- Skull Squid - Always Squeming (squid scheming~)

He is awoken by familiar screams.  

Not the screams of familiar voices, rather the recent familiarity with what caustic chorus sounds when sleeping souls are suddenly woken by ambush. Though unfamiliar is the join-in of thunderous cannonade, the lightning strike of blinding blasts roaring in its tango.  The storm is veritably right overhead— soaring the night skies as ravenous hawks on glowing white wings.  At every side there is fire and bloodshed, the bellowing of titans under attack an overstimulation to startled senses, the roars of war and wails of anguish spilling blood in colours that should not mix.  

The Hound is made to scramble as self-righteous fire nearly rends his existence barely a bloodstain on churned earth. The clashing of nearby blades bars one direction of escape, and more blood-curdling shrieks far too close for comfort pierce the air down another.  A new false sun comes crashing from above and he has no other choice; charge forward, no matter if forward leads out of the troubled encampment or deeper within.  His eyes sting from the acrid air, begging to close and wash out poison's smoke— but if he is to survive he must remain alert to his surroundings. He curses himself for his weakness; nothing but a frightened rat, powerless to stand his ground and force this invading beast away.  Live another day, that's all that matters. Survive yet one more night.  

Alas his watered vision fails him just that second long enough to trip his footing, somehow the blazing corpse not enough a warning to its outstretched arm in his path.  The dirt tastes rotten in his fears, too muddied by blood to get a good grip of any kind. The Hound writhes as a pathetic worm in its belonging muck, no gods he was taught to pray to worth what might be his last licks of breath— to scorn and weep, to accuse the crime of his very birth… to plead for just one more goddamn chance.  But someone does answer his un-uttered cries, someone who has answered before. 

Death. He truly is a master of his craft.

He plucks winged soldiers from the air as if they hung on puppet strings, cutting loose their tethers to life with about the same regard as carving away weeds.  He moves fast with the savagery of a pure force of nature;  a dark dancer to the songs of screams.  Only bloodshed would be his ovation, the Universe itself seemingly powerless to forbid he breathe another day.  Despite the sucking mire of the mud underfoot, the sickening crunch of skull under his boot finds no muffle from the Hound's pounding ears, a clanging church bell herald to yet another funeral— yet hardly does Death seem to notice. The lesser believes himself next to face such demise—another bug ground up under heel, not even worthy enough to stain his soles—when those ember stars somehow find him; perhaps the Nephilim simply have a nose for downed prey.  Instead, Death grabs a fistful of the Hound's tunic and wrenches him from the earth, forcing him back to his feet as if it'd be a sin to lay down and die.

"Make yourself useful and fight back!"  There's no telling how the command of his rugged tone rings so clear and with such bite, drowning out the chaos.

"I don’t have a weapon!"  Somehow the Hound doesn't stammer before his overseer, though does flinch hard at another blast some very short distance behind them both.  The Nephilim appears about to chew his lesser out when a teal flash shoots into the heavy amulet—fiercely aglow—chained at his neck, the wisp's rush to ornamental sanctuary carrying shrilling wails of damned children.  His teeth grit hard in the roar he tries to chew instead, what fingers he could spare flying to his belt in the freeing of an ugly blade.

"Now go!"  The grating order is barked before the flat of dagger's blade even presses to the Hound's chest, the force behind Death's push nearly enough to send the lesser back into the mud.  No time for a word more, Death is already returned to the slaughter; dazed, the Hound only stands and stares until a shriek snaps awake his fragile senses.  Join the fray, that's the order the Hound follows against instinct to continue fleeing, rounding another tent to catch the last moments of the opposition pulling its polearm from fresh corpse's chest. Their back is turned to him and, by a compulsion he doesn't understand, he finds himself lunging forward and onto the armour of that combat's victor— though hesitates to plunge the dagger that second it takes for a massive feathered wing to knock him winded. The blade caught a bite within the limb, but it figures that one moment he dared think himself capable lands him below the stained spear's point. He did try, fool to believe he could stand a chance. His throat feels so thin compared to that blade; the moment it will press in to exact the toll of his boldness might as well sever his head outright. Though he waits for that moment to come be his last, instead the assailant gets a good look at him and appears to hesitate as well.

