.
I'd go for all four but we don't really need an ID card, imo. The skull and journal are very Aesthetic and we could use a pet dog, frankly. I suppose I'm taking this from the perspective of "what would look good arranged in my house", as opposed to "what's gonna lead us to more plot", but that's valid from my view
[X] A thick, plastic employee ID on a cheap lanyard. It has the logo of a crescent arc with a long, tapered needle drawn through, a little like a bow and arrow. The bottom is stained rust-red.
[X] A saber-toothed tiger skull (it comes with a placard) that's been plated with metal and etched with complex circuitry. Apparently recover from a ruined "outpost" on Vancouver Island.
[X] A leatherbound journal written in runic script. You can't translate it, obviously, but you can definitely admire the almost Renaissance style anatomical drawings of animal-men hybrids.
Never trust mysterious needles, as my dying grandmother told me. I trust our ability to resolve whatever arises from these items than the mysterious injection. Also, don't run with needles
[X] A saber-toothed tiger skull (it comes with a placard) that's been plated with metal and etched with complex circuitry. Apparently recover from a ruined "outpost" on Vancouver Island.
[X] A medical injector and a small vial with a half-translucent…thing sleeping inside. Like someone crossbred a squid with a shell-less scorpion. It glows with a ghostly blue-green light.
[X] A thick, plastic employee ID on a cheap lanyard. It has the logo of a crescent arc with a long, tapered needle drawn through, a little like a bow and arrow. The bottom is stained rust-red.
I see you there, 'leather bound' (It's totally tanned human skin) runic journal of manimal anatomy and your hints of a Werewolf crossover. And I deny you.
Let's mess around with all the weird Umbrella esqe SCIENCE instead.
Oh, and I would like to say Foaming Fangs is a good boy, yes hims is, finding the people ('people') that it's moral to murder them all and take their stuffs, whooose good at following random weirdos and eavesdropping hims is yes hims is.
[X] A saber-toothed tiger skull (it comes with a placard) that's been plated with metal and etched with complex circuitry. Apparently recover from a ruined "outpost" on Vancouver Island.
[X] A medical injector and a small vial with a half-translucent…thing sleeping inside. Like someone crossbred a squid with a shell-less scorpion. It glows with a ghostly blue-green light.
[X] A thick, plastic employee ID on a cheap lanyard. It has the logo of a crescent arc with a long, tapered needle drawn through, a little like a bow and arrow. The bottom is stained rust-red.
[X] A saber-toothed tiger skull (it comes with a placard) that's been plated with metal and etched with complex circuitry. Apparently recover from a ruined "outpost" on Vancouver Island.
[X] A leatherbound journal written in runic script. You can't translate it, obviously, but you can definitely admire the almost Renaissance style anatomical drawings of animal-men hybrids.
[X] A medical injector and a small vial with a half-translucent…thing sleeping inside. Like someone crossbred a squid with a shell-less scorpion. It glows with a ghostly blue-green light.
[X] A thick, plastic employee ID on a cheap lanyard. It has the logo of a crescent arc with a long, tapered needle drawn through, a little like a bow and arrow. The bottom is stained rust-red.
Hmmm. Wonder who's this is. Not Valks. Probably not Chiron group.
Ah well. Be careful everyone. Nothing is without cost.
)
