who we are and all that we're trying to be
Not one to readily advance into companionship exploitations or halcyon smiles, the fiend hadn’t meant to diminish the one the stranger conjured. But there it was, a dampening frown, something the fiend usually accustomed himself with, and the subject of Long Night pulled into more soused spirits. “An unusually long-drawn out evening. No sun. And roaming monsters.” He didn’t shrug this off though, didn’t impart it as an idle threat, omen, or ultimatum; he’d seen enough of the hazardous wakes of claws, talons, and death - and frankly, didn’t care to experience it again anytime soon. But the seasons had slipped by, on the junctures of other eerie, enigmatic twists and turns, and before long winter would be upon them again, and the haunting gallows of the aforementioned bestial twilight. It’d be one thing if the demons were easily conquered, but with such a mass, with such a threat, he wasn’t certain how they were to triumph other than tucking themselves away again (hidden, concealed, cloaks and daggers at the ready, guards at doors, some playing judge, jury, and executioner all in locks and keys). “Noise attracts them. Most of us stuffed houses and places with snow moss, and then stayed in the Rathskeller. We also lured Luxere, which are some form of deer with glowing antlers.” Like Auni, brilliant and blinding and taken during the last Long Night, when souls died and turned into something else altogether. “They keep the demons away, apparently.” The fiend didn’t know the ins and outs, all the intricacies, only the experiences nestled and coiled in his mind – not so much fear as trepidation and apprehension, uncertain of how it would all spread apart again with the Greatwood now open. Would the Fae be effected as well, suddenly bombarded with more of Caido’s ongoing dilemmas? If the blight saga wasn’t enough –
Enough, enough, enough. It was time to hunt, time to relish and savor the violence, the vehemence, the acrimony clustered and bristling in his chest, in his lungs, in his soul, vibrant and chilling, dusting off the irreverence, the sedition, the splendor in desecration, devastation, and death. It was a song, a tune, a melody he knew well, composed and comprised on battlefields, on the undulation of his movements and motions, in the flight of swords, in the belligerence of upheavals, in the tradition of tossed banners and forgotten graves. The human turned back to the wolf, searching, exploiting, and the man with the bow lingered, a savage, predator, carnivore haze invited, instigated, and invoked.
He crouched back to his familiar spot, and breathed in the rapacious follies, the ghostly bindings of war and battle and vigilance – eyes narrowed, senses anointed, consecrated, blessed with their nefarious conditions, watching, speculating, listening for the sounds of upcoming prey. For a few moments, there was nothing but his own feral, wild, untamed thoughts, a blistering of machinations coiling at his seams, at his frayed ends, at his grasp on the bow, string pulled taut, ready, fervent, eager for the fray.
Then it arrived. The stag was chased and taunted and implored into his range, a masterful exchange and workmanship of Attuned lengths and lineage. Deimos was a sharp, precise beacon, a hunter, a vice, a pinnacle of oblivion and scythe swipes, letting the arrow fly as crowns, napes, and shoulders made their appearance, intending for it to be felled within an instant, aiming for its cranium, for quick, sudden, swift ends.
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts
