A Meeting of Monsters

[Speechless]

From live roleplay between Speechless and Skid:



For hours, he was still. For hours, he'd hidden... and now the sun was gone, and there was the weak light of two moons, intermittently cut off by a passing cloud... hours of silence meant it was safe to emerge. A shimmer beneath the wagon revealed the figure hadn't moved at all, but rather seemed simply to fade into the background, become one with the scenery. Eyes opened one at a time, first black, before fading to contain whites and irises and pupils and normal eyes. Normal. Were slits normal? One eye could have one. Then he could choose later which he wanted to keep. Sallow, and sunken, and pale, and filthy, and smelling of rot, he emerged, moving toward his unfinished meal.

This time... he watched carefully as he consumed. Handful after handful, and he wasn't even watching where he was grabbing anymore, where he was pulling from. Before, it had almost been methodical. Now, it was nearly desperate.

Consume. Hungry.

Slowly, another corpse was picked clean until it was bare bones and empty, broken skull. As he chewed, he seemed to look upon the shattered bone in front of him... and carefully brushed messy fingertips against the teeth, sharp fingernails clattering as he dragged. He moved to another body, then, and inspected the orc's face, tilting his head as he went into a crouch, reaching forth and putting palms on cheeks. To the left, he turned the head. To the right... and then it was wrenched from the neck, to be pulled closer.

-

Darkness hides more than oneself, of course, and this night, in these woods, there were Nightmares lurking amongst the nothing. Nothing more than the scents of ash and oak, barely there beneath rotting foliage and flesh.

The softest footfalls and the barest glimmers of moonlight were all to give Skid away as he stalked the underbrush, moving towards the sounds of gorging, full gullets and gnashing teeth. Perhaps prey wandered the woods, or maybe, just maybe, something more interesting may have awoken.

-

His fingers were prying open the mouth of the orc, and had dug in, grasping the tongue, when there was the softest noise of night that gave him pause... he stopped moving, and his face rose, nose going into the air... nostrils flared, but he could smell only decay, and the putridity of the orcs he was moving through. The head remained in one hand, cradled almost gently, the other nearly disappeared into that mouth, and, still on haunches, he shifted. Looked over his shoulder.

There seemed little movement, but he shuffled toward the cart, quietly, all sounds of wet smacking and soft groans having ceased, on his end. He cradled the head closer, and a soft breathy hiss came from his mouth, his throat, perhaps, like an alligator warning off potential nuisances. And yet... he still backed away, slowly, toward the safety of that abandoned cart.

-

Claws and talons found precious purchase in soft soil and patches where the grass had grown thin as he continued his approach. The Nightmare's tail, long and languorous behind him, froze as warning was given. This urgency of action, the care taken to pay attention to its surroundings... A scavenger could be more than a little dangerous to an unwary predator.

He let out a horrible sort of growl, like gravel on glass, as he made his presence known. Not loud, but not plaintive. He had arrived, that much was certain as he emerged into the clearing, tail twitching ever so curiously as he looked over the scene before him.

-

Eyes locked on to the creature in front of him, and he leaned to one side, head tilting as he narrowed those mismatched eyes, the hand once in mouth now slowly moving to ground, fingertips pressing to the packed and charred dirt of the area until his fingers became crooked, and almost taloned. His spine curled forward as he answered that growl with another warning, a guttural gurgling, made brave by the predator before him announcing their arrival.

The other had lost advantage, in the creature's mind. If it could think. Still, he clutched his prize, and further in it was pulled. Fingers curled, and nails dug into dirt, legs tensing so that his whole body seemed to thrum. Whether in a lunge for the one across the clearing, or for flight, it was unclear.

-

The fabric stretched across the Nightmare's face twisted into a grin, straining against whatever lie beneath as he rose up to his full standing height. Smoke began to rhythmically coil up from the corners of where his mouth ought to be as he chuffed out a little anticipatory laughter. His eye opened wider, and the reptilian pupil at its center widened in the dark.

Too-long, clawed fingers spread just so and tightened, as his legs coiled up. He couldn't have looked more the part of a cat under the Christmas tree if he'd started wriggling at the haunches. What will you do, strange new creature? Could he resist either fight or flight? The temptation could certainly prove to be too powerful.

-

There was a long, tense moment, one that seemed to stretch for eternity, two forms waiting each other out... Until he broke the silence, dropping the head to roll in the dirt and lunging forward, all at once, springing from the ground with a grunt and a snort from flared nostrils. Quickly, he moved, eyes never leaving the form, until he was simply... There. He still stood with a vague hunch, and one arm dangled at his side as he curled to the side of the creature, sniffing... Testing. Fingers splayed, and curled, as if ready to defend himself, and moved closer to his chest. A low noise came from the back of his throat, broken only by a heavy pant, carrying with it the smell of rotten flesh, sulfur, and something old, and wet.