"You are of the sullied…" The voice of a woman accuses down at him, yet he's given no chance to attempt a reply; a second winged-warrior swoops down to the earshot of the first. Words are exchanged in a tongue the Hound cannot understand, but where the new warrior sneers in regards to him—visible in the resplendence of the woman's wings—she only bares a look of pity onto his form. Pity?

Before there can be any motive or intentions discerned, her spear adopts a lightning blue and rends the Hound's flesh apart, not an inch higher than where the seams had barely just healed above his elbow. He howls at the amputation, so much more sudden than the original cut— immediately subjected to however many volts make sizzle the wet flesh. In midst of his pain, the shadow of a small frame escapes the scene where next the spear might have shed blood; a child bought the chance to flee. It's through eyes hazed in tears and smokedust he watches the fires die in their distance, carried away as if a consciousness on its way to dream.

The glare of two distant ember stars promise naught but nightmares…

—

Whether truly a state of sleep or merely the vacant stare of shellshock, it ends violently in the upheaval of his stomach. It took air untainted to remind his lungs how to properly breathe, shifting gears into sputters and chokes to sift out the ashes in hackfuls of bile. A hand on his shoulder reels him backwards, a startled animal to the presence of the very same being which pulled him of the carnage.

"Easy, small one," silvery voice of a warrior's attempt to soothe parts the winged-one's lips. Despite his flinch she doesn't jump back or take to low crouch, proud posture holding her as upright and unyielding as a temple's stalwart guard. She holds her free hand open and facing him, but his eyes remain on the one still wielding her spear.

"The Light has found and freed you, as I am vessel through which is speaks. You needn't fear any longer."

When one stands small before an armoured vision of everything one is not, even the scuffs and bloodsmears make part of perfection… despite the odd droop of one wing. A vision of strength in conviction and spirit, and from his previous vantage at the very point of that spear her wield of it must deliver as swift a judgment as it stills for her mercy. He truly wishes he had more to his defense than a dagger in one hand, and a cauterized stump for the other.

"I am Ithuriel, of the Light's Shield; third division under her lordship Aurorus." Her open palm closes over her chest, the strike-sound of carved gauntlet to breastplate nearly flinching him a full pace back. To this, her demeanour seems to change— from below the crest of her helm she's seen to dawn a slight puzzle, then the vanish of marble stoicism for instead a soft smile.

"Might I know your name? What you are called?"

Twice he'd been asked his name, and twice now does he hesitate to answer. The pregnant pause begins to show its due, but he does find an answer he can stomach.

"…Hound." The first he'd spoken in a space where he hears himself think, and—though the sound is pulled from a hoarse crag he hates to home—doesn't taste as bitter off his tongue. Despite this unforeseen respite, the warrior's brow knits a sad look to veil her eyes, a look the Hound can't help but find patronizing.

"Small one, you need no longer carry the title forced upon you by those beasts.  What do you wish to be called?"

"Hound is fine." The cobwebs dusted from his voice carry an edge in his insistence, even when only muttered. Ithuriel appears about to protest but holds her tongue, breathing a long sigh instead.

"Very well. Please come with me, unfortunate Hound."

Despite not nearly enough of what needed discussing having been said, Ithuriel turns and leaves it up to him to follow. It takes a considerable few paces for his mind to decide itself. With nowhere better to turn, the Hound walks about a spear's length behind in the woman's shadow, a pale thing upon the dirt cast only by sinking moonlight. Each further tread forward made it impossible to ignore those feathers in soft marble glow declaring her back, nearly tripling her stature over him if she weren't already two to three feet taller. This image of her being pristine and untouchable folds as he remembers having latched to her back in misguided frenzy, that those ruffled feathers are stained in red by his doing. It'd have been a shame if he'd actually killed the woman, given she'd taken him from his captors and now lead the way to…

"Where are you taking me?" His grip tightens unconsciously to the handle of his borrowed—though suppose now stolen—dagger, wishing he had any way of folding his other arm… it still hurt despite not feeling real at all.

"Where you wish to be taken of course; salvation." He'd not been following behind far enough it seems, as the slight turn of her frame and proud puff of her wings brush the wind too close to disturbing the hair over his face.

"By good fortune this realm homes one of our outposts; luckier still the forces of Heaven found you before the sons of Hell's spawn might have tainted you further."

