Gale
this is going to break me clean in two --
this is going to bring me close to you
He snarls again, one lip raising silently as she mocks him. His white teeth shine in the glow of her fury, and he is silent as she repeats the realization that he had come to in Tephra.
For nearly a year he has turned his back on Power for her, and she derides him for it the moment he does something to remedy it.
There are some who think themselves gods when they touch what he can. Gale, though, had only been reminded of his own shortcomings. His access to magic is flawed, the pleasure he takes in using it serving only to sap his ability to do so. The more powerful he becomes, the more intense the effect of emotions, and he’s no idea how to control it.
So he means to seclude himself in Tephra, to drive the other residents out or into the shelter of the trees-that-are-not-quite-trees, anywhere that is not near him. There, without Mazikeen to distract him, he will find what he is capable of.
He makes no effort to argue, not even when she refers to Gale. He only arches an eyebrow and waits for the lunge that he Sees coming with the last bit of magic that he can pull from her bones.
Sharp wolf’s teeth tear into his neck, and his skin broils beneath an aura of fire. Tensed and waiting, Gale hisses, transforming into a cobra with a hood nearly six feet across to pull his body away.
With fangs longer than her own, Gale draws back, and a white rattle shakes at the end of his coiled blue body. Each strike she lands will make him stronger, and they both know it. She will hurt him, and he will hurt her, and when he cannot hold any more power at all and more satisfied than he can fathom, their snarls of pain will turn to satisfaction, and the magic will be gone before he has realized it is leaving.
He wishes he could kill her.
And then, though his host cannot remember the tales of his ancestors: his wish is granted. The Ancestors care not if they are remembered, it seems. They only wish to be invoked.
Gale lunges toward her, and though his venomous fangs are aimed for her heart, it is his rattled - now barbed - tail that wraps tight around her body. Gale crushes her first few ribs and sighs in satisfaction as he drags her closer, caring not that she’d avoided being poisoned with her quick reaction. He has her now, and that is what matters. The snake’s black tongue flickers across her body as he grows larger still. The pain of the little bumps and jolts as she scrapes against the stone and snow are sweet like berries, and the snake grows a wolf’s head just to lick his lips.
He could kill her.
Does he want to?
Unsure, he picks her up using the coils around her midsection, and slams her into the side of the mountain. Blood and power join the snow flying through the air. It feels marvelous, and Gale does it again, feeling the way the bones in her hind legs are snapped like green twigs.
Just before she loses consciousness and just after he is sure she cannot read the lie in his voice or mind, Gale leans close to whisper into her ear, “I’ll be back for Viszla.” The coils around her body release from where they’d been both holding Mazikeen and shielding his child. And Sickle, he thinks, if the oily Prince follows through. By then he’ll have rid himself of this weakness when it comes to the white mare, and he’ll finally be able to kill her.
Permanently.
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