"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
11-13-2016, 06:42 PM (This post was last modified: 11-13-2016, 06:42 PM by bruise.)
It felt good to have the powers flow through him again.
More than good. It felt right.
As soon as the fairy had snapped her tail, he’d felt it flood back into him—in the same manner that it had left. The singular horn in the middle of his forehead had dissolved and the weight had been redistributed, rightfully so, to the sides of his head where the horns curled out, menacing. Brute force instead of the piercing danger of the singular horn. His hooves had split open into their cloven form. He had felt the speed, the agility, the endurance like a drug in his blood; the feeling was both heady and powerful.
He had not waited around to simper out his thank you. Instead, he had turned on his youthful hocks and made his way back to the deserted graveyard that was Pangea—that was his temporary home. He had been attempting to seek out his father when he had run across her. There was a glint in her eye, something that spoke to the bloodthirsty nature that was curdling in his blood, the fear that was now within his grasp.
So he slowed, he angled his path toward her. He came within several feet before he stopped, his dark eyes appraising her and then locking onto her. He himself was still young, a yearling stallion with just enough heft to not look ridiculous. He was filling out, but wasn’t quite full-grown—still coltish and long-limbed. But, if you looked close enough, something simmered underneath the surface. Something that was not fully formed but dangerous, something that was almost outside of his control. Something wild, feral.
His smile was slow and calculated when he finally gave it.
“You look like you may be missing something that was once yours.”
The land itself is in unrest – she heard the proclaimation, but did not go to him as he so demanded. She is not here out of any real loyalty; she is here because she is the kind of girl who thrives in wastelands, whose lungs are coasted in dust. The kind who didn’t kneel on the mountain, who didn’t beg.
She is unrepentant, unrelenting.
And she is still so wretchedly powerless. There is only her horn, slick and sharp, and though she has made good use of it – she pierced a man’s flesh with it, her first kill in her own skin, and god, it had felt good - she’d break the horn in a second to have her bones back.
She watches the stranger, expecting him to go to the summons, expecting him to be some parasitic wanderer who fancied the weight of a crown on his head. But he does not go that way, instead comes to her, and she straightens a little. He is odd, cloven-hooved and curl-horned, and she regards him with curiosity.
There is no greeting from him, merely a statement: You look like you may be missing something that was once yours.
God, was she.
“Yes,” she says, “I lost things, as most of us did. Though you seem to have recovered quite swimmingly.”
Bruise did not hunger for crowns and kingdoms—not yet, not now.
For the moment, he was pleased to help pave the way for his father, the keeper and origin of the Fear. He was pleased to have secured his spot at Pollock’s side, to have earned the Krampus’ favor. In time, perhaps, he would turn his dark gaze toward greater things, reach in ambition for titles and the power that came with them—but not now. For now, he slunk in the shadows and played along the edges of the Fear; for now, he learned the curves of his own gifts, the weight of it as it sat in his own palm. He learned how to wield the darkness, to slip the edge of the blade between the ribs, to pull out terror between the teeth.
For now, he held onto her gaze, his gaze unwavering and disturbingly still.
“I have,” he says simply, letting it rest between them for a moment. The best part, however, was that he did not have to beg to have the power flood through his veins once more; he did not have to sink to his knees and feign regret for sins he did not commit. He was sure that she had heard stories of those who had clawed their way back up the mountain to ask for forgiveness, to beg for gifts and mercy. He had not.
He does not share that though—does not show the tricks up his sleeves. Instead he just tilts his coltish head toward her, shrewd in his youth. “What if I was to tell you I could help you recover just as easily?” His grin grew slow, languid as it spread across his mouth, deliberate and empty. “What would something like that mean to someone like you?”
She doesn’t need a kingdom to rule, not when she has her bones.
(Which she doesn’t have, not now. She forgets so easy.)
She finds no power in titles, prefers to forge her power through performance – she recalls vividly the way the girl’s eyes had looked, wide and terrified, as Violence’s bones had danced closer and closer. Kiss them, she’d said to the stupid girl, and the girl hadn’t listened, and, well --
But that’s not the story here.
The story here is this boy, who has manifested like some deus ex machina, here with a sweet promise on his lips, a promise of help. Of restoration.
Wholeness.
Her eyes bespeak her hunger but her voice is calm, even.
“I’m powerful,” she says, simply, “before… this, I could animate the dead. I could possess minds; make people do whatever I wanted them to.”
A bit of a lie – her possession had not been so refined as the necromancy, she did her best work when their minds were willing and open, or if they were particularly stupid. Most minds fight against her piloting them. But she doesn’t tell him this.
