The Breath Of Midnight (Mikhael Please)

[Gossamer]

TS: 17th of Imperos, Season of Decay, XIV (pf)
Just Before Dusk...

The suns shone through the gloom that was usually autumn this time of year out on the Primus Countryside. It was a rare thing, and one that wouldn't please someone used to the filth and grime of a midnight city. Especially to one used to doing business in the shadows devoid of passion and true pleasure in equal measures. Here, the world cling to summer, at least what was left of it as the dimming light stole the leaves from the trees and cast the world in an aura of the death and ice that was to come.

He was compelled to come, provoked to leave his forest of stone and iron where blood and power ruled the streets. Instead, here, he would find the darkness waiting for him, unhindered by the pollution of gas and coal lighting, torches, lamps, and anything else that cast the shadows from the world. It would wait for the fall of midnight, where nothing dared move but those who were part of the shadows themselves. A secret bond was planned, and a mortal would be forced to take another step, one he was not quite going to be given a choice about. You see, most people didn't realize the night had a sentience. One was never alone, no matter how deep the darkness was. When the stars were overshadowed, and the light fled from the land, the breath of midnight heavily caressed the back of ones neck, teasing, testing, wanting more...

Sometimes it got what it wanted.

[Mikhail Vashael]

A masked figure pushed through the subtle underbrush while watching a shaking human child dig a seven foot deep grave.

"Deeper, I don't want no dogs sniffing you out.."

The silhouette's half naked face wore him rather then the other way round; a scarred hide of thick leather and mapped creases complimented by the sunken shades that fell through trenches of skin. The weather had begun to cool and Vashael stood slightly irritated with his fingers driven deep into the pockets of a black business overcoat, contrasted by a spotless red kneck sash pinned to a singular silver stud. Kicking dirt back into the hole with mocking jest directed towards the gravedigger's last hopes, Vashael sneered as the child's shaking hands dropped the spade in question.

"Now Cale, I promised your mother this would be a quick death, but I've been out here for fletching yahren boy.. DIG."

Choking on his own laughter, Mikhail pushed a larger clump of earth back into the gaping maw, this time spraying the lad's face and running it down the back of a sweat stained shirt. "Cale" was the son of a prominent Merchant Guild representative.. one who did not seem to take a fancy to the Butcher and his crew leaning on the establishments of Ioannes Gate. Watching the fragile boy with a sullen sigh, Vashael drew a simple but sharp knife.

"It's time Cale."

The youth seemed to choke on his own breath then dropped to his knees in prayer. Twisting the shine of steel beneath fresh starlight, the elder jumped into the pit while cascading the dagger between his right fingers with a performer's grace. He finally whispered, displaying a hoarse and jagged smile.

"It's time.."

Kicking the child in the head, his hostage slumped over unconscious while Vashael's theatrics emptied from his candour seamlessly. That would be enough.. For now. The kid could find his own way home come brightening, but the Thief had better things to do then abuse his leverage all night. There was a card game in Candaceburg that couldn't be missed..
With the onset of fear and the threat of the Vagaran's ability to take whatever he wanted from the Merchant Lord whenever he wanted, Vashael knew this affair would send a very clear message indeed.. Your muscle can't help you, nor the law. The merchant Titus would bend, even bow. They all would. The Gate would be his come winter.

Rising from the shallow grave, the crimelord brushed himself off before finding a discarded bottle of firewater. Removing the carved effigy of a painted jester from over his brow, the man grimaced. Gods, did he need a drink.

[Gossamer]

The darkness laughed fluidly at the jest that was about to be played on the jester. Death stalked the night, though it wasn't a foreign menace. It was a natural part of things, complex and forgiving... usually. Tonight, however, the darkness had issues, and the shadows danced as their human target was about to be inducted into their macabre priesthood. One never could tell why a single brightly burning flame of life was chosen over another. Was it that the soul inside was far more than it manifested to the world around it? Quite possibly. Such decisions and factors couldn't possibly be accounted for in human standards. But humor was universal. As the mask was pushed back, unbenownst to the wearer, its grim visage broadened into a leering grin as the shadow clinging to it reacted. Oh, it had sentience alright... far more than the mere mortals that glided through its embrace gave it credit for. It saw all time, all places... and every single place a finger of darkness touched, it bore witness.