Without warning or consent the woman extends chivalrous hand to bolster the Hound's injury, as if the robbery of his arm would be a trophy in high and mighty wield. A thousand questions spin his head into a nausea; from the origins of her being, discerning her purpose, the exact reason her kind descended the pitched skies with such aggressive assault, why he earned her mercy—

The aching limb is pulled back into his custody, landing his entire focus towards perhaps the most trivial yet gnawing question of them all;

"What was wrong with it?"

His amputator breathes as if obvious, unconscious and unsubtle in the wipe of her gauntlet to the cloth draping her hips.

"The sickness is cleansed of you, little Hound. I'll not terrify your mind with tales told of what their twisted intentions would strive to make you. Their desecration of life and flesh will cease with their end; trespass of Heaven's expanse is all but fated for their extinction!"

"So… Heaven's fight is with the Nephilim?"

Her lilt felt mocking, the throw backward of her head shattering another face of her righteous portrayal.

"Of course not! So small a parasite on the back of the greater conflict. Heaven's war is with the Hells, child— not just what filth they might spawn. I mean this in no offense, but there'd have been no saving you from the claws of a proper Demon."

"But they—"

"They are scavengers and thieves yes, fed by blood and meat and whatever else they might rob of the land. We know, child, and it will end when the Light wills it so. I assure you."

His agitation might have been starting to show, nothing more bitter on the surface of his skin than the trap of her hand to his shoulder as her words do not sit well. His people once told folktale of the Winged Warriors in Heaven, the fabled guides and protectors to the ones most lost. He heard his people cry for them when their village was first ransacked, then again when the glow of holy wings ambushed at nightfall. Cries that silenced fast in the cannonade that left him scrambling.

Equally were there tales of the horrid beasts of Hell, and not more needed be said than the recall of what assaulted him within inch of success in the Nephilim camp… though with it came the recall of what did save him.

"Please be still, our most capable healers will return your former glory as you were meant to be, according to the Creator's design. I understand your fears, but you'll never need accept injustice again under Heaven's guidance."

The Hound's well of thought drowns in the deluge of a painful static, all too aware of the virgin metal stained in dark that brushes of its fingers at his forehead, while he can't even scream for it to stop.

"It pains my heart to wonder what you endured… why a creature so beautiful wouldn’t fight tooth and nail against those abominations’ defacement," the veil of hair he'd neglected to care for long before imprisonment is peeled away from his face— a touch meant to be soft, instead the scrape of coarse stone to raw nerves as muddy strands came tucked behind his ears. In her sorrowful eyes the Hound recalls his own mother…

"Or hide herself."

His heart falls in the recesses of his stomach. An acid taste builds in back of his throat so potent it might eat through his skin and bones if he doesn't soon spit, and she is none the wiser as her hand gives last caress to his scarred cheek. She must think him built of delicate porcelain, easily broken, in need of some assurance he could cling his hopes to.

"Worry not; though now the battle quiets from the worst of the cull, by daybreak another phalanx will come to finish—"

Somehow, the Hound lunges just as she finishes turning her back. Feral wrestling of peril-wild mouse clinging in the saddle-space between wings of a swan; the blade is driven deep where her wing already hosted injury, completely forbidding her advantage of flight. Missing an arm makes it difficult to hold on as he forces his weapon from her flesh, but now he lacks the hesitation that spared her the first time.

The taste of ivory hair flosses and tangles in vermin teeth just to keep the reins, the iron lock of small legs able to anchor behind details of her armor. In this position, despite the beating of wings so strong they would've knocked him off his feet standing, the blade's horrible edge finds purchase and his arm begins to saw. The edges of the world do not blur or darken, the ringing in his ears drowns out nothing. Every thought runs screeching through his skull but he thinks none of them, whatever gargled sin the swan would try for continues to be gutted from her throat. Only under the resistance of her spine does he notice his breath had not slowed, while hers wasn't even a crawl. Nerves on highest alert somehow too numb for the earthquake impact of her knees to the dirt, the desperate clawing on his arm for his carving to yield finally succumbing with the rattle of dead metal. She surrenders—her life and all completely—yet the Hound's teeth don't relinquish.

