Antlers
Estylwen
FernStone
NoriWasHere
TokyoPewPew
Framing A Moose
Cao the Exiled
Raijinslayer
Mixtape Ghost N
AtomicEmperor
Sloane could feel the look of I-told-you-so burning into the back of her skull from Lynn as a massive crash shook the house. She refused to acknowledge the woman as she shifted to the window, her mind populating a dozen other things that could have caused the noise rather than Lynn’s guess being right. It was Kenshiro continuing to unhealthily unleash his grief in a public forum, or Linqian and Aryin roughhousing, or Drake doing something stupid, or Jack causing someone to react violently by teleporting behind them for another cheap jumpscare as he played his part as the boy who cried wolf. Maybe it was an auditory recollection. Perhaps a meteorite had fallen from space and crash landed right in Kari’s backyard. Whatever it was, it most certainly wasn’t what Lynn had predicted.
Sloane reached out and popped up a blind to look outside. The reflection of her eyes off of the glass showed her pupils become pinpoints as her jaw set firm. Truthfully, she wasn’t surprised. A tiny, annoying, pestering small part of her, the part she assumed was also responsible for when she tripped over words or banged her knee on a table, had believed that Lynn was right. Still, she hadn’t anticipated Emily to show up with an undead siege engine. It was hard to believe that 8th Street would just walk away if they gave into their demands, just like it was hard to listen to Emily speak like she had never been out in public before, instead having spent the last ten years trapped in a high school girls locker room. Any suspicions of whether Sloane’s failed attempt to get a meeting with Emily had been some kind of hazing ritual or not suddenly disappeared as her eye twitched.
A plan began to machinate in her mind. The first step was to obviously have Jack get Lila out of here. Britney, too. While that woman did deserve to be punished for her actions, it was something that should be handled fairly by a tribunal instead of being violent mob justice. The second step was to engage in a kind of mock negotiation, allowing the rest of the Coven time to retreat, regroup, and, if necessary, ready themselves to retaliate. The third step was to stop that stupid fucking BIT—Sloane’s hand slammed against the window as Linqian stomped out across the yard, roping Aryin along with her. She shouted to no avail at the window, treating Lynn to a shocking string of obscenities from a woman who normally used them only sparingly when she needed to deliver a precision strike.
The first punch was thrown and it unleashed pande-fucking-monium. Kari’s room became nothing more than heat, smoke, and the groaning of imminent support beams collapsing as the upper floor of the home was engulfed in hellfire. Amara burst through the door with her squad of phantoms, smashing out the window and ushering Sloane and Lynn out. The slightest of hesitations as Sloane looked at Kari’s computer, the screen already beginning to bubble and melt, was overrun by a more basic instinct as she allowed herself to be rescued. Another wave of heat burst from behind Sloane, the concussive wave of the fireball forcing Sloane to steady herself on Amara’s arm. They would’ve been directly in the path if the rescue had come any later.
The burst left a ringing in her ears. It was accompanied by confusion, panic, and fear. A chunk of wood splintered from the house and cracked her in the back of the head. Her vision tunneled. A look back left her with the blurry imprint of a child burning, the kind of image that would be forever burnt on the back of her eyelids whenever she would close them to interrupt a moment of peace. Her imagination started carving shadows out of the smoke, tortured phantasms of those left inside burning, real shouts swelling with an orchestra of imagined screams, Anya calling her name, her voice fading. Sloane looked away, pulling herself away from the suicidal urge to rush back inside and rescue someone who might not even be there, her eyes watering from not only the smoke. Focus. She needed to focus.
“Lila…”
Right, Lila. Lila was right in front of her. They needed to protect her from 8th Street. The edge of Sloane’s vision continued to pulse with the throbbing pain in her head as she reached out to the doubling-over woman. Had she been hurt by debris too? Lila looked badly burnt, her arms were covered in ash. Sloane’s eyes focused and her hand hesitated. It wasn’t ash. Sloane’s hand cupped over her mouth, eyes widening as something began to crawl, pulsate, and snap underneath Lila’s skin. Sloane held back a scream as Lila released her own, accompanied by the ripping of flesh, the unfurling of wings, and the splattering of gore across Sloane’s clothes and face.
