Gale
this is going to break me clean in two --
this is going to bring me close to you
He sees Ciri nod at the edge of his vision, but most of his attention is focused on the way a bead of blood is travelling down the inside corner of the dying mare’s cheek. It glitters in the myriad of light sources on this dark evening - the round moon, Ciri’s red stars, Gale’s golden glow and flickering blue lightning. The brindle creature takes a step closer to smear it away, and to pull in the very last conscious thought that lilac mare had.
She’d loved someone and had wished to tell them one last time.
Gale makes a mental note to find this lover later, to feed on the horror and misery of their loss. He smiles at the thought, having forgotten Ciri entirely until he feels her shift beside him. When he meets her gaze, the molten silver has gone hard. But she’s trying to smile, so Gale suspects she is not cowed only a moment before she goads him more sharply.
Emotions are necessary sustenance, but there is nothing that feeds his Power like death. It’s why he’s the ability to ressurect the creatures he kills, after all, and tonight he’s no intentions to let go of the magic he feels running hot in his blood. He pulls away the dead mare’s starry mane and tail, and what he’s looted from her corpse he adds to his own body, and the magician’s spine-length mane and tail becomes instead a line of storm clouds.
They move with him as he steps closer to Ciri, because while the cursed creature is possessed of a large ego, he has an even larger reservoir of patience, and enough caution to know better than to taunt Nashua directly by slaying his Thane. He’ll leave the taunting to Aela and Mazikeen.
He’s asked what she had to trade for the mare’s life. As he meets her gaze, Gale rememebers that there is something specific he wants. He’s just not considered Ciri a possible means to achieve it until now, as he frowns down at her.
He wants to be rid of what he feels for Mazikeen. That hadn’t seemed possible before, but as he feels the rising black swell of Death and Power singing in his bones, he thinks that perhaps he could finally do something about it. He frowns, because it is always risky to do a new magic. But, he reasons, Ciri isn’t strong enough to kill him and the lilac mare was the only other horse around. He’s safe here.
So he rips open Ciri’s chest. Metaphorically, though it’s likely she’ll feel in nonetheless. Into it he presses a bit of brightness, the happiness that he feels in the presence of an orange-eyed queen. And then he adds his shadows, so that he’ll know if it is meddled with, and some of his lightning so that Ciri might feel the shocking reminder of who it is she’s made a deal with.
Then, with magic that is far easier to manage than a true resurrection, Gale returns the look of life to the lilac mare’s eyes. He pulls on her bones until she stands, stumbling in a perfect replica of a living body. She staggers back when her open eyes land on Ciri and Gale, then turns starry-looking tail and runs. The magician sends her bones off toward Tephra, and perhaps she’ll make it to the waterfall before her soul has travelled too far from her body to be called back.
When she has disappeared into the trees, Gale turns back to Ciri. Her chest is still open, and the pain she feels seeps beneath his skin and feeds his ability to tug and pull and twist until she’s patched back together again. The ache in his head that would usually accompany such magic is nothing more than a feather touch.
Gale smiles, feeling incredibly pleased with himself. He arches a single eyebrow in query at his red-starred companion, as though wondering if she still has doubts about his power.
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