Bury your fangs in my flesh. Tear me asunder.

RULES

ABOUT

† in media res

What are you?The voice was sinuous and not-real, more fluid and shape than sound. It slipped against his horns, ran curling fingers over the ridges like a careful mother, taking stock of each and every inch of him even as it held him in its grasp.What are you? it says again, and it grows demanding, irritated in its unsatisfied curiosity, touch turned rough and probing where it wanders over his body, then, Ah, it says as its fingers curl knife-sharp into the lashes on either side of his throat, I see, it says, digging itself into the space of his open wounds until it can seep into his veins, indistinguishable from blood.It is cold where it touches him and colder still as it bleeds in, filling empty space with something that burns like ice. There is a musing hum, a soft utterance as it spreads out until his body is more it than him. He is a chrysalis, a shell holding something that feels at once familiar and foreign, host to a change that will make the past irretrievable. He is powerless to stop it.Are you angry? it asks smugly, hiding behind his own flesh and bones and heart where he could not rip it out even if he tried– and gods, does he want to try.Yes, he tries to snarl in response, yes, yes, yes– but his voice is soundless in this place, or rather he is voiceless in this place, and even though a lilting laugh acknowledges his answer, it does not give him the relief of having spoken.I will be your voice, it replies, and he feels it settle under his tongue, spiral into the roots of his teeth. I will be your shield, your claws, and in return you will have things to be far angrier about than me.No, he says back, and it chokes his response at the root.Yes, it counters, the sound of it smiling, and it crawls through his memories. It drags itself by jagged claws through past and further past until it finds what it is looking for and pulls it forward; the tendrils that anchor the memory in his mind tense and tremble and snap like wires. It hurts at the breaking, and then it forces it into his awareness, and it hurts in the watching as well– a face that is familiar, the sick turning of his heart, the tearing of his flesh– and he is angry, so angry, and it laughs again.See? it says, and, Let me help you, and he knows that he shouldn’t but it has already seeped towards his hands and curled around them in vicious claws, and it gifts him the image of sinking them deep into betrayal, of ripping out the poisoned root that hurt him, and so even though he knows he shouldn’t–Yes, he says, and curls the claws in on themselves. Yes, let me rip and tear. I’ll kill him. I’ll do worse than kill him, I’ll–The voice wraps around his throat and stifles his words again. He feels a flash of rage; it means nothing.In time, it says, and before he can respond, it closes around his heart like a vise– through his heart like a sharp-jawed bear trap– and rips him in half straight down the center of whatever essence he has remaining.He wakes in the snow, in the dirt, like a maggot: mouth full of blood, decay given life. The voice lurks in his jagged clawtips and down his scaled spine and in his scarred throat, and it hungers- and for now, he is eager to hunt.

bonds

† mains

memoirs