The ringing finally fades in like careful hands coming to rest on his shoulders, a touch he wants no part of. His grip only steels as fever runs through his options; he'd need proof, wouldn't he? There's no returning empty handed. There's no going anywhere at the moment, he's barely aware enough to catch himself finally sawing through the bone before the blade might just accidentally cut into his own neck.

Hunched over like the mad dog he truly is, it's an ache to sever his grip around the weapon even if only by a few fingers, just to pull the hair from his mouth. He expects to see horror as her last expression, perhaps utter curse and contempt for his betrayal. Instead there is nothing in her lifeless eyes, save the silencing of her lie. In that silence he finds a deep, deep apathy, all while the warm mud turns cold in its soak of his knees.

The silence shatters from a piercing whistle. The Hound's gaze is heavy to land on its source, though the silhouette is unmistakable. He can't bear to rise let alone try to run, to preserve his freedom— not that it would have mattered, he is upon the Hound in mere moments. A shadow darker than the rest.

Get up.

"If I call, you heel."

"You followed me." The Hound croaks softly, more a mutter of acknowledgment than any attempt at conversation. His thoughts feel too loud to keep in his head.

"Only to retrieve a stolen weapon." Death allows for nothing to escape his notice, nor allows the illusion that something just might.

Get up!

The Hound can't help the rough scoff that claws up his throat. All this fuss over a knife? It aches still to pry it from his palm, but it spins in his hold to offer up handle-first. The air hangs stale between the Nephilim and his lesser, nearly a moment so long the Hound might wonder if he'd imagined the entire exchange. But the offer is accepted, Death giving a mysterious chuckle as he slowly wipes away the blood.

"Here I assumed I'd drag back a corpse, not find another in two pieces." The way the blade drags against fabric is nails to a chalkboard in air so empty of sound.

"Pity."

"You think I ran?" The Hound's breathing shallows, eyes affixed to the severed head in his lap and her dead eyes reflecting back into his very soul—

"It wasn't my choice."

"One dead Angel will do little to sway my mind."

"More are coming." That, at last, buys him something of Death's interest, much like it finally gets his body to obey him and stand up.

"Before dawn. She said there's an outpost."

"Speak."

"Before dawn, that's all I know."

Death's breath catches in a hiss as his eyes shoot a curse upon the corpse. He feels an anger threaten sparks in his chest, right under the thrum of his glowing amulet. Retribution may yet be possible… just not through this one. Rather than kneel, Death positions his boot under the fallen Angel's spear and kicks it up, one smooth motion for him to catch while in air.

"Will you follow, or must I take you?" His words come out an ice cold, but it's as sincere a choice as he can offer. The Hound's arm hangs at his side in the carry of Ithuriel's head by fistful of her hair, his own head lowered in his obedient forward steps.

He must rely on his overseer to guide most of the way back, until the smell of death and burning flesh welcomes them back to the battleground once host to the race's camp. A tent or two still burn a bright beacon to reflect in glassy eyes strewn all around; cattle, captives, the typical casualties that came with being too slow or stupid to properly flee. What's most jarring about the scene are the children— rather, the amount. Where lay dead a felled adult body—Angel or Nephilim—near it lay also the body of a child… infants, toddlers, barely newborns… The worst of the cull.

Even the pre-adolescent were chased and cut down, anything that yet resembled in strength or size the bulk of the Horde the Hound witnesses parse through the wreckage, cradling these corpses to their chests in various shows of wavering stoicism and silent heartbreak. It feels strange to watch titans on their knees, raking the dirt with their bare hands.

Death relays to Absalom the news of an eminent second attack, who then barks loud for any of their brothers and sisters still despondent over such devastating loss to take arms and ready themselves— if not to protect the young still alive, then to treat Heaven's bastards with every ounce of pain and rage it would take to avenge the dead. It's difficult for the Hound to latch onto the specifics of the First's call to action, only that it succeeds in reigniting wrathful fires in many warriors still kneeling, despite clutching his own small corpse as well. The Hound can't help fixate on that body instead, the body of a young boy he was certain he'd bought the time to flee earlier… how his eyes were now as dull as those in the Angel's head.

"What can I do?" The words fall out for Death to catch, earning him a rather long and questioning look. You'd think the Hound to have sprouted a second head, and yet—

"Can you use a spear?"