Demonic? No... such things rarely were. It was only that the world was full of far more than oblivious people suspected. And that 'far more' often reached forward, embracing those it found somehow appealing. There was darkness in Mikhail Vashael, but it wasn't the sort of raw cruelty that appealed not at all to it. No, his darkness was the deep intellect of a brooding soul bent on a plan far vaster than his subconscious had allowed his conscious to view. His was a soul of burning passions, tightly reined and acknowledged for what they were... weaknesses. Oh, he indulged all right; cards, booze, whores. But he didn't let himself become attached nor addicted. His was a pleasure that allowed himself to walk away when it was for the greater reasoning of common sense.

But he lacked.

He lacked a great deal, as the shadows stared into his heart and mind, finding it lacking. They could teach him control, even more than he had now, and to channel the energy that no shadow could replicate for itself... the pure burning flame of a living soul. But they'd need his willingness, and that wouldn't come easily. To them, they saw a tool... a bright glittering sword they'd sharpen to a surgeon's precision and wield when the time was right. Until then, they'd seduce him with something more... something better. The seed had already been planted like a man carelessly spending himself in the body of a ripe woman, and that seed had begun to grow. It was time to feed it, and to begin to teach him. It would be the first stroke of whetstone on finely forged steel. Alone in the night, the darkness shivered with pleasure.... almost human in its anticipation.

And they would use Cale. How thoughtful he was, providing a vessel that already had language skills and intelligence.

The darkness detached itself from the mask as the man stooped to pick up his discarded drink and turned away from the prone form in the grave. The boy still breathed, therefor he was accessible. They took the easy road, leting the prone form absorb them with his breath. They repaired the damage, quickly, and even as the boy started to wake, they took control. Blackness seeped over his eyes, and the essence used his vision and his limbs, crawling to its feet. It crawled from the grave as well, but not in the way of a child... in the way of one of its own kind, stepping into the black shadows, and back out again intercepting Mikhail's path.

Drink was poised to hard thin-stretched lips as the boy simply appeared. It wasn't a new skill, it wasn't even particularly isolated. Other's used it, even as the shadows of the land granted their gifts here and there. Cale waited, straight in Mikhail's pathway... his tiny form stoic as he watched the butcher of prime's approach without any whites to his eyes. Darkness called to darkness, and as Mikhail drew a single pace away, that which was in him roared quietly to life, and his own eyes lost their whites, darkening even as Cale's were.

"You are the priest." The boy said softly, in a voice that was not his own. He had no choice, and decidedly no awareness of events. That which was within him didn't allow him to understand, or even see. Mikhail however, was different. He was still fully in control. He could still blink, still feel, still think. Truth be told, the shadows hadn't tried to rectify this yet, for there was a noticable fear that his will would be as strong as they desired, unabling him to see.

Cale was not himself. Not any longer. And as Mikhail halted, assessing... bottle to his lips... the boy held out his hand.

"Come."

[Mikhail Vashael]

Anger.

It bubbled.

It Burned.

The fire was black and pure, no ether. He hated himself.. he hated nothing. Mikhail Vashael had a drink of whiskey, resting a sullen laughing mask of a face against the ash tree nearest. He couldn't kill enough, he couldn't fletch enough to make it go away. Nothing would. No mercy, no quarter would be given.. He'd only keep on killing, till the end. No truth to a smile, no word to a bond... the shadow consumed him with a drunken slur of bound rage. What in Umblat's welcome arms was this thing pouring down his lungs hot like a plague?

As the man's eyes coagulated into clouded abyss he recognized such an experience as the culmination of pure Anathema. Some would say curse. A fine grade of possession that first ate into him upon the sea of diana.... Nightmares followed, piranhas that wore upon the man like a cloak of shadows as they tested his metal. These memories.. these eniquities.. it was all just a test wasn't it? The incubating seed of black tar had finally germinated as the tendrils ripped open his mouth and mocked him. So be it.

His emotions had been amplified, moody and insanely blank and wild. He could see a street corner from ten times of weight, ten tons of memories.. a whore, a sterile doctor, a child orphan, an Apothecary wearing a long black coat. They juggled like knives pricking his fingers upon passing.

