Fiends lit by Moonlight

In honor of Halloween being literally hours away for me and having recently finished his new game, here's a Hellboy Starter Call.

Give this post a Like for a starter of varying length.

With that, after all, he could've just done it the second he'd rounded the stairs and left without saying a word. Not that he couldn't change his mind, with the way he was looking at her like every move was something to be studied.

"Well, not the kind of key I was talking about." She admitted, frowning as her gaze followed his to the chain. If they had to, she supposed, he could go get it and cut her out...

"Well, the alternatives are either I stay here, or you kill me; you can't exactly blame me for thinking being a bit uncomfortable is a necessary sacrifice. I am getting out of here."

It came with more of that cold from his initial assessment of her. The implication that she wasn't leaving doing more than just upsetting her, after all, with the mere implication that she wasn't going to be leaving because it would be 'inconvenient' for her to do so in these conditions.

Though it's once more as gone as quickly as it had returned, as volatile as her personality seemed to be under scrutiny.

He leaned a shoulder against the wall, golden eyes narrowing as he stared down at her for a moment, brow furrowing in thought. Was it a mask? Is this a trap? Was the 'story' he'd fallen into some obscure variant on a tiyanak folktale? Some silly morality test? What?

Possibilities raced through his mind, even as she argued on why he'd be better off letting her go as if she hadn't all but threatened him with her tone just moments earlier. Not that he was worried, not yet. Even if he couldn't shake the feeling that something wanted him to be.

No, he's just thinking, taking a long inhale of the inhale of his cigar as he stared in silence... letting smoke seep out in an exhale.

"Whelp." He answered, more of a grunt than a word, as he stood himself up straight, crushing the remaining bit of his cigar in his hand and tossing it aside. "Can't say I understand the reason to rush, but I ain't one t' go and make anybody else's choices for em'.

Curl up and cover your ears, your highness."

The cambion said, rearing his stone right hand to the side- giving the princess just enough time to do as he instructed before it'd come swinging at the base of the chain like a wrecking ball. Fully intent on shattering the metal, outright.

Her retreat with the cigarette was faster, though, glancing to him somewhat worriedly before relaxing when she wasn't hurt for the action. Trying to replicate how he held the cigar earlier as cigarette came between fingers like she actually knew how to even use it.

"Ah, um, thank.. you?"

The lighter does, naturally, make her tense for a moment, before moving to let the flame light the cigarette. She looked at the lit cigarette for a moment, as if wondering how one used it. Someone that looked like she did surely wouldn't, after all, but she does her best impression of what someone that doesn't properly know how would do it.

A brief drag, pausing, and letting out an exhale that ends with a bit of a cough at the end.

"Sorry, sorry. That.. did help a little, though, thank you." Voice came more centered now, at least, an echo of the more calculated one from before. No longer quite as shaky and scared as moments before, but nowhere the ice queen she had been at his entrance.

There's several moments where she just sat there again, looking down at her hands and the heavy shackle that rested on one arm. She wasn't sure what to say now, of course, as she'd been admittedly taken quite off-guard by not remembering who had been the one to put her down here. She just knew that someone had, surely, because people don't just... appear shackled to walls in basements, after all.

The eventually accepted act of kindness did at least seem to help to ease the tension in the room, even if he couldn't shake the thought that the woman he'd met when he walked in wouldn't have coughed.

Nonetheless, he did his best to focus on the her in the here & now, as the worrisome little lady locked in a dingy basement.

"There was nothin' up there but a knife. Meant for you, I'd imagine." He said, already looking to the chain in question as he spoke. It wasn't that impressive of a thing, not for him, at the very least. He could shatter the aging metal like glass, he was sure.

Her entire train of thought came crashing off the rails when he finally spoke, though, and asked who 'they' even were. So.. nobody had sent him here? That had to have been the case, though, who would stumble upon her by complete accident? Surely, they...

She hesitated, now.

