The Silence Between All Things

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The Silence Between All Things

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Tairais

Tairais

@Amuulzhaan 2 years ago

(( So first things first this is the product of many sleepless nights and the threads my characters have been in, so it's an entirely selfish bit of writing. Secondly, it's a very Tai-esque post in the sense of there's a bit of angst. But hey, this time you guys get character backstory and stuff so.. yay?

Thirdly, this was twelve pages long in google drive, so I'll be putting in a tl;dr at the bottom of it ^^" Finally, the picture you'll see somewhere in here is a collaboration between my girlfriend, my friend Aurora , and me. I sketched and did the flat colors, my girlfriend did the lineart, and my friend Aurora did the freaking awesome shading job because I'm still learning how to do glowing things ;-; So yay teamwork!

Hope you enjoy! ))

Charricthran knew hunger. He knew loneliness and shadows and whispering. He knew humanity while having little to none now- he had watched each of its little cogs work, creak, rust, and die, and had watched them replace each other one by one in a cyclic, cosmic manner few beings could ever confess to know.

Few, if any, mortals could confess to know. He was mortal still, technically. Had been completely mortal once. Had been completely human once- in a universe far, far different to this one, mind, but still human. Chosen by a girl with too much power for her fragile form, liquid magic and otherness bleeding from her cracked skin, her body only just holding it in.

Chosen by a little girl who was a living weapon against an alien, otherworldly threat. Against dragons. Against men. Against The End of All Things. Against The End.

A monster created by other monsters; By her father and then by those who betrayed her.

A god created by other gods, who then stole their hearts and had nothing to do with them.

A little girl who found her company in the natural world, the passage of whispering, singing time, and in the cogs of humanity, having watched her own humanity become slowly replaced by the same eldritch beings she wielded herself against.

A little girl that saved an older brother that made and broke too many promises.

A little girl who saved an older sister that saw thunderstorms and cataclysm, nearly going mad from it all.

A little girl who rescued and changed several animals to supplement a found family that slowly turned to bones and dust.

A little girl that he'd gladly been the messenger of since the eighth year of her infinite life. A little girl he had gladly been the friend and beloved bird of since they explained the idea of Death. A little girl whose mind contained universes unseen, futures untold, stories unheard.

In the silence between Richard's gurgling breaths, he reflected on both of their fragile mortalities, his past, Richard's current. Richard was, while a veritable machine through conditioning and replacement, still a man. A monstrous man who'd done monstrous things, but still a man.

A monster shaped by other monsters, stretched as thin as what remained of his paling tanned skin. He could see the veins underneath both bodies- the influences that shaped the psychological, the vessels that kept the physical alive. He could destroy or change neither.

In the silence between Richard's shaking heartbeats, Charricthran wished he could. It would be kinder to the man. Kinder still to the many people of his past, present, and future.

Just as it would have been kinder to him if the universe had allowed him to die when he was separated from the little girl who became his dearest lone little sister, and from the woman that had storms of stardust in her eyes who had become his everything else- His shelter from the outside world, his guide, his confidant, his adviser, his equal and so much more.

Never his lover, though. They were too similarly different in their tastes.

Charricthran knew hunger. He knew loneliness, he knew rage, and he knew cruelty.

He knew because he had known the bright sunshine warmth of family and love longer, and knew the wonders of humanity as only someone outside it could admire them.

He missed it terribly. He ached something terribly.

He was terribly homesick.

He was terribly lonely.

Most terribly of all, there was fire and understanding in his heart the same way there had once been lightning, glass windows, and partnership. Knowledge sparked by abated loneliness, comfort, warmth, eternity, and the smell of smoke.

The one thing in this universe he wanted, if only for a little while

The one thing he wouldn't allow himself to have again, to save himself the agony. To save them both the agony.

…

He was terrible. Plain and simple.

He wanted, complex and intricate. Terribly.

After minutes that passed like molasses in an hourglass, he remembered there had to be one more terrible occurrence that night. Whatever fond memories he'd been reliving in the silence between those terrible things (Friends killing friends, Artemis' blood on his shadow, Artemis' corpse on a table, Richard's shaky, dying rasps, lover to kill lover-) shattered in the quiet.

He sighed. He fell. He melted into darkness once more, with grief and trepidation melting the remnants of his breaking heart.

~*~

In the silence between worlds, Torke snarled something fierce.

I will not die like this! Charricthran will suffer!

Even thinking it, his conviction was halfhearted, not even his. It was the voice of someone else

All the regret and misery in the world didn't change the fact that Charricthran had been his most cherished friend once, had been his beloved once. It didn't change the fact his thoughts were only half his own on the matter, and so he could do nothing but disagree quietly as his body fought to rise again.

He would die like this. Charricthran would not suffer.

He just wanted it over with.

All the regret and misery in the world couldn't change the fact he was bound to an unforgiving god, and an even more unforgiving master. A god of cataclysm and storms bound to the King of Golden Summers.

A god bound in more than one way.

A god in the wrong universe. A god born man.

A homesick man and a lovesick man.

A broken man.

In the silence between worlds, Torke's snarls of rage and helplessness turned to cries of saddened pain- it was inevitable, the water he'd fallen into (almost entirely purposefully, he admitted; his weariness was bone-deep in the worst way) had burned away the wards trapped on his skin of stone and glass and then washed even that away. It left him with nothing but his true form- not the glamour he could hold at will, but his body.

A god in the body of a man. A god who could not be in the body of a man.

He stared at his hands as he laid on a sort of amorphous floor. There were no directions here, no up or down, only dark trees and dark halls that stretched as far as any eyes could see. It was hard to tell if there was a left or right- everything seemed flat, two dimensional.

Where it not for the cracks in his hands, arms, and face, the world would be completely dark. His body shed the only light- there were cracks in his hands that mimicked glass, that mimicked the past prisons he'd been trapped in. The bright white-blue-purple of lightning spilled out like smoke and fog, like dust suspended on shadows trapped in the light of day.

There was no day here. There was no one here but his agony and he. Searing agony that traced across all the lines on his hands, his arms, his chest and back where wings and limbs would rest, his lips where thunder spoke from his mouth, and his heart.

Oh, how his heart burned. Regret, guilt, anger. He wished- oh gods, did he wish! He wished for the days where his greatest pleasure was curling up with a book at the end of the day, listening to the London rain as it tapped against his window. He wished for the streets of his familiar time, crowded by car and pedestrian rather than pedestrian and hansom and cart and horse. He wished for the times when the threat of his power growing was a distant laugh, and when he could do no more than sense the patterns of the weather and watch as his eyes flashed with the storm.

He wished he had never set foot inside the Autumn Court, and he wished he had kept his true nature hidden. The one curse had been enough, been more than enough.

He wished he could love like anything simple, rather than with all the intensity of the storms he held in his heart. He wished he'd had no love instead of too much; too much love for the wrong men, the wrong creatures, the wrong times, and the wrong things.

He wished he had never loved Richard, his first friend in this new world, who he manipulated, mocked, and cherished- betrayed with the whispered hint to his mentors and closest friends twice over- first in bitterness, then secondly in remorse.

He wished he hadn't loved and wished he still didn't love Charricthran, the shadow of a god himself and feathered messenger, with whom he was partnered, worked with, befriended, loved, and then cast aside in the pursuit of the means to control the power that broke him even now.

He wished he hadn't learned too late that the deal his friend offered and that he'd rejected so bitterly, so blindly, was infinitely kinder than the nine levels of Hell he lived in now.

He desperately wished he hadn't met the Lord of the Summer court and The King of Golden Summers, Tehrkirin, and he wished he didn't affectionately refer to him as Kirin even now.

He wished Kirin had been kind instead of dangerously charming, dangerously suggestive, or dangerously alluring. He wished Kirin wasn't relief from the lightning that burned in his veins, respite from the magma in his heart, or shelter from the earthquakes and whirlwinds in his mind.

He wished Kirin wasn't a drug of the worst kind, a King made of collected debts, or he the unknowing debtor (Unknowing and then knowing- he knew now. He hadn't then).

He wished he wasn't the desperate god in the body of a very desperate man.

He wished he wasn't the terrible, gods-damned fool that he was.

He wished he wasn't known as the one who wore the debts he owed like a collar of vines and flowers around his throat, hidden just under his cracked, peeling skin. He wished he wasn't one whose debts forced him to repeatedly try kill the one friend who had always wanted the best for him, and had been ready to sell his own soul to provide it.

He could no longer act of his own free will, save for moments like these where the pain and curse of his own damned existence was too much, made so much noise and static and searing white agony that he couldn't think, couldn't breathe for the pain. He wished this wasn't the worst pain he'd ever been in.

He wished he hadn't sunk into the darkness of each of his beloveds to smother the light that burned all of them. He wished the acid in his heart didn't drip into all the lives he loved.

He wished he didn't have ties to his lover whose sadistic cruelty forced him to rip apart the lives of the two men who had been family to him for many months.

He wished he wasn't Torke, a gods-damned idiotic man who made as many mistakes as Charricthran did deals with the souls he occasionally devoured.

And he wished he could keep living with them. He knew he couldn't.

In the throes of his agony, he felt the disturbances of the shadows returning to life with the return of their strongest. Those around him hissed and recoiled and whispered death and violence as Charricthran's form, blurred in his vision due to the tears in his eyes, shifted and warped in and out of this reality.

He didn't want to keep living with his mistakes if it meant those three blessed shadows would be split apart by plasma and vibrancy.

He locked eyes with Charricthran and knew in that moment that he could not fight, even as his furious red eyes smoldered with the light of dying stars, even as claws and hands and feathers and darkness crowded his throat and began to burn against his cursed light.

"Kill him or die trying, Torke. Your loyalties are to me first, aren't they darling? Yes? Then it should be easy for you. If it's not, I suppose I can't love you after all. You'd be terribly upset if that were the case, wouldn't you? Oh, dear."

After a handful of moments suspended on his ragged breathing, he closed his eyes and uttered hoarse and desperate words:

"Please." Surely the jerky movements his body made as it tried to fight both itself and the hands caressing his face counted as trying? Surely this was one debt he fulfilled? "Please know- I.. am so sorry."

The unspoken 'I love you, I loved you' hung suspended in the like the breaths he could not hold.

After a handful of moments suspended on something like whispering wire, Charricthran smiled.

It was not a pleasant smile- the bird's flesh was melting and bubbling away from too many teeth just as his skin was cracking and peeling from too much light, too much lightning and chaos and rage that belonged to things older than he- to proper gods, not men with impossible, terrible power.

It was not a pleasant smile, but it was a kind smile.

It was a sad smile. Neither of them wanted this.

Torke's smile was a hopeful one, and then a relieved one- even as his body struggled with renewed fervor, his mind quieted and calmed in Charricthran's steady, sorrowful hands.

'I love you. I loved you. I love you still, but I cannot be.'

After handful of moments, there was silence. The sound and feeling of feathers shifting and moving behind him.

There was a resounding CRACK, falsely amplified in the ears of the only one left to hear it.

There was darkness.

And he had peace.

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~*~

In the silence between fevered lucidity and fevered slumber, Richard stumbled down a highwire of remembrance. In the silence between the fragmented images and memories that assaulted his mind and cut into his heart, his soul screamed and yearned for so many terrible things to be made right.

His very being sang with the need for justice that would never come, and for mercy that had always regarded him with cold dispassion.

No, not him- the ones around him. His anchors, his friends, his family, his beloved. Those he called mylimasis, in all their forms. A word he held on to and chanted like a fervent prayer in the sickly sweet and humid sweat of his lungs and throat.

Mylimasis. Beloved.

Mylimasis: A little girl and a little boy with matching curly black hair and crooked grins, with silver-framed glasses that flashed as they ran and caught the sunshine in their high-pitched laughter. Twins that had identical, precocious expressions that knew so much and were so curious, so bright.

Twins he had laid to rest one before the other, the only difference was which brother was responsible: the older or the younger?

The other brother had no name, no face in his mind. Only the sound of a scratching pencil, paused and interspersed with the sound of a scalpel rasping against the graphite. A quiet sense of danger and choking fear he couldn't help but love, just a little.