“Perhaps there’s a dead relative you’d like to speak to,” she forges on, “or someone who you’d like to make listen to you. Do your bidding or such. I could help you.”
It’s a price she’d pay gladly – someone else’s blood for her powers. An easy trade.
Her suggestions fall to the wayside—he has no use for them.
He was not sentimental enough to want to speak to a dead relative or as foolish to think that was worth his gift; he had his own ways of making others listen to him (it was astonishing how some quickly bent when he applied pressure at just the right spot). But his eyes lighted when she spoke of her powers. Bruise was not a politician, but he knew the advantage of having powerful friends, of being owed favors.
Bruise may have his own…devices, but there may come a time when he needed numbers. There may come a time when his father required an army, of sorts. It would do them well to have allies with tricks of their own up their sleeves. Krampus thought they may be, the world was full of all kinds of things that creeped and crawled in the night. Bruise was not opposed to having the most dangerous on his side.
So he scoffed and shook his head. “I have no need for them now,” he said simply, decisively. “But there may come a time when I will. Honor your favor then, and I will consider this a worthwhile trade.” His smile was cold, eerily similar to the crocodile grin of his father. He did not elaborate on it further, did not tell her of the Fears he would pluck from her skull, the chemicals he would race through to flush her flesh. Instead he snapped his tail, the ash of it cracking against the gold of his hide, the sound smart and loud.
And, just like that, he felt the magic from the fairy slip through him and toward her.
His tail snaps across his hocks and for a moment it simply seems to be for show, and then she feels it. It’s like breathing in winter air, a moment of coldness in the lungs, and then it readjusts to her warmth and she is whole.
She reaches out with her necromancy and it floods over Pangea, eager, like a caged animal finally let loose. There aren’t many bones here – it’s a relatively new land – but she finds pieces, a buck’s skull, a bobcat’s body, and these are what she calls forth. As she has always done, she reassembles them – places the deer’s skull atop the bobcat’s body, weaves it a rough-hewn crown from the bones of birds and squirrels. It’s a rough creation, nothing like the majestic thing that had crumpled at the mountain, but it’s satisfying, to create in this way.
God, she missed it.
She calls the bone-thing forth, and it walks past her and cocks its head to stare upward at the boy. She moves its jaw and for a moment the lower jaw detaches almost completely, a bit grotesque – she’s out of practice! – but she reattaches it quick enough.
She moves its jaw again, murmurs “thanks.”
She can’t throw her voice in any kind of convincing way, but she’s always liked to speak for the bones.
She considers leaving, then, but a small kernel of fear exists in her – that he could take it away as easily as it was given. So, she mustn’t be rude.
“For all the talk, there’s not much death here. Though, that’s not all I can do,” she says, and with a sharp intake of breath she rockets into his mind, crude and brutal. She is there long enough to gleam that he can do wonderful things, to sample a sliver of fear on her tongue, and then his mind rejects her and she is rocketed back into her own mind.
She smiles, prettily. That may have been rude, in hindsight. But she is too delighted in her newfound wholeness to care.
Her gift is more than he could have ever imagined, the power billowing out from her as it floods deep into her cells. He watches carefully with a neutral gaze, tucking away his admiration, as she calls forth this thing of bone and magic. He tilts his head back to glance at it, to study the way that the bones clanked against one another, rickety and yet strong, held together by nothing but the bonds of her magic. It murmurs its gratitude and he dismisses it; he did not need her thanks, he needed her to remember.
One day, he may very well call upon her.
He would need her, and her crude bone creatures, to heed his call.
But he does not have a chance to respond to her, to navigate the craggy cliffs of their tenuous friendship before she is in his mind. He throws his head back and breathes in deep, exhilarated by the alien feeling of sharing the space of his mind. Bruise does not pause to think much on the intrusion, although later perhaps he will be annoyed at the liberties she took with the gift that he granted.
Instead he simply breathes heavily when his mind finally kicks loose and throws her.
After several moments, he opens his eyes to catch her gaze. They are dark, unreadable, sharp as they study her. “Aren’t you a clever thing?” he finally offered before his crocodile grin grew larger and darker. “I suppose if we are sharing gifts..” his voice trailed off as he closed his eyes, his breathing growing deeper and more steady. His mind expanded, hungry despite the recent invasion. The threads of Fear hung around them and he played along their edges, envisioning the spiderweb of them surrounding them.
Gingerly, he reached up to tug on a few, his control of it growing since he had first regained control. He did not want to call forth terror, but he wanted to feel the rush of her pulse, the dryness of her mouth. His eyes opened suddenly and fastened upon her.
