08-21-2013, 04:49 PM
“The only light was what came drifting into the windows from the city, yellowed and old, like rotting snow. The only thing white, with the full face of the moon hidden, with the stars blurred into nothing but dreams by the city lights, were their eyes.” Thomas waits until the end of the stories of the stories when the cliaths have their turn, and then he waits until the end of that to shift to homid and speak. Long enough that it almost seems he'll go another moot without more than howling and hunting at their sides. When he does speak, finally, it isn't in the tones that those who know him are used to.
This is something else. Something interwoven with the same confidence that let him signal two people he barely knew and a stranger in a bar without the slightest concern that they wouldn't do as he asked. But that...that is a different story. Another night, perhaps, another swollen moon.
Instead, he drives on with this story, voice low, filled with enough tension it almost seems the words could snap, burst open, and reveal something deeper underneath them. “Nights before, those other eyes had blue, green, brown...but now all of them, all of them white. Windows to empty vessels, hollowed out husks to serve us this last message. What was, on nights before this one, Champion of Honor began the message with the twisted and warbling cry of those who have Fallen. The Guardians, as they had come to come what was in him, followed what was in him.” There is the slightest of pauses.
“They turned on each other, claws shredding and rending, jaws snapping through bones and meat. They tumbled to the floor in pieces. 'Witness,' the thing that commanded Champion of Honor's voice commanded, over the howling and the steady sound of flesh and blood raining to the floor, 'See the fate of all things,' as if uncorrupted truths would come spilling from a stolen mouth.”
“Dances with the Hurricane knew that, knew better than to listen, better than simply to watch. Instead, she drew her sword and offered out to each of us moon stones, the first gleaming and white thing in that room we had seen that was ours. And then, one more gleaming, white thing as Shadowboxer shifts. The moon stone Still Waters throws strikes the thing in Champion of Honor's skin full on in the chest, forces him into his wolf form.”
“When it charges, Shadowboxer and Dances with the Hurricane rise up to meet it like waves from the sea. It's blood pours forth from it like rivers from it where it is torn open, torn almost in half, but does. Not. Fall.” Another pause, another second, just one breath. “They fall away to its sides, flowing around it. It twists, dances, writhes, like the currents flowing into a bay but it is no more their match than the river is a match to the ocean. It's head is torn from it, drops and is swept away across the floor. Still, the thing stands.”
“Until the last of the Guardians rushes forward, throws open the elevator doors, and the room is bathed in fire. That fire burns unnaturally and twists and grasps like a live, serpentine thing. But it swallows up and consumes what remains of the thing, and everything falls into silence.”
Or, unconsciousness, for some of them. But he lets the tale end there, leaving behind, as the fire left behind those that had served the same will, the memories of what was beneath them. One hell at a time is all he's willing to offer tonight. Ingrid may have thought to offer up an apology, but Thomas only really knows how to give them this.
He shifts back to lupus and eases back toward his place.
This is something else. Something interwoven with the same confidence that let him signal two people he barely knew and a stranger in a bar without the slightest concern that they wouldn't do as he asked. But that...that is a different story. Another night, perhaps, another swollen moon.
Instead, he drives on with this story, voice low, filled with enough tension it almost seems the words could snap, burst open, and reveal something deeper underneath them. “Nights before, those other eyes had blue, green, brown...but now all of them, all of them white. Windows to empty vessels, hollowed out husks to serve us this last message. What was, on nights before this one, Champion of Honor began the message with the twisted and warbling cry of those who have Fallen. The Guardians, as they had come to come what was in him, followed what was in him.” There is the slightest of pauses.
“They turned on each other, claws shredding and rending, jaws snapping through bones and meat. They tumbled to the floor in pieces. 'Witness,' the thing that commanded Champion of Honor's voice commanded, over the howling and the steady sound of flesh and blood raining to the floor, 'See the fate of all things,' as if uncorrupted truths would come spilling from a stolen mouth.”
“Dances with the Hurricane knew that, knew better than to listen, better than simply to watch. Instead, she drew her sword and offered out to each of us moon stones, the first gleaming and white thing in that room we had seen that was ours. And then, one more gleaming, white thing as Shadowboxer shifts. The moon stone Still Waters throws strikes the thing in Champion of Honor's skin full on in the chest, forces him into his wolf form.”
“When it charges, Shadowboxer and Dances with the Hurricane rise up to meet it like waves from the sea. It's blood pours forth from it like rivers from it where it is torn open, torn almost in half, but does. Not. Fall.” Another pause, another second, just one breath. “They fall away to its sides, flowing around it. It twists, dances, writhes, like the currents flowing into a bay but it is no more their match than the river is a match to the ocean. It's head is torn from it, drops and is swept away across the floor. Still, the thing stands.”
“Until the last of the Guardians rushes forward, throws open the elevator doors, and the room is bathed in fire. That fire burns unnaturally and twists and grasps like a live, serpentine thing. But it swallows up and consumes what remains of the thing, and everything falls into silence.”
Or, unconsciousness, for some of them. But he lets the tale end there, leaving behind, as the fire left behind those that had served the same will, the memories of what was beneath them. One hell at a time is all he's willing to offer tonight. Ingrid may have thought to offer up an apology, but Thomas only really knows how to give them this.
He shifts back to lupus and eases back toward his place.