The younger brother wished very much, when he had half the mind to do so, that he had received the blade to his throat, and not Artemis.

Not another mylimasis, forever immortalized in stone monuments and the halls of his mind, since the real one's death was his fault, his fault, and his fault over and over again, two mantras twining and twisting their nebulous pathways through his muddled thoughts. Two mantras chanted in the sanctuary of the cathedrals imprinted on his mind- there was a tremendous amount of cosmic mockery in his life, he thought. Too many parallels, too many second chances. Too many seconds and doubles and similarities.

Brothers and sisters and stone and burials. Always together, always the same. Always unique.

He watched as the feverish mists swirling in the sanctuary of his cathedral condensed into nightmares given flesh- of Russian soldiers and hiding on trains running, screaming across frozen countryside. Of lavender and roses, of nursery rhymes and dances in the garden, flesh peeling away from bone in large clumps, falling into- no don't remember that, nononono. not here, not now not safe never safe- start screaming and won't stop, won'tstopwon'tstop.

Of a brother two brothers had adopted and cared for, slaughtered as they were forced from the home of their family's friends in the wake of tragedy that lived as smoke and ash and burning hands in his mind. The silhouette of two boys carrying a too-thin body, ash raining upon them, falling to their knees in hunger and sorrow. A stag, surrounded by ravens and inky darkness, watching them with detached hunger.

("You look lost, kids. Who's that?” A raven with markings of blood on its chest spoke from its perch on the stag’s antlers as it tore bitter bark from slumbering trees.

"What does it matter to you, bird? He is dead. We will be soon. You can tear the flesh from my bones then- just let me bury them first."

"Sure you're gonna outlive him, kid?"

"I've outlived everyone else I loved, haven't I?"

"Heh. That you have. Tell ya what, I'll make ya a deal...")

In winter, all things starved.

He couldn't stand the cold. Memories and hunger.

The boy's body was cold. Memories and hunger- hunger.

Digtohideit dig to hide it keep it warm keep it safe protect it cherish it the stag is hungry the birds are hungry you are not safe their eyes hunger and yearn and burn.

Only one of his hands was metal then- the other was scraped and bruised and torn as he dug into frozen tundra, past rock and flesh and blood, past his little brother's- his Benediktas'- sleepy questions and tears from a heart as white as the snow their bare feet bled into.

Down and down and down until he broke through the floor and ceiling and fell into a study with eyes of scarlet and sapphire studying him, impaled on a pin like a butterfly, blood spreading like wings of the most gorgeous, gossamer kind-

Just like Jack's, just like his- Elise overhead, prying and peeling away skin with knives and acid and revenge- exposing organs and offering each one to his mentors, his captors, his friends. they took his eye then (not how the story really went- nightmarish artistic liberty taken by his traitorous, feverish mind), compared it to their own, put it in a jar (actually true- will found it amusing and who was hannibal to begrudge him anything, even a student?) and left it there on the desk above him, just out of his spiraling reach.

Spiraling, spiraling- another memory, more mists- make it stop please please gods stop, he knew, he knew, he didn't need to remember anymore, just make it stop gods please.

It wouldn't stop. It never stopped.

It hadn't stopped in Spain, in the original version of one of the cathedrals his mind and past haunted. It hadn't stopped with fire and with Torke. Hadn't stopped after with a different cathedral in France, with Hannibal and Will and his eye and leg (the first leg, that is). Hadn't stopped in England, with the Society, with Elias and Artemis and Lewis- damn the man for knowing so much, he'd be a problem akin to Hannibal and Will, one he couldn't get rid of- and Catt and far too many kind people.

He spiraled downwards, back into homes set ablaze for greed, profit, and power. Nothing had ever changed- people were the same, monsters were the same.

He watched dispassionately as his father died again and a younger form of himself comforted, consoled, and screamed.

When he cut into his uncle's heart, a searing pain laced his mind and heart, and the current form of himself sat bolt-upright in bed and screamed- the sound of a dying, broken animal.

A monster.

People were the same. Monsters were the same.

He had not changed, merely hidden from himself.

He was a monster.

He had to leave.

In the second-long silences between his broken, muted screams into his pillow (memories of ties leather straps masks and electric currents and cuts and incisions and injections and stop stop please no not again get himout out out out OUT get out please let him out not again no no Benediktas where are you brother-), Richard gasped and heaved and coughed for air that couldn't fill his lungs, for oxygen that did not reach his brain.

For relief and mercy that could not and never would come from within his own body.

~*~

In the silence between the beats of his steadily broken heart, Charricthran lowered Torke's body to the ground as it twitched its way into the last stage of death for creatures like them.

A kiss and it would all be over, Torke's legacy erased. His future devoured.

Most monsters like them tended to eat their prey- it was a less.. personal transfer of power.

He was not most monsters, and neither was Torke. Torke hadn't ever been a monster- a grumpy, misguided jerk, yes. A monster, no. Not by choice.

None of this was by, had been by choice. Neither of them had wanted or expected this outcome. A mistake, in hindsight. Death was always an option, even for men like them.

Especially for men like them.

In the silence between worlds, his breath was once again the only thing to hear over the susurration of the shadows that made up all these things. The silence did not bring him the peace it once had- not when Torke's screams and misery were blanketed between trees that extended in all directions like so many unending cobwebs. Not when bittersweet victory coated his tongue, and not while mercy poisoned his very touch.

Not while his lips kissed the lightning and warmth from a man he'd once loved.

Not while the man's body split along invisible lines beneath him like fruit, drawing him into blinding, agonizing white light that was so at odds with the darkness that made up his lack of everything that it carved new pathways in his skin.

Not while he was reborn into something just a little more powerful, just a little more godly.

Not while he lost a little more humanity to save the remnants of a former friend (so much more than) in order to save new ones (new so much more than's).

Not while he and Richard screamed at the same time, in different parts of London.

In London, fair London, his screams echoed as murderous bells, a murder of crows, a thousand footsteps and other sounds that weren't his, weren't anything except a sudden cacophony of noise that really wasn't all that out of place given the time of day (afternoon, morning? movement regardless, people regardless). Shingles that fell from their roofs to clatter against cobblestones below, hansoms and horses creaking and clopping their own courses- angry, agreeing shouts from a crowd around a man preaching about politics that would and wouldn't mean everything and anything in a hundred years. All these voices belonged to him.

And under it all his voice whispered its cries from the Other place as it crawled out of a thousand shadows at once.

Shadows, lies, secrets, whispers, weapons, and poison crawled out hand in hand with lightning, hurricanes, typhoons, earthquakes, volcanoes, explosions, violence, and catastrophe. The subtle mixed with the bombastic, machinations mixed with the results.

They pulled their way out, screaming the whole way and they didn't stop until they reformed somewhere, anywhere that wasn't their one idea of home at this point. Somewhere, anywhere that didn't carry the remains of so many different kinds of pain.

They fell out of the Other and into London screaming, screaming until their throat was hoarse and they were panting for air, glorious air. Still didn't need it, still breathed it, still winced at the familiar stench of fair old London.

A quick glance down at his hands showed Charricthran the reconfiguration of his 'blood vessels' into a stained-glass pattern similar to Torke's. After several moments where it seemed as if grief and panic and regret might steal his breath and control again, he managed to make the pattern disappear from view.

He could not, however, banish the terrible itching under his skin. Thunder and lightning and chaos begged to be unleashed upon the world, but it was held back with the whispering patience of infinite darkness.

This is what they could have had together. Power. Balance. Hope. An end to loneliness.

Well, Charricthran had the first two. He'd killed one of two last hopes for the last one- what did that leave him with?

He clutched the small glass and stone heart dangling from around his neck and pressed it to his lips. It beat once, twice, then settled into a soft hum. A blessing to go in peace. Firm, quiet solidarity. A talisman of balance, forever tied to his skin much like the rest of his clothes at this point. A timeless look for two timeless men, now one through nothing but mercy.

No love, not anymore. Not for some time. At least, not in the romantic sense. More in a resigned, nostalgic sort of way. A quiet, wistful way. Love of an ideal, love for the past.

It was time for the past to die. It had died- he’d killed it.

In an alleyway somewhere in London, Charricthran stopped screaming in the tongue of a thousand little things. In a room somewhere in the Society, Richard continued to muffle his choked sobs into a pillow, desperately trying to cope with the consequences of so many actions.

Both creatures mourned for loved ones.

One had emerged from mourning stronger, the other was only just starting to look down that path.

Regardless, both were more alone now than they had been but a handful of months ago.

They were both less alone now than they had been but a handful of months ago.

In this sense, nothing had changed.

People were the same.

Monsters were the same.

In the silence between all these things, they knew.

They always had.

(( So. That was a thing. Tl;dr: Richard suffered through memories/nightmares of his little brother Benediktas and the two other unnamed siblings he'd forgotten about, the first time he met Charricthran, Hannibal and Will, his once-fiance Elise, Jack, and a couple of other things. Charricthran killed Torke, who was under the influence of a Sidhe Lord, and stole his power out of mercy. Richard woke up screaming and Charricthran crawled his way out of the Other screaming. Charricthran is less upset than he should be, but give him time. Richard is.. Richard.

Any of you who want to respond to this as you see fit are more than welcome to- Richard's awake enough to summon/receive visitors now :P Charricthran's somewhere in London, so if you listen closely- be it in the waking world or wherever the borders of the Other start to blend into other things- you'll be able to find him. ))

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Mz.Hyde Mod • 2 years ago

(We are go for Hyde! I repeat, we are go for Hyde!)

* Other than Richard's screaming, the night was calm and dark as normal...until Mz. Hyde barged into his room with her needle drawn and screaming.*

AHHHH! COME AT ME! COME AT ME IF YOU WANT TO DIE!!

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Tairais  Mz.Hyde • 2 years ago

Richard promptly let out another hoarse screech as his body did its best impression of a wooden board flying into the floor at mach twelve.

That is to say, in his surprise and terror, he jolted and fell out of his cot in the infirmary, then promptly started coughing and hacking up a lung. Metaphorically speaking- things weren't quite that bad yet.

He tried to voice an apology and many, many questions to Mz. Hyde, but ultimately found his voice had failed him- he still hadn't quite shaken off the fog of memory and misery wrapped so tightly around his mind.

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Mz.Hyde Mod  Tairais • 2 years ago

I HEARD SCREAMING SO I CAME AS FAST AS I COULD!!!

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Tairais  Mz.Hyde • 2 years ago

Richard waved from behind his cot in his best attempt at an apology as he tried to smother the last of his startled coughs into his other hand.

Not the most graceful of situations- still, at least it was providing a wonderful distraction from all the things he'd woken up from. All the things flitting at the edges of his thoughts like particularly malevolent butterflies.

... He was very tired. More than a little feverish.

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Mz.Hyde Mod  Tairais • 2 years ago

* Mz.Hyde quickly inspects the infirmary and its connected rooms. Finding nothing she returns to Richard's side.*

There's nobody here....did you have a nightmare?

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Tairais  Mz.Hyde • 2 years ago

He nodded once, slowly, then made a sort of waving hand gesture in the vague direction of his throat in an attempt to indicate that talking was beyond him at this point. Pretty much everything was beyond him at this point- even breathing was a raspy effort.

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Mz.Hyde Mod  Tairais • 2 years ago

Your throat's sore? Would you like some water?

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Tairais  Mz.Hyde • 2 years ago

Well. Not exactly what he was trying to convey, but his throat was rather sore now, so it wasn't the worst miscommunication.

He nodded again somewhat sheepishly.

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Mz.Hyde Mod  Tairais • 2 years ago

* She grabs a cup from a cabinet and fills it up with water from the sink. After helping Richard get back on the cot she hands him the cup.*

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Tairais  Mz.Hyde • 2 years ago

Richard suffered through the necessary manhandling required to get him back onto his cot, ignoring the lingering unease that skated down his skin in favor of taking several sips of water from the cup with a grateful smile.

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Mz.Hyde Mod  Tairais • 2 years ago

Does that feel any better? Just nod, you don't have to talk until you're ready.

