Gale
this is going to break me clean in two --
this is going to bring me close to you
The feral rage in Ciri’s eyes draws Gale closer; the fury that she feels is an irresistible lure. She snarls and he moves to touch her, to pull in the tumultuous negativity more directly. But before he can, her flared and threatening wings suddenly droop, and Gale draws up short at the sudden absence of constantly growing Power.
Focused as the brindle stallion is on assessing his abilities, he doesn’t hear her first words. He must rewind time a moment to hear them, and the ease with which he does so brings a bright smile that doesn’t fade even when he’s understood what the star mare says.
Her ears pin back in anger, but her words and laughter are cold and hardly satisfying after the piquant fury of a moment ago. He wants her dark again. Wants her feeling black emotions: fury, sadness, pain.
Anticipation of the full course meal makes his movements match her own, drawing closer until he can feel the warmth of her breath against him when she mocks his monstrosity.
Her fear is gone, but he imagines he can almost hear it, singing there beneath her skin. He is sure he feels it when he grabs hold of her bones, when he forces her perfectly still. Will she struggle, he wonders?
His lips hover above her shoulder, and time grows still. Gale has grown fond of this ability - being able to pause time and consider his actions. Now, he remembers the way Mazikeen’s voice had gone very soft as she’d spoken, the way her mouth had curled around the threat: ‘Touch anyone else and you’ll never get to have me again’.
She’d meant a very specific type of touch, he decides, not the kind that happens when times begins again and one thick black tentacle wraps itself around Ciri's neck. It tightens, not to choke her but to lift her into the air and slam her back to the earth where she’d been standing.
It hurts her - he can feel that buzzing toward him, and Gale smiles delightedly.
“Bolder isn’t a threat to me at all.” He says, bending down to whisper into her ear as a second tentacle twines around the bones of her feathered wing. “Nothing is,” he says as he snaps the ulna and radius of her starlit wings with a single twist, simultaneously releasing her from Wishbone’s stolen magic.
Gale takes a step away. Will she use the room to rise to her feet, he wonders? Will she grit her teeth through the pain and taunt him again? Having killed her once, Gale is neither fearful nor cautious. Ciri is not a threat to him, and the interest with which he regards her is very like that that of a cat intent on toying with its prey. His blue eyes regard her with intense curiosity, so very like his host’s had once done, and he waits.
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