"I can make due." The Hound, standing just a bit straighter as he offers up the Angel's head in exchange, finds surprise when he is intimately dwarfed by his overseer.

"Bringing her back alive would've earned more favour with the rest—"

Death's sudden grab for the amputated stump instead makes the Hound snarl, only for the sound to silence as he sees the Nephilim carrying his missing limb.

"—But not with me."

As easily as it sliced through bone before, that damnable dagger carves fresh bleeds in the stump's cauterization, an inescapable torment as the Hound can't simply slip away from Death hold. A mutter like black ichor oozes from the carver's lips and blood finds blood like mending chainlinks; in the recited final verse the Hound watches a thread of enchanted teal snake up from the Angel's head and stitch his arm back in place. Most incredible of all, it doesn't feel like it was ever missing.

He marvels through narrow eyes and clenched jaw; flesh of a flayed deep red and speckled with obsidian scales so dark no light seemed able to reflect, talons twice the length of his other hand's fingers punctuating the appendage in dangerous appeal.  True, it certainly is no arm native to him, but as the pain subsides to only a focused sting he feels strangely whole once more. The blade that made it all possible returns to its sheathe in near too smooth a motion, dismissed without further consideration.

"That will hold for now. Don't lose it again."

The mended man nearly forgets to catch the spear as it's tossed his way. Immediately he is given a test of his connection with the limb—the weapon heavier than expected—but both hands secure along the polearm's body and assures both the Hound and Death they'll remain steady in the conflict ahead. Death readies himself as well, leaving his lesser final instruction to not lose track of the head— that there will be purpose for it later.

"Do not disappoint me."

—

How four small words can so loudly resound when in middle of a slaughter would be worth study. How no matter the manner nor amount of times he lost his footing, the Hound grit his bared teeth and somehow made recovery by the repeating mental loop of those words alone. He never crossed arms directly with the enemies taken to ground—whether landing or by fall—but he certainly made short work of their lives wherever possible, allowing for those he fought with—bigger, braver, bolder—to keep their focus towards the skies. An Angel's spear is truly an unwieldy thing for his size, better used as anchor or crutch while he gored using his own claws instead. It felt… powerful, to simply grip around the neckflesh of the fallen and pull from it their lives, fates ensured with each snip and shear of interrupted throatcords. Even more powerful was to see himself on the winning side, how the eruptions of bellowing all around him began to outnumber the glowing wings that'd swoop from above. And when he could see more and more the colour crimson on himself and the brutes in his allegiance, their bodies more visible than mere passing shadows to a backdrop of fire and midnight, there burned such triumph in his soul he near forgot to feel afraid. He survived. He lived. The Hound got his second chance and by the gods, he fucking earned it!

Then came the fruits of the night's labor.

Split stomachs and gored chests no longer obscured by dead of night, corpses whole and in pieces to be seen as offering under the prophetic glow of dawn. It's a sight just like Ithuriel said it would be, but with the wrong side basking as victors in the cold sun— whatever much of it can cast through the smoke of funeral pyres and belongings put to torch. All the Angels had to their advantage, it seems, was the ability to ambush. With it stripped, the Nephilim were upon them with total, unforgiving brutality.

One point in favour of the Nephilim, the Hound makes mental tally; they had been a touch more discriminate in the defeat of their enemy, even making an effort to take prisoners. A point which falls hollow as the Angels held forcibly knelt are stripped of their armors, each one revealing to be a woman.

"You're all vile! Beasts of no honour!" The boldest dares spit, a fiery glower spawned to match her spirit. "If you've but a shred of decency to redeem your hides, you'd cease this parading and deliver us a warrior's death!"

The Hound can't fully choke down a bitter scoff, heard by him alone.

Honour, was it?  Was it honourable to attack in the dead of night, to slaughter those caught in slumber, unnarmed and unaware? To then allow them a short reprieve, that they might be caught off guard again as they bury their dead?

By the way a meteoric fist cracks across her jaw the sentiment is one universally shared, but the Hound watches in small surprise as Absalom himself barks a harsh word and lands his hand to the tremoring brother's shoulder, oddly gentle in his guide aside to take his place before the snarling bitch.