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Tairais  Mz.Hyde • 2 years ago

He nodded, feeling the little bit of energy he'd gained from his sudden adrenaline rush start to fade.

Safe enough to let his guard down.

not that he'd be able to go anywhere soon.

he coughed again, a hacking, horrible thing.

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Mz.Hyde Mod  Tairais • 2 years ago

Tissue?

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Tairais  Mz.Hyde • 2 years ago

He shook his head and sighed heavily before glancing at the needle in her hand. He tilted his head to the side in quiet questioning.

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Mz.Hyde Mod  Tairais • 2 years ago

What?

* Her eyes follow his gaze to her hand.*

Oh! That's my needle-sword. When I prick my wrist it grows to its full size. Wanna see?

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Tairais  Mz.Hyde • 2 years ago

He gave a very tentative nod, spurred on by scientific curiosity. Just to be on the safe side, though, he shifted to the far edge of his cot, stifling another cough as he did so.

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Mz.Hyde Mod  Tairais • 2 years ago

* After Richard shifted to the far end of his cot, Mz. Hyde took a few steps back before jabbing the needle into her wrist. She then tosses the bloody needle up in the air, where it then expands to the size of a rapier. At the hilt of the blade, a skull and crossbones with the name "Hyde" is etched into the metal.*

Ta-da!~

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Tairais  Mz.Hyde • 2 years ago

Without the use of his voice, Richard went with light applause to show his appreciation. He was curious to know what sort of processes were involved in the transformation (Neoalchemy? Some sort of bio-geological reaction that altered the structure of the metal?), but even just that little bit of movement left him drained and weary.

not that he wanted to sleep either- with an ocean full of shark-like nightmares, who would?

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Mz.Hyde Mod  Tairais • 2 years ago

Here, you want to touch it?

* She holds it out to Richard.*

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Tairais  Mz.Hyde • 2 years ago

Richard gingerly took the sword and inspected it, turning it this way and that in order to watch how the light reflected off it in an attempt to discern its composition and mechanics.

"Fascinating."

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Mz.Hyde Mod  Tairais • 2 years ago

My Jekyll has a pair of scissors that operate in the same way. Both of our weapons are made out of our essence. They can't break and if they are lost, they return to us almost instantly.

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Tairais  Mz.Hyde • 2 years ago

He nodded in the practice of active listening, not so much understanding. The need to understand was a core principle of who he was- he was constantly questioning everything, wanted to know everything.

Lately, though, everything was narrowed down to circumstance, and he was left wondering why this?

He handed Mz. Hyde her weapon before he could stab himself with it.

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Mz.Hyde Mod  Tairais • 2 years ago

Our weapons are a part of us, and we are the weapons. The man who separated us said that they represent something about us, though I'm still not sure what my needle means.

* She lets out a nervous laugh.*

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Tairais  Mz.Hyde • 2 years ago

Richard offered her a kind smile he hoped conveyed the thought that it was sure to be something good about herself, not the bad. Once it faded from his lips, he covered his mouth as he began to cough again, gasping for air between his shudders.

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Mz.Hyde Mod  Tairais • 2 years ago

I wish I could understand the labels in those counters to find you some cough syrup.

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Tairais  Mz.Hyde • 2 years ago

Richard didn't know the appropriate hand signals for 'I am currently in a state of psychological and physical shock brought on by the death of a friend that has reverted my state of mind back to a time where I was forcibly mute in order to ensure my little brother's freedom'.

If he had, he wouldn't have used them, because Mz. Hyde didn't deserve the unfocused wrath or misery lingering in his throat, or the mists and forests swirling in and out of his vision, carried aloft by feathered, carrion breezes.

So instead, he merely shrugged and focused all his willpower into keeping his head from ringing and his lungs from seizing, ignoring the high-pitched whine in the back of his skull that spoke of many, many terrible problems to come once his intense focus wore off.

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Mz.Hyde Mod  Tairais • 2 years ago

I'm sorry. I know that you're in a state of shock from Arty's death and physically can't talk to me about anything, pertaining to Arty or hypothesising about what life is supposed to be all about before coming to the anti-climatic conclusion that life is meaningless no matter what we do. 😐

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Tairais  Mz.Hyde • 2 years ago

He paused, blinked slowly once in surprise, tilted his head, then nodded. Not quite his exact train of thought, but close enough that he was shaken by the similarities.

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Mz.Hyde Mod  Tairais • 2 years ago

Yeah....

* She looks out the window and gasps.*

Oh my! Look!

* She goes over to the window and motions Richard over.*

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Tairais  Mz.Hyde • 2 years ago • edited

Richard took several moments to gather up his strength, then hauled himself out of bed with little more than extreme force of will.

The fact that his limbs were metal and thus were less inclined to collapse under him was likely the only reason he didn't just keel over regardless. He met Mz. Hyde at the window and looked out.

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Mz.Hyde Mod  Tairais • 2 years ago

* In the middle of the society's courtyard is...*

It's a doe! A deer! A female deer!

* Sure enough, there was a little doe in the courtyard, munching on the grass.*

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Tairais  Mz.Hyde • 2 years ago

Richard went still for a handful of moments as he squelched a number of knee jerk reactions that would be incredibly counter-productive in his current state.

It was a doe, not a stag, and therefore he was safe. Those thoughts raced through his head like bullets thudding in time with his heartbeat. Eventually, the instinctual panic passed, and he chuckled softly. It was a low, rumbling sort of thing- more like a purr that skipped and skittered with every raspy breath.

He nodded. So it was.

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Mz.Hyde Mod  Tairais • 2 years ago

She's beautiful.....let's get a closer look!

* She takes Richard's hand and leaps out the window with him in tow. Thankfully for Richard, Mz. Hyde caught him in her arms.*

Gotch ya!

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Tairais  Mz.Hyde • 2 years ago

Richard didn't even have a moment to voice how absolutely bloody terrible an idea this was given the fact he was in the process of recovering from a great many things, viral pneumonia included before he was panicking as he fell.

In response to her amusement, he merely grabbed at her arms with clenched fingers (not hard enough to break anything, thank the gods) and wide eyes, breathing heavily and wheezing every couple of seconds.

He'd be amazed if the doe didn't run off like he wanted to in that moment.

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Mz.Hyde Mod  Tairais • 2 years ago

* GASP* She sees us!

* The doe looks up from her meal. Curious, she starts treading over to the two strangers.*

Look! She's coming over! I've heard that does tread lightly because they don't want to hurt the plants. I guess that's true huh?

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Tairais  Mz.Hyde • 2 years ago

He nodded quickly, jerkily, still trying to get his frantic breathing under control. It was rather hard to enjoy the moment when the fever burning his brain made it difficult to see or think straight past the discomfort.

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Mz.Hyde Mod  Tairais • 2 years ago

* Suddenly, something cool and wet started touching Richard's forehead. He opens one eye to find a snout in his face. As he opened the other eye, the doe licked his face again.*

Awww she's kissing you!~

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Tairais  Mz.Hyde • 2 years ago

Richard proceeded to do his best impression of a hiccuping wooden board.

That is to say, he remained perfectly still save for the fact his attempts at muffling his frantic coughing caused his chest to shudder violently.

He was more than a little panicked, to say the least. He couldn't really hide the fact either, which made him more frustrated, and subsequently made his shuddering chest worse as he tried to suck air into his lungs.

On perhaps any other week but this, he'd find the moment enchanting. As it was, he was about two seconds from passing out again, his shirt soaked through and his hair plastered to his face by sweat.

His short hair. He'd forgotten about the haircut- no, no no. It was a bad idea to even consider thinking about that- the impending identity crisis could wait for a time when he could properly reason.

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Mz.Hyde Mod  Tairais • 2 years ago

* The deer laid her head down on Richard's chest. At that moment Mz. Hyde put Richard down on the ground so the deer wouldn't have to strain her neck. The doe laid there with him, trying to keep him warm with her body.*

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Tairais  Mz.Hyde • 2 years ago

Keeping warm wasn't the problem- it was getting enough oxygen in his lungs to dispel the black fogin his vision that was proving difficult, made more so by the extra weight of the doe's head on his chest.

As such, the only sounds he had the energy to make were the quiet rasps of his inhaled and the wet rattles of his exhausted exhales.

He couldn't even muster the energy to try and crawl away. He wouldn't have gotten very far even if he had had the energy, though, and so he just lay there, quietly watching his vision worsen.

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Mz.Hyde Mod  Tairais • 2 years ago

* Sensing something off, the deers ears twitch and she stands. She then trots off into the courtyard.*

Aw, I guess she was bored.

* As soon as Mz. Hyde said that the dear returned. She carried a little branch with yellow flowers on it. She bends her head over to Richard, putting the yellow flowers in front of his mouth.*

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Tairais  Mz.Hyde • 2 years ago

Richard didn't have the faintest clue what the yellow flowers were, he only knew that deer and humans did not have the same digestive capabilities. As such, he feebly tried to bat the flowers away with one hand and covered his mouth with the other.

Really, if he could.stop coughing for a few seconds, he could get back to his cot and sleep his misery away, safe from the gnarled claws and ash-filled mists swarming his vision, safe drom the burning in his skin and the ache in his chest.

Had he the energy, perhaps he would have found the situation amusing instead of threatening. As it was, he could barely move without making his coughing fit worse.

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Mz.Hyde Mod  Tairais • 2 years ago

* But the dear would not leave. She kept putting the branch in Richard's face.*

I don't think she's leaving until you eat that.

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Tairais  Mz.Hyde • 2 years ago

He glared at both Mz. Hyde and the deer, ignoring the fact he looked about as intimidating as a wet kittin at the moment.

He gave up on moving again and focused on trying to breathe past the crushing weight in his chest, watching with detached panic as darkness and white-yellow static filled his eyes again.

Slipping into the stream of unconsciousness seemed pretty appetizing at the moment. He decided to give into that urge after about five more minutes of being unable to see.

Though his body was limp and disturbingly ashen despite his tanned skin, his breathing had evened out slightly, as panic no longer had a hold on him.

Had he the capacity to, he would've been glad to be out of the reach of memory and dream alike.

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Mz.Hyde Mod  Tairais • 2 years ago

Oh shit he's out! Listen Miss. Doe, but I have to take him back upstairs.

* The doe shoves the plant into Richard's mouth as Mz. Hyde picks him up.*

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Hastie Lanyon  Mz.Hyde • 2 years ago

(This is a very interesting read without context x) )

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Tairais  Mz.Hyde • 2 years ago • edited

Richard, rather predictably, didn't react to either of these events and continued to softly wheeze. He'd almost look asleep were it not for his pale color, fever-warm skin, and ragged breathing.

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Jekyll1886 • 2 years ago

Lewis had just finished afternoon tea when a subtle, seismic shift occurred in the invisible currents of London...and the space/non-space just bordering it, a realm just out of sight but close as the next breath.

The sensation rippled through him as a wave might jostle a buoy, jarring him from his thoughts but not upending them.

He blinked thrice, regained his bearings, and honed his focus to home in on the source of the disturbance.

Charric...thran?

((Charricthran has woken here: http://maps.nls.uk/geo/expl...

in the little yard off Colchester Street. Not far from a feather mill. In Whitechapel.))

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Tairais  Jekyll1886 • 2 years ago

He didn't need to breath, and yet he was so gods-damned tired that he forgot for several moments more. A familiar rhythm pulling at his lungs, Torke's heart beating for him in the space where his own heart had been, trapped like oil in water.

He coughed, spluttered, and spat up what looked like a mixture between tar and plasma as he crawled to his feet, separating and mixing like different colors of paint, different solutions to some demented cosmic problem.

He was absolutely loony right now.

No, he was a raven- get it?

He laughed too hard at his own joke and coughed up more of the same not-liquid. He watched the patterns on his skin shift and twist, watched feathers grow and fall and diminish like condensation on glass, and he watched his hands shake with too much everything- too much panic, too much grief, too much raw power, too much anxiousness.

Too much in a man used to feeling too little.

What a f*cking rush.

His giddiness lasted only as long as the pause between his thoughts.

"Veyet'toon Torke. Si geou agantal llewarin wux." And he would. He would always miss what could have been, but he had to say his goodbyes, lest he face the same brand of madness Richard forced upon himself. The world was still dealing with those consequences- it didn't need a second helping. He had to move forward through life this time.

He took in the smell of feathers, salt, and misery (feathers? why where there so many feathers?) and sighed heavily, reaching up to wipe the plasma and tar from his lips.. Shaking his head, he tested his balance on his feet once he'd realized he'd been standing upright for several moments. Nodding in satisfaction when he remained upright, he took a step forward....

and promptly fell onto his face.

Moving forward would have to wait for a little while, then.

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Jekyll1886  Tairais • 2 years ago • edited

It was, indeed, Charricthran...ish. With a bit of...

Torke! Weir realized with a thrill of alarm.

Something's happened!

Worried what it might mean for both Charricthran and the Society, Lewis hailed a hansom and rapidly crossed the city.

He had the driver stop at the corner of Whitechapel and Church Lane, in view of St. Mary's.

After paying the man, Weir went down Church Lane, only to turn right onto Colchester Street.

He passed a pub, a smithy, a...feather mill. All the while, the strange energy signature grew more intense. He had to be close now...

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Tairais  Jekyll1886 • 2 years ago

Charricthran had been in the process of pulling himself onto his hands and knees when he heard the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps. Now, typically speaking, he wasn't all that fond of footsteps approaching him in general- most of the time when people sought him out it was to ask for a favor or try and kill him to get out of theirs. When they were rapidly approaching footsteps, they tended to be the latter of those two things in the form of some otherworldly creature he really didn't want to try and fight right now. The power pouring from him was likely a beacon drawing all sorts of nasties from the far corners of fair London- he needed to get out of there, and fast.

Which simply wasn't going to happen, he realized, as his entire body lurched and shuddered with a wave of light that rippled from his eyes down his back. The recoil of that surge of energy sent him flying into the nearest wall, and while it wasn't enough to break the damn thing, it was enough to knock the wind out of him.

Assimilation was always a messy, terrible thing. He ground his teeth and stifled a scream of pain as lightning and shadow chased each other in circles inside of his veins, sending sparks and the smell of decaying leaves flying into the air. His body glitched in and out of varying phases of existence like a flickering lightbulb- first a human, then a terrible bird-like quadruped, then something between the two with too-many-eyes, too-many teeth- not as beautiful as Richard's version, though- something truly nightmarish and made of smoke and darkness and plasma.

He gripped his head in his hands and shook it, and for a moment all things were still. His breathing slowed and he managed to pull himself upright again.

The footsteps were growing closer- he needed to leave.

He took a step forward and was launched forward into a crouch that more fit a leopard than a man like him. He finished thinking the half-thought right in time for a new surge in power to send his form ripping and tearing and leaking black ichor and white-blue-purple lightning along the seams into a terrible amalgamation of feathers and gargoyle and stained glass windows.

Hesitantly, he took another step forward, and fell into a mess of half-formed limbs and wings and teeth. Another step melted these things into a singular body again, and he sighed and stopped moving, back to lying on his face and familiarizing himself with London's cobblestones.

Given the chance, he could probably slip back into the Other long enough for whatever was approaching to lose interest. Probably.

He winced as chips of stained glass and feathers met halfway and turned to shards of feather-like obsidian that pushed out of his skin as if they were new teeth. He hid his face in his arms when he realized the skin along his jaw was bubbling in a manner that whispered only of too many overlapping teeth and eyes.

Underneath all the pain and agony and rapidly fluctuating energies, he couldn't help but feel gloriously alive, courtesy of the storms in his skin and the currents of the air and the shadows on the walls and the secret whisperings nearby- two branches of magic that almost, almost balanced each other out in the worst of ways.

Then his body was wracked with searing turquoise light and even that whisper of cheerful thought died, replaced by frantic cursing as stone shifted and moved like waves in the ocean. He pulled himself into a crouch and willed his body to be still and human-like, even for just a handful of moments while he could assess the situation. Fortunately, he was rapidly regaining control over himself. When the footsteps neared the mouth of the alleyway, he braced himself to face their owner.

He could probably fight it, whatever 'it' was.

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Jekyll1886  Tairais • 2 years ago

St. Elmo's fire.

A storm at sea.

A moonless night, scorched with heat lightning.

Lewis thought of all these things as he approached the alleyway, only to perceive a...being he had not expected.

Not singularly, anyway.

There should have been two.

Charricthran and Torke should have been so close as to be on top of one another, but as he came face-to-face with the figure before him, he was able to discern it wasn't so. Not entirely so, anyway.

The energies still fought to find their balance. But they were, for the moment, contained within the same vessel.

A vessel which was, perhaps, Charricthran, though now how greatly altered!

"Charricthran?" Weir ventured.

He prayed his hypothesis was right.

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Tairais  Jekyll1886 • 2 years ago

"Ohthankf*ckit'syou." He said, and promptly fell onto his forearms and knees to retch up more of the strange mix of not-quite-bloods. He watched out of the corner of his eye as it dribbled out of his cheek in a place his skin had split in his momentary lack of concentration and swore vehemently.

He rocked backwards to sit on the ground fully and huffed out a shuddering breath, listening to the sound of electricity sparking along the air as he did so. Once he was moderately more collected, he flashed a bloodstained grin to Lewis, blatantly trying to alleviate the seriousness of his situation.

"Come here often?"

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Jekyll1886  Tairais • 2 years ago • edited

An immense wave of relief washed over Weir as Charricthran proved the hypothesis true.

Then concern came rolling in.

"Only when I feel I need to..." answered Lewis.

"What..." He looked at the puddle of charged ichor between them.

"What the Hell happened?"

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Tairais  Jekyll1886 • 2 years ago

"Oh well- Like I told ya I was gonna have ta, I k.." He trailed off and let the grin fade from his face, aided by another wave of light that illuminated his skin from the inside out. "I killed Torke. Mercy, y'know? All this power was eatin' him alive. Considering he would've jus' kept coming back, I had to eat him instead. Or, rather, Assimilate him. 'S what we c-c-c-"

He bit off the end of his sentence and clamped his jaw shut against the sensation of glass crawling up his throat.

He needed to stabilize- fast. For the first time in many centuries, an Assimilation had the power to truly kill him.

He growled and scratched at his throat, forcing the shards down.

"Call it. Point bein', I ate his soul and am currently undergoing the metaphysical equivalent of digestion. And am now in quite a big of turmoil for my troubles- serves me right for bein' nice, y'kn- Agh!"

Acid and magma boiled in the pit of his stomach and he doubled over, wrapping his arms around himself as he coughed and retched again. He shook his head and chuckled despite the tears gathering in his eyes. "Sorry 'bout the mess."

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Jekyll1886  Tairais • 2 years ago

"Well, that would certainly explain the...unusual vibration you have at the moment," Lewis replied to Charricthran's explanation.

When the latter apologized for the mess, Weir was unable to suppress a snicker.

"It's not like I live here," he said with a smirk and a shrug.

Then his expression turned more serious.

"Is there...anything I can do for you? In this...state?" he asked, looking the poor fellow over. Charricthran was certainly having a rough go of it, both the sizzling energy and Lewis's eyes could attest.

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Tairais  Jekyll1886 • 2 years ago • edited

"Gods, I hope no one's living here- I'd be bringin' down the real estate value for sure." Charricthran snickered in response to Lewis' smirk before he shrugged in an forcibly casual manner.

"Need somethin' to ground all this electricity. Need to stabilize. Now, mind you, I have no idea how to do either of those things given Torke's about twelve times more powerful than anything I've ever had to kill before, and his essence is the complete opposite of mine."

He stared down at his hands as glass tried to push its way through them and shuddered again, muffling a string of expletives in his throat.

"What I do know is that this is bloody awful. Never let me do this again, kid."

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Jekyll1886  Tairais • 2 years ago

Lewis thought a moment.

"There's a railway station nearby. A depot, actually; freight trains only. You could release the excess electricity into the metal rails. Would that do?"

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Tairais  Jekyll1886 • 2 years ago

Charricthran beamed, a bright, glowing thing- though the glowing was mostly from the lightning crackling in the back of his throat and the blood glittering like rubies in his eyes. It was a devastating sort of grin.

"That sounds absolutely fantastic. Here's hoping I can keep myself together for the walk over, though."

With that, he slowly got to his feet, brow furrowing in concentration. The one good thing to come out of all of this was that he didn't have the spare mental resources to think about the agony of Torke's death- why should he anyways, when the man was practically still alive through him?

Pointless thoughts for the moment. Upon noticing that his form stayed relatively static (his eyes would occasionally flash from red to white to bright lavender and back and forth again), he took slow, measured steps towards Lewis and hummed thoughtfully.

"Here's hoping the good folk of London are as unaware as always then. I'd hate to be the source of any more local legends." He shook his head and smiled again.

"Lead the way, then."

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Jekyll1886  Tairais • 2 years ago • edited

"We're lucky it's getting on toward evening," said Lewis as he walked to the end of Colchester and turned left. "And," he said as they continued along Commercial Road East, "not to worry."

He signaled for Charricthran to cross the road with him.

"This is it," he proclaimed as they arrived at the railway depot.

"My one request is that you find a track with no workmen on it here. You do have several choices."

(( http://maps.nls.uk/geo/expl...

))

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Tairais  Jekyll1886 • 2 years ago • edited

Every step was Olympus conquered, his thoughts a current threatening to bash his focus against the rocks in his skin and tear it to shreds. Somehow, he persevered through every aching (unnecessary, he didn't need to, why did he keep forgetting that?) breath, every spasm of pain that worked his jaw loose and forced out a hiss of irritation.

Still, the promise of release was a powerful motivator- after this he was going to properly sleep the first chance he got, something that he hadn't allowed himself in decades at least.

His teeth clacked and chattered with unspent energy as he gave Lewis a grateful look that wasn't quite a smile- it was too much effort he couldn't spare to try and talk at the moment.

He glanced up and down the rows of tracks and was fortunate enough to find one devoid of workers and sheltered by other train cars. He crossed over to it with relative ease, though he could feel the edges of his outline blur as if they yearned to join with the clouds up above.

Which it did, but he wasn't about to let it any time soon.

With a final glance towards Lewis for.. something, (reassurance, probably) he placed his hands on the track and switched his focus to maintaining a slow, steady release of energy, rather than a single explosive burst.

Of course, that plan went out the window rather quickly- the instant his fingertips connected with the metal rail, the entire track hummed and snapped and sparked to life with an electric pulse he could feel in the very core of his being. He felt the coil wind tighter with every second that passed, every hundreds of volts of electricity that coursed through his veins, into the rails, and into the ground.

Tighter and tighter it wound, wracking his body with white-hot, blinding agony and muted flashes of light that danced and glowed from somewhere inside his throat, along his back, inside his ribs. His eyes swam between so many shades of red-blue-white-violet that he wondered if they wouldn't just melt from the sheer intensity of it all.

"Huh. I might die here." As per usual, his internal monologue was of no help whatsoever.

The coil wound and it kept winding and Torke's heart kept beating, racing faster and faster and maddeningly faster until the electricity in it and the lightning arcing in the rails hummed at the same frequency. There was a high-pitched whine in the air, just inside the borders of human perception.

The coil wound and it kept winding, and the whining whined and kept whining-

And it stopped.

And then it collapsed inwards on itself with a massive clap of thunder overhead and the sudden darkening of the skies and gods he'd never felt more alive in his life, even as the workers called out to each other in confusion and his body shuddered with a sudden outpouring of too much brightness and he clasped his hands over his ears and chocked on a scream as everything began to ring- he'd never felt more electrified, more energized.

And then it all came crashing down and he was left with the shaky after-effects of the rain and thunder rumbling in the distance.

He curled up into a ball and laughed once, twice- a harsh, grating laugh. The sort you would hear from a macaw and not a raven.

Gods, the rain felt so good. Invigorating.

Gods the rain burned and he needed to get out- get out get out get out NOW.

