As he left his apartment and fled down the street, he wondered what drove him to hurry this much. Sure, he and Nysrog got along, but would he dash out like this for someone else he got along with? Did he rush for her because she had helped him before, because he liked her, or simply because she was a demon? What was he getting from this? He'd spent a century hating other demons, judging them, but the moment he left their company he clung desperately to those occasional stragglers who fit the label well enough, a well-cloaked bid to his own insecurity. And now someone he regarded as his demonic kin called for help. He reflected, too, about when he came to her injured and seeking refuge, and Nysrog let him into her dark kitchen, with that quiet voice and those delicate features and intent but far-away eyes. Her hard questions, her staccato shift in mood, the sudden creepy laugh. She was so different than the demons he knew, really, more poised when put-together and much, much more wild when let-loose. Not feral, not the humans turned to monsters of his own Hellscape, but truly wild, a merger of some other essence and humanity rather than just humanity corrupted.
Or that's what he thinks, anyway.
His thought is interrupted as he rather ungracefully sends his step down into a pit her shifting body had carved out of sight, tucked behind a tuft of grass; his foot finds nothing and he stumbles, falls hard onto his hands and knees in wet mud, cursing.
He looks up, suddenly, his eye caught by the movement of writhing colonies of something so wholly unlike himself but given the same name. He recoils from it by instinct, the blood-magic coating his currently-invisible horns pulling it towards him, and he knows the hunger that leads them without needing it explained. He feels it somehow, in his gut or his horns or his balls, and accordingly he springs to his feet to leap away.
He loses the trail once or twice, but only briefly; he strays off the path to avoid the grasping, growing inchor, feeling an uncomfortable clench like cold fingers on his spine when he comes too close.
And then he sees it. Her. It?
He stops with eyes wide, like a person who's never been to Hell.
He's seen her before, and so the awe doesn't root him; further, he's seen great monstrosities in his own past, and so he isn't horrified. But still, she's different, and the way her nightmarish body shudders and shakes the small waters she interrupts is...
unsettling?
He remains about twenty feet away. With her size, it still feels close. But he musters the voice:
"Nysrog," he says loudly. It's like a command, spoken as though he intended to summon a demon like himself through a mirror. In his world, his reality, the name of a demon is a pull at the core of its being, and his tone would say something figurative like, Come here. Pay attention. Wake up. He doesn't know that Nysrog's name is so linked to her experience, but even humans jerk their gaze towards the source of their name.
no subject
Or that's what he thinks, anyway.
His thought is interrupted as he rather ungracefully sends his step down into a pit her shifting body had carved out of sight, tucked behind a tuft of grass; his foot finds nothing and he stumbles, falls hard onto his hands and knees in wet mud, cursing.
He looks up, suddenly, his eye caught by the movement of writhing colonies of something so wholly unlike himself but given the same name. He recoils from it by instinct, the blood-magic coating his currently-invisible horns pulling it towards him, and he knows the hunger that leads them without needing it explained. He feels it somehow, in his gut or his horns or his balls, and accordingly he springs to his feet to leap away.
He loses the trail once or twice, but only briefly; he strays off the path to avoid the grasping, growing inchor, feeling an uncomfortable clench like cold fingers on his spine when he comes too close.
And then he sees it. Her. It?
He stops with eyes wide, like a person who's never been to Hell.
He's seen her before, and so the awe doesn't root him; further, he's seen great monstrosities in his own past, and so he isn't horrified. But still, she's different, and the way her nightmarish body shudders and shakes the small waters she interrupts is...
unsettling?
He remains about twenty feet away. With her size, it still feels close. But he musters the voice:
"Nysrog," he says loudly. It's like a command, spoken as though he intended to summon a demon like himself through a mirror. In his world, his reality, the name of a demon is a pull at the core of its being, and his tone would say something figurative like, Come here. Pay attention. Wake up. He doesn't know that Nysrog's name is so linked to her experience, but even humans jerk their gaze towards the source of their name.