"Vile?" The giant has a dangerous laugh to him, something the Hound—even from a distance away—feels bristle the hair on the back of his neck.

"An angel accuses us of being vile, yet you have shown you know its meaning intimately."

Absalom throws a wide gesture to the destruction they all stand in, his voice booming so none present would miss a word.

"My brothers drink from puddles while yours hoard the falls— and call us filth for it. Both Heaven and Hell race to conquer, and dub us mongrels for scouring the little left to seize. Your "honour" rapes us of the little we possess and calls us beasts for mere act of living! All Creation seeks survival but so long as it falls outside your Creator's holy view, ours is a fate of slaughter while yours is meant to carry out the execution!"

With the thrust of his axe towards the sky, the horde roars in unison. Their outrage, their triumph, how they stand tall and unbroken before what remains of this latest trial's opposition. Even Death brandishes high a crimsoned half of his pair-weapon; the amulet chained to him adopts a brighter glow, as if something held within wishes to join the uproar.

"So whenever you think of one of us, of all of us, of me, as being vile—" the Hound's eyes go wide at the very first time he's ever seen a titan kneel before the living, just so he might pick up the Angel's chin as if inspecting a bruised apple,

"—know that you're looking in a mirror."

It becomes harder to watch the scene and its unfolding as shoving body push closer in their circle of the survivors, but there'd be no way to miss how that stubborn warrior pulled back her lips and spat.

"Unhand me."

As if the realm's yet had its fill, more Angel blood stains the earth by the axe's drop over her wrists— the sever of her hands into yet more useless meat birthing her howl over disjointed laughter.

"That is the last I ever grant an Angel's request!" True nature of his laughter reveals in its twisting to a snarl, little regard at all given to the crippled dove as he kicks her on her back. Absalom leans only to take up the hands he's cut before addressing his kin.

"Now brothers! Pick your favourite haloed whore and make her feel at home. We take them alive!"

Hatred makes for an ugly sheen over the ones licking their lips; whatever notion of perfection or pride Heaven bestowed its people would be marred again and again in horrid colours and broken spirits. The ones which still hold their heads highest will feel their wings torn straight from their backs, then kicked onto their stomachs, humbled and humiliated before their peers. Those with feathers left to pluck will feel the bones break as many times as they dare try to heal, regardless that the first time is all it'd take to never rule the skies again. Vengeance will be reenacted as many times as their wombs can force out replacement heirs to the ones they'd slaughtered— children born and bred of monstrosity.

The Hound dares believe he'd done Ithuriel—whose head he is made to carry again as Death readies her own spear as the display pike—a kindness after all.

—

"They won't be enough." Drained of whatever cold confidence he paraded earlier, Absalom takes his frustrations out on the worktable by slamming down his fist. Despite the wood shuddering under the First's might—tremors felt against the flat of Death's resting palms—the Second only moves to lightly drum his fingers.

"We could have spared every winged whore that came, it would not have mattered. Even if all are seeded this very night, it's the time we've truly been robbed of."

The larger of the two Nephilim all but barely contains himself from hurling out the entire table, though it's a miracle enough the structure still stands given the supports are now mostly charcoal.

"Perhaps, then, some of the recent captures—"

"Would snap in half under even our gentler kin. If not, they would rupture before viable term. You've seen them, Absalom— I've assessed them. With their fragilities, we can only spare the few who'll perish the travel anyhow. They serve for our due to Hell and nothing more."

If the First had thoughts to protest he's wiser than to voice them. Even with their Mother's sponsor, the Lords of Hell are hardly a power worth crossing— like how taking an Angelic outpost head-on would be embracing annihilation.

A hiss interrupts Absalom's pacing. The sudden pain shot through the Hound's nerves affixes the Nephilims' gaze like pointed spears to the tent's rear opening, where he feigns as if only now walking in on their conversation. The lesser awaits for wrath to literally toss him out, yet it seems his deception is bought well enough… just not enough to avoid being perceived.

"…Your latest toy doesn't break easy."

It's cruel of fate to remind them the activities taking part not all that far outside, all in the drown of a pleading voice under vulgar shouts. It takes everything in the Hound's power to suppress the tremble creeping up his breath.

"No, he does not."