He shook and twitched his way into sitting upright with teeth that hadn't stopped chattering and he laughed because uh, woops, that wasn't planned.

With a sudden, manic desperation, he hoped he hadn't accidentally ruined a favorite coat of anyone's. Of Lewis's.

He stared up at the sky with fingertips that sparked, a mostly settled soul, and complete and utter awe, almost childlike in its purity.

Nature was fearsome indeed, and he had two of its greatest elements living inside his very bones.

This awe lasted for all of two minutes before he gave a final full-body twitch and fell back into a curled up ball, feeling the after-effects skate and skitter and scratch against his skin, against each other.

He was grounded and stabilized, but not settled.

All in due time, he supposed.

He continued to twitch.

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Jekyll1886  Tairais • 2 years ago

Lewis understood the magnitude of the forces at play.

Understood it would be difficult for anyone to keep them completely under control for long, much less someone grappling with them for the first time.

He understood the effort of will it took Charricthran to get to the depot and even attempt to let the energy out gradually.

Yet Weir still could not suppress a sarcastic thought as living lightning illuminated the station:

Subtle.

He had stepped well away from Charricthran and anything metal as he'd felt the energy build to its crescendo. Therefore, thankfully, he and his clothing were in perfect order.

The same, he discerned with a trace of regret, could not be said of Charricthran. Oh, Weir could tell he was better than he had been just a few minutes ago. The immediate danger had passed. But he wasn't settled. Not hardly.

Lewis debated for a moment whether to approach or not.

Perhaps Charricthran simply needed some time.

Perhaps he could ill afford it.

Already, the startled workers were shouting and murmuring to themselves, many--fortuitously for their sanity--temporarily blinded by the flash.

Lewis moved to stand by Charricthran, and adjusted his own metaphysical vibration...just in case.

He extended a hand.

"Come. I know a place."

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Tairais  Jekyll1886 • 2 years ago

Charricthran glanced at Lewis' hand from his curled up position on the ground.

He could very well end up electrocuting Lewis if he touched him. It'd be safer if he got up on his own.

And yet there was the tiniest of selfish whispers that murmured 'reach out, he can reach you- no one else can, not really. Trust him.'

He gingerly grabbed Lewis' hand and breathed a quiet sigh of relief when nothing dangerous arced between them, only a few stinging sparks of static electricity. Once he'd gotten to his feet with a minimum of cursing, he chuckled.

"You have my gratitude, kid." Another full-body shudder almost sent him to his knees. He glanced over his shoulder at the workers and sighed softly.

"Once more unto the breach, then. Lead on." He resolutely ignored his shadow as it warped and twitched under him.

This wasn't over, not by a long shot. He stopped thinking and put his focus back into keeping his form contained in this human form.

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Jekyll1886  Tairais • 2 years ago

"Lean if you need to," Weir offered.

He led them to a two-story pub on Beagle street, the upper floor of which he knew would not be crowded just yet, and which offered suitably dim corners whose darkness might do Charricthran some good.

Lewis left him at the table for a moment and returned shortly with two beers from the bar downstairs.

"Here we are." he said, setting them down before taking a seat himself.

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Jekyll1886  Jekyll1886 • 2 years ago

((Beagle Street is in the upper left hand corner of this map. The depot is on the right side of the map. http://maps.nls.uk/geo/expl...

))

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Tairais  Jekyll1886 • 2 years ago

Charricthran had avoided leaning on Lewis too much in the beginning of their trek, but by the time the pub came into view, he was using the other man like a crutch.

Once Lewis had left him at the table, he cast a surreptitious glance around the room, noting entrances and exits and making observations on the people around him (a tall man drowning his sorrows in one too many drinks with a shorter companion that seemed to be consoling him caught his eye). When he was certain that no one was looking his way, he allowed his shadow to spread the wings that begged to tear through the skin on his back and pulled the shadows of the corner tighter around him, rendering him transparent in the darkness, nearly invisible to the world for a handful of moments.

In a way, it was like a particularly healing blanket. The extra darkness helped to smother the flames and storms scratching in his chest, comforted and soothed his burned, soot-stained fingertips. He wondered if those were going to be permanent fixtures- they had been on Torke, the product of too many near-misses.

Lost in thought as he was, he hadn't noticed Lewis' return. He peeled back enough of the shadows to make his form translucent, almost solid, offered a smirk, then slid one of the beers closer too him, staring down into the cup.

"Thanks, kid. Hope I'm not ruinin' your evening too terribly. If it helps, this is definitely much better."

He glanced down at the monstrous thing that was his shadow, watching it writhe and shift through so many different variations of formlessness. Wings and teeth, eyes and tails, feathers and glass and stone. Sometimes multiples of the same thing- there were his wings and Torke's wings and a mix of the two.

He wrapped the shadows snugly around him and imagined that they were the wings he was keeping hidden away out of propriety.

Shaking his head free from loose thoughts, he tore his gaze from his shadow to his cup.

"Y'know, I don't even know if I can get drunk anymore." He paused, then flashed a sharp-toothed grin. "Suppose I could always find out on a night when losing control isn't such a bad idea."

He took a drink anyways and savored the slight warmth that traveled down his spine, eyes wandering across the room once more as a force of habit. Still the same people, no one'd really moved yet.

Still the same sound of Torke's heart humming near-slash-inside his chest. No one'd really started getting loud yet.

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Jekyll1886  Tairais • 2 years ago

"Well," said Lewis at barely more than a whisper, "it's for show as much as anything. Drunkenness and darkness may help disguise your outline, but you'd look sorely out of place here without a drink in hand."

He chuckled.

"And I am relieved you're feeling a bit better."

He took a swig from his own mug.

"Any idea how long this...transitional period will last?" he wondered.

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Tairais  Jekyll1886 • 2 years ago • edited

Charricthran chuckled too. "True enough. Been a while since I've had to blend in rather than just avoid being seen entirely."

He tapped his fingers against the rim of his mug and sighed, listening to the way it crackled on the way out.

"Hopefully no longer than the rest of the day, since this is awful. Chances are, if I don't stabilize by then, I'm buggered anyways, so I guess I wouldn't be able ta complain much." A twitch of the eye. Three of four eyes. No eyes. Twitch of just the one eye again. He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.

A wing flickered somewhere on the edges of his vision. Two or three pairs of wings. Disembodied feathers strung along wire and glass and technology that was from the future of two different universes, not this one.

He took another sip from his mug and drummed the spindly fingers of his free hand against the table. Too much energy to sit still for long, too much he wasn't used to yet.

Least he wasn't retching up ichor again. That'd be pretty difficult to explain.

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Jekyll1886  Tairais • 2 years ago

"Would it help you to blend in with the fog, come nightfall?" asked Lewis. "Ground-bound clouds and shadows, to my mind, might be just the thing to help shore up your shifting form."

He sipped his drink.

"They work quite harmoniously together, and there is a certain beauty to the way they complement one another."

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Tairais  Jekyll1886 • 2 years ago

"See, I'm glad you have a decent head on your shoulders right now, because mine's about eight different kinds of fuzzy. Would not have thought of that any time soon. Probably would, yeah." He shook his head tiredly and chuckled.

"Here's to harmony and beauty, then." He knocked back another swig of his drink and smirked. "Not that there's really anything beautiful in a pile of.. tar and body parts, I suppose, but it's the thought that counts."

His thoughts kept wandering back towards a nap. There wasn't really a place he could do so safely, what with the Other currently turned on its ass from Torke's influence.

He could worry about that when he wasn't at risk of dying in an explosion of plasma and acid.

He shook his head again and wondered what he might knock loose with the repetitive gesture. "Mercy is gods-damned messy, Lewis, but then so's cruelty, and they're both simple in turn. What a wonderful burden existence is. I also have no bloody idea what I'm sayin', so pardon me if I suddenly sound intelligent." He snickered into his cup as he took another drink, noting it was near-empty.

He felt settled, but it was the kind of settled that preceded a storm. He realized now he wouldn't quite find balance until he made a form to hold that balance, a representation of that balance to hold close at hand and meld into during times like these. A focal point, an anchor, and a bridge between two pillars of power that would allow them to grow and merge into one over time, stable once established.

Which meant he needed time and space. The fog of London was looking more and more promising already. He'd also need something to ground him to himself, but..

He'd burn that bridge when he got to it. He'd burn it even if he didn't. Fire was nice.

What was he even thinking at this point?

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Jekyll1886  Tairais • 2 years ago

Lewis continued to drink as he listened to Charricthran. It wasn't the first philosophical discussion over a mug of beer he'd taken part in.

"Simple and complex. Everything nuanced, but everything with its aim. They say the simplest solution is the best, yet when are things ever simple? To live life is to walk the edge of a fractal pattern. To perceive that pattern is wisdom. To walk it afterward is courage.

"Most simply stumble about blindly in the fog, yet fancy themselves cartographers."

He finished his beer.

"Want to head to the docks? There's sure to be plenty of fog by the river. Several railway depots, as well." He smiled.

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Tairais  Jekyll1886 • 2 years ago

Charricthran had listened in understanding silence to Lewis's contribution to their short discussion.

His thoughts precisely.

He nodded when the other man was done, having nothing further to say on the matter. It was simply the nature of each and every universe he'd been in- any further explanation seemed almost.. redundant.

He chuckled. "Are we gonna stumble in this fog or walk in it like an old friend? And I think it's best for all the poor souls of London if I stay far, far away from large quantities of metal. I dunno about you but in times past, frequent large bursts of bright light generally had bad connotations for me."

He shrugged as he got to his feet. "Then again, I suppose my experiences aren't quite this-universal, now are they?" He held a straight face for all of two seconds before he snickered at his own poor joke.

Had to find some joy in this situation, lest he start thinking too much again.

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Jekyll1886  Tairais • 2 years ago

Lewis chuckled, then shrugged.

"Alternatively, you could go to Hyde Park. There should be fog there, too. And if a storm should happen to roll in...well. Would anyone even think anything of it?" he suggested with a conspiratorial smirk.

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Tairais  Jekyll1886 • 2 years ago

Charricthran once again grinned a smile full of too many teeth, however, where the previous one had been devastating in the same sort of way watching a burning building collapse was (horrifying, terrifying, beautiful and heartbreaking), this was a warm sort of smile, borne aloft by the tender wings of friendship and amusement.

That being said, the glitter in his eyes was as mischievous as any found in the eyes of a goblin or imp.

"Hypothetically speaking, I hope not! If an alarm was sounded every time there was a storm in fair London, I'd worry the lot of ya'd go deaf from the damn bells screamin' all the time."

He inclined his head towards the stairs and chuckled again. "If I tell ya to lead the way again, d'ya think it'll become obvious it's been some time since I've roamed the streets of London properly? You'll have to make sure not ta tell anyone- most people think me some sort of all-knowin' god, y'know? Best for 'em to keep thinking that." He offered a conspiratorial wink for Lewis's smirk and stretched slightly, listening to the pop and crack of joints and sparks and little pieces of glass alike as they rose and fell in the illusion of his skin.

The thunder in his blood crowed and cried for its fervency to be unleashed even as the whispering sorts of knowing and promise in his mind murmured for patience. The lightning in his (Torke's, technically) heart sang with the beauty of the natural world, and the shadows in his lungs muttered for it to quiet down, just a bit, lest they shatter the tentative stillness between all of them.

"Just a moment longer, ya noisy buggers."

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Jekyll1886  Tairais • 2 years ago

Charricthran spoke of hypotheticals.

Too many churches in this city as it is, thought Lewis.

Though their bells' tolling could conceivably help cover the sound of a murder, if necessary. Noon or midnight would give the best shot, sound-wise, though obviously night is better than day for such an undertaking.

Hm.

He filed the thought away for later.

Charricthran spoke of navigating the streets, and keeping secrets.

"I'm the soul of discretion," Weir assured him.

He rose, and offered Charricthran a hand.

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Tairais  Jekyll1886 • 2 years ago

Charricthran waited for the sparks and shards dancing down his hands to calm themselves before taking Lewis's hand, though there was still a mild sort of static electricity that travelled up his arm at the contact.

Lewis had spoken. Replies were in order, right.

