It isn't just the one voice behind him that proclaims Raphael a bastard, but he's too busy staring at the now empty space that the devil has left behind in his wake. His mismatched eyes confirm he has certainly gone, that it isn't just a trick of invisibility. He remains unmoving for a few moments, slowly becoming more aware of all the physiological symptoms he's so very used to, but with a twist of discomfort buried deep in his chest. A sudden creeping that becomes a cascade of fragments of knowledge pulling together to form a bigger picture.
He's a bit old to be a paige anymore but I am sure I can find something for old time's sake
The racing of his pulse in his ears, the blood rushing until he feels like he can't hear anything else. The way his skin starts to burn, his fingers start to curl into fists. The only reference he has for this level of physiological response is how it felt on the hunt for prey, the moment immediately preceding that first cut, when his entire body was singing with worship, with imminent sacrifice.
"Fuck," slips loose far more quietly than the random object he finds his fingers snatching up, hears it smash against a stone wall before he's cognizant of what's happened. The vase sits in pieces at the base of the wall, his gaze stuck on it blinkingly for a moment before he comes back to himself. Not a blackout like before, and perhaps they can all take some kind of comfort in the first thing he reached for being an object and not a living thing.
Somewhere behind him he hears Karlach say something, but he's not yet properly resurfaced from the way his mind starts to race towards something more practical than the seething he can feel drowning him from the inside. If he could choke on the own heat of his blood, he feels it in a way he cannot momentarily explain.
Eventually, though, the old habit of controlling and suppressing things to achieve a goal filters back in, something of old applied to something wholly new. He turns to face his companions and they wait, are leaving space they barely have spare for him to step into. And how he steps into it matters. He's acutely aware of that too.
Shadowheart had supplied their next lead, reminding him that the Sharrans had been spying on the two Chosen when they had headed to a diabolist in the lower city. And so with time not on their side, the ragtag group sweep through the city, arriving in a bustle of barely contained energy and fuelled by the urgency of their new task at the Devil's Fee.
He doesn't allow the diabolist much room to deny his request. Any complication surrounding his lack of memories doesn't figure into the way he converses, suddenly the simplicity of what he needs to achieve collecting as raw power in the way he carries himself.
His message is clear: I will carve a path through you if I need to, though I would prefer not to.
It's convincing enough of an assertion that when they do finally filter into the House of Hope through the portal, it is still fresh without a fight. Given his thoughts to the matter of Raphael, it's likely for the best. He will not allow the cambion to continue to exist, cannot allow it.
So, to be faced with not even a sniff of a welcoming party, that impotent rage has to sit idle beneath his skin, a lack of avenues for it to find a conclusion apparent. He isn't surprised that Raphael continues to make him work for another audience with him, and that sits about as well as anybody is expecting.
The snarl of fury is barely a word as he moves for the large set of double doors, closed tight until he forces them open with strength alone. A bloody-mindedness that calls so much of who he has become to lead, but the hunter beneath never far behind. Murdering was never about anger. But he can feel the pull of wanting to kill driven by something altogether consuming and it is rage.
"Raphael," he bellows as he invades the entryway towards the large banquet table ahead, the wolf at the door of the devil, the duality of who he was and who he is represented here by the fury tugging at his features. Gone is any effort to control how angry he is, unlocked by that singular sentence that annotates the rest of what he hadn't understood of Enver's scars. It all overlaps messily, memories of complicated, blasphemous moments and the context by which his human had been tortured.
no subject
It isn't just the one voice behind him that proclaims Raphael a bastard, but he's too busy staring at the now empty space that the devil has left behind in his wake. His mismatched eyes confirm he has certainly gone, that it isn't just a trick of invisibility. He remains unmoving for a few moments, slowly becoming more aware of all the physiological symptoms he's so very used to, but with a twist of discomfort buried deep in his chest. A sudden creeping that becomes a cascade of fragments of knowledge pulling together to form a bigger picture.
He's a bit old to be a paige anymore but I am sure I can find something for old time's sake
The racing of his pulse in his ears, the blood rushing until he feels like he can't hear anything else. The way his skin starts to burn, his fingers start to curl into fists. The only reference he has for this level of physiological response is how it felt on the hunt for prey, the moment immediately preceding that first cut, when his entire body was singing with worship, with imminent sacrifice.
"Fuck," slips loose far more quietly than the random object he finds his fingers snatching up, hears it smash against a stone wall before he's cognizant of what's happened. The vase sits in pieces at the base of the wall, his gaze stuck on it blinkingly for a moment before he comes back to himself. Not a blackout like before, and perhaps they can all take some kind of comfort in the first thing he reached for being an object and not a living thing.
Somewhere behind him he hears Karlach say something, but he's not yet properly resurfaced from the way his mind starts to race towards something more practical than the seething he can feel drowning him from the inside. If he could choke on the own heat of his blood, he feels it in a way he cannot momentarily explain.
Eventually, though, the old habit of controlling and suppressing things to achieve a goal filters back in, something of old applied to something wholly new. He turns to face his companions and they wait, are leaving space they barely have spare for him to step into. And how he steps into it matters. He's acutely aware of that too.
Shadowheart had supplied their next lead, reminding him that the Sharrans had been spying on the two Chosen when they had headed to a diabolist in the lower city. And so with time not on their side, the ragtag group sweep through the city, arriving in a bustle of barely contained energy and fuelled by the urgency of their new task at the Devil's Fee.
He doesn't allow the diabolist much room to deny his request. Any complication surrounding his lack of memories doesn't figure into the way he converses, suddenly the simplicity of what he needs to achieve collecting as raw power in the way he carries himself.
His message is clear: I will carve a path through you if I need to, though I would prefer not to.
It's convincing enough of an assertion that when they do finally filter into the House of Hope through the portal, it is still fresh without a fight. Given his thoughts to the matter of Raphael, it's likely for the best. He will not allow the cambion to continue to exist, cannot allow it.
So, to be faced with not even a sniff of a welcoming party, that impotent rage has to sit idle beneath his skin, a lack of avenues for it to find a conclusion apparent. He isn't surprised that Raphael continues to make him work for another audience with him, and that sits about as well as anybody is expecting.
The snarl of fury is barely a word as he moves for the large set of double doors, closed tight until he forces them open with strength alone. A bloody-mindedness that calls so much of who he has become to lead, but the hunter beneath never far behind. Murdering was never about anger. But he can feel the pull of wanting to kill driven by something altogether consuming and it is rage.
"Raphael," he bellows as he invades the entryway towards the large banquet table ahead, the wolf at the door of the devil, the duality of who he was and who he is represented here by the fury tugging at his features. Gone is any effort to control how angry he is, unlocked by that singular sentence that annotates the rest of what he hadn't understood of Enver's scars. It all overlaps messily, memories of complicated, blasphemous moments and the context by which his human had been tortured.