It was horrifying. It was monstrous. It was…strangely curious. In a way, the green glow calmed Sloane, stripping away the fear of Anya being cooked alive and clearing the confusion caused by a blow to the back of the head. There was comfort and beauty in those wings. Was it so strange for someone so grounded and tied down by her obligations to covet the freedom granted by flight? Eyes swirling in enchantment, Sloane’s hand reached out on its own, desperate to grasp what she did not have. Her fingers wrapped around a dark feather still slick with Lila’s blood and tightened. The sound of crows cawing overhead was the ringing of encouragement: do it, do it, do it. How bizarre it felt to be so immediately accepted. Her fingers tightened and twisted, the caws growing louder and louder and louder, as the creature that had been Lila sprinted away, Sloane’s releasing her grip a moment before, the feather ruffled but unplucked, stopped only by an instinctual realization of danger and the Emotional Field granted to her by her bloodline.
Her vision began to blur aga—no, focus. They had to fight. Stupidly, Sycamore had to fight. Sloane was not a fighter. Her first actual foray into the field had been the final confrontation with the Stygian Snake, and if it hadn’t been for Jade she would’ve been killed. She had a handful of encounters since then, often in the company of Drake, Lionel, or Ayrin, but she had never been the heavy hitter and always it had been with a kind of strategy and plenty of preparation already in play. Sloane had even taken up fencing in anticipation that she would be able to get the Apparition Killer from Ashley so that she could be of better support to her cohorts, but in a street fight fancy footwork and quick reactions only got someone so far when their opponents refused to follow the rules of engagement.
Still, she had to help somehow.
“Amara, get Lynn somewhere safe,” said Sloane, shrugging off her jacket.
From the window Sloane had seen that there was a backline hiding behind the undead monstrosity, using it as cover. She seeked to remove that barrier. Hopefully between its many sets of glossy, cloudy eyes at least one pair wasn’t vestigial or she’d just be ruining a perfectly good coat, if it hadn’t already been ruined between the scorch marks and the blood splatter. Heavy rain soaked her as she folded and layered the sleeves so that the fabric was thin enough to be pierced all the way through by her knife but thick enough that the blade didn’t slice itself free when the knife was elevated by her possession hexmark, the jacket lifting with it. Satisfied that it would hold there for long enough to get the task done, Sloane tapped the jacket with her channeler.
There was an orange spark followed by a blue glow that dimmed but did not completely fade away as Sloane infused the jacket with cursed magic. The fashionable coat frayed and tattered, warping to appear more archaic and anachronistic, like something that would’ve been worn in Victorian times, as Sloane’s magic turned it into an object of obsession. Only the undead amalgamation would be targeted by the spell as she conducted her possessed knife with her tarot card channeler, launching the knife and the jacket with it into the trunk of a tree a decent ways away. As the jacket reached its destination she wiggled her channeler as if she was holding the end of the knife, pulling it free from the fabric and carefully returning it towards herself while keeping an eye out for anybody trying to get in a cheapshot.
If the spell worked the undead creature would be drawn to the jacket, completely distracted and disabled until the jacket was wrenched from its hands or destroyed. More importantly, it would create an opening for Sycamore, allowing for the others to bypass the big fleshy barrier and strike at the individuals less suited to take a punch.
Interactions: Linqian @Fernstone Britney Williams @Punished GN Jasper (Knight), Lila @NoriWasHere
Kari's HouseVashti’s elbow cracked against something hot and hard. She growled, an eyebrow raising up in confusion. Linqian’s face might’ve been the prettiest one whose nose Vashti had smashed through the back of her cranium, but it definitely wasn’t the first. The impact felt wrong. It lacked the oddly satisfying squish like wet sand between toes on a bright, sunny beach and there was no beautiful popping sound of a mind being blown apart by the cage designed to support and protect it. Oh, Linqian was proving to be quite a pleasant surprise like Leon before her. Better, even. Just as desperate, but with less hair to deal with and the option to sleep in on Sunday morning after getting no sleep Saturday night. Vashti's eyes shot to the side and caught Linqian's attempt to grapple her. It was a damn shame the girl wanted to get herself killed so fucking badly.