In Death's thrown glare the Hound believed his fate finally sealed; instead, Death speaks firmly against his brother's thin-veiled insinuation. Before the lesser might break free of frozen stupor, Death speaks of other things— less cold, more mechanical. Practical, edged in serious concern.

"We have neither the time nor resources for more than what we currently have. It has to be enough."

"We must make it enough, brother. There is no other way about this." Having no other solutions to offer, the First takes his axe off its lean against the table and takes a stomping leave— not before throwing somber decision over his shoulder.

"Speak with Mother when next you have the chance."

The tensions do not die with Absalom's departure, his last words leaving instead a pin-drop silence where Death long holds in his own breath. The Hound feels any slight movement would be a transgression, so he merely waits for his overseer to move first. The deep roll of the Nephilim's shoulders could move a mountain.

When at last he turns around, Death sets eyes on his Hound to find him holding up his half-sewn arm; an effort interrupted when the Titans took to the tent for their moment of counsel. He dares feel impressed he hadn't noticed the Hound's presence until he'd made it known.

"The hold gave out," the Hound mistakens silence for expectation, trying to grit through another flower of pain where his nerves are about all keeping the limb grafted to his body. In silence, two fingers beckon him to the table.

"Do you know what you are?" The question comes unexpected though it's asked as casually as discussing the weather, all while sharp eyes of molten metal examine the stitch trail already done. Crude, but he finds no reason to undo the progress. When the Hound holds his silence, he is commanded to answer.

"Does it matter?" He doesn't quite find it as funny as Death does in his throaty chuff. The battles against the Angels took much from him—both of them—and Death will need to recover before any more deep manipulations of things flesh can be enacted through black arcane. Needle and thread will do for now. He watches his charge try to flex his claws in test of frayed connections— how his hair-shaded eyes try to hide a deep fascination for the limb yet cannot easily pry away.

“…I’m to be your latest monster."

The lesser’s eyes at last flick up at his overseer’s cutting inhale.

"You fought well with us," the Nephilim's compliment comes across as mere observation, a nonchalant remark made as he lifts the heavy black-iron chain from around his neck. Before the Hound might question accepting the statement, there comes the catch.

"But not nearly well enough."

"I did the best that I could—" his responding croak is spoken without thought, interrupted in Death's calm wrap of the amulet chain around his thicker wrist.

"Then your best will be made better!"

Without warning, without a moment of consideration, the Hound feels his hair once again touched—then pulled—to force him in Death's wield. No protest can even sound before Death presses his amulet to the uncovered nape of the Hound's neck; at even the barest touch of the artifact to his skin, it's as if a star collapsed right behind his very eyes.

Souls. The essences of every Nephilim slaughtered surround his every sense, fill his every pore, clawing raw his awareness of anything else save the agony searing in his brain stem. He sees through their eyes their exact moments of demise as they are released back to the natural cycle, barking mad for the toll of their lives to be exacted on whatever stole it from them… and more. Hunger for more.

"Every soul of our dead hang above our heads; yours, and mine." By sorcery unknown Death's rattle etches for him a message, heard above every wail of a life cut short, every outcry for vengeance and return. The amulet resounds in him a cacophony now of razor blades; still, Death is heard. The thunder above it all.

"I will wring out every drop of weakness and turn you unfathomable. Where you fail again to lift your carcass from the mud I will tear out your broken bones and push you harder still. You made your choice standing with us, and now your purpose does not end until I find no more use for you."

Though the Hound is in no state to know, both his own hands claw at Death's wrists, only lacking the strength necessary to peel him away. The Nephilim is witness again to a creature in the throes of savagery, the inexplicable will of nature to adapt forcing foreign skins to seal faster—stronger than before—where without the stitchwork trail and discoloration one could be fooled into believing that hellborn limb had always been of the Hound's own make. It is that desperate bid to live he seeks most, that which he calls potential.

The torment most mercifully ends with the pull away of the amulet. It's glow subsides slowly whereas the Hound's arms drop limp at his sides, exhausted by the assault. He hears the discard of the now emptied entrapment upon that table, as well as the drag nearer of something else with a chain.

“We have no need for more monsters, we require weapons.  You—,”  the Hound isn't granted the moment he might shield his neck before there's the icy press of metal encircling his throat.

“—Are a weapon.”