#hawksblooded

Niamh was going to die.

That was what kept going through her head, the small group of undead surrounding her. I am going to die. I am going to die. Repeated over and over in a frantic voice. She didn't call for help, because who would be out there to help her in the middle of the dark, misty woods?

She brandished her dagger, but she knew it wouldn't be enough. She was strong, but not strong enough to fend off five of them. They were too close for the bow on her back to be of any use.

Tears pricked at her eyes and she tried to blink them away.

She was going to die.

She didn't want to die.

"Ah, but we have barely seen much..." The grin widens a bit, with a quick glance over the shoulder. Marylin could sense the haste to leave, even before hearing it.

" Besides, I thought it was a mere rumour... dragons exist only in tales. Right?" she jests oddly relaxed, their situation considered, but with a hushed voice. If not a dragon, then something or someone else may as well take shelter there. Most likely, not too welcoming towards two trespassers. Aside their voices and movements, fortunately, she cannot hear anything far ahead in the darkness.

How easily a mere breath echoes and bounces the hollow caverns they follow deeper, darkness shifting aside as the cold light of her staff spreads on their path.

However, it is not the treasures Marylin is after; not the gold coins and pieces of jewelry and gems coating the path underneath the feline soft steps. Once a measure of a great wealth, now rendered almost worthless. Dragons were collectors she heard, alike to her. Instead of variety of goods, her thoughts are set on a potential stash of an ancient knowledge. " Who says we could not kindly ask for what we need." And by we, she of course refers to herself.

Wasn't it Marylin who suggested this journey.

But she needed someone to aid her on the way there, and potentially, help to keep her safe while they are at it. She cannot lie though, the deeper they go, the more she feels it in her stomach. Perhaps, a small kindle of fear, even. "No glory without some risk taking, I say."

When The Levee Breaks

-- a closed starter with @hawksblooded / @henosiis

Mama, you got to move.

- - -

    The last man standing tries to flee, but his fate is sealed. The whip swings at him from the side, the end unfurling into nine smaller strands that wrap around his body like vines. He screams from the deepest pits of him as the barnacles growing on the cords sink their stone hard beaks into his flesh. He isn't in pain for long.

    William yanks the whip as he opens the massive claw that is his left arm from the elbow down. The spikes lining the inside of the pincer are already dripping red, a gruesome antithesis of his sky blue carapace. He thrusts it forward as the whip rockets back.

    The man's body drops to the stained ground. The head sails somewhere into the piles of dead littered around the village square.

    All is silent save the crackle of something burning and casting a pillar of smoke to the clouds.

    William looses a long, tense breath, a white, Otherworldly mist hissing past his mandibles. That they forced him to Shift doesn't make his terrible mood any better. He was leaving. He was leaving this nothing town and its nothing people not for greener pastures but for steps in the direction of his next destination. Someone must've seen. Seen him. And instead of letting him leave, they raised an alarm. A monster, one who'd supped with them and stayed at the inn last night, was in their midst. They came for him with poleaxe and blade and bow. They could've come for him with an army, it made no difference.

    Now he needs to travel even farther and faster before word of this disaster outpaces him and the entire country bellows for his blood. The only thing going for him is being able to conceal himself as a full human. If he lies low, this might blow over, like hunkering down on the ocean floor as a hurricane rages above.

    William coils the whip up, shuts his eyes, and urges his hearts to desync. No more need for two as one. The strain Shifting puts on his human side is intense. Trekking out of here was already going to be arduous; he isn't looking forward to doing so exhausted.

    When he opens his eyes, a blue, armored half-fae looks back at him in the reflection of a window.

    That's not supposed to happen.

    Adams approaches the glass. No, he's still covered in chitin plates. The elaborate, eternal knots looping on his chest still proclaim him as holy, allegedly. His segmented tail still wags.

    He can't feel his human half at all.

smash or pass // @hawksblooded ;;

"𝑴𝑼𝑹𝑫𝑬𝑹𝑬𝑺𝑺," 𝑺𝑯𝑬 𝑪𝑹𝑶𝑶𝑵𝑬𝑫. "𝑾𝑹𝑬𝑻𝑪𝑯𝑬𝑫 𝑲𝑰𝑳𝑳𝑬𝑹 𝑶𝑭 𝑴𝑰𝑵𝑬. I will break her into her smaller and smaller pieces until her traitorous desires are bared. We have spilled too much blood between us to lie -- and we all know only mortals may obscure the truth thus."

Wasn't it impossibly miserable? The Revenant had herself poised near one of the walls   ( wonderfully blending with the decor and drapery at that )   after failing to procure a seat, gaze ever watchful over the pittering of the drabble nearby. She should have been out  there,  laying waste to what lurks in the darkness and what perpetuates its shadows. If she could scowl, it'd most certainly have been deep upon her features.

       ❝ Absolutely dreary... ❞   Her voice is clear as a bell, simply manifesting into the air between them more than being spoken from painted lips.   ❝ and with no where to go thanks to the  storm  outside. At this point I'd rather rot... ❞

Mead glows like honeyed blood in the hearthlight and pours down his throat with the ease, soothing the aches in his joints. His hand is heavy around the cup, his knuckles pale and scarred, thick like knotted rope.

The question lands like an axe sunk into bogwood. Not sharp, but deep. It is asked with the half-lidded irreverence of one who has never seen their own shadow grow claws.

Farkas, moon-sick brother of the Circle, lifts his head. He does not answer immediately, not because he is thinking, precisely, but rather because he is feeling. The room is close, stuffed with smoke and the scent of wet stone. The fire sputters and, outside, the snow scratches against the window like something trying to get in.