"Wonderful. Keeping secrets goes a long way in my line of work."

He trailed off into thoughtful silence once more, mind divided between the still-novel experience of effortless, actually physical touch rather than the tiresome approximations he was used to carrying and the effort of keeping a solid form, growing minutely less arduous over the course of the evening.

In an absent sort of way, he wondered how much of it might've had to do with the simple act of touch as a grounding point to solid reality, rather than the incoporeal fantasies of clouds and darkness, of whispers and winds.

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Jekyll1886  Tairais • 2 years ago

By the time they arrived at Hyde Park, darkness had well and truly fallen. Not a single star was visible, due to the thick fog which hung about, a combination of coal smoke from the city and moisture welling up from the Thames.

"Here we are," pronounced Weir as they walked into the dark-misted park.

A little more walking, and they'd reached the dead center of it.

"Shall I leave you on your own for this part?" asked Lewis, wondering how far away he ought to get from Charricthran, and how quickly. Given what was to come.

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Tairais  Jekyll1886 • 2 years ago • edited

The closer they'd gotten to the park, the more difficult it'd been to maintain a decidedly human form- fog beckoned to mist, nightfall called to shadow, and both begged to be unleashed with all the ferocity of Mother Nature herself, against which all living things eventually succumbed to.

Charricthran was not the exception.

He turned to Lewis with storms electrifying his normally red eyes with all the shades of lightning, thunder, and rapturous magma. His normally cat-like pupils were gone, burned away by the light and glow pouring from his eye sockets and the cracks lining, peeling apart his skin everywhere except his mouth and throat, and under his clothes, his chest. Those burned with the blackness of the void, of the same starless night overhead.

When he spoke, he spoke with the dreadful whispers of unease that curled around the spines of those foolish enough to walk during the witching hours. He spoke with the comforting heaviness of a humid summer's night, wrapping around the mind like a heavy blanket. He spoke with the harsh murmurs of all things that called out to the unfortunate in the hours hidden by daylight, and the echos of those foolish enough to listen.

He spoke, and he listened to his voice echo in a clap of thunder and the whisper of a sudden breeze. He spoke, and he listened to the rasp of shadow and plasma alike fall from the widening cracks in his skin.

He spoke, and he listened to the voice of Charricthran, far, far gone.

"Sia thurirl, I would recommend ya run very far, very fast, very soon."

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Jekyll1886  Tairais • 2 years ago • edited

"Thought so," said Lewis with a nod.

The next instant, he bolted.

He didn't stop until he'd crossed the road at the park's edge, then ducked down a side street, just for good measure.

His placement would afford him a decent view, if there were one to be had, yet also offered ready cover...just in case.

He tossed his metal walking stick away...and waited in the gathering silence.

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Tairais  Jekyll1886 • 2 years ago • edited

Charricthran tilted his head and watched Lewis with a smile that bled crimson, black, and blue. He listened as the other man's footsteps grew more and more distant, then stopped somewhere else in streets of London, close enough to watch, far enough to be safe.

He allowed the world a few more seconds of silence, listening to the sounds of nature outside his control quietly trail off into suspenseful silence.

The few birds awake stopped calling and fled with the quiet flutter of wings. Small mammals and insects stopped chattering and chirping, promptly finding shelter in things older and stronger than they.

The small breeze that had trailed through the fog stopped whispering and waited with a smile and held breath.

The suspension sharpened into a taut, razor-like quiet, broken only by the sounds of fair London, fair London, whose music always played on.

"Showtime, folks."

With a hastily muttered prayer to gods that had long since turned their back on him, he split apart at the seams.

The world quickly exhaled, and then all Hell broke loose.

With a raucous clap of thunder, he arced into the arms of the heavens above, whose clouds gathered to spectate and aid the process of his Becoming.

He crashed into several clouds as many bolts of lightning and the shadows that bloomed in the hidden folds within them. Exhilaration and pure ecstasy coursed in every vein of consciousness as half of him raced from cloud to cloud, slammed into the ground, slammed into roofs and cobblestone and metal and trees alike, sparking and tearing with gleeful joy. The wind in the trees sang with him as he raked branching fingers of lightning across the sky, higher and higher and higher until he was singing jubilantly in the ozone layer above London, harmonizing with stardust and celestial bodies just like he.

And when he was out of breath he fell into Hyde park once more with an explosion of sound and light that seared itself into the eyes and ears of all of London like bombs that would not fall for almost another century.

In the aftermath of that glorious thunderclap, he left one hand in fingers of lightning and stretched downwards into the mist, downwards still into the wildly flickering shadows below.

With the background noise of ceaselessly rumbling thunder and cascading light, what was left of Charricthran that wasn't scattered among electrons pooled itself into darkness that reached upwards with skeletal, hungry fingers- like a tree that continued to grow in winter, unnatural and spindly.

The clouds and mist and wind and shadows and even the very night itself seemed to reach towards each other to embrace, his focus scattered thin- their focus fractured and split among so many things that didn't fit them quite yet.

They reached out, a hand for each point of contact, a star of their own making. The wind howled and cried and cheered, the clouds rumbled their assent, and the night watched on with stoic detachment.

It was the dance and play of lightning and shadow that proved so hard to complete.

In the skies above London, for those who cared to look with an inkling of the truth, an awesome, terrible battle occured, written in the eyes of the clouds.

In their stormy arena, the parts of themselves that called themselves Charricthran-Kothar faced off against those they called Torke Shohcraos.

{"Itova, why are ya still fightin' me? I gave you my mercy, why won't you take it?"} Cried the shadows skittering away from their touch.

{"You of all people should know that darkness burns in the light, danthe. I cannot help but burn you until you allow your darkness to smother me."} Rumbled the thunder, though not unkindly. {"You've given me your mercy restrained in an attempt to fix what was terribly broken. Shatter what is left of me, stop holding on to the past. I will not see you dead from me."}

{"You an' Ricky-boy are both so self-sacrificing and I f*ckin hate both of you for it."}

Thunder rumbled once more in the approximation of a chuckle. Somewhere nearby, despite the relative calm of the storm compared to its explosive beginning, a church lost its steeple, and the bell contained within it toppled to the streets below.

Perhaps the storm was only calm relative to its beginning then, for rain still fell in sheets, faster now, as if the sky were weeping.

It was, after all.

{"Were that the case, Charricthran, we would not be here."} Softer still, it mumbled, {"Please, let it end. Why kill me if you didn't intend to go through with it? Are you really so foolish as to expect a happy ending?"}

The night sky hissed with sudden rage, lashing out with the terrible, screeching ring of metal scraping against metal. The lightning retreated further into the clouds as nightfall burned its way into it.

Charricthran pinned Torke's cloudlike form against a handful of stars and snarled, the gesture lost somewhere in the formless, starless darkness that made up his currently shifting, roughly humanoid form.

{"Apparently I am. Did you ever even TRY to resist Kirin? Did you just let him walk all over ya and let him tear apart the only two people you had EVER loved in all three thousand years of your pathetic life? Did any of my f*cking efforts towards that happy ending ever f*cking matter, or did ya throw em out in the trash the same time you threw me an' Richard to the wolves?"}

Torke smiled where Charricthran's talons were wrapped around his neck without the other not-quite-man's knowledge. The clouds were slowly disappearing around them as he slowly bled into the night.

{"It all mattered- don't you see? I will give you... the majesty.. of true becoming."} The thunder grew more and more distant with each pulse of their shared heart- Charricthran couldn't hear it over the sound of blood and ichor rushing in his ears with every harsh snarl.

It was only when the glow in Torke's eyes faded that Charricthran realized it hadn't been the real man. It was only when Charricthran stretched out three pairs of wings and felt darkness bleed across the clouds like watercolors and oil that he realized what had been said, and he raged and mourned with the fury of a thousand summer storms, the likes of which rivaled that thrice-damned Sidhe Lord's.

He wasn't real, the heart wasn't real anymore- lost when he'd crushed the life out of Torke's neck a second time.

Torke was dead, dead and gone and he didn't even get a second chance at a proper goodbye.

He plummeted down, hard and deadly fast, a blaze of blue-white light against the empty night sky that dragged the clouds and mists in his wake.

Shadow cradled lightning close to its heart, tailed by storm and wind and chased by the night itself, seeking a swift burial that wouldn't truly come.

He fell towards the center of Hyde Park with all the bombastic glory of a meteorite. A high pitched whine screamed in the night, lost under the full-scale return of the roaring, raging thunder. It grew in fevered pitch and intensity, rising higher and higher as he fell further and further, grew closer and closer to the ground until he slammed into it with the force of a thousand cannonballs and a shrill ringing that made all dogs within a three mile radius howl and bay in sympathetic agony.

His last thoughts before falling unconscious were as ill-timed and relatively pointless as usual.

"Damn bastard always has to get the last word in, even when it's just a fragment of him. All that energy an' I didn't even see what we look like now."

The five forces of the new core of his being met, fused, and melted into one terrible creature.

A creature that promptly blacked out with a final, shrill, bird-like screech.

The storm that followed was completely normal in its ferocity- a simple summer rain. No longer did the sky mourn its loss, for now it had regained itself. No longer did the darkness hide from nature's secondary lights- rather, they seemed to dance and laugh gently out of reach.

Charricthran did not stir. His mind was ringing, the noise from outside come to roost within the walls.if his mind.

He did not move, but his body steamed and smoked and lent itself to the mists overhead.

He did not move, but he ached in every way he knew how, and several that he didn't.

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Jekyll1886  Tairais • 2 years ago • edited

All the energies whipping and streaming about at once braced, energized, and threatened to overwhelm Weir, even at a distance.

The lightning arced from ground to sky, from cloud to cloud, from clouds to ground, roofs, a steeple, trees, and freestanding gaslights.

Incredibly fortuitously, the sweeping rain soon extinguished the resulting fires.

Weir sensed Charricthran's presence coalesce...and plummet.

He felt the impact through the ground beneath him before the sound wave reached his ears.

He picked up his cane and approached its source.

In the middle of Hyde Park, Lewis found a freshly-made crater a full thirteen feet wide. The rock beneath the topsoil had been heated, though whether from the friction of impact or Charricthran's electrifying nature was unclear. Having fused into a shallow, watertight bowl, it was already filling with raindrops.

And in its center...lay Charricthran.

The world's biggest birdbath, Weir's mind quipped offhandedly, even as Lewis stepped into the crater to see about Charricthran.

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Tairais  Jekyll1886 • 2 years ago

For some reason, despite the aching in his bones and teeth and skin, it was the rock digging into his back that prompted him to drag himself to his feet.

The first thing he noticed upon gaining a semblance of awareness was the fact that everything felt heavy and exhausting. No longer was he made of so many racing, formless things- they were condensed into a body that moved and looked and seemed human so long as you didn't look to close.

Business as usual.

The second thing he noticed was Lewis, shrouded with rain and mist and the occasional distant flash of lightning.

He looked almost otherworldly, painted in those shades of mist.

He offered a crooked smile looking up from under his hair, mindless of the way his skin was charred and how it split on his cheeks, exposing the form of mixed ichors underneath, pitch black and sparkling blue-white mixing and swirling almost lazily underneath.

"Enjoy the show, kid?"

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Jekyll1886  Tairais • 2 years ago • edited

"It was a blast," replied Lewis in a deadpan manner before breaking into a wicked grin. "And there's a church steeple lying on the street that doesn't know what hit it."

He looked Charricthran over.

"You seem more settled, I dare say.

"Shall we abscond from the scene before anyone arrives? Just in case."

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Tairais  Jekyll1886 • 2 years ago • edited

Charricthran burst into a fit of cackling laughter at Lewis's deadpan humor that lasted several minutes.

Sighing at the end of it, he nodded. "I feel more settled, yeah, if very frickin' sore. Leaving sounds like a good idea-'specially if I knocked down a steeple. Been the subject of a religious inquisition once and I swore never again." Both of those were true. His skin felt his own again, no longer shaking with foreign energy. A quick look at his hands showed that the cracks and glass there had receeded into nothing more than a faint suggestion of lines, though his fingertips were still as blackened and charred as his face.

