violence
Interest gleams bright in her eyes as his skin glows for a moment, as if he has been set alight. It’s gone in a blink, replaced by the acrid stench of his fear, which is its own rich pleasure, an almost metallic tang she is learning to love.
Stop, he says, and though she has – not willingly, but because his body is not dead enough for her magic to ensconce itself in his skin, she tilts her head, curious.
“Why?” she asks, “I would make you better.”
It’s what she’s done to her sister, after all, piloted Charnel like a vessel and made her hunt, used that gloriously monstrous jaw to rend flesh. Charnel is better for it, surely – without Violence she would be a simple, stupid monster. With Violence, she is something else, something transcendent. A weapon.
She smiles at him, and it’s a wide, dead smile.
“I was born like this, too,” she says, then adds, “I can do something else, too. Something besides moving the dead.”
The ill-wrought possession, still rough at the edges, unable to stay long unless they are willing or particularly stupid (Charnel is both, but moreso the latter – her mind is used to Violence, now, and does not know to push her out).
“I could show you.”
She says it like it’s a gift.
“If you let me.”
I’d stay the hand of god, but war is on your lips
