09-12-2021, 04:20 PM
What does he mean to do? He has no plan, and that should not come as a surprise.
"Yes!" he barks back at her, he'll kill the girl-that-was-his-mother as many times as he has to until she wears out her magic, or until he does. He'll find the limit of her immortality or the limit of his healing, and one of them will kill the other for the final time, centuries from now. The obsessive zeal of this plan kindles a strange light in his eyes. He has wished for death a number of times, been ready to die purely out of spite, but suddenly presented with this chance at it, he finds himself inexplicably less willing. It is only the idea of self-sacrifice he finds so unappealing, he thinks to himself, or the idea that his dying would not be a release but his mother's victory, and he looks, frowning, at the little corpse in time to catch the exact moment a single star blooms in the air above it.
"Watch," he growls to Aela.
Others soon follow, bathing her still form in their faint, twinkling light. Neverwhere never had a great deal of magic in her, but he does not know when she got the stars, nor when she became an Immortal, so there's no telling if she is capable of anything else. Between one blink and the next, she is whole again, as if reset.
"You son of a bitch!"
Her child's voice is high-pitched and the words rip a sharp laugh from his throat. Is her death-addled memory is too sluggish to capture the irony of them? The bald-faced girl clambers to her wobbly legs, glaring first at the glowing mare who she does not take the time to recognize, then throwing her small body at Wherewolf, crashing against him in a flurry of bright teeth and swinging grey hooves. He lifts his head high, out of reach, and knocks her down with the blow of a wing.
"Try not to be so embarrassing, hm?" he says, placing a heavy hoof at her poll to keep her prone. He deserves this. He deserves the opportunity to show her the fruit of all that bitterness and resentment and hurt that she'd planted in his chest years ago, even if Aela wonders at the change in him. His mother scowls into the dirt but lies still, not keen to die twice in one day. No doubt she is trying to plan her escape.
"Lilliana will come for her eventually. If she makes it out of Tephra alive." How many reincarnations can they get through before then, he wonders? And what will Lilliana bargain for her friend? Something ridiculous, surely, her own life for his mother's, as if he has any interest in the red mare's death. But Aela, with all her war-mongering, might, and he looks to her again, wordlessly.
They'd kill them both, of course. He won't let his prize go so easily.
"Yes!" he barks back at her, he'll kill the girl-that-was-his-mother as many times as he has to until she wears out her magic, or until he does. He'll find the limit of her immortality or the limit of his healing, and one of them will kill the other for the final time, centuries from now. The obsessive zeal of this plan kindles a strange light in his eyes. He has wished for death a number of times, been ready to die purely out of spite, but suddenly presented with this chance at it, he finds himself inexplicably less willing. It is only the idea of self-sacrifice he finds so unappealing, he thinks to himself, or the idea that his dying would not be a release but his mother's victory, and he looks, frowning, at the little corpse in time to catch the exact moment a single star blooms in the air above it.
"Watch," he growls to Aela.
Others soon follow, bathing her still form in their faint, twinkling light. Neverwhere never had a great deal of magic in her, but he does not know when she got the stars, nor when she became an Immortal, so there's no telling if she is capable of anything else. Between one blink and the next, she is whole again, as if reset.
"You son of a bitch!"
Her child's voice is high-pitched and the words rip a sharp laugh from his throat. Is her death-addled memory is too sluggish to capture the irony of them? The bald-faced girl clambers to her wobbly legs, glaring first at the glowing mare who she does not take the time to recognize, then throwing her small body at Wherewolf, crashing against him in a flurry of bright teeth and swinging grey hooves. He lifts his head high, out of reach, and knocks her down with the blow of a wing.
"Try not to be so embarrassing, hm?" he says, placing a heavy hoof at her poll to keep her prone. He deserves this. He deserves the opportunity to show her the fruit of all that bitterness and resentment and hurt that she'd planted in his chest years ago, even if Aela wonders at the change in him. His mother scowls into the dirt but lies still, not keen to die twice in one day. No doubt she is trying to plan her escape.
"Lilliana will come for her eventually. If she makes it out of Tephra alive." How many reincarnations can they get through before then, he wonders? And what will Lilliana bargain for her friend? Something ridiculous, surely, her own life for his mother's, as if he has any interest in the red mare's death. But Aela, with all her war-mongering, might, and he looks to her again, wordlessly.
They'd kill them both, of course. He won't let his prize go so easily.
@Aela