Here, he stood, Body curled so that his head was not above, or level with the creature's, but rather closer to shoulder height, face lifted so he could display the curling back of lips, from sharp, jagged teeth, some nearly broken away, and shut tightly, so that spittle bubbled, slightly, in the spaces between as he breathed.

-

He remained still, at first drinking in every movement with an eye slowly shining more gold than red. His head craned to watch the creature's inspection, drawing on his scent, the mars in his form, the cobbled together bits and pieces. He'd certainly notice the heat roiling off the Nightmare's scales, not quite hot enough to pull steam from the air.

As he did so, the mask's fabric unraveled across his jaw, revealing rows and rows of silvery needles and razorblades lined up not unlike a shark's. All twisted into a grin set on scales much finer than those across the rest of his body. The smoke curling up from the corners of his revealed mouth carried that heady scent of ash with them.

A smile for a smile.

-

Like the smoke that curled from the Nightmare's mouth, he curled, now slowly moving his upper body to snake around to the other side. Lips drew back over teeth, so that they only parted, slightly, and eyes finally went from the other's face, to let his face move closer, and his nose wrinkled severely at the shimmer of heat he felt, saw, almost... And his head pulled back, lifting to pull at his spine. His arms had nearly folded into his chest at this point, and fingers curled and clawed inward, clutching at the ratty hooded jacket he wore. he did not step back, but now stood, strange eyes meeting strange face.

A guttural noise was huffed forward, something like the whuff of a half-assed bark from a lazy dog, and he tilted his head thoughtfully, as the slitted eye shifted, doing its best to resemble the one he saw just before it.

-

The noise that came from the Nightmare's throat was one of amusement. His hands had relaxed, loose and uncoiled as the creature made its inspection. The fabric of the mask stitched itself back together as Skid tilted his head to match.

The pupil contracted back into a slit, the gold and red mercurially sloshing across the surface of his eye, never blending, but always entangled. Blood spattered over gold.

He leaned in, just ever so much, perhaps to make things simpler. Can you do it?

-

Nostrils flared, and deep set eyes did not blink, and there was no movement from eyes, even in the sort of tick that was natural , minute movements of searching, or the constant shimmy of data gathering. Something had fully caught the attention of the filthy creature. Stock still, he stood, now concentrating, memorizing, mesmerized... and color swirled, imperfect. The slit too wide, and the colors could not match the vibrance of blood on gold, but rather rust upon beaten brass, smeared rather than splattered.

Finally, there was a sharp exhale through his nose... And he bent back into that skulking hunch, taking a step back, curiously. Hands roamed his own chest, before he held them out, blackened in blood and filth, palms up and fingers doing their best to pull away from palms, looking an unnatural movement, in the way tendons jumped to escape the position they'd been forced to take on.

"Huh." And it had a voice!

-

The ridges over his eyes rose, tugging the fabric into a quizzical configuration as he watched the copy come out, though maybe a little low on toner. Regardless, he looked quite pleased with the outcome.

As he looked over those filthy mitts, the Nightmare had an idea, and such a grand one at that.

One hand slipped up and into his little pouch, coming back out with something soft and greyish. A curious cylinder with a sweet scent, soft and fluffy and most interesting. But there was something sickly about its sweetness. And something almost.... Meaty, about its texture. He brought it, rather daintily, to the outstretched hands, and deposited it there.

-

It was an unexpected gift, and he looked down to the puffed thing in his palm, then up once more... and hands lifted as his face lowered, to sniff at the strange soft cylinder. He gave an exploratory sniff, and one hand turned palm down, long dirty fingers delicately picking it up from his palm to be brought to his mouth. He paused, then, letting it touch his lips, before curling away to settle on his haunches. Both ends were grasped, gently, with fingertips, and he slowly pulled it apart, one half brought closer before being shoved into his mouth with two fingers. It did not take long for the other half to follow suit.

Seemingly mollified, he looked up to the other... and then to the piled and scattered bodies, where he started to move. Perhaps the fear of threat had gone. Perhaps it was an invitation. Either way, he skulked back to where he'd dropped the forcefully severed head, going back to inspecting its lax mouth.

-

The Nightmare watched him eat with rapt attention, before sauntering along behind his new compatriot, keen to do more of the same.