Electricity sings in my veins, calls out to the sky where a storm is brewing. If it will be enough to drench the burning around us, only time will tell. The yellow light casts tall shadows around us, and I can almost catch a glimpse of the shapes of monsters in their dance. Stretching limbs and gaping, slavering jaws and-
"Too?" I ask, blinking the smear of blood from my eyes. Everything is tinted red and gold and he is no exception. My wings shake and spasm of their own accord, like wringing hands. Yet another nervous tick that I've collected over the years. A step toward him, then away, the heat of the fire touching my back as it nips closer to where we stand.
An inconvenience only, when I look at this stranger with a bloodied eye.
My scraped jaw clenches in a rictus grin, lips stretched over worn teeth. "Who are you?" I demand, a spector of my old imperious nature lifting its weary head. "Give me your name or I will leave you here with Them." A threat if I'd ever made one. Because if he hears the Voices too, that means They aren't only in my mind. It means They're real.
That realization shakes me to my hollow core.
There are a great many things in this world far worse than death. I know it, and it seems that so does he. If They are real, then we are in greater danger than I had ever guessed.
Or else this is a trick. One They have created to unhinge me further, and it makes me bare my teeth again to think that he is Theirs. A puppet or a slave, an enemy or an ally. They bicker behind me, dulled by the throb in my head, but never really gone. By the Dark God, what I wouldn't do to have them gone. Any means, any price. And perhaps this haunted stranger feels the same.
@[Balto]
"Too?" I ask, blinking the smear of blood from my eyes. Everything is tinted red and gold and he is no exception. My wings shake and spasm of their own accord, like wringing hands. Yet another nervous tick that I've collected over the years. A step toward him, then away, the heat of the fire touching my back as it nips closer to where we stand.
An inconvenience only, when I look at this stranger with a bloodied eye.
My scraped jaw clenches in a rictus grin, lips stretched over worn teeth. "Who are you?" I demand, a spector of my old imperious nature lifting its weary head. "Give me your name or I will leave you here with Them." A threat if I'd ever made one. Because if he hears the Voices too, that means They aren't only in my mind. It means They're real.
That realization shakes me to my hollow core.
There are a great many things in this world far worse than death. I know it, and it seems that so does he. If They are real, then we are in greater danger than I had ever guessed.
Or else this is a trick. One They have created to unhinge me further, and it makes me bare my teeth again to think that he is Theirs. A puppet or a slave, an enemy or an ally. They bicker behind me, dulled by the throb in my head, but never really gone. By the Dark God, what I wouldn't do to have them gone. Any means, any price. And perhaps this haunted stranger feels the same.
@[Balto]