Drinking the firewater made it easy, definitely lingered and diluted the sensation..

Staring down at the boy, his first urge was to kill it dead twice.. his second was to ask a question or say something sharp. His third.... was just to follow..

Vashael blinked black.

The bottle was empty.

"That's a good look for you kid, lead on..."

His smile shimmered into a cresent moon.. Hitting the bottom never felt so good.

[Gossamer]

Blackness. Some instantly thought of it as an absence; a noted lack. But the reality was far broader, far more distinct in what black truly was. An artist could tell you. Pure white was zinc... mixed with nothing, a noted absence. But to get a fine perfect black, an artist could mix all the colors on their pallet... and keep mixing. They could add in blood, sweat, and the flesh of the world. Blackness thus was everything, full to overflowing... containing all and holding onto nothing.

They were poised on the edge of something that tasted like terror in the back of his throat... like, but not exactly. Mikhail could feel it... but it was nothing he could vocalize or even think about as Cale turned and lead him off into the darkness. The route, ironically enough, took them the direction Mikhail had originally intended. It took them towards a card game in Candaceburg, though that wasn't their intended destination. No, Cale thought to lead them elsewhere closer, to the edge of a camp where a pair of travelers rested around a campfire. The light of the fire blinded the unsuspecting travelers to the ink black night around them.

Then, Cale dropped Mikhail's hand and walked into the circle of firelight, leaving the butcher as a silent witness to a timeless unfolding cycle; death. The travelers looked up in surprise as the boy came among them. But it was too late. A single touch, and first one crumpled, then the other.

Within moments, Cale was back. His hand was out once more. "There's little time. Hurry." He said, softly but urgently, his eyes still deep dark black... no pupils, no sign of human life.

Cale's youthful eyes turned ancient and suddenly reflected this. And in an instant, when Mikhail's blinked black, like acknowledged like and fingers intertwined. The boy... stepped sideways into the shadows, his fingers thin, cool and extremely ancient as they linked with the Butcher of Prime's strong well-calloused digits. It was a sensation of being torn... torn from life into death... and then not somehow allowed to make the complete transition. They stood in a realm that was a mockery of the real world. It was a shadowy place washed in grays that held the same landscape as the living realm, but it was somehow twisted by darkness... as if they'd both stepped into the black and white world cast in the near darkness of twilight.

Only then... when they'd fully passed across the barrier, did Cale speak. His words reflected Mikhail's assessment. "Welcome to Twilight." Then he released Mikhails hand and turned. The dead men were there too, sprawled in corpse form... only they were moving, struggling, and even as the Butcher of Prime watched, they burst through the dead flesh... shadowy spirit forms screaming in rage and surprise. Cale moved fast. He had them, reaching out with first one hand, then the other hand firm and confident; capturing them... like ghostly pieces of fabric. As they struggled, twisting like a blown piece of torn sheet in the wind, he tucked one under his arm and pushed and pulled at the other, like taffy in a candy factory.

He reshaped it, forced his will upon it, and before long a shadowy nightmarish creature stood there trembling and snorting its dazed confusion. A silvery headpiece graced its head... that gave Mikhail a bit of confusion until he saw Cale pull the other torn shadowy soul from under his arm and form it as well. He forced it with his Will, pulling a silver tangle of his own energy to harness it with... and before he was done a pair of steeds of deep shadow stood before the two. Cale swung aboard one. It had no form or substance, and only vaguely resembled a horse in the loosest sense of the word. The second stood waiting for Mikhail.

"Come. Ride." Cale said again, already turning his mount away, as if intent to ride deeper into the shadow realm. He had a rendezvous to make, and regardless if his chosen was coming or not, he'd not leave what was waiting for them impatient.

[Mikhail Vashael]

Mother Fletching Mikhail Vashael... What are you getting yourself into, you fletching whoresmeat c'nt. The dark orbs readied a snow white heart, scrubbed clean from yahren of deception. The self? never.. He never lied. To himself. It was borderline suicide in this field of hopes and dreams. You accepted your vice, your crime, your guilt. You mounted it on a wall and kissed someone everytime you passed under. It was a boon, it was you.. your truth. Your smile. Everything may as well be a lie, but you weren't. Not to yourself.. That much was chiselled stone cold fact.