With a grunt and several muttered expletives, he pulled himself fully to his feet. It was about then that he realized the rather large crater they were in, courtesy of him.

"Well. I was not expecting a crater. Add it to the list of marks I've left on the world, then. We absconding somewhere in particular, or..?"

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Jekyll1886  Tairais • 2 years ago • edited

"Not really," replied Weir. "Just...'away'."

He always felt the pull of nights like these. The fog lying heavy through the city, the rain just light enough that people would venture out in it, but still so strong it would wash away any blood spilled on the street.

And, with the pyrotechnics in the West End, Lewis reflected, anything which happened in the East was all the less likely to be noticed...

Scotland Yard, he reminded himself fiercely. It wouldn't do to run afoul of them again.

Don't sh*t where you eat. He'd made his home here in London, and that was that. A petty indulgence could jeopardize everything.

Still...

"Let's go wherever you like, Charricthran." I don't need to be left to my own devices on such a beautiful lovely maddeningly tempting night.

Oh, for an instant jaunt to Glasgow...

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Tairais  Jekyll1886 • 2 years ago

Charricthran thought for a few moments, tilting his head as if to listen. After a few moments a wolfish grin split his features, cracking the charred skin around his cheeks even more.

"My turn to take your hand then, kid. Just as well too- the mist carries the footsteps of concerned citizens and some constables I can't wait to not meet!"

With that, he grabbed Lewis's arm and pivoted on his heel, noting with weary resignation that he had far more strength than he'd had before, and needed to adjust accordingly.

Damn. And he'd just finished getting used to the last shift.

In a rare moment of remembered foresight, Charricthran didn't take them directly through the Other, rather, he skirted the place where their borders met, soaring along a sort of tightwire realm.

A glance to their right showed the night sky and the ocean's horizon whizzing by in dizzying shades of black and blue and purple, like a bleeding bruise.

A glance to the left showed the Other in a state of true chaos. Storm clouds covered much of what was below them, and what slices of the grim forests and meadows were visible hissed and roared as they were battered about and clawed at by the wind.

It was about this half-moment that Charricthran noted the Amuulzhaanir were out in full force, as evident by the vicious waves of violet-magenta fire that warred against the tempests and volcanoes that threatened to overwhelm them.

He especially didn't want Lewis meeting those. They made the whispering shadows of madness seem perfectly reasonable by comparison.

No sooner had he finished that thought than the pair of them emerged at their destination roughly spat out by the edge of the roaring typhoon that was the Other at present. However, where he had been expecting wild, open moors, he now saw dilapidated buildings and many, many trains running through what looked to be the ass-end of some sort of big city.

Dropping Lewis's arms, he chuckled and shrugged.

"Not what I was expectin', honestly. Last time I was in this area, there wasn't a city on top of it. Any idea where we are, then?"

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Jekyll1886  Tairais • 2 years ago • edited

On their journey, Lewis took in the sights with a curious eye, once he'd gotten over the initial surprise of leaving Hyde Park so suddenly.

When they arrived at their destination, he looked about...and burst out laughing.

"Oho, Charricthran, you spoil me!" he managed between cackles.

Weir recognized the place down to the very street corner--Bridgegate and Saltmarket.

It couldnae be more perfect!

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Tairais  Jekyll1886 • 2 years ago

Charricthran's wolfish from returned in full force at the sound of Lewis laughing. It was a sound he could honestly get used to- he was tired of other people's grief.

"Wasn't me drivin' this time, Lewis, but I'm glad to see it's putcha in good cheer. Where are we that's gotcha all tickled? I'm dying to know now."

"'Specially since it looks like a right hellhole around here. Still, as that one guy said- goin' nowhere, nowhere, anywhere's better than this. This bein' the massive bloody crater."

There was a light mist here too. It hummed along the back of his skin and beckoned for him to join it in the free-wheeling euphoria existing in such a formless state promised.

Where it would've had him splitting at the seams not an hour or so ago, he now only felt energized in an anticipatory sort of way, listening to the shape of the sounds carried along the air.

Nothing familiar, yet.

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Jekyll1886  Tairais • 2 years ago

Lewis's laughter wound down to a chortle as he got ready to speak.

"We're at Briggate 'n' Saltmarket," he explained, "not far from the River Clyde..." A lopsided grin refused to leave his face. "In Glasgow."

He broke into a guffaw.

"The shite end of it, too!"

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Tairais  Jekyll1886 • 2 years ago

Charricthran was well and truly confused now, something that didn't happen as often as one might expect. Despite this, he was still smiling, though the expression now has fewer teeth and more bewilderment.

"Now, see, I still don't get why that's funny to you- it's funny to me cos I turn my back for a couple years and people've built a city where I once hunted and it shows just how bloody fast the human population grows, but I still dunno why it's funny to ya, though calling it the shite end was my first reaction too."

Yeah, no. He was terribly confused. And amused, at least.

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Jekyll1886  Tairais • 2 years ago

"This is just where I was wishin' I could be!" Weir exclaimed.

"Thank you."

Profound relief mixed with a growing and heady sense of anticipation.

"The night is young." His voice dropped in both pitch and volume. "And Glasgow's finest dinnae exactly give Scotland Yard a run for their money."

A grin spread like a nasty gash across his face.

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Tairais  Jekyll1886 • 2 years ago

While Lewis's gratitude poured liquid gratitude down the inside of his chest, sudden understanding made a curious gleam flicker in the depths of Charricthran's eyes.

"Interesting. The Other borrowed his wishes for the trip. Suppose I know what it thinks of him, then."

The curious gleam quickly turned towards an electrifying spark, suspense skittering along his spine as Lewis's voice changed to something.. darker than before. There was a tangible energy in the air that had nothing to do with him this time around.

His own answering grin bloomed back to life like the spread of blood across marble flooring.

"Oh? And what am I to do with this information you're so graciously sharin' with me, Lewis?"

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Jekyll1886  Tairais • 2 years ago

"Whatever pleases you," replied Lewis with a knowing smile.

"So long as you keep whatever I do with it a secret.

"You're free to hare off on your own if you like... There's a nice fog from the river, and the weather's shite here, more often than not.

"Or you can come with me, if that's what you fancy. But," he warned, "if you do the latter, don't ever let anyone know what you witness. Not Richard, not a friend in another dimension--no one."

Though Lewis knew the caveat was necessary--just to make assurance doubly sure--there was still a jangling impatience within him, ready to have things sorted and get on with the bloody night!

"Agreed?"

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Tairais  Jekyll1886 • 2 years ago

Charricthran considered the terms of the agreement for all of perhaps fifteen seconds.

Where there were secrets, there too was he. And it wasn't like he was gonna tell Richard jack shite after the stunts he pulled. Kid needed to be left alone indefinitely, at this point.

He clasped his left hand over his heart and bowed slightly, his voice echoing with traces of the ancient powers of a universe long dead. Might as well go the extra step, since Lewis had undoubtedly saved his life that night twice over.

"I agree to the terms of your contract, Lewis Weir."

His sigil, usually hidden underneath his clothing in this form, glowed just bright enough to be seen for a handful of moments before it faded away like the flash of a camera. He shook the lingering energy from his fingertips and savored the taste of iron and dew in the back of his mouth, subtly different with every deal.

This iron had the potential for blood, and the dew carried the taste of ozone and glacial ice.

With a lopsided smirk, he straightened out of his half-bow and added, "Now I can't break my word even if I'd wanted ta in the first place. A little bit of extra security for the both of us."

"Never know when contracts start to override the best interests of other contracts."

He tilted his head and clasped his hands behind his back, wondering just how much more... intriguing Lewis could get.

Fortunately, curiosity never said anything about killing the bird; He was very, very curious.

"After you, then, sia thurirl."

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Jekyll1886  Tairais • 2 years ago • edited

Lewis nodded immediately, a smile returning.

He walked down Bridgegate, his steps measured but with barely-restrained energy beneath.

Without warning, he ducked left into a rather narrow close.

His back to the entrance of the close, he took note of his surroundings, scanning visually, aurally, and metaphysically.

No one about but Charricthran.

Good.

He exhaled, letting another form slip to the surface as easily as a cork in water.

"There we are..." he half sighed, half whispered.

((Location of close: middle diamond on this map: http://digital.nls.uk/learn...

Picture of close [though it'd be w/o the children]: http://digital.nls.uk/learn...

[It's Plate 20.]))

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Tairais  Jekyll1886 • 2 years ago • edited

Charricthran, for his part, was as silent as the grave. More accurately, he was as silent as a shadow- in this case, Lewis's. He didn't want to interfere with whatever was about to occur next- merely took in the sights of a cramped, cloying little part of Glasgow, admiring and pondering upon the vast spectrum of wealth and squalor in humanity.

He admired the visible shift he now saw and heard in Lewis, which sent pinpricks of dark amusement and a heady sort of anticipation skittering down his spine and arms, like so many feathers trying to emerge from their hidden places.

He watched quietly, and he admired quietly, with the intense sort of regard that one admired a wolf prowling far too close for any sane idea of comfort.

Well, he certainly wasn't insane by the technical and medical definitions, but he definitely wasn't the sort of sane most people had a claim to. Another line to gleefully toe, then.

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Jekyll1886  Tairais • 2 years ago • edited

Lewis stretched, arcing his spine and extending his arms overhead as he raised onto the balls of his feet. He was rewarded with several satisfying cracks.

He dropped back onto his heels, made some slight adjustments to his clothing, and pulled a pair of gloves from his waistcoat pocket.

After donning these, he took out his pocket square and wiped his walking stick of fingerprints, just in case something might happen to it. He replaced the cloth...and turned to face Charricthran.

An easy but unwholesome smile graced Weir's features. The slight bump to the bridge of his nose had become more pronounced. His cheekbones were a bit higher than usual, and his brows thicker. His hair had shifted to the color of coal, lengthening to his shoulders at the same time that its slight wave twisted into something more akin to a curl. His sideburns had crept a little further down his jawline; the latter had changed its proportion vis-a-vis the thickness of his neck. Though still of lean and wiry build, the cording of the muscles was more evident even as the form itself seemed more youthful. A man in his early twenties, mayhap. His complexion was simultaneously dusky yet pale, as if he were of Celtic extraction or hailed from a Mediterranean clime but had never seen the sun.

His eyes, meanwhile, contained no trace of their former green hue. Instead, the brown at their centers had spread and darkened to such a degree that is was difficult to say where iris stopped and pupil started. Yet the overall effect, or likely the spirit into which they served as window, was something at once sharp and malevolent, a soul both cunning and malign.

He fixed his piercing gaze on Charricthran, studying him with a cool amusement, aware of every minute shift and subtlety in the other.

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Tairais  Jekyll1886 • 2 years ago

Charricthran had seen a great many things in his great many lifetimes, and it had gotten to the point where he'd say he couldn't be surprised by anything. This was still true- he was not surprised, per say, by Lewis's transformation.

What he was was intrigued and... excited, in an odd and hungry sort of way he'd not had the pleasure of experiencing before. It was close to the same ravenous, darkened hunger he'd felt when letting Lewis hold him, now predatory and appraising. It slithered down and coiled at the base of his spine

The dark thing hidden behind his human appearances flickered in the depths of his eyes and close-lipped smile, beckoned with tar and a mouthful of glass and teeth, reached out with claws and talons, smiled with a rictus grin that oozed blood and violence.

It flickered out of existence just as quickly- a simple reminder that it was there, and it would come out to play if it was invited. He rather hoped it would be. He'd be content to watch his fellow creature if it wasn't, though.

He let the small smile fall from his lips and tilted his head in a very familiar bird-like manner, watching, waiting, aware of Lewis in his own little ways- in the depth of his shadow, in the way mist shifted and curled around him, in the way ozone hovered over all things.

Consider him enticed.

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Jekyll1886  Tairais • 2 years ago • edited

When he caught the flicker in Charricthran's eyes, his own crinkled at the corners in mirth, and he broke into a feral grin.

"Let's go," he said, voice between an impatient rasp and a guttural purr. He let the gloved fingers of his left hand trail briefly, playfully, along Charricthran's arm as he slipped out of the close and strode into the street.

