Gale
this is going to break me clean in two --
this is going to bring me close to you
Her eyes become silver stars, glittering in the dim red glow from overhead. Soft red, from her stars, and deeper red from the blood moon that rises between the bare-branched limbs. Her pain and anger spiral toward him, dark and exhilarating, and he swallows them down.
Something is going on behind her smile, but Gale is not sure what it might be. At her near-hysterical laughter though, he frowns. He’d been hoping she’d cry.
Had she broken already, he wonders? Has her sanity fled? She struggles to her feet and Gale watches, his smile having turned down into a scowl despite the renewed flood of pain that radiates toward him. His Power grows along with his discomfort; the manic expression in Ciri’s eyes is disconcerting.
She’s threatening him, Gale realizes.
It takes him a rather long time to realize this, long enough that she’s stepping closer before it has truly sunk in.
He hadn’t considered her a threat at all, and is so taken aback by this sudden development that he is struck mute. Before he can respond, an unfamiliar voice cuts through the seductive allure of her fury and single-minded rage, and something strikes at his shadows with lancets of sunlight.
“Get away from her!” It shouts again. Gale turns away from Ciri to find the source of the voice. It’s a lilac colored mare, her mane and tail formed of patches of shimmering starlit sky rather than hair, and a pair of elegantly branching silver antlers.
She shoots another beam of sunlight toward him, and Gale hisses. Accustomed to the safety of Hyaline, he’d forgotten that the entire world isn’t cowed. No one in Hyaline would have dared interrupt him, and it infuriates him.
Having been well fed by Ciri’s black emotions, Gale has no difficulty holding the Thane by her bones while simultaneously wrapping the purple mare with more shadows than she can destroy with her powers. Her gasps and pleas are less sweet than Ciri’s had been, Gale thinks, but he supposes that she is a stranger.
Tangible darkness rips open her chest while her bones lock in an upright position even as she loses consciousness. The lilac mare stands before them, it is not the red glow of the moon or Ciri’s stars that turn the grass below to crimson. Gale’s shadows plunge into her open chest, and disappear into her still-beating heart. They emerge grasping her Power, and as they leave her heartbeat begins to slow.
Gale’s own white mane and tail transform, becoming cloudlike and nearly insubstantial. His black horns become silver and branching. Her Powers had been nothing impressive, but it still takes a moment to master them. A moment in which he watches the way she collapses, barely breathing, to the bloody earth.
That over, his blue gaze returns to Ciri.
“Where were we?” He asks, remarkably casual with the strange mare dying off to his left. He remembers - she was threatening him. So full of darkness and magic, Gale feels nearly intumescent, and seizes on an excuse to use some of it.
“Oh right. My death.” Ciri walks closer to him, each movement controlled by the gift he’d taken from the Tephran Queen. Gale crushes a few of her smaller tail bones to measure his precision, and is pleased at his progress since first attaining this ability.
A soft gurgle from the lilac mare comes as blood begins to drip from her mouth and nose. She’ll be dead soon, but not quite yet. Gale continues to move Ciri like a puppeteer, until she too is standing over the dying mare.
“Have you ever watched someone die?” He asks conversationally.
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Gale