Stepping on heels that didn't give two copper damns whether they moved nor stayed, Vashael swaggered after the altered child while pausing to steady his gait on a tree branch or three. Coming across the men sleeping, he started to laugh as their bodies emptied.. It was the drink of course, no rational souless bastard would laugh at death....

Then to embrace it, To ENJOY it.. That was another thing all together.

Watching what was left of Cale slip to shadows almost broke down something true inside him, it was a playful caress of careless abandon.. a dire swagger that viewed the entire telath as a stage, and himself but a single player being tailored for a suit .. Yet the Gods did always give him such good dialogue and meaty roles that it would become a tragedy if Mikhail did not ultimately step up to the part and deliver with real passion. This was now opening night, and the roses were already at his feet.

Vashael entered through, expecting the pain.. but said experience delivered far more then romantic idealism, the sensation was viceral to a point of regret. A shocking purge that delivered not only authority but the weight and depth of terror and acute cerebral hemorrhage.
It was a Fletching rush.

Crossing over, the man could see the remains of the two comedic devices. He was numb to this all somehow, like each piece and playmate only single elements of some grander scheme.. One which now pulled at him, painted his face white with bashful red cheeks then shuffled him under the spotlight...
Rereading the script, he'd want to only fake his death until a later act, perhaps finding redemption to forgo final poetic justice. Who knew.. all the cards were in the air now and watching them fall like colored rain was simply beautiful to watch. Snatching up the fool card, he could see through it like a prism... all light being absorbed into the black expanse which the child inside himself seem to love. It was exciting and nullifyingly heavy to be here.. in the Twilight realm. But he knew what it was .. he'd known for months.. the experience had been waiting inside him.. building.. changing him, directing and augmenting his very structure. Bones, veins, matter.. it all vibrated and channelled at new peak and direction. They had been preparing him, warning him... down to a cellular level.. pushing his physical frame to such a blank edge that even something as simple as a human would be able to stand the extremities of the experience. Especially the first time, others had died from this.. he knew it... HE COULD FEEL IT.

As his host molded each stallion to it's final pose, Vashael couldn't help but reach out to the static surrounding him; the sheen of silver, grey and flat tone and try to touch the landscape beyond. He'd half-heartedly attempted to push and force his fingers back into the land of realized spectrum, to find the relationship between himself and each polarity. Smearing his index finger over the pigment Mikhail watched the lad climb his new mount with a tried smirk.. forgoing all theatrics the man swung his own hips and jumped aloft soon after. 'Said nothing.. didn't need to.. he knew what was happening, something inside of him did. The man was letting his hand ride, it was a gambler's patience mixed with vermouth. Yet what was to be offered? He could only imagine the subtlities it would take from him... each haunting dreams since Alyxandrya had provided ample material to forgo wonderment... Were they dreams, hallucinations.. or steeped in faded touches of past life? The blunt end of a stick to his temple would never tell. This stooper of hard liquor left him reeling.. drunk on the displacement of the euphoric disparity he now existed in. A laughing, mocking existence to the shallow surface of past regrets and beautiful accidents. This was a perfect play, but it was not yet time for his opening soliloquy.

[Gossamer]

The shadowrealm absorbed them as the seemingly unreal creatures turned and followed the will of the monster inhabiting the child who formed them. Soulsteeds, just one of the many things a soul could be formed into... the knowledge filled Mikhail as his hands touched the unlife beneath them. They were hallowed things neither cursed nor blessed, simply enslaved for a purpose much like all things living were.

They rode.

The boy lead the man over the landscape that turned into a mockery of a city that Mikhail thought he knew better than he now realized he did. The shadows had life even as the main gates of prime were breached and they road through near empty streets. Near... not wholly. Shadows dispersed from their view, things that shouldn't exist, and things that were afraid. Here, on the outskirts of sanity, it wasn't hard to imagine. As Mikhails mind stretched forth he realized what he saw fully fleeing from his sight were the things he only glimpsed deep within the dark in the corner of his vision. These were the same things when a man turned, stared fully, and found them missing.