When he speaks, his voice is a low growl, slurred not with stupidity, but with liquor and weight:

“Don’t need regrets.” A pause. He sniffs, nose wrinkling like a beast catching wind of prey or rot. “It’s power. It makes me fast. Strong. Gets the job done.”

He wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand. There is dried blood beneath his blunt fingernails and, in the dim, his eyes glimmer like mercury. Not clever, not cunning. Instead they house something that breathes heavier, deeper, than what lies beneath the skin of man. He does not remember the first transformation, only the after. The split ribs of a sabre cat, the feel of its heart clenched like a fruit in his palm, its blood thick on his tongue.

It is not shame. It has never been shame.

“I like not thinking,” he says at last. Softer now, almost distant. “When it takes me, there are no ‘what ifs’. Just hunger. Just the kill. It’s clean. Simple.”

There is silence now, the kind that collects in crypts and unmade beds. He watches the fire peel itself apart. Then, as though catching the scent of something he hadn’t noticed before, Farkas shifts. He sits forward. Heavy, sudden.

“Why’re you asking? You think I should hate it?”

He snorts, but it isn’t amusement. His voice is rising now, ragged at the edges like a sword notched from overuse.

“You wouldn’t ask Vilkas that. You wouldn’t ask Kodlak.”

Shadows catch on his frame like pelts. The beast is always beneath, pacing, pacing, even when mead makes everything swim and blur at the edges. Or maybe that’s just the question, circling him like horkers around blood on the ice. He doesn’t regret it.

He doesn’t.

His lips pull back from his teeth. Not a smile.

"Got three reasons. Reckon one'll do ya."

Soot doesn't so much as shift beneath the weight of her stare, staring back with scarcely a blink even as he hails down a serving girl for his own cup of ale. "Reckon ya already noticed th'weather?" He gestures up to the ceiling over their heads and the all-too intrusive falling of rain just beyond, swiveling a stained finger with a grimace. "Ain't about t'let up. Not even once I'm dead'n gone. Not till the ones stirrin' her up get dealt with." Propping his chin onto a curled fist, he lends his cup a suspicious glance before snorting. "Surly, they are. Ain't a care for who or what's around. Scorched earth way o'doing things."

There's a wheezing on his part, and Soot smothers a round of coughing into the tattered sleeve of his cloak before shaking his head. "Lead's a bit to th'second reason. Everyone here? This town? Reckon they'll get what they're tryna give me." Something quick but cruel cuts across his flinty eyes, something like rage and hatred as a sparking flame burns but is just as quickly doused, and Soot sets his jaw in a way that makes his teeth creak. "Including yerself. Figure it'd be better t'put them down 'fore they get the chance t'try their luck with ya."

With a bit of rummaging and fumbling about, his free hand produces a bulging coin purse from somewhere within the confines of his cloak. Coins clink together in pleasant protest as Soot tosses the purse over, and gleam of gold is apparent even in the dim lighting of the tavern. "Final reason? Triple pay." Once more he leans in, and the words are murmured low enough so that none but the two of them could possibly catch their meaning. "Consideration. For someone who seen what I've seen. Fought like kinds."

Alizebeth was a figure cut from fairy-tale pages. A beach pebble polished by years of wind and wave, a dryad sprung from mossy, vine-riddled cracks. Weathered in beautiful ways, her roots ran deep into the soft belly of the earth, her flint tongue fluent in the language of seasons and storms and shifting light. Even her hound – a lithe, long-limbed creature of cream and shadow – seemed understood on some primal, unspoken level.

It was a beautiful exchange, Anri thought, even as unease curled like smoke in the corners of her mind. Once, she had seen a similar beast shake a small child dead, had watched in dark-eyed terror as its squabbling pack pulled him apart like a hare. Ever since, she had doubted even the most obedient of velvety, black-lipped maws.

But this was no space for old horrors. Not today, not here. Not while the sun was warm on their backs, the sky stretching bright and endless. Not while the river ran clear and cold, minnows darting around her knees in open-mouthed streaks of quicksilver.

Despite the unwelcome memories, despite Alizebeth’s grumbling participation, Anri smiled warmly. Hurt recognised hurt, and she wondered if, beneath the hunter’s brittle words and bristling weaponry, there was something raw – a bruised and tender spot, one wreathed in broken glass and steel-tipped pikes. Knowing that some wounds were best nursed in secret, healing only in the dark, she dared not ask.

Instead, she waded deeper, careful not to wander so far as to be snatched by the current. Mountain-birthed water rose, pressing frigid kisses to her thighs, then her waist, stealing the heat from her skin in a stinging rush that shocked the ache of travel from her bones. It was bracing and joyous – but Alizebeth moved as though the river might rise up and devour her whole. Restless hunter eyes trailed over the sodden stoop of the banks, cutting through curtains of reeds, ever cautious and wary.

“Perhaps,” Anri said softly, her voice lilting with its gentle cadence. “But even the diligent must rest – and play.”

With those words, she cupped her hands and splashed water toward Alizebeth, intending to draw her companion’s attention away from imagined dangers.

“Let the river bear the weight of your burdens for a time, hm?”

Anri was still smiling as she worked with wet fingers to remove her hair pins, honeyed waves tumbling from fraying plaits, kinked with the memory of their bondage. Pale, dappled light played across the damp-dark hair that fell to the tundra between her shoulder blades, across the rose-tipped breasts that perked with the cold. Among her own sex, there was little room for shame. The young acolytes of the cathedral had bathed and dressed together, flinching as a flock when the man-eating saint lunged. Her childhood had been one of crowded dormitories and wishful whispers, escape found only in dazzling flights of fancy. Unfortunately for Alizebeth, old habits died hard.