I'll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife
They part easily for him, the cold-soaked stallion, running intangible fingers along the thick sinew of his frame in admiring delight. A moment longer and another comes. Fear …, their reverent whispers leak into the frigid air, trembling in their eagerness to know him.
Then the ice dragon interrupts their grasping inspection and they shrink back with an inaudible hiss, indignant in their retreat. He is the first of the resistance and it is here that Niklas begins to lose interest.
Perhaps they notice him as he peels from the nothingness. Likely not. A waifish frame separates from the darkness molecule by molecule. The eyes are a pit of nothingness, obscure in their focus though it is she, the instigator, that holds his measure. A dry tongue darts forth to taste the wintry air.
He knew The Plague. Oh how he knew the Plague. Don’t you know that all things – even the gods and faeries – are tainted by Hell? A mirthless chuckle rises in a cloud of vapor from lips, scarred and cracked so that they might think he is infected. Content in his own introspection from somewhere near the bone-winged spectre and the fanged teleporting one – my how they gleam -- it is clear this pupil-less devil has thrown his weight behind the more, let’s say, discerning crowd.
Niklas
The Demon