Misshapen, misshaped, twisted.... they were nightmare visages composed of slices or memories of reality. Some were rat sized, some man sized... some even bigger. And as they road deeper, the streets grew even more ferocious. Things lingered on the sidewalks, watching them ride past, boldly defending territory with images that should never ever exist. He realized then where they were riding, even as they turned down his street. The Butcher Shop. It came into clarity as the beginning, and in some ways the end of Mikhail's mortality. It glowed strongly in the shadows, not quite with illumination, but he could feel the energy around it... the energy of death. Cale reined in his mount there, dismounted, and waited. As Mikhail did the same, the twisted boy rode by something inhuman took the souls he'd shaped and reworked them one at a time. One he handed to Mikhail. It was a glowing gray orb that gave off no true light. The other orb Cale pocketed with a somewhat savage grin. "I'd release them, but they tend to wander lost rather than go home after they've been used... so we might as well use them until they are all used up." Some things never changed, no matter what lands you walked in. "Can be anything for you here, you know... firewater for your thirst or a whore for your lust... just gotta know how to shape them. And the liqueur will burn going down, just like the real stuff. Just don't drink them dry, for its hard to catch more unless you are something more than you are now. When you learn to cross forwards and back again, you can even bring them with you. Just don't expect them to be what they were when they were alive." His tone implied the quality and consistency of the leavings of a dog, when he glanced at Mikhail, a slight grin slowly appearing on his face. It looked... feral.

Then they entered the Butcher's Shop. It was... the same shop Mikhail had known in his early days, but it was also... far different. There was a dark substance that covered the floor, oozing outwards, and suddenly he understood. Death. The death of the slaughterhouse just a block away flowed steadily into the Butcher's Shop which was situated slightly downhill from it. It spiraled slowly through the room, attracted by the grayish hued meats, which had in life owned the blood that followed them in death. Then it spiraled into the drain in the center of the floor. The grate was large, and partially covered by a display table that Cale had no trouble pushing back out of the way. Then, with a strength unbecoming a child his age, the boy lifted the grate up. Stairs lead downward, and although the opening was narrow and dark, it looked to him like a maw opening up into the shop itself. He half expected to see a tongue rise forth, swirl around the perimeter, and dart back within.

Oddly enough, it was in that instant, he realized the twilight had no smell. None at all. He could hear, he could see... but he could not smell... nor taste he suspected. It was an odd thought, one that sprang forth unwelcome just as Cale gestured for him to go down... proceeding the boy. Go down.

Down...

Down...

Down was always easy. Falling never required effort. It was the landing and more importantly the scramble back to the top that brought breath-stealing hesitation. It was the hint of going down meant coming back up that stopped him initially. It stopped him dead in his tracks. It implied a future, and possibilities beyond the now. Down was sin and failure and weakness. Up held more meaning. Up was preferable. The symbolism was deliberate, obvious, and blatant.

Cale began to laugh.

[Mikhail Vashael]

Mikhail Vashael was a calm man, but tonight he felt carefree and playful enough to hurt just for felicity's sake. The sensation running down his spine shot a shiver back up in response but he let the beast take him.. carry him forward with a cradle's sway.
Breaching through the city gates, his grey smirk widened as his eyes fasted. Could such monstrosity truely exist here? or was it all just longhand for the adverseness of humanity.. Dangerous grounds.. he winked towards the shape of a massive shadow with a lingering fingerwave from the grip of his stallion's kneck. Truely, Vashael was enjoying this experience.. Something niave and primal chuckled as he held on from the cold remains of his perch, watching the stones below him meld into a blur of speed and darkness. A rippling sunder.

Arriving at his stomping grounds, the wild eyed dog dismounted with a wave of energy and potent feral thrusting lust. He was alive.. and beating. No man could see him.. no man would now know him.. he lived and breathed in the temperament of some primeval, indomitable, and unsatiable conquering godking. Whatever he wanted, he would take. Whatever he needed, he would have. Nothing was now outside his grasping maw.. No single soul. Kidnapping, rape, murder. It all became nothing to this pure force. It was his.. There was no rule, nor law to bind it.. . He would sink his teeth and consume every last sweet drop. You are mine. You are all Mine. ..
'Just don't know it yet....