Vashti flicked her arms out as she felt Linqian slipping behind her, deflecting Linqian’s initial attempt to cinch in while protecting herself from too bad of a burn thanks to the quickly deteriorating hoodie she had borrowed from Lila. She was just going to step away then turn around to stomp Linqian’s face into the mud. However, something locked her feet. Vashti looked down to see thick vines wrapping around her leggings. Her head snapped in the direction of Britney as another pop of thunder exploded in unison with the arrows launched from Jasper’s Ranger. A flash of lightning illuminated Vashti’s face, a wide grin stretching across her face composed of sharp teeth, her eyes gleaming. The look she gave Britney wasn’t of hatred or anger. It was something closer to adoration, like that of a child on a playground trying to impress a tired mother as they screamed, Hey, hey, look what I can do!
She so wished that Britney had talked to her when she had her chance. After all, Vashti owed her everything. At the very least she’d present Britney with a beautiful bloodbath to show that Vashti had been the right candidate for the Leviathan after all. Britney had already guaranteed her own fucking death, the very least Vashti could do before Britney’s stomach was sliced open and she and Carol played double dutch with her entrails was to make her proud. Vashti raised a hand to wave at Britney with a playful wiggle of the fingers, her eyes opening wide in shock as Linqian was able to grab onto the back of her hoodie and pull her down to the ground, the vines burning away from Linqian’s heat.
Vashti let out a heavy breath as Linqian wrapped her legs and arms around her. Normally, she would’ve been fully onboard to roll around in the mud with Linqian, preferably face to face, but the smell of burnt hair and barbecued bayou burgers killed the mood. Plus, they had never decided on a safe word, and the melted polyester of her leggings that began to adhere to her skin and burn like napalm was starting to approach Vashti’s threshold. However, with Linqian’s arms wrapped around Vashti’s belly that meant they could no longer be used to block more hits. Rapidly, Vashti threw her head back, cracking her skull loudly against Linqian’s face again and again and again until Linqian had to drop her grip.
Vashti rolled off of her body and through the cooling mud, numbing the pain from the burns. She scrambled over to Linqian to see much to her surprise that the woman was not only still breathing but relatively okay, dazed more than anything. Vashti would have to fix that. She raised her hand up, claws flashing and eyes wild as she delivered the killing blow, hand diverting just a few inches in the final moments that it punched the ground, showering mud in the place of blood as Vashti leaned down. She shoved her other hand over Linqian’s mouth and roughly grabbed the molten threads of her hair with the other, the mud on her palms sizzling, as she hissed in her ear, “Play dead. You still might get the chance.”
Vashti climbed up to her feet, wiping a streak of mud across her face like warpaint, and flipped her hair back. Carol had better be able to reverse the burnt ends. She looked back at Britney and smiled, gesturing down to Linqian, presenting her as the first offering. From that distance it would be impossible to tell that she was still breathing. The rain pounded down even harder, shifting around Vashti as she cracked her knuckles, locking in on who should be her next target. Some asshole cosplaying as a knight was moving to the group. A second later the knight was knocked to the ground, its armor slightly caved in from where Vashti had clotheslined it. A human would’ve had the wind knocked out of it.
Vashti raised her foot to stomp the helmet in but paused as she heard Lila cawing her name. The green glow of Lila’s wings drew her in, sparing the knight from the curbstomp as she blanked and walked away from it. It was so nice to see someone else be so accepting of the gifts provided to them. Underneath the mud her skin itched where the scales of the Leviathan had once been. The admiration soon became jealousy. Vashti honestly didn’t care for whatever reasons Emily had to go after Lila. She just wanted to rip those fucking wings off.
Lila ran and Vashti gave chase, the caws of the murder being answered by the crackling of the storm.