Some of that cold and harsh visage frayed at the edges, as confusion took it's place. Gaze shifted from him to some of the many nondescript stones in this nigh-featureless basement; scanning along them as if they held the answer. Who were 'they'? She... surely, she should know who had locked her down here, shouldn't she?

"I can't recall. I've been down here so long, I simply must have... forgotten."

Was it her wicked stepmother? It didn't sound wrong, anyways...

"Maybe... maybe that is it? It's hard to say. I can't remember the last time I've seen another person, let alone spoken to anyone"

As she continued speaking, he could swear it sounded like even her voice had changed, softened and bewildered as she struggled to provide him an answer through her apparent lack of information.

The cambion didn't say anything as she sat there getting lost in her thoughts, he just watched on and listened... taking a long drag of his cigar as he did, doing some much quieter thinking of his own.

Eventually, he dug his smaller hand into one of his jacket pockets, rustling for a moment before pulling out a pack of cigarettes. Flipping it open with his thumb, and offering it out to her.

"Here, you can take one if ya want." He said, speaking around his own larger cigar in-between his lips. "They always help calm my nerves." The offer, if accepted, would be followed by him once again flicking his light and holding it out to light it for her.

Truth be told, he was thinking less about who the princess was or why she was here after that shift than he'd been when he'd walked in... putting whatever tragic backstory she had aside, for this moment, just so he could focus on the now.

A man, she thought, looking at him. Face as cold and indifferent as her voice made her out to be. Eyes scanning over him more out of cautious curiosity than shock. No, the other being some form of... non-human hadn't even phased the Princess in the slightest. Gaze stops where many expect it to linger, of course, at the hulking hand. A weapon? Potentially.

Her gaze flicks back up, stopping briefly again on what might also be a weapon. The hilt of some sort of firearm, perhaps? There was a trigger, it seemed, yes. So was he here to...?

"I thought they'd forgotten about me down here by now; to what do I owe the pleasure, then?"

He'd read a great many Germanic folktale, but even the earliest versions of Rapunzel or Sleeping Beauty did not see their royalty locked away in the meager basement of a featureless cabin.

He was able to put aside his confusion at the lack of a grand tower for the moment, however, as he heard her speak... while his burning yellow orbs betrayed little as he listened, but the raising of a brow at her response certainly did; an inquisitive look crossing his features.

Cigar simmering in silence for a moment, before it was slipped away by two fingers of his much less dangerous-looking hand.

"That door's just as loud as you think it is, you know."

It's a curt and cold response, of course, but she can't imagine many other reasons someone would come down here; save, of course, for a nefarious purpose. It's to be expected, after all, as she's been down here so long. Surely whoever had put her down here had left to get someone to do what they couldn't and, now, they were here to do said job. Took them long enough, she'd been down here... however long, it was hard to say.

She shouldn't be here. She knew that much. Something about this place didn't sit right with her and she wanted out. That could wait, though, someone was surely here and wanted something from her. What, was the question.

'Somewhere else' being, apparently, in a cold dark forest. Only thing there to meet him being a lonesome cabin on a hill.

At first he thought he'd somehow ended up back in the material version of Europe, but the radio silence on Altman's end confirmed he must've still ended up somewhere in the Wyrd... ... or, at least, somewhere like it.

He was half-expecting to find wolf wearing the skin of a grandmother lying in bed on the inside, but no- there was nothing but a dagger, now resting in his jacket's pocket, and door leading to a basement.

The apparent inhabitant of which was quick to catch onto his presence as soon as he'd bumped the heavy wooden thing open with his shoulder, the voice of a woman ringing up the short stairway, icy and brash... the first response, of course, being the flick of a lighter.

"Don't have t' tell me twice." The words came out casually as he lit the cigar between his teeth, very nonchalant about the rude welcoming. Soon enough, heavy footsteps followed, stairs groaning under his weight as he did as requested... smoking making it down first.