Taking the handed form of shale and shadows between three fingers, Mikhail elongated it into the makings of some bizarre and wickedly curved device. It became symmetrically sloped, binding it's self into the shell of a midnight glow exoskeleton. Shaved and shaped into the design of a mosaic of balanced spikes, the knuckle grip and handle pressed between his awaiting palm emancipated the thorns into full length blades, black and sleek in their repose. It all felt like some violent retraction of fangs as the Cerberus turned man howled full force at the devious merriment of his deadly mastercraft. Who knew if such imagination would hold under the bonds of terrestrial play, but as another curved relay of double pincers shimmered and shot over the plated guard he cared little. This creature could wither and die.. or perhaps be called back with fresh tempted skill.
Still the man did laugh, joining in tune with the child-shade.. As the final combination of clawed sabers locked outward, he raised the object into the sky like a trophy then leaped forward down through the hole without a word, providing only the faded whisper of release and inner mixture of taunt preparation.

[Gossamer]

He leaped, falling downward over and over again, tumbling uncontrollably as high velocity winds ripped past him, threating to tear the new weapon from his hands... threatening to tear the flesh from his bones. Cale's laughter permeated his sense, filling every core of his being. Mikhail landed hard, but thankfully on his feet. Greyness eroded away his senses, making him forget that he ever saw color as he looked about the landscape. It was Aelyria Prime... but a vastly different version of the one he knew. This one was fraught with destruction and while its lights still blazed bright into the night, there was something just not quite right about it. In fact, his senses screamed the wrongness of where he was, causing him to drag a breath and take stock.

A temple... not the basement of the butcher shop at all. No, he stood in the ruins of the temple overlooking the city. Birds circled overhead, crying of pain and destruction, harbingers of disorder and crying aloud their gladness of a feast of death that was sure to come. Cale stood beside him, looking perfectly at home in the shadow realm. So too did the woman that presented her back to both of them. Black hair washed out behind her, playfully tugged by the ill wind that blew across the cityscape below. Leather was her clothing choice, and there was something that whispered to him of her decided lack of mortality.

She turned then, and where a normal woman might have smiled, she said nothing but studied him with eyes that had no whites. Cales. Just like Cales. It was a timeless moment, when her gaze met his, and within her he recognized something... divine. With the recognition came something of a jolt... a shock, for her pureness overwhelmed him for a moment. The light and the breath of sheer power within her was laced with such light as he could not maintain the gaze and had to look away. Breaking contact was like removing all the oxygen from ones lungs at once.... sharp, acutely painful, and a sudden pounding sense of loss that made him want to scream out in true physical discomfort.

She sneered at him. It came as such a surprise from such a creature that it snapped him wholly out of his intense state of loss and allowed him to regroup his thoughts and catch his breath. If he was a wise man, he'd not catch her gaze again. While she, in turn took a moment to give him a quick once-over, then laughter filled her lips. She turned to Cale and raised a black eyebrow at him. Her words were like daggers as she spoke, forceful yet controlled... well able to cut, well able to protect. "This... of all that you might have chosen from.... this is what you brought me?" She said, glancing back at Mikhail once more, and then back to the boy. "He's got one foot in the Umblat already." She said, her face softening to a simple mirth for a moment before she glanced back over at the butcher of prime. "You brought me a crime lord? For this?" She repeated again, then turned, walking up to Mikhail. She seized his chin, forced it upwards, and stared down into his face.

Judged.

He felt it immediately almost acutely. But he didn't have time to weigh it within his mind, for the woman released Mikhail, turned, and lifted her hand to gesture at Cale. "This was a bad decision. For it, you loose the toy." Suddenly the darkness peeled off the boy as if it had been wearing it like a second skin. Young Cale screamed, clawed his way backwards... his eyes once more normal... and turned to run. The world, in a heartbeat, stood still and a flash of light revealed what could only be a crack in reality. The boy tumbled through, screaming the whole time, and was gone in an instant.

