RE: QUIETUS [S!5] [Round 3: Deluge]
07-07-2017, 11:50 PM
Holy shit, Anila. You look awful.
I am an expert on tactics. You know nothing of war.
Rain pattered on the roof of a copper lantern, the gas flame within flickering weakly. The air was so saturated with water that the lantern’s metal was crusted with green patina, crumbling away more and more with each day. The gas line leading up to it was pitted with age and ill maintenance, ready to collapse. Every now and then the little flame would flare as a pocket of air made its way through the tube, illuminating the canal with a soft orange light.
At the lantern’s base, something hunched like a starved animal, lying half in and half out of the water. Its great back pulsed rhythmically as it drank, gleaming dully under the gaslights. It made no noise but for the soft splashing of water.
Holy water cannot save you now.
Who is it for? Who is it for?
For you.
It sang back, fluting with the throats that weren’t drinking. It was starving. It could not bring enough water into its body to be satisfied. It slid more and more of its body into the water, swelling with every breath.
A lapse in judgment.
The sun, the sun was calling. Even from here it could feel the heat, that radioactive radiance. Such anger. It did not know anger, not in the way of the sun, but it knew heat, and it knew revenge.
We can't risk any more damage to this body.
It doubled in size, tripled, quadrupled. It exulted, spreading its long black wings and fanning the water to its breast. How glorious. How long since it had drunk so deeply, so cleanly? Its skin was stretched nearly to bursting, its muscles sliding over one another like oiled silk, its liquid bones swollen with river’s blood. It lifted its head to the sky and sang, a pure, beautiful song of twittering birds and broken violins that echoed off the brick walls.
A siren answered back, distantly.
A city. A hive. It had known very few cities. What little it knew of them concerned feasting.
It pushed itself off the canal wall into the water, slipping into the overflowing stream in silence. Rain pattered kindly on its back; it pattered as well, calling with the sound of rattling copper and rushing tides. It pulled its newly-fed body into the shape of a tongue and undulated in lazy joy, reveling in the flood. It had eaten; it had drunk. The glow of the gaslamps turned its black skin orange, yellow, red.
Glorious.
I am an expert on tactics. You know nothing of war.
Rain pattered on the roof of a copper lantern, the gas flame within flickering weakly. The air was so saturated with water that the lantern’s metal was crusted with green patina, crumbling away more and more with each day. The gas line leading up to it was pitted with age and ill maintenance, ready to collapse. Every now and then the little flame would flare as a pocket of air made its way through the tube, illuminating the canal with a soft orange light.
At the lantern’s base, something hunched like a starved animal, lying half in and half out of the water. Its great back pulsed rhythmically as it drank, gleaming dully under the gaslights. It made no noise but for the soft splashing of water.
Holy water cannot save you now.
Who is it for? Who is it for?
For you.
It sang back, fluting with the throats that weren’t drinking. It was starving. It could not bring enough water into its body to be satisfied. It slid more and more of its body into the water, swelling with every breath.
A lapse in judgment.
The sun, the sun was calling. Even from here it could feel the heat, that radioactive radiance. Such anger. It did not know anger, not in the way of the sun, but it knew heat, and it knew revenge.
We can't risk any more damage to this body.
It doubled in size, tripled, quadrupled. It exulted, spreading its long black wings and fanning the water to its breast. How glorious. How long since it had drunk so deeply, so cleanly? Its skin was stretched nearly to bursting, its muscles sliding over one another like oiled silk, its liquid bones swollen with river’s blood. It lifted its head to the sky and sang, a pure, beautiful song of twittering birds and broken violins that echoed off the brick walls.
A siren answered back, distantly.
A city. A hive. It had known very few cities. What little it knew of them concerned feasting.
It pushed itself off the canal wall into the water, slipping into the overflowing stream in silence. Rain pattered kindly on its back; it pattered as well, calling with the sound of rattling copper and rushing tides. It pulled its newly-fed body into the shape of a tongue and undulated in lazy joy, reveling in the flood. It had eaten; it had drunk. The glow of the gaslamps turned its black skin orange, yellow, red.
Glorious.