Weir took a couple of major roads, only to lead them through a veritable labyrinth of bystreets and closes and wynds.

Fog met drizzle as rain swept over the city.

Lewis ducked into a crowded pub and took stock of the clientele.

Rough types, these. Dockworkers and sailors, railwaymen and the criminal class.

Perfect.

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Tairais  Jekyll1886 • 2 years ago

Charricthran suppressed a shiver as Lewis's (Did this other form have its own name?) fingertips trailed down his arm. Not out of revulsion, no, decidedly not. The shiver went hand in hand with the heavy swoop in his stomach and the pinprickling scrape of tension across the hairs on the back of his neck.

Consider him very enticed.

He'd kept on Lewis's heels for the most part, though at some points he'd had to dip a toe into the man's shadow like a tether in order to keep himself from getting lost or left behind in unfamiliar cities. The rain and fog twisting through the city air only served to heighten the tingling glee in the cavern of his chest, laughing and whispering quietly in a language unknown by men. He resisted the urge to whisper back, but took their floating cheer and cradled it close to his chest, knowing it wouldn't affect him as much as time continued its merciless march.

When they slipped into the seediest bar to have ever been seedy, Charricthran did his own customary read of the room and came to much the same conclusion as Lewis- rough types, good for a fight, good for a job- good for a lot of things except being good.

When he was finished with that, he merely continued watching Lewis with a faint smile and a watchful expression, the intensity of which bordered on unsettling in any conventional sense.

The air felt alive with an vibrant electricity palatable to perhaps only him. He couldn't wait to see what the night brought- a definite change for the better when compared to how it'd started.

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Jekyll1886  Tairais • 2 years ago

Lewis was certain he looked like an out-of-towner who had only come to Glasgow for a funeral, what with his black garb, including waistcoat. The materials were nice enough that he surely must have wandered into this part of town by mistake. The fact that he carried a walking stick also gave him away.

Which he banked on.

It wasn't long before he purposefully made eye contact with just the wrong person.

Unpleasantries were exchanged, the man's with a Glaswegian accent, Weir's in his best Edinburgher.

"'Mon 'en," said the tough, rising to fight.

"Gladly," returned Lewis, seeming for all the world like an incensed member of the middle classes too prideful to know when to quit. "Outside."

Not only the man, but five of his gang members, followed him out.

The whole lot nipped off to a deserted yard behind a leather processing building, not about to let Weir go anywhere else.

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Tairais  Jekyll1886 • 2 years ago

Charricthran, upon entering the bar, had allowed his usual attire to look a little more shabby and rough around the edges with the purpose of blending in. His favored fighting style tended towards ambush and surprise, vanishing and reappearing to confuse the enemy into questioning just what exactly was attacking them, if anything was at all.

When Lewis, his verbal sparring partner, and his sparring partner's partners began to slip outside, he casually leaned against the wall, as curious an onlooker as any. Unlike the rest of those intrigued by the barrage of jabs and insults flying overhead, though, he slipped into the shadows on the wall and used the ones on the floor as little stepping stones to avoid stepping into the Other as he made his way towards the vanishing group. Just as an extra measure of security, he slipped into the shadow of the last man of the group out the door, smiling wickedly the whole while.

He'd keep his use of magic towards the minimum side of things this time- slipping into the shadows of others was as easy as breathing, the new act of summoning fog and mist nearly the same sort of ease. Perhaps he'd even throw in a little bit of whispering darkness- who knew? The night was still young yet.

He spent a quick few seconds analyzing each man's form and the way they stood in anticipation for the brawl about to unfold. His eyes kept darting towards Lewis, noting the hidden potential for lethality in his stride.

When the lot of them had arrived in the yard, he waited for Lewis to move first before making any move on his own. Well, he couldn't really help the light fog rolling in, still clinging to the aftershocks of his massive energy display in Hyde park.

"Least it adds to the ambiance." His mind chirped in, unhelpful but true as always.

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Jekyll1886  Tairais • 2 years ago • edited

Lewis and the man he'd had words with faced each other within a rough but spacious circle formed by the remaining five toughs.

The gang shouted encouragement to their leader:

"Gut 'im, Conall!"

...who made a show of pulling out a knife.

Weir looked about, seeming for all the world as if he'd only just realized how far in over his head he truly was. He even made a show of trying to flee the circle, only to be shoved back in.

Hoots of laughter and hollers of condemnation followed.

"Stand an' fight, you coward!"

"Nancy-boy Edinbuggerer!"

"Take your beatin' like a man!"

Conall advanced, Lewis retreating in a circular fashion.

At last, Conall lunged with the knife, aiming straight for his opponent's neck.

Finally, thought Weir as he broke into a smile.

He dodged to his right; even as the blade slipped by on the left, he stepped in and jabbed his right elbow into Conall's throat, sending the man into a coughing fit.

He took advantage and in one horizontal, arcing, backhand motion, let his cane slide through his hand so he was grasping the end of it and let the momentum add to the force behind its heavy head as it struck Conall solidly in the temple.

As Lewis had noted before the fight even began, Conall was right-handed. So when the man, staggered by the blow, reflexively raised a hand to his right temple, it left Weir a perfect, knife-free opening.

Quick as a whip, he used the walking stick to sweep Conall's feet out from under him.

The gang leader landed on his back, the sheer surprise of it freeing the blade from his grip.

Not wasting a second, Lewis leaped atop him, all the force of the jump concentrated in his feet as he landed on Conall's solar plexus, only to spring off, using the lout as a launching pad.

Weir landed in a crouch, next to the fallen knife. Grasping it in his left hand, he rose and used the inverted cane in his right to strike one last blow...this time, to Conall's face. There came a sickening crunch of bone.

"And stay down, you blighter."

He breathed a satisfied sigh...then looked to the circle.

"Who's next?"

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Tairais  Jekyll1886 • 2 years ago

At some point during the fight, he'd slipped into Lewis' shadow to both watch the man better and to be ready for his chance to leap into the fray. When Conall fell, both Charricthran and the rest of the assembled thugs were speechless. The difference was, however, that whereas the latter were struck dumb out of a mixture of horror and rage, Charricthran was silenced by a quiet, rapturous awe, the likes of which was normally reserved for the grandiose artworks of Botticelli or Michelangelo.

"Devastating." Torke's heart (his heart, technically, not really) hummed in agreement.

Unfortunately for him, his admiration was cut short by the chucklef*ck Lewis'd turned his back on to address the majority of the circle/pentagon. Said chucklef*ck had pulled a knife and had not only regained his senses before any of his peers (a survivor, certainly), but had circled around behind Lewis with the very clear intent to stab him in the back and end their fun before it truly began (perhaps not, then).

"Well," He thought, "That's rude. Allow me to fix that. Permanently."

Charricthran allowed his form to bleed to the surface of Lewis's shadow and flashed a positively wicked grin, gaping holes in the shadow where his teeth should be. As his arms snaked out to curl around the poor idiot's neck, he promptly froze, allowing Charricthran to add,

"'Scuse me, kid, but if anyone's gonna hypothetically stab this guy in the back, which we're not, it's gonna be me, and it's gonna be more dramatic than in the back alley of some arse end of town. But since we're not, like I said..." He trailed off with a chuckle.

His grin grew wider, impossibly so, and his voice and shadow grew darker. "I'm.. ah, gonna have tae break your neck instead!"

And with that, he did just that.

Taloned hands jerked the thugs head up and to the left, the symphonic sound of bone slipping and breaking filling the air. No sooner was the necessary movement done than he'd slipped his hands back into darkness and stepped mutely into the shadow of the thug opposite Lewis.

His gaping grin was still plastered on his face as he rose to the surface, flickering at the edges where it wanted to split and devour.

Not yet, perhaps not this time, but gods, he was living off the stench of death in the air.

He'd wait until all Hell broke loose before he jumped in again.

Lightning sparked across his throat and into his maw, spurred on by the liquid excitement coursing through his veins. This, however, was not to be the encore to what happened at Hyde Park.

This was the time for darkness, dripping from fang and claw.

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Jekyll1886  Tairais • 2 years ago • edited

Well, shite, that throws off my plan a hair, thought Weir as he felt Charricthran rise from his shadow.

Ah, Hell... he relented, he's entitled to his bit o' fun, too.

Charricthran spoke. Lewis pretended to be as startled as any man there as he partially turned toward the living shadow.

And his intentions are good, too, he concluded. Cannae fault him.

He noted the supreme distraction of rest of Conall's crew.

May as well take advantage!

With Conall's knife, blade down, in his left hand, he swept in and made a quick slash across the throat of the thug nearest him, then plunged the blade into the man's chest for good measure.

Weir needn't have worried. Jugular vein, carotid artery, heart...all were hit.

He heard a familiar sound behind him, the telltale CRACK of a breaking neck, just as he pulled the knife out.

Heh. Bit o' fun, indeed...

For two of the remaining toughs, their shock and horror gave way to rage and a thirst for vengeance; blades drawn, they charged at Charricthran and Lewis.

The third, however, turned and bolted for the yard's only exit.

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Tairais  Jekyll1886 • 2 years ago • edited

(( Heads up, we've got quite a bit in the way of gruesome content ahead, and I went into a bit of detail. ))

Charricthran noticed the man fleeing the scene the same time he noticed the knife arcing towards his throat. While it wouldn't really do anything deadly per say, it would still hurt a helluva lot to be stabbed. And while normally he'd respect anyone who had the sense to run away from a fight where they were clearly outmatched...

He was hungry. Hunger did not discriminate. It was not merciful. It bled and bled and coated all things it could reach.

He hungered for violence in the mist, and he would have it.

Time shifted and time slowed in a way only those with the predisposition towards supernatural or preternatural speed and agility could hope to understand. All things blurred at the edges. Tar and plasma dripped from his eyes, his hollow eyes and gaping mouth, things that had not been there before and still weren't quite there anyways.

It coated everything- his hands, his lips, his chin- it coated nothing. It glitched and twitched and shuddered in and out of existence, pressed between two worlds, humming under his skin.

And as the silver flash of a blade in the night arced towards his throat, he flicked out a hand and twisted. He listened to the lurching sound of a shoulder being dislocated and a wrist crushed under his grip all in one movement. He listened closer still to the sickening rip and squelching tear of flesh, wrenched from joint and bone and tissue.

He listened to the pop of the nameless thug's eye and the blood that bubbled around it as he stabbed the man in the eye with his own knife, arm still attached, and he listened to the scrape of steel against bone as he twisted and jerked the knife upwards, through the skull, through the brain. He watched as sclera and gray matter oozed onto his hand slightly, and he relished the flavor of it all, of fear and agony and so many energies and racing, jittering things that could not and would not be put into words.

He savored the taste of the squishing ring that painted the air next to the screams that hadn't finished yet on the back of his tongue and wondered if he could ever find a way to recreate these tastes without going out into the world. He rather liked the way this death tasted- earthy, like mushrooms and rotting logs. Bitter, like regret and the unfortunate realization of a mistake far too late. Sharp, like the blade of the knife poking through the roof of the man's skull like an angry steel tooth.

And when all that was done in less than twenty seconds, he adored the flip of the knife in his hand as he tested its weight, and he eyed the retreating tough with amusement as he made it towards the end of the exit, very nearly into the dredges of civilization once more.

He pinched the blade in his hand and he let the blade sing to him as it flew from it, whispering and laughing as it tumbled end over end to bury itself in the back of the poor, retreating soul's neck. He laughed with it, a dark thing made of smoke and blood and mercy scattered for the birds.

His foes dealt with, he resumed his study of (devastating) Lewis, leaning against the wall with a face that no longer bled and oozed from a triplet of slashes in his face and the blood of three more men on his hands, delivered with inhuman, breathtaking brutality.

Still human. Only technically. He wondered how much longer that'd be true.

He didn't particularly care on nights like these.

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Tairais • 2 years ago

(( Shoot HenryRoseQuartz I can't tag Dr. de Lezo since disqus apparently hates me, but he has a patient if he's willing! ))

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