What was left where he stood was even more... disturbing. A shadow writhed upon itself, wholly unformed, without purpose, but with acute intelligence. Mikhail realized in an instant that it was like the blade in his hand and if he wanted too.... he knew how now... he could reach out and make it his own. Greed filled him, so too did the power he knew manifested within him in this place. He could own the creature... though how he knew it he had no real knowledge. Glancing back at the woman, additional thoughts filled him... bold brazen things that took his mind down dark pathways... until she spoke.

"No."

The voice was firm, and left no question. Power looked at power and he knew himself the lesser of the two here facing each other. She watched him thoughtfully as if studying the thoughts filling his mind. "Now, tell me where you are." She said, not unkindly, but with no warmth in her voice.

[Mikhail Vashael]

As the draped mocking figure of Mikhail Vashael landed amidst the temple ruins, the rigid invertebrate adjoined to his left forearm clicked it's mandibles while shifting armored obsidian plates to protect it's pupilless creator.
What if he could make an entire suit of armor made from midnight to rise and recede as demanded? Or simply solidify at the offending location before steel should break flesh.. if shadows had a proclivity of their own, protection 'be automatic in it's function. The possibilities were near endless.

Snapping the man from his power drunk state, a brazen woman with pale features stepped to his form with little satisfaction. The dawn of logic and law tarried as if Butcher knew he was slumbering and would do anything in his range to prevent such momentary bliss from receding.. These apparitions and coiled, lingering dreams would seem strange spaced across a mahogany desk in the docks of Durnside.. but here, above the reascent cityscape it all felt so vividly real; the sensation of living and breathing as something more then what that man had been beneath his channel of singular dimension. Still the woman stared leaving the simple vein of mortality struck awe, amassed in vertigo.

Observing the displeasure matching her lips did somehow heightened his own satisfaction despite feeling like a ragged insect left to be sundered.. as if Mikhail had somehow beat the odds of selection by means of effortless guile, or a fool's favored grace. No matter, it was an odd choice of emotion to tether levity to the depths of his current affair. Letting the blades coil inward around his wrist like sleeping feet Vashael stepped forward hard, matching her gaze like two rams butting fury. The human retraction of self preserved fright lost to the bravado of his wild Ego.
She asked the question and he said nothing... staring like a poisoned leper, a lecherous grin lodged and locked.

"I think .. you underestimate the qualities of a man free to pursue Any and Every instead of only one. Direction, I mean.. Could not a servant unbound and unrestricted be of more use to the depths of your need then one who would but follow, lodged in a singular chasm of faith. I can kill at whim, but I may also bless the lips that kiss my rings and fingers.. Ha.. I may even felicitate those who spurn me and murder others of quality. I AM FREE. Few are."

He leered further... with not a stable idea what it is he fought and worshiped, the cornea of his shallow eyes fighting to maintain purpose. Vashael flexed both calves to keep his knees from faltering, rising to full capacity despite the vibration of hypersensitive lust and pain filtering downward through the aura of such unmatched fate. He reached out to the shadows for support, but in the face of complete attraction that was like asking rain to keep his body dry. Yet courage would shine through. A man dead to his very insides had nothing left for his figure to feel.

"Where am I? A dimension of Shades and Pillows .. Wormwood spilled in my drink." The black left arm was raised to attention as his words only mocked the question, giving one pure ounce to the gallon. "So do we test the merits of my character? I have none.. I am filth and a liar ground to mince. Ask your questions but tarry one returned. Who the feth are you to judge one such as me."

[Gossamer]

The woman considered his words, looking him over as if he were a piece of distasteful meat of dubious freshness. His words though... they sparked Her interest and caused Her to take a second look. She turned fully then, so that she stood with the shadowcast city as her backdrop, and moved towards him as she captured his face. It was then he had a true sense of Her. Mikhail saw She was beautiful, not the faked beauty of cosmetics but the simple beauty of good blood, perhaps not wholly human. Green eyes met his, and he felt the pull of a thousand wild forests, something his life now had no concept of. When he looked at Her, he lacked thirst or hunger, for She was bounty and just Her visage nourished his spirit.

It was humbling to a man that didn't know the word. He'd clawed his way from the streets and higher still by the sheer force of his will. "I see now what you have brought